1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850
Britain's Whig prime minister Viscount Melbourne resigns August 23 after a six-term ministry. A general election returns the Tories to power in a new government headed by Sir Robert Peel, most of the queen's ladies are married to Whigs, but although Prince Albert persuades Victoria to take a less hostile view of her new prime minister and she will come to share Albert's high opinion of his character and policies during his 5 years in office, he gives no office in his cabinet to Benjamin Disraeli, now 36, and younger Conservatives begin looking to the charismatic Disraeli for inspiration.
Spain's Cortes (parliament) appoints Baldomero Espartero regent in May and names Agustín Arguelles tutor to the young queen Isabella II (see 1840). Former regent Maria Christina at Paris registers a protest and wins support from moderates, who try to seize Isabella in September. Espartero crushes their insurrection with such harsh measures that he loses popular support (see 1842).
Greece's Otto I tries unsuccessfully to annex Crete, thereby alienating Britain and provoking a rebellion at home (see 1843). The island's patriots have rebelled against rule by Egypt's Ottoman viceroy Muhammad Ali, who agrees to give up Crete as well as Syria, pay tribute to the sultan, and reduce his army to 18,000 men (see 1840). Now 72, Ali will reign until he loses his mind in 1848. The Straits Convention signed by the five great powers July 13 replaces the 1833 Treaty of Unkiar Skelesi, to which the British have objected because they feared Russian influence in the eastern Mediterranean. The new pact follows an Anglo-Russian agreement negotiated by Karl Robert Vasilyevich, Graf Nesselrode, now 60; it guarantees Ottoman sovereignty, recognizes the sultan's right to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to all foreign warships in time of peace, and marks the return of France as an international power for the first time since the Napoleonic wars.
French forces under the command of Algeria's new governor general Thomas Bugeaud destroy the emir Abdul-Qadar (Abdelkader)'s fortified sites and force him to become a nomad in the interior of Ofran (see 1837). Devastating the countryside to starve the inhabitants and force their compliance, Bugeaud will take the emir's capital of Tlemcen next year, but Abdul-Qadar will reach safety in Morocco (see 1844).
Afghan forces under Dost Mohammed's son Akhbar Khan lay siege to the British garrison at Jellalabad on the Kabul River west of the Khyber Pass November 14 in the continuing Afghan War (see 1839). Pashtun tribesmen assassinate the puppet ruler Shah Shuja at Kabul in December and murder British envoys Sir Alexander Burnes, 36, and Sir William Macnaghten. British forces fall back to the Khyber Pass (see 1842).
Vietnam's second Nguyen dynasty emperor Minh Mang dies at Hue January 11 (or January 21) at age 48 after a 20-year reign in which he has persecuted Christian missionaries and made every effort to keep his country isolated from Western influence. He is succeeded by his brother, who will reign until 1847 as Thieu Tri.
Chinese negotiators agree January 20 after extensive talks to pay indemnities to the British and cede the island of Hong Kong in the continuing Opium War (see 1840). Seamen from the survey ship H.M.S. Sulphur come ashore on the barren 30-square-mile island January 26 (its population of 5,000 consists mostly of fishermen and pirates), but both sides reject the January 20 draft convention. British gunboats resume their attacks on Qing coastal fortifications north to Shanghai (see 1842).
Britain makes New Zealand a colony separate from New South Wales May 3 (see Cook, 1769; Maori War, 1843).
The Sultan of Brunei confirms British soldier James Brooke, 38, as rajah of Sarawak in September. A veteran of the East India Company's army who sustained a serious wound in the Anglo-Burmese War 16 years ago, Brooke succeeded to a large property when his father (a civil servant) died. He helped the sultan's uncle Muda Hassim suppress a rebellion by several Dyak headhunter tribes in the province 3 years ago when he equipped the schooner Royalist and set forth to rescue the Malay Archipelago from barbarism. Brooke will reform the Sarawak government and rule until his death in 1868 (but see 1850).
London appoints the first British consul general to Zanzibar.
William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia at Washington, D.C., April 4 at age 68 just 1 month after taking office as U.S. President. Vice President John Tyler, 51, moves into the White House.
Antonio López de Santa Anna leads a revolt and seizes control of the Mexican government; he will hold power until 1845.
Former Republic of Texas president Sam Houston regains the presidency December 13, succeeding President Lamar. Lamar has favored establishing a national bank, but the legislature has opted instead to print new paper money, which has become virtually worthless; the republic's national debt has soared, efforts to obtain loans from the United States and France have failed, Texas is close to bankruptcy, and the loss of men on an ill-planned expedition to Santa Fe has cost Lamar whatever popularity he retained. Houston will serve until December 1844.
El Salvador declares her independence, ending the 18-year-old confederation of Central American states (see Guatemala, Honduras, 1839).
German-born British explorer-surveyor Robert H. (Hermann) Schomburgk, 37, fixes the boundary of British Guiana (later Guyana). The 11-year-old Royal Geographical Society has sponsored his expedition, his Description of British Guiana was published last year, he will be knighted upon his return to Britain in 1844, and his Schomburgk Line will remain the boundary until 1895.
The obese Asuncíon lawyer Carlos Antonio López, 54, gains power as the dominant consul of Paraguay, succeeding the late dictator José Gaspare Rodríguez de Francia (see 1840; 1844).
Peru's president Agustín Gamarra invades Bolivia but is defeated and killed November 20 at Ingavi. Gamarra's death at age 56 plunges Peru into anarchy, and a civil war begins that will continue until 1845 (see Castilla, 1844).
Providence lawyer Thomas W. (Wilson) Dorr, 36, founds a People's Party to liberalize the Rhode Island charter of 1636, whose provisions place severe limitations on voting qualifications (see 1790). Dorr submits a new constitution whose terms extend white male suffrage in the state (see 1842).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules March 9 that the mutineers who seized control of the Spanish slave ship Amistad last year are not guilty and orders their release. Former president John Quincy Adams has pleaded the case of Cinque and his fellow Africans. Madrid protests the decision.
Cincinnati street fights in August develop into a five-day race riot.
Republic of Texas president Mirabeau Lamar appoints New York-born Indian fighter Hugh McLeod, 26, military head of an expedition to open a trade route to Santa Fe that will establish Texas control over an area claimed by Texas in the Boundary Act of December 1836 and extend the republic's jurisdiction by peaceful means to the Rio Grande (see 1839; commerce [Becknell], 1822). McLeod receives his commission as brigadier general June 17 and a few days later sets out with six troop companies and a group of merchants, but the expedition is underprovisioned and lacks accurate maps, its Mexican guide is untrustworthy, New Mexico's governor Manuel Armijo encourages the Kiowa to harry the Texans, hunger and thirst take their toll, and when Armijo sends out a detachment to halt the expedition its members surrender in mid-September without a fight, submitting to Mexican imprisonment. They are marched south to Mexico City, and McLeod will not be released from Perote Fortress until the summer of next year.
Dallas has its beginnings in the Republic of Texas as Tennessee-born trader John Neely Bryan builds a house on the Trinity River to start a settlement that he will name after his friend George M. (Mifflin) Dallas, 49, who will become U.S. vice president in 1845 (see religion [La Reunion], 1858).
Fur trader and "mountain man" Thomas Fitzpatrick, now 42, guides the first emigrant train bound for the Pacific through northwestern Montana Territory. The covered wagons of John Bartleson and John Bidwell bring 130 settlers to Walla Walla in Oregon Territory in November after a 2,000-mile journey through hostile Indian territory. A rifle accident has cost Fitzpatrick two fingers of his left hand, and he is known among Native Americans as "Three Fingers" or "Bad Hand."
Secretary of State Daniel Webster estimates that U.S. lands west of Wisconsin Territory have 30,000 to 50,000 settlers even though the lands have not yet been offered for sale. Congress gives each head of family the right when the lands are opened for sale to buy as many as 160 acres at a minimum price of $1.25 per acre, provided that a house has been built on the land he or she holds and that the land is under cultivation (see 1804; Homestead Act, 1862).
Swiss-born pioneer Johann Augustus Sutter, 38, buys California's Fort Ross from the Russian colonists who established it in 1811. Sutter arrived at San Francisco in mid-August 1839 by way of a job with the American Fur Company and a journey via Fort Vancouver, Honolulu, and Sitka. Granted lands to start a settlement by the provincial governor Juan Bautista Alvarado, Sutter has become a Mexican citizen and thus gained title to his 50,000-acre land grant—New Helvetia—on which he has built a house and fort (see gold, 1848).
English military engineer George Everest, 51, completes a trigonometrical survey of the Indian subcontinent. The world's highest mountain—29,035-foot Chomolungma in the Himalayas on the border between Nepal and Tibet—will be named Mount Everest in his honor (see sports, 1924; 1953).
Explorer and promoter Edmund Fanning dies at New York April 23 at age 71. He has seen seal rookeries wiped out by ruthless slaughter for skins that could be traded in China for valuable cargoes and encouraged exploring expeditions that would lead to the discovery of new rookeries.
A British Antarctic expedition under the command of James C. Ross leaves Hobart, Tasmania, in November, charts part of the coast of Graham Land (Palmer Land), and will sail around the ice of what later will be called the Weddell Sea (see Weddell, 1823; Dumont d'Urville, 1837). Sailing with the ships Erebus and Terror, Ross discovers what will be called the Ross Sea, the Ross Ice Shelf, an indentation in the ice shelf that he calls the Bay of Whales (see environment, 1987), and a land mass with snow-covered mountains as high as 13,200 feet that he calls Victoria Land (see Gerlache de Gomery, 1899).
Britain's new Peel ministry introduces the first peacetime British income tax, assessing incomes above £150 per year at a rate of 7d per pound sterling (see 1799). It lowers import duties on raw materials and foodstuffs, thus encouraging grain imports that lower food prices and reduce the national debt by increasing customs revenues. Although the income-tax rate will fall as low as 2d per pound in 1875, it will rise to 10s per pound sterling in the war a century hence.
British coal miners form the Miners' Association of Great Britain and Ireland, hoping to organize some 200,000 workers into an effective bargaining force (see 1831; 1842).
The Natural System of Political Economy by German-born U.S. political economist Friedrich List, 52, argues that "the cosmopolitan theorists [such as Adam Smith] do not question the importance of industrial expansion. They assume, however, that this can be achieved by adopting the policy of free trade and by leaving individuals to pursue their own private interests. They believe that in such circumstances a country will automatically secure the development of those branches of manufacture which are best suited to its own particular situation. They consider that government action to stimulate the establishment of industries does more harm than good." List was charged with sedition in 1824 for opposing tariff barriers between the German states, came to America in 1825, has served as U.S. consul at Baden, Leipzig, and Stuttgart, and wrote the work 4 years ago in just 5 weeks; his ideas will have strong impact on German economic practice later in this century.
Nine U.S. states suspend interest payments on their debts and three repudiate their debts as economic conditions remain dismal in the wake of the 1837 panic (see 1839).
Dun & Bradstreet has its beginnings in the Mercantile Agency founded at New York July 20 under the name Lewis Tappan & Company by former Journal of Commerce copublisher Lewis Tappan as the world's first agency whose purpose is to determine the creditworthiness of prospective customers in remote locations. Now 53, Tappan was credit manager of Arthur Tappan & Company and helped make it a success before the panic of 1837; he will run the new enterprise until he retires in 1849 to pursue his humanitarian interests, whereupon his older brother Arthur will take over the firm (see Douglass, 1854; Dun & Bradstreet, 1933).
Parisians see a demonstration of arc lamps for street lighting (see Brush, 1879).
The first patent for an incandescent lamp is granted to English inventor Frederick de Moleyns, who has used powdered charcoal heated between two platinum wires (see Swan, 1878).
The Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Navigation Company begins service to India, with passengers disembarking at Alexandria and traveling overland by mule-drawn carriages and camel to the Red Sea (see 1840; communications [Waghorn], 1837; rail line, 1856). The P&O Line will extend service to Singapore and the Far East in 1845, start bi-monthly Singapore-to-Australia service in 1852, and become Britain's largest shipping firm (see 1853).
A rail line opens September 19 to link Strasbourg and Basel; it is the first transborder railway. France has 350 miles of railway track, and other European countries are laying track at a furious pace; Britain's Great Western Railway completes a line between London and Bristol.
Cook's Tours have their beginnings in a travel service started by English printer-temperance worker Thomas Cook, 33, who has observed that the Midlands County Railway has opened an extension between Leicester and Loughboro where a temperance conclave is to be held. He persuades the railroad to reduce its fare to Loughboro if he will guarantee 500 passengers on a route that normally carries only 50, organizes a group of 570 teetotalers, and charges them only 14 pence each for the 48-mile return trip (see London Great Exhibition, 1851).
English mechanical engineer Joseph Whitworth, 38, proposes a uniform system of screw threads. He has introduced machine tools and methods that permit working tolerances to be reduced from the generally accepted 1/16 of an inch to a mere 1/1000 of an inch, his suggestion will eventually be accepted, and the British Standard Whitworth (BSW) system will be generally adopted (see Sellers, 1864).
French chemist Eugène Melchior Péligot, 40, isolates the metallic form of uranium, using a thermal reaction of tetrachloride and potassium (see Klaproth, 1797; Becquerel, 1896).
German chemist C. J. Fritzsche pours caustic potash (potassium hydroxide) on indigo and produces an oil (aniline) (see Wöhler, 1828; technology [Perkin], 1856).
Cambridge student John Couch Adams, 22, notes in his journal July 3 that he has "formed a design in the beginning of this week of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus . . . in order to find out whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it." (see Uranus, 1781; Neptune, 1846).
A report to the British Association for the Advancement of Science by anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen uses the term Dinosauria in reference to fossil specimens that have been unearthed in various parts of the world since 1818, recognizing them to be from a group of large prehistoric reptiles unlike any variety still extant (see 1834; Owen, 1832). His word dinosaur will be published for the first time next year in the association's Proceedings.
Botanist Augustine P. de Candolle dies at Geneva September 9 at age 63.
Scottish surgeon James Baird, 46, discovers hypnosis; hypnotherapy will prove useful in treating some disorders (see Breuer, 1882).
Morphine discoverer Friedrich Sertürner dies at Hamein, Prussia, February 20 at age 56.
Scottish medical missionary David Livingstone, 27, arrives at the Cape of Good Hope March 15 with the intent of bringing Christianity to the natives and ending the slave trade. Raised as a Calvinist, he was sent to work in a cotton mill at age 10, converted to Congregationalism in his teens, received a medical degree, and has been sent out by the London Missionary Society. Livingstone had hoped to go to China but the Opium War there has forced him to change his plans (see 1843).
Vietnam's new emperor Thieu Tri softens the restrictions on Christian missionaries, has the grave of the late Le Van Duyet restored, and declares it a national monument (see 1832; but see also politics, 1847).
New York's Common Council votes overwhelmingly in January to reject last year's petition that Catholic schools in the city be given a share of the state funds administered by the Public School Society. Says one opponent, "They demand of Republicans to give them funds to train up their children to worship a ghostly monarch of vicars, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and Popes! They demand of us to take away our children's funds and bestow them on subjects of Rome, the creatures of a foreign hierarchy," but Bishop Hughes continues to press the issue (see 1842).
Fordham University has its beginnings in St. John's College, Fordham, that opens with six students June 24—44th birthday of Bishop Hughes, the Jesuit priest who will become New York's first Catholic archbishop and who purchased the Rose Hill estate 2 years ago (see 1787). Father John McCloskey is the college's first president.
Brook Farm is founded at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, by New England intellectuals who join former Unitarian minister George Ripley, 38, and his wife, Sophia Dana Ripley, in forming a commune and school based on the ideas of the late French social theorist Charles Fourier to pursue truth, justice, and order. Shares of stock in the enterprise are sold to members who include teachers, farmers, carpenters, printers, and shoemakers, with each man and woman receiving a dollar a day for his or her labors and with housing, food, clothing, and fuel provided at cost to all members and their families. Charles A. Dana, 21, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, now 37, are among the initial members, and by 1844 the commune will have grown to include four houses, work rooms, and dormitories with an infant school, primary school, and 6-year college preparatory course whose classes in botany, philosophy, Greek, Latin, Italian, German, music, and drawing will attract students from as far away as Havana and Manila (see 1846).
Philosopher-educator Johann Friedrich Herbart dies at Göttingen August 14 at age 65.
The New York Tribune begins publication April 10. The city's first Whig daily paper, it has been founded by New Hampshire-born printer Horace Greeley, 30, who has come to New York with idealistic ideas of abolishing slavery, uplifting labor, establishing utopian socialism, and prohibiting liquor. Started with $2,000 (half of it borrowed), his 1¢ paper will grow to have a circulation of nearly 300,000 by 1860, making it the largest in the country, and will have great influence on popular opinion as Greeley sends weekly and semi-weekly editions (condensed versions of the daily) to rural areas from Maine to California.
The Cincinnati Enquirer begins publication April 10 with a four-page Saturday afternoon edition. Printers John and Charles Brough have started the enterprise.
The Memphis Commercial Appeal has its beginnings in the one-sheet Appeal published by journeyman printer Henry Van Pelt from the wooden shack that serves as his home on the Wolf River.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer begins publication as The Advertiser.
The Brooklyn Eagle begins publication October 26 at 28 Fulton Street in Brooklyn, New York, under the name Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat. Isaac Van Anden has founded the daily; it will continue until 1955, gaining a reputation for supporting the working classes.
The first advertising agency opens under the direction of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania-born Philadelphia entrepreneur Volney B. Palmer, 42, who sells newspaper space to out-of-town advertisers, charging the papers 25 percent of their space rates plus postage and stationery costs. By 1849 Palmer will have offices at New York, Boston, and Baltimore, in addition to his Philadelphia office (see Rowell, 1869).
Punch begins publication July 17 at London. Author-journalist Mark Lemon, 32, edits the new humor magazine with journalist Henry Mayhew, 29, who ran away to sea in his teens, voyaged to India, returned home to study law with his father, and has helped to start two earlier London periodicals.
The Jewish Chronicle that begins publication at London November 12 will survive as the world's oldest Jewish newspaper.
Nonfiction: The Two Main Problems of Ethics (Die Beiden Grandprobleme der Ethik) by Arthur Schopenhauer; The Essence of Christianity (Das Wesen des Christentums) by Ludwig Feuerbach, who posits the idea that religion is really nothing more than a consciousness of the infinite. Although he will deny that he is an atheist, Feuerbach says that the notion of God in Christianity is an illusion, that God is merely the outward projection of man's inward nature; "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History" by Thomas Carlyle, whose moral essay contains the line, "No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men" (in lectures delivered at London last year, Carlyle said, "Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in his world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here" (May 5) and "Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers" (May 12) (the latter sentiment ignores the obvious fact that historians have a perspective that journalists preoccupied with daily events cannot have); "History" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who says, "I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called history is"; "Self-Reliance" by Emerson, whose moral essay contains the lines, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines," and "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist"; "Spiritual Laws" by Emerson: "All mankind love[s] a lover." "There is less intention in history than we ascribe to it. We impute deep-laid, far-sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon; but the best of their power was in nature, not in them"; Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Scottish journalist Charles MacKay, 27.
Fiction: Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty by Charles Dickens (see Gordon "No Popery" riots, 1780); The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens, whose account of the death of Little Nell in the novel's final installment has reduced strong men to tears on both sides of the Atlantic; The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper, whose frontier figure Natty Bumppo (Leatherstocking) makes his first appearance as a young man, having been an older frontiersman in the original Leatherstocking novel The Pioneers, Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, and then the Pathfinder; "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe in the April issue of the new Graham's Magazine at Philadelphia is the world's first detective story (it has been inspired by the Paris detective Eugène François Vidocq, whose somewhat fictitious "memoirs" were published in 1828). Poe is editor of the new magazine, founded by Philadelphia-born publisher George Rex Graham, 28, and his story "A Descent into the Maelstrom" appears in the May issue.
Poetry: "Pippa Passes" by Robert Browning appears as part of the first in a series of pamphlets he will issue under the title Bells and Pomegranates between now and 1846: "The year's at the spring,/ And day's at the morn;/ Morning's at seven;/ The hillside's dew-pearled; / The lark's on the wing;/ The snail's on the thorn;/ God's in His heaven—/ All's right with the world!" (I); "If you get simple beauty and nought else,/ You get bout the best thing God invents"; The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov; Ballads and Other Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who includes "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus."
Poet Mikhail Lermentov fights a duel with a fellow officer at Pyatigorsk July 27 and is killed at age 26.
Painting: Dawn after the Wreck (the Baying Hound) by J. M. W. Turner; Jewish Wedding in Morocco by Eugène Delacroix; Père Lacordaire by Théodore Chassériau.
Sculpture: A giant marble statue of George Washington by Boston-born sculptor Horatio Greenough, 35, is unveiled at Washington, D.C. The work has been commissioned through the influence of Greenough's novelist friend James Fenimore Cooper, and Greenough has worked on it for 8 years at Florence. It depicts the first president in the garb of a Roman senator, but because it shakes the floor of the Capitol it is quickly moved outside. Thomas Bruce, 7th earl of Elgin (and 11th earl of Kincardine), dies at Paris November 14 at age 75, having sold Greek sculptures from the Parthenon to the government for the new British Museum being built at London.
Viennese mathematician Joseph Petzval, 34, produces an f/3.16 lens for portrait cameras.
Massachusetts-born apprentice carpenter Josiah J. (Johnson) Hawes, 33, and Vermont-born entrepreneur Albert S. (Sands) Southworth, 30, open a Boston portrait photography studio. They met last year after each had viewed the daguerrotype brought to New York by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1839 and set new standards of portrait photography by avoiding painted backdrops and contrived poses, trying instead to engage their subjects in dialogue and capture each one's personality. Celebrities such as Sen. Daniel Webster, Sen. Henry Clay, and state supreme court chief justice Lemuel Shaw will be among their patrons, and they will also produce daguerrotypes of cityscapes, landscapes, and even hospital operating rooms.
Theater: London Assurance by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault (né Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot), 20, 3/4 at London's Covent Garden Theater.
Ballet: Giselle, ou les Wilis 6/28 at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, Paris, with Istria-born ballerina Carlotta (originally Caronne Adele Josephine Marie) Grisi, 22, choreography by Jean Coralli, 62, and Lyons-born dancer-dancing master Jules (Joseph) Perrot, 40 (who has married Grisi), music by French composer Adolphe C. (Charles) Adam, 38, libretto by Théophile Gautier. Giselle will survive as the great classic tragedy of ballet repertory.
Montpelier-born Paris organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, 30, completes a large organ for the basilica of Saint-Denis. Having won a prize for a circular saw at age 22, Cavaillé-Coll came to Paris in 1833 at the suggestion of composer Gioacchino Rossini, was awarded a contract for the construction of the organ, and has produced an instrument that lacks some of the qualities needed for the fullest expression of works by the late J. S. Bach but that in many ways represents an advance in organ making. He will have a wide influence on the craft, standardizing keyboard layouts and stop controls as he goes on to build some 600 organs, many of them in England, with improvements in mechanisms and pipework that will inspire some major composers to write new organ music (see Hope-Jones, 1889).
First performances: Symphony No.1 in B flat minor (Spring) by Robert Schumann 3/31 at Leipzig's Gewandhaus; Symphony No. 4 in D minor and Overture, Scherzo and Finale by Schumann 12/6 at Leipzig's Gewandhaus.
Anthem: "Deutschland, Deutschland Uber alles" is published September 4 with lyrics by German poet-philologist August Heinrich Hoffman, 43, a professor at Breslau University, whose words represent a plea for unification, are set to the music of the "Imperial Hymn" in Franz Joseph Haydn's Emperors Quartet, and will become the German national anthem in 1922.
Irish-born bareknuckle boxer James Ambrose, 30, becomes middleweight champion of England February 2 by defeating Johnny "Hammer" Lane in a bout at Crookham Common. Standing five foot ten and weighing 160 pounds, Ambrose will emigrate to America and fight under the name "Yankee" Sullivan (see 1849).
New York bareknuckle boxer Tim Hyer, 24, becomes the first recognized U.S. heavyweight champion September 9, defeating George "Country" McChester at Caldwell's Landing, New York, in a 103-round match that goes on for 3 hours (see 1849).
New Orleans inventor John Hampson obtains a patent (#2,223) for a method to adjust the angle of the slats on venetian blinds.
Shepheard's Hotel, Cairo, has its beginnings in the Hotel des Anglais opened by English entrepreneur Samuel Shepheard, 20, of Preston Capes, Northumberland. Housed in a building that occupies the site of a harem built in 1771 by the sheik Ali Bey and used as Bonaparte's headquarters in 1799, the hotel will be called Shepheard's beginning in 1845 and will be the last British outpost between Gibraltar and India, a mailing address and international meeting place for the pink-gin set.
A New York State Fair at Syracuse begins the tradition of U.S. state fairs dedicated to the advancement of agriculture and the home arts.
California landowner Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo plants wine grapes in the Sonoma Valley (see 1861).
Irish agriculture falls into decay, with 663,153 out of 690,114 land holdings being comprised of less than 15 acres each. Tenant farmers raise grain and cattle to produce money for their rents while depending almost entirely on potatoes for their own food (average potato consumption is 12 pounds per day). Whisky is at times cheaper than bread, and the price discrepancy helps produce widespread drunkenness (see potato failure, 1845).
Food preservation pioneer Nicolas Appert dies at Massy, outside Paris, June 3 at age 91.
Ireland's population reaches 10,175,000, up from 7.7 million a decade ago. Famine and emigration later in this decade will sharply reduce the figure. Britain's population reaches 18.5 million, with 15 million of it in England and Wales.
London is a city of 2.24 million; Paris 935,000; Vienna 357,000; Berlin 300,000; Munich nearly 100,000.
New York's population reaches 313,000, with nearly 50,000 passing through the city each year, but fewer than 140 U.S. towns have 2,500 or more.
The U.S. population reaches 17 million, with 12.5 percent of it in cities of over 8,000. The country will receive 1.7 million immigrants in this decade, up from 599,000 in the 1830s.
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