Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: James S. Slingerland (political party unknown) (until January 2), Frank Denver (political party unknown) (starting January 2)
Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Pardon Stevens (political party unknown) (until month and day unknown), Charles Cutler (political party unknown) (starting month and day unknown)
March – One of the first Personal Liberty League formed in the United States in response to the threat posed to the liquor industry by the growing political strength of the temperance movement.
June 4 – Two men lead investors to land near the Wyoming-Colorado border claiming to have found diamonds there, starting a diamond craze in the western U.S. (which is later revealed as a fraud).[1]
November 2 – Spiritualist, suffragette, and Free Love advocate Victoria Woodhull publishes shocking allegations in Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly claiming in "The Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case" article that Henry Ward Beecher had committed adultery with Theodore Tilton's wife. The subsequent trials and hearings, "drove Reconstruction off the front pages for two and a half years" and became "the most sensational 'he said, she said' in American history", in the words of Walter A. McDougall.[2]
November 5 – Women's suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time (on November 18 she is served an arrest warrant and in the subsequent trial is fined $100 - which she never pays).
November 7 – The Mary Celeste sets sail from New York, bound for Genoa.
November 9 – Great Boston Fire of 1872: In Boston, Massachusetts, a large fire begins to burn on Lincoln Street. The two-day event destroys about 65 acres (260,000 m2) of city, 776 buildings, much of the financial district and causes US$60 million in damage.
^Willyard, Cassandra (November 26, 2008). "Benchmarks: Exposing the Great Diamond Hoax". Earth. American Geological Institute. Retrieved September 13, 2010.
^McDougall, Walter A. (April 7, 2009). Throes of Democracy. HarperCollins. p. 551. ISBN 978-0-06-186236-6. Retrieved May 24, 2013.
^"The Diamond Fields; Exposure of a Gigantic Swindle Report of Geological Experts The Ground "Salted" Dissolution of the Company". The New York Times. November 28, 1872.
^Marx, Jeffrey A. (June 2012). ""The Days Had Come of Curds and Cream": The Origins and Development of Cream Cheese in America". Journal of Food, Culture and Society. 15 (2).
Further readingedit
"American Annual Cyclopaedia ... 1872", American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year, NY: D. Appleton & Co.: 14 v – via HathiTrust
External linksedit
Media related to 1872 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons