On February 2, 1876, the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, which comes to be more commonly known as the National League (NL), is formed. The American League (AL) was established in 1901 and in 1903, the first World Series was held.

On March 7, 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention: the telephone.

The first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days before.

After a public disturbance occurred between policeman Wyatt Earp and a candidate for Wichita, Kansas county sheriff, Earp is fined $30 and relieved of his job.

On April 22, 1876, the Boston Red Caps beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-5, in the first official National League baseball game. The game, which lasts a little more than two hours, is played in "favorable" weather before 3,000 fans at the Athletics' grounds at 25th and Jefferson streets. "Great interest was manifested in the result," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "as it really was the first game of importance played this season."

On May 6, 1876, Thomas Gainsborough’s painting, Duchess of Devonshire, causes a stir when it goes up for auction at Christie's in London. It sells to a London art dealer, William Agnew, for $51,540, the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.

A mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco.

Sioux and Cheyenne Native Americans score a tactical victory over General Crook’s forces at the Battle of the Rosebud, foreshadowing the disaster of the Battle of the Little Big Horn eight days later.

Embittered and impoverished, the once mighty Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna dies in Mexico City.

On June 25, 1876, Native American forces led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River.

After a slow two-day march, the wounded soldiers from the Battle of the Little Big Horn reach the steamboat Far West.

“Wild Bill” Hickok, one of the greatest gunfighters of the American West, is murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Charles Franklin Kettering, the American engineer and longtime director of research for General Motors Corp. (GM), is born on August 29, 1876, in Loudonville, Ohio. Of the 140 patents Kettering obtained over the course of his lifetime, perhaps the most notable was his electric self-starter for the automobile, patented in 1915.

Attempting a bold daytime robbery of the Northfield Minnesota bank, the James-Younger gang suddenly finds itself surrounded by angry townspeople and is nearly wiped out on September 7, 1876.

William Magear “Boss” Tweed, leader of New York City’s corrupt Tammany Hall political organization during the 1860s and early 1870s, is delivered to authorities in New York City after his capture in Spain.

U.S. troops under the leadership of General Ranald Mackenzie destroy the village of Cheyenne living with Chief Dull Knife on the headwaters of the Powder River. The attack was in retaliation against some of the Native Americans who had participated in the killing of Custer and his men at the Little Bighorn.

On November 30, 1876, Yale defeats Princeton, 2-0, in Hoboken, New Jersey in the first collegiate football game played on Thanksgiving. Nearly 1,000 fans attend the game, played in cold, rainy weather. "The friends of both colleges mustered in good force," the New York Times reports. "Several carriages containing ladies were on the ground, and a goodly number of Alumni were there to cheer the contestants."

A fire at the Brooklyn Theater in New York kills nearly 300 people and injures hundreds more on December 5, 1876. Some victims perished from a combination of burns and smoke inhalation; others were trampled to death in the general panic that ensued.