1839
1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840
Willem I of the Netherlands recognizes Belgian independence in the Treaty of London signed April 18 (see 1831), letting the Belgians have the western part of Luxembourg, keeping the rest as a grand duchy with himself as grand duke (see 1815; 1867).
French revolutionary socialist (Louis-) Auguste Blanqui, 26, leads 500 armed insurrectionists in a takeover of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) at Paris May 12, but the uprising is easily suppressed after 2 days of fighting. Blanqui escapes, police apprehend him soon afterward, and although he is condemned to death the sentence is commuted to life imprisonment, and he is sent to the island of Mont-Saint-Michel off the Normandy coast, where he will remain in solitary confinement for 4 years (see 1848).
The Serbian prince Milos Obrenovic abdicates under pressure from opponents who have conspired with the Russians to curb the autocratic powers exercised by Milos since 1817 (see 1829). He is succeeded by his son Milan, 20, who rules until his untimely death July 8, and then by his 14-year-old son, who will reign until 1842 as Michael (Mihailo) III Obrenovic.
The Convention of Vergara August 31 ends the Carlist War in Spain's Basque provinces after defeats of Carlist forces in 1836 and 1837 and of Liberal forces last year. Baldomero Espartero has opened negotiations with the Carlists in the wake of last year's Battle of Morella; he is called "the Peacemaker of Spain" and given the title duque de la Victoria. Don Carlos emigrates to France, leaving his niece Isabella II to complete a reign that will continue until 1868, but insurgent leader Ramón Cabrera refuses to recognize the Convention (see 1840).
Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor delivers a speech at Manchester setting September 29 as the date for violent action if Parliament does not grant the six points demanded by the Chartist movement (see O'Connor, 1832; Lovett, 1838). Now 42, O'Connor established the weekly paper Northern Star at Leeds in 1837 to support reform of Parliament. His paper has gained a circulation of more than 48,000 copies. He opposes the "moral force" arguments of William Lovett, and he has given speeches promising to lead the people to "death or glory," declaring his willingness to "die for the cause." His remarks outrage Lovett and Henry Hetherington, and they exclude him from the platform of a mass meeting organized by the London Working Men's Association. Monmouthshire draper and tailor John Frost, 55, leads an uprising at his native Newport November 4, having attended the Chartist convention at London from February to September and cast the tie-breaking vote (as chairman) that dissolved the assembly (see 1838). Troops kill about 20 Chartists in the street battle, Frost will be convicted of high treason in January of next year and sentenced to death, the sentence will be commuted to exile for life in Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania), he will be released in 1854 on condition that he leave British territory, but he will be granted a full pardon at age 72 in 1856 and allowed to return to England (see 1842; O'Connor, 1843).
Denmark's Frederik VI dies at Copenhagen December 3 at age 71 after a 31-year reign (plus 24 years as regent) in which Norway has been lost to Sweden (see 1814). Frederik is succeeded by a 53-year-old nephew who will reign until 1848 as Kristian VIII.
Ottoman forces invade Syria in April to contest the claims of the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali, now 70, whose son Ibrahim has been ruling with an iron hand (see 1833). Ibrahim defeats the forces of Mahmud II June 24 at the Battle of Nezib (Nizip). The sultan is poisoned to death at his summer residence in Scutari July 1 at age 54 as his fleet surrenders at Alexandria without a shot being fired. Greece has won independence in Mahmud's bloody 31-year reign; his 16-year-old son continues the war against the Egyptian viceroy and will reign until 1861 as Abdul Mejid I (see 1840).
The British-Afghan War that began last year continues as a 5,000-man British army escorts the unpopular Shah Shuja to Kabul and restore him to power in place of Dost Mohammed Khan. The shah reigned from 1803 to 1810, agitation rises against British influence, and Pashtun tribesmen work to restore Dost Mohammed (see 1841).
Former British governor general of India Lord William Bentinck dies at Paris June 17 at age 64.
An Opium War between China and Britain begins in November (see commerce, 1838). Chinese official Lin Zexu (Tsehsu), 54, has given orders in March for the destruction of 20,000 chests of illegal Indian opium stored by foreign merchants such as Jardine, Matheson & Company in Guangzhou (Canton) warehouses. To burn the opium would risk having people inhale the fumes, so Lin has more than 3 million pounds of it dissolved in river trenches and lets it flow into the sea. William Jardine has arrived at London just before the Chinese seizure of his opium, gained election to Parliament, and organized a lobby of Midlands industrialists, City bankers, and merchants who flood the foreign office with petitions calling for a forceful response (see 1840).
Report on the Affairs of British North America by John Lambton, 1st earl of Durham, proposes the union of Upper and Lower Canada and the granting of self government (see 1838). Written largely by the former governor general's chief secretary in Canada Charles Buller, submitted to the Colonial Office January 31, and published February 11, Lord Durham's report attempts to justify the position that he took before his resignation last year, and Lord John Russell, 46, introduces a resolution in Parliament June 20 to implement Durham's recommendations (see 1840).
Mexico's president Anastasio Bustamante absents himself from the capital in March; the vainglorious General Santa Anna seizes power and rules as dictator until July (see 1838; 1841).
Former U.S. senator Robert Y. Hayne dies of fever at Charleston, South Carolina, September 24 at age 47, having served one term as governor and later planned a railway route across the state.
Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar oversees the transfer of the republic's capital in October to the frontier town of Waterloo, which is renamed Austin. Intent on territorial expansion and opposed to annexation by the United States, he tries to make a peace treaty with Mexico, fails, and forms an alliance with a rebel government in the Yucatán (see 1841).
Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar forces Cherokee to leave the republic and join their tribal refugees in Arkansas (see 1838). North Carolina-born Battle of San Jacinto veteran Colonel Edward Burleson, now 41, laid out the town of Waterloo (now Austin) last year and defeats Comanche forces December 25 at Pecan Bayou (see 1840).
Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky delivers a conciliatory address against militant abolitionism. Consulting others before making the speech, Clay is told that it may offend ultras of both parties, but he replies, "I trust the sentiments and opinions are correct; I had rather be right than be president." (He has been trying for 15 years to gain the presidency.)
Slaves aboard the Spanish ship Amistad rebel while en route from one Cuban port to another, killing the captain and all but two crew members after a passage in which one third of the slaves have perished en route to Havana; the American Missionary Association is founded to defend the slaves, who have mutinied against their Spanish owners and brought the slave ship into U.S. waters (see 1840).
Abolitionist Benjamin Lundy dies in Illinois August 22 at age 50. He has twice traveled to Haiti and made other trips to Canada and Texas in search of a suitable location for settling black freedmen, many of them illegitimate sons of white planters by black women.
"Appeal to the Christian Women of the South" by Angelina Grimké is published in September in The Anti-Slavery Examiner: "I know that you do not make the laws but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do." Grimké, her sister Sarah, and Sarah's husband, Theodore Dwight Weld, compile a work entitled American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. They suggest that one of the chief monstrosities of slavery is the rape and sexual coercion of black women by white masters.
Mississippi adopts the first U.S. married woman's property law, giving wives the right to hold property—including income from their employment—in their own names (see New York, 1848).
An Ottoman decree issued November 3 begins what will be called the Reorganization (Tanzimat), introducing reforms that will include abolishing the slave trade, inaugurating new codes of commercial and criminal law based largely on the French system, developing a secular school system, creating provincial representative assemblies, reorganizing the army with a Prussian-model conscription system, and ending nepotism and the traffic in favors and appointments. The Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber (Hatt-Serif of Gülhane) guarantees every subject equality and security of property regardless of race or religion; it also authorizes the development of a standardized system of taxation and fairer methods of military conscription and training. The young sultan Abdul Mejid I has entrusted his 39-year-old grand vizier Mustafa Reshid with preparing new reform measures consistent with his late father's programs, and Reshid will play a key role in implementing the Tanzimat (but see 1871).
Australian settler John Batman dies May 6 at age 38, having fathered six daughters and a son (who will drown in 1845). The settlers at Melbourne start work on a customs house (the town's first public building), and by 1842 the town will have about 10,000 people.
Stephen Van Rensselaer dies at Albany January 26 at age 74. Last of the Dutch patroons who once controlled so much of New York's land, he has done nothing to amend the cumbersome system of land tenures on his vast estates, which have some 3,000 farms on 436,000 acres, or to mitigate the grievances of its tenants except to be careless about collecting rents and charitable toward the more unfortunate. His tenant farmers are said to be $400,000 in arrears on their rents, they have expected these debts to be remitted, and violence breaks out when this is not done.
British troops in southwestern Wales suppress an uprising that will be remembered as the Rebecca Riots. The ostensible cause of the unrest is the toll levied at tollgates on public roads, but there is general dissatisfaction arising from increased tithe charges and provisions of the Poor Law Amendment enacted 5 years ago. Many of the rioters disguise themselves as women, they quote the words of Genesis 24:52 ("And they blessed Rebecca, and said to her, . . . may your descendants possess the gate of those who hate them!"), and they ride out at night to destroy the tollhouses (but generally spare the tollkeepers) (see 1842).
"To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities," writes French utopian socialist (Jean-Joseph-Charles-) Louis Blanc, 28, in his essay "L'Organisation du Travail," which appears in serial form in the newspaper Revue du Progrès, founded by Blanc to promote his doctrines. To prevent the rising power of capitalism from crushing the weak, Blanc proposes the establishment of state-financed "social workshops" that would be controlled by the workers and gradually take over most production (see 1848).
Britain's Anti-Corn Law League gains power by amalgamating opposition groups (see 1838). Richard Cobden and John Bright's league attracts workers to its cause by promising that a removal of tariffs on foreign grain will reduce food prices, give Britons more money to buy clothing, and thus create more domestic demand and more jobs in the textile industry. Promoters of the league know that lowering food prices will enable them to lower wages (see 1841; 1846).
Robert Bennet Forbes becomes head of Russell, Sturgis & Company in May, continuing to reap profits in the Chinese opium trade. Western physicians make wide use of opium, which has legitimate value in medical practice, but the East India Company has encouraged addiction to the poppy derivative in order to keep its Indian and Chinese workers subdued, pay for the tea that it is buying from China, and produce huge profits for British investors, who have been told by William Jardine that the opium trade is "the safest and most gentleman-like speculation I am aware of." When his British competitors withdraw to Macao and urge Forbes to join them, he replies, "I did not come to China for my health or pleasure; I shall remain at my post as long as I can sell a yard of goods or a pound of tea," but textiles and tea are not his most profitable wares. Warren Delano returns home with a fortune and in 1851 will settle on a large Hudson River estate at Newburgh, New York, keeping mum (as do other Russell, Sturgis & Co. partners) about his activities in the opium trade (see 1840; politics [Hong Kong], 1842).
Economic depression in the United States in the next few years will force Maryland and Pennsylvania to default on their interest payments to British and European bondholders (see 1837; 1841).
Welsh-born English physicist William R. (Robert) Grove, 28, pioneers the hydrogen fuel cell: he places amalgamated zinc in dilute sulfuric acid and a platinum cathode in concentrated nitric acid, separates the two liquids by a porous container, and thereby mixes hydrogen with oxygen in the presence of an electrolyte to produce electricity plus water, but the electricity produced is too small to be of any use (see 1889).
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal started in 1828 reaches 134 miles west of Georgetown but runs into financial difficulties (see 1850).
Steam engines are introduced on the New York and Harlem Railroad (see 1837; Vanderbilt, 1863).
The first Italian railway opens between Naples and Portici, covering a distance of eight kilometers (see 1859).
The first railway between Munich and Augsburg opens September 1.
The first true bicycle appears at Dumfries, Scotland, where local blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan, 29, of Courthill, has added a pedal system and a brake to the frame and wheels designed by Sauerbroun and Niepce in 1816. MacMillan's 57-pound bike with its 32-inch iron-tired front wheel and 42-inch rear wheel makes it possible for the first time for a person to travel under his own power faster than he can run (see Michaux, 1861).
Charles Goodyear pioneers effective use of rubber. Now 39, the former Philadelphia hardware merchant has obtained rights to a sulfur process for treating rubber, has accidentally overheated a mixture of rubber, sulfur, and white lead, and stumbled on a way to "vulcanize" rubber to make a hard and durable substance that chars but does not melt. Goodyear has sold the patent on his father's pitchfork (the first steel-tine pitchfork) to finance his experiments with raw rubber, which has been used to some extent earlier, as in Macintosh raincoats (see everyday life, 1823). Rubber's tendency to become sticky in hot weather and lose its elasticity in cold weather has limited its commercial potential; Goodyear's vulcanization process does not solve all the problems but will extend rubber's uses (see 1844).
Massachusetts inventor Isaac Babbitt, 40, patents a journal box, or housing, for the portion of a shaft or axle contained by a plain bearing. He suggests that the box be lined with an alloy of tin, antimony, and copper that will be called Babbitt's metal.
Philadelphia civil engineer William Smith Otis, 25, receives a patent (No. 1,089) February 24 for the world's first steam shovel. It employs a system of pulleys to move its 180° slewing jib, arms, and bucket. The bucket has a capacity of 1½ cubic yards and can move 380 cubic yards per day. Otis mounted the machine on four flanged railroad-type wheels 2 years ago and used it to excavate earth for construction of a railroad at Canton, Massachusetts, but he is killed while operating it later in the year; canal and railroad builders and mine operators will continue for decades to rely on hand labor.
Scottish engineer James Nasmyth, 31, invents a steam hammer that will make possible larger forgings without loss of precision; a protégé of the late inventor Henry Maudslay, he returned to his native Edinburgh after Maudslay's death in 1831, started a business at Manchester 3 years later, and has devised the steam hammer for forging a huge wrought-iron paddle-shaft. He will patent his invention in 1842 after finding an identical steam hammer being used at Le Creusot in France. The British Admiralty will adopt his hammer in 1843, and it will serve as the model for precision metal shapers that will be the basis of a worldwide machine-tool industry.
Scottish-born London machinist Alexander Bain, 28, applies for a patent on the world's first electric clock (it will be issued January 11 of next year to Bain and chronometer maker John Barwise). At age 18 Bain walked 21 miles through the snow from Wick to Thurso to hear a penny lecture on "Light, Heat, and the Electric Fluid"; moved to London 7 years later; worked as a journeyman at Clerkenwell while attending lectures that included demonstrations of electromagnetism; and has earlier found other practical uses for electricity. An electric current drives the clock's pendulum instead of springs or weights, and Bain will improve the clock by giving it an "earth battery" made by burying plates of zinc and copper in the ground.
Traveler-author John Lloyd Stephens goes to Central America on a confidential mission for President Van Buren; his North Carolina-born clergyman friend Francis L. (Lister) Hawks, 41, has urged him to investigate vestiges of ancient civilizations in the area, so he brings with him English artist Frederick Catherwood, and when he is unable to find the Guatemalan government to which he is accredited he examines the ruins at Copán, Palenque, Uxmal, and other Mayan sites, whose monuments Catherwood sketches in pencil.
German anatomist Martin H. (Heinrich) Rathke, 46, at the University of Dorpat describes the embryonic structure (later called Rathke's pouch) from which the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland develops. An eminent embryologist, Rathke has been the first to describe gill slits and gill arches in the embryos of both mammals and birds, and although he has believed the gill arches to be vestiges of ancestral gills he has also seen that they were significant to the later development of associated blood vessels.
Microscopic Investigations on the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Plants and Animals by German naturalists Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jakob Schleiden is an exegesis of the cell theory (see 1835; 1838).
German-Swiss chemist Christian F. Schönbein, 40, discovers ozone and gives it that name.
Swedish chemist Karl Gustav Mosander, 42, of Stockholm's Caroline Medical Institute isolates lanthanum, a rare earth (metallic element) heretofore unknown. Mosander has been studying a compound of cerium under the direction of Jöns Jakob Berzelius (who suggests the name lanthanum from the Greek word lanthano, meaning to hide or escape notice) and will discover other rare earths.
Nauvoo, Illinois, receives its name and becomes the largest city in the state as some 10,000 Mormons settle at a town on the Mississippi that was formerly called Commerce. The Mormons have been driven from Missouri into Illinois (see 1830; 1844).
New England clergyman John Humphrey Noyes, 28, establishes a Bible class at Putney, Vermont, where he will soon urge the establishment of a communal society (see Putney Community, 1846).
The American Bible Society announces its intention to make sure that the Bible is read in every U.S. classroom, including those in tax-supported public schools. The country is almost entirely Protestant, few people doubt the importance of religion as part of education, and virtually no objections are raised. Educator Horace Mann has written, "Our system earnestly inculcates all Christian morals. It welcomes the religion of the Bible, and in receiving the Bible, it allows it to do what is allowed by no other system—to speak for itself."
The Republic of Texas Congress votes January 29 to set aside land to support public school and two public universities in accordance with President Lamar's December 1838 inaugural address, but economic constraints prevent any further implementation of the president's proposal.
The University of Missouri is founded at Columbia; the first public university in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase territory, it will survive as the oldest state university west of the Mississippi.
Virginia Military Institute (VMI) is founded at Lexington (see politics [Battle of New Market], 1864).
The first state-supported normal school (teacher's college) is founded at Lexington, Massachusetts, through the efforts of Board of Education Secretary Horace Mann, now 42 (see 1837). Mann persuades the Massachusetts legislature to enact a measure establishing a minimum school year of 6 months and more than doubling appropriations for education (see 1852).
Boston's Lowell Institute is founded by John Lowell Jr., 70, to provide free lectures by eminent scholars.
Boston University is founded.
English physician James (Phillips) Kay, 35, is appointed first secretary of a council that has been set up to administer the British government's annual grants to education. An assistant Poor Law commissioner since 1835, he has worked to educate the children of paupers in workhouses and seen the need for a national system of education and teacher training. Kay and E. Carleton Tufnell will establish St. John's College in the next year at Battersea, London, as Britain's first training college for schoolteachers. Kay will introduce a system under which schools receiving grants will be subject to inspection by government officials, and he will expand a program under which promising youths aged 13 to 18 will teach in elementary schools while receiving secondary education from the heads of those schools.
Electric clock inventor Alexander Bain devises the prototype of what later will be called a facsimile ("fax") machine but lacks the money to develop it. The editor of the Mechanics Magazine introduces him to Charles F. Wheatstone (see 1837); he demonstrates his models at Wheatstone's town house; Wheatstone says he sees no future in them, but next year he will demonstrate an electric clock to the Royal Society, claim that he has invented it and use his social position in efforts to block Bain's patents (see 1841).
The Morning Star begins publication April 8 at Houston, Texas, as the state's first daily newspaper (seePost, 1885; Chronicle, 1901).
Nonfiction: Letters from Russia by the 49-year-old French aristocrat Astolphe, marquis de Custine, whose father went to the guillotine in 1793. He has spent some weeks studying the Russians and writes, "Russia is a country where everyone is part of a conspiracy to mystify the foreigner." "Russians have only names for everything, but nothing in reality. Russia is a country of façades . . . The entire nation, in essence, is nothing but a placard stuck over Europe"; On Philosophy and Christianity (Uber Philsophie und Christentum) by Ludwig Feuerbach, who argues that "Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea."
Fiction: The Charterhouse of Parma (La Chartreuse de Parme) by Stendhal, who has written the novel of passion and political adventure in 7 weeks after 7 years of thought; Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, whose novel has been serialized for 20 months, introducing readers to the bad education administered by the exploitive Mr. Squeers of Dotheboys Hall, an institution derived from the author's childhood experience; "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, whose melodramatic tale of an intellectual confronted with the death of a beautiful woman appears in the September Burton's Gentleman's magazine.
Poetry: Voices of the Night by Portland, Me.-born Harvard language professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 32. His poem "A Psalm of Life" begins, "Tell me not, in mournful numbers,/ Life is but an empty dream!/ For the soul is dead that slumbers,/ And things are not what they seem./ Life is real! Life is earnest!/ And the grave is not its goal . . ./ Let us, then, be up and doing,/ With a heart for any fate . . ."
Painting: Suzanne au Bain and Vénus Anadymone by French painter Théodore Chassériau, 19; The Fighting Téméraire Tugged to Her Last Berth by J. M. W. Turner, who depicts the onetime pride of the Royal Navy being towed by a small steamboat up the Thames for conversion to a stationary storehouse, having been made obsolete by steam power; Dignity and Impudence by English painter Edwin Henry Landseer, 37; Mother and Son by Thomas Sully.
A new Hermitage Museum is completed at St. Petersburg after 10 years' work to designs by Leo von Klenze.
John James Audubon returns to America, where he will remain permanently after 13 years of shuttling back and forth to Europe (see 1830).
A meeting of the French Academy of Arts and Sciences August 19 hears a description of the daguerreotype process of photographic reproduction discovered by Louis Daguerre in 1829 and announced by him to the Paris public in January. Daguerre writes an instruction manual that goes through 29 editions within 3 months and is translated into six languages, but English chemist (William Henry) Fox Talbot, 39, claims he produced photographs earlier than Daguerre using a camera obscura with silver chloride and common salt or potassium iodide as fixing agents. Talbot successfully exposed his first negative film in 1835 (see 1840).
Telegraph pioneer Samuel F. B. Morse makes the first daguerreotype portraits to be produced in America. He returns to New York from a visit to Paris with the process that he has learned from Daguerre (see 1837; Hawes, Southworth, 1841). Morse teams up with English-born U.S. physician-scientist John William Draper, 28, who will make important contributions to photography, photochemistry, radiant energy, and the electromagnetic telegraph (see telegraph line, 1843).
Theater: The Battle of Arminius (Die Hermannsschlacht) by the late Heinrich von Kleist 10/29 at Bad Pyrmont's Detmolder Hoftheater.
Playwright William Dunlap dies at New York September 28 at age 73.
Opera: Jenny Lind makes her English debut singing the role of Alice in the 1831 Meyerbeer opera Robert le Diable; Giulia Grisi sings the title role in Gaetano Donizetti's 1833 opera Lucrezia Borgia in its first London performance 6/6 opposite tenor Giovannio Mario, who will become her professional partner and lifelong companion; Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio by composer Giuseppe Verdi, 26, 11/17 at Milan's Teatra alla Scala with soprano Giosapina (Amelia Maria Josepha) Straponi, 23, who makes her debut at La Scala and is in large part responsible for the theater's agreeing to produce Verdi's opera.
First performances: Romeo and Juliet Symphony by Hector Berlioz 11/24 at the Paris Conservatoire.
England's Grand National Steeplechase has its first running at Aintree, near Liverpool.
Rugby rules devised by Cambridge University student Arthur Fell codify the game (see 1823).
Baseball rules are devised (it will later be alleged) by West Point cadet Abner Doubleday, 19, of Cooperstown, New York. His dicta call for a diamond-shaped field and two teams of nine players each. Jane Austen mentioned the game in her novel Northanger Abbey, and Oliver Wendell Holmes played it at Harvard before his graduation in 1829. It is only distantly related to cricket (see 1788; 1846).
The Boston Morning Post March 23 carries the first known published use of the term "o.k." to mean all right. It has been popular to use initials for commonly misspelled words, and "o.k.—all correct" will be widely employed in place of oll korrect.
Kingscote at Newport, Rhode Island, is completed by English-born architect Richard Upjohn, 37, for George Noble Jones of Savannah. William Henry King will acquire the house on Bellevue Avenue with money acquired in the tea trade, and more imposing "cottages" will follow as Newport becomes a favorite summer resort for the rich.
The heath hen Tympanuchus cupido cupido once common throughout New England is now found only on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. A game bird closely related to the prairie chicken, it was at one time an important food source, but market hunters have reduced its numbers (see 1908).
Sugar production in Jamaica, British West Indies, will fall in the next 2 decades to between 20,000 and 25,000 tons per year, down from 70,000 tons in 1821, as a consequence of the end of slavery and a decline in prices.
John Deere produces 10 steel plows (see 1837; 1842).
Congress appropriates $1,000 for the first free distribution of seeds to U.S. farmers.
Lectures on the Science of Life in two volumes by Sylvester Graham urges dietary measures for good health (see 1829). Graham blames American dyspepsia and sallow complexion on fried meat, alcohol, eating too fast, and the use of "unnatural," refined wheat flour. Espousing vegetarianism, he advises readers to eat fruits, vegetables, and unbolted (unsifted) whole wheat flour in bread that is slightly stale and is to be chewed thoroughly to promote good digestion, prevent alcoholism, and diminish the sex urge. The white flour despised by Graham has, indeed, been stripped of many nutrients, but most Americans get plenty of those nutrients from other dietary sources.
Swiss engineer Jacob Sulzberger builds a flour mill at Budapest that employs rollers rather than millstones. The process will make white flour more affordable to consumers (see 1833; 1870).
Some 95 chests of Assam tea arrive at London to be sold at auction (see 1823). Less astringent than green tea, the new black tea begins to gain popularity (see duchess of Bedford, 1840).
London's Reform Club employs as its chef de cuisine the French chef Alexis Soyer, 29, who has worked for several noblemen (it has been a mark of social status to employ a French cook for one's private kitchen). Soyer will remain at the Reform Club until 1852, and the press will call him "the great pacificator, who caused the Tory to dine in amity with the Whig" (see 1847).
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