25 August – Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel.[2] 27 September – American merchant sailing ship Ellen Southard is wrecked off Liverpool; 12 crew and life-boatmen are lost. September Joseph Bazalgette completes the 30-year construction of London's sewer system.[4] Association football team Birmingham City F.C. is founded as Small Heath Alliance in Birmingham by a group of cricketers from Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley, playing its first match in November.[6] 26 November – The Times newspaper reveals that Isma'il Pasha has sold Egypt's 44% share in the Suez Canal to Britain in a deal secured by Benjamin Disraeli without the prior sanction of the British Parliament. 6 December German emigrant ship SS Deutschland (built in Scotland 1866) runs aground at Kentish Knock resulting in the death of 157 passengers and crew and inspiring Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem The Wreck of the Deutschland.