1845
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The Royal Navy tests its experimental 1,112-ton propeller-driven sloop H.M.S. Rattler against warships with paddle wheels (see Smith, 1836; U.S.S. Princeton, 1843). Francis Pettit Smith has equipped Rattler with a two-blade propeller more than 10 feet in diameter, Isambard Kingdom Brunel has designed her machinery, she can easily attain speeds of eight knots, she proves herself faster than ships with paddle wheels, and the Admiralty proceeds with construction of the Royal Navy's first screw battleship, H.M.S. Ajax (see H.M.S. Warrior, 1861).
President Tyler signs legislation making the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November the standardized election day for electors of presidents and vice presidents. Religious scruples have ruled out Sunday as election day, and many rural voters live so far from the polls that they would have to travel on a Sunday in order to vote on a Monday. (The standard will be extended to congressional elections in 1865.)
Florida joins the Union March 3 to become the 27th state (see Osceola, 1837).
Mexico severs relations with the United States March 28 following the U.S. Senate's ratification of a treaty to annex Texas (see 1844). The Republic of Texas established in 1836 is annexed to the United States over Mexican objections, and the Mexicans send Antonio López de Santa Anna into exile.
Former president Andrew Jackson dies at his Tennessee plantation The Hermitage June 8 at age 78.
Boston officials select local lawyer Charles Sumner, 34, as orator at the city's Independence Day celebration. At least 100 members of the audience are in full military or naval dress uniform, and the six-foot-four-inch Sumner offends many if not most by declaiming, "Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable?" He is widely thought to have committed political suicide.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story dies at Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 10 at age 65, having served on the high court for more than 33½ years and written a great deal about constitutional law.
United States Magazine and Democratic Review editor John L. O'Sullivan asserts U.S. claims to Oregon Territory "by right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent" in his July-August issue. Diplomats renew the 49th parallel as the boundary between Oregon and British territory. U.S. title to the Oregon Territory up to the Alaskan border at 54°40' is "clear and unquestionable," says President Polk in his annual message to Congress in December, but U.S. relations with Mexico are worsening and Polk does not intend war on the northwest border issue.
Texas joins the Union as the 28th state December 29 despite Mexican claims to the territory (see 1846).
Argentina has civil war as her dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas refuses to recognize the independence of Paraguay. Hostilities will continue until next year.
Peruvian general Ramón Castilla, 46, seizes power and ends the civil war that has roiled the country since 1841. Having fought under the late José de Sucre for independence in the mid-1820s, he will have himself elected president next year, initiate a number of important reforms, hold office until 1851, but oust his successor (see 1855).
New Granada voters elect Conservative Party leader Tomás Cipriano Mosquera, 46, president. A member of one of the country's most powerful families, Mosquera will institute a number of economic reforms before he leaves office in 1849 (see 1861; Hilario López, 1849).
Former British prime minister Charles Grey, 2nd earl Grey, dies at Howick, Northumberland, July 17 at age 81.
The Russian czar Nicholas I authorizes an invasion of Chechnya by 18,000 troops, who drive the country's defenders back to the capital, Grozny (see 1838), but the Sufi imam Shamil of Dagestan mounts a spirited counterattack; the Russians lose 4,000 killed and thousands wounded before withdrawing (see 1857).
An Anglo-Sikh War begins in India as British forces set out to conquer Kashmir and the Punjab. A force of 17,727 British and Indian troops under the command of Irish-born general Sir Hugh Gough, now 66, defeats a Sikh army December 18 at the Punjabi village of Mudki, where a 22,000-man Sikh army with 22 guns puts up a hard fight under the command of Lal Singh but loses 15 guns and suffers about 3,000 casualties (the British have had 42 guns; their casualties number 215 dead, 655 wounded). Sir Hugh attacks the Punjabi village of Ferozesah (or Firoz Shah) December 21 with 65 guns, the Sikhs there number only 5,000 under the command of Lal Singh and have a mere 18 guns, but a fresh Sikh army of 25,000 men arrives under the command of Tej Singh. The British run out of ammunition, a staff officer confused by sunstroke orders the cavalry to withdraw to Ferozepur, 15 miles away, the horse cavalry follows, Tej Singh misinterprets the move as an assault on his own flank and rear, and he breaks off the action. The Sikhs lose 4,590 dead and wounded (8,000 by some accounts), the British 694 dead, 1,721 wounded; the British capture 78 guns, but General Gough comes under criticism for having made costly frontal attacks (see 1846).
Former Kentucky state legislator Cassius Marcellus Clay, 34, begins publication at Lexington of an abolitionist newspaper, The True American. Clay has been influenced by William Lloyd Garrison, whom he heard speak while at Yale, but proslavery forces take over his office while he is away and he moves the paper to Cincinnati.
Portland is founded in Oregon Territory near the junction of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. William Overton and Asa Lovejoy beached their canoe on the banks of the Willamette 2 years go, Overton saw the possibilities of land development but lacked the 25¢ required to file a claim, Lovejoy agreed to put up the 25¢ in return for a share of Overton's 640-acre site, Overton has tired of clearing trees and building roads, he has sold his half of the claim to Francis W. Pettygrove, and Lovejoy has flipped a coin with Pettygrove to decide on a name for the town that is named after Pettygrove's 213-year-old hometown in Maine rather than Lovejoy's native Boston (see communications [Oregonian], 1850).
Oregon pioneer Jason Lee falls ill and returns to his native Stanstead, Quebec, where he dies March 12 at age 41. His remains will be reburied at Salem, Oregon, in 1906.
Kentucky-born surveyor Jesse Applegate, 34, leads a party that opens the southern route into Oregon Territory. Applegate will unify British and American settlements in the region, raise cattle on his ranch at Yoncalla, and become a political force in the territory.
"The Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and Northern California in the Years 1843-1844" by John C. Frémont is published while Frémont proceeds to California on a third congressionally-funded expedition, with Kit Carson serving once again as guide (see 1842). Frémont's young wife, Jessie, has edited his report (see Los Angeles, 1846).
Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, U.S. Army, explores the South Pass of the Rockies with help from "Mountain Man" Thomas Fitzpatrick.
British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, now 59, sails in May with two Royal Navy ships—H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror—on a new Royal Geographical Society-sponsored expedition to seek a Northwest Passage (see 1819; Ross, 1831). Lured by unusually good weather, he ventures with his party of 128 men deep into a hitherto unknown channel (the Victoria Strait), where his ships will become hopelessly icebound next year (see 1847).
Lawrence, Massachusetts, is founded on the Merrimack River. The milltown for woolen production is named for the Boston firm A. (Amos) and A. (Abbott) Lawrence, the big New England textile concern founded in 1814 (see Lowell, 1834; Lawrence, Kansas, 1854).
The Condition of the Working Class in England (Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England) by Friedrich Engels is published at Leipzig, revealing the exploitation of labor by capital. Having renewed his acquaintance with Karl Marx at Paris (see 1844), Engels has gone to live in England (his father owns a cotton-spinning mill near Manchester) (see 1847).
An English and Irish potato famine spurs free-trade supporters Richard Cobden and John Bright at Manchester to lead a wide-scale agitation against the Corn Laws that prevent free imports of grain. Dublin's first Roman Catholic lord mayor Daniel O'Connell tries without success to persuade Parliament to deal quickly with the famine and comes under attack from the Young Ireland movement. Whig leader Lord John Russell is converted to the idea of free trade (see 1846).
Sophisms of Protection (Sophismes économiques) by French economist Frédéric Bastiat, 44, satirizes protectionists with a parable: a fictional group of candlemakers asks for protection against the sun, arguing that if only the sun were eliminated as a competitor in providing light there would be a boom in candlemaking and related industries (see 1846).
"Essays on Domestic Industry" by Charleston, South Carolina, manufacturer William Gregg, 45, is a pamphlet whose ideas are based on a tour of New England and Midwestern textile-manufacturing areas. Forced by ill health to retire from his watchmaking company at Columbia some years ago, Gregg has published his "essays" as articles in the Charleston Courier, urging that the one-crop "Cotton Kingdom" industrialize. A textile mill starts up immediately at the port city; Gregg will obtain a charter from the state legislature next year, build a factory at Aiken, and become an advocate of a protective tariff that most Southerners oppose.
The Lehman Brothers banking house has its beginnings in a dry-goods store opened at Montgomery, Alabama, by German-born merchant Henry Lehman, 23, who has come to a town founded 25 years ago that now has a population of 6,000, including 2,000 slaves. Lehman's brother Emanuel, now 18, will join him in 2 years, the firm will be renamed H. Lehman & Bro. in 1848, it will be joined in 1850 by Meyer Lehman, now 15, and it will prosper in cotton trading and by extending long-range credit to planters even after Henry Lehman dies of yellow fever in 1855 (see 1858).
Merchant Charles William King leaves Guangzhou (Canton) in poor health during the summer and dies September 27 at age 36 aboard the Bentinck off Aden; his body is buried in the Red Sea.
Scottish engineer William McNaughton, 32, develops a compound steam engine.
A hydroelectric machine perfected by Newcastle-upon-Tyne lawyer-inventor William G. (George) Armstrong, 35, produces frictional electricity by means of escaping steam.
New Bedford, Massachusetts, reaches the height of its whaling trade (see 1775; 1820). Manned by 10,000 seamen, the New Bedford fleet brings in 158,000 barrels of sperm oil; 272,000 barrels of whale oil; and 3 million pounds of whalebone.
The 750-ton Rainbow begins a new era of improved clipper ships that will compete with the new screw-propelled iron steamships (see 1832; S.S. Great Britain, 1843). First of the "extreme" clipper ships that will for years be the fastest vessels afloat, she is narrow in the bow, high in the stern, has aft-displaced beams, and has been launched by New York-born naval architect John Willis Griffiths, 36, who has built her for the China trade. Griffiths first gained attention 9 years ago with a series of articles, he has exhibited a model that embodied his novel theories, and he has delivered the first formal lecture on naval architecture, explaining to audiences how ships with narrow bows can achieve high speeds while carrying hugely profitable tonnages of cargo (seeSea Witch, 1846).
Lawyer-inventor William G. Armstrong patents an hydraulic crane (see Ellswick Engineering Works, 1847).
The Ames & Company arms factory at Springfield, Massachusetts, is acquired by Eliphalet Remington, 53, who has been making rifles at Ilion, New York, since 1828 and will contract for government work (see Oliver Ames, 1803; Remington typewriter, 1874).
E. B. Bigelow of 1837 two-ply power loom fame invents the Brussels power loom for carpet making.
English inventor Samuel Cunliffe Lister, 30, improves on earlier machines for combing wool. Backed by their prosperous father, he and his brother started a worsted spinning and manufacturing business 7 years ago in a new mill at Manningham. He will buy up rival patents, demand by other companies will build a huge market for his machines, he will sell them at £1,200 each (they cost only £200 to produce), but they will lower the cost of production to such an extent that clothing prices will come down and the need for new supplies of wool will spur a growth in Australian sheep farming (see 1855).
French inventor Joshua Heilman, 49, patents a machine for combing cotton and wool.
London rubber manufacturer Stephen Perry of Perry & Company uses vulvanized rubber to create the world's first rubber bands for use in holding papers or envelopes together.
German chemist (Adolph Wilhelm) Hermann Kolbe, 27, converts carbon disulfide into acetic acid, using several steps to make the conversion that validates his theory that organic compounds can be derived from inorganic ones. Kolbe has studied under Friedrich Wöhler and worked as an assistant to Robert Bunsen at the University of Marburg.
Chemist and plant physiologist Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure dies at his native Geneva April 18 at age 77.
Scientific American begins publication August 28 at New York in a newspaper format (see 1946).
British archaeologist Austen (Henry) Layard, 28, begins 6 years of excavations at Nimrod and Kiyunik in Iraq. His work will reveal the remains of the palaces of the Assyrian kings of Nineveh (see 1846).
The Massachusetts Medical Society hears a lecture by Boston physician William J. (Johnson) Walker, 55, whose "Essay on the Treatment of Compound and Complicated Fractures" is published later in the year. A consulting surgeon to the Massachusetts General Hospital and a stickler for cleanliness and high professional standards, Walker will soon retire from his practice, invest in railroad and manufacturing company stocks, and amass a substantial fortune (see education [MIT], 1861).
The Adventist Church is founded at Albany, New York, April 29 by evangelist William Miller, now 63, whose 1836 prediction of the Second Coming in 1843 proved wrong but who has nevertheless attracted a considerable following (see Seventh Day Adventist Church, 1860).
The Methodist Episcopal Church in America splits into Northern and Southern conferences after Georgia bishop James O. Andrews resists an order that he give up his slaves or quit his bishopric.
Former Oxford University vicar John Henry Newman abandons the Church of England after a bitter dispute and amidst great agitation at Oxford and elsewhere (see 1833). Now 44, he is received into the Roman Catholic Church October 9 and will be ordained at Rome in October of next year (see "Apologia," 1864).
Babism is founded by Persian religious leader Ali Mohammed of Shiiaz, 26, whose followers call him the Bab (the Gate). He has influenced large numbers of Persian Muslims, but Muslim leaders call his views heretical and persecute him (see 1850).
Vedantic Doctrines Vindicated by Calcutta (Kolkata)-born Hindu philosopher and reformer Debendranath Tagore, 28, is published in English.
The United States Naval Academy is founded at Annapolis, Maryland, October 10 at the urging of Assistant Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, now 44, and others, notably Baltimore-born naval officer Franklin Buchanan, 45, who will serve as superintendent of the new school until 1847.
The telegraphic Morse code developed by Andrew Vail in 1837 will soon come into universal use as Charles F. Wheatstone and W. F. Cooke in England have a falling out over who shall receive chief credit for the improved single-key telegraph to which they have received patent rights (see 1837; 1844; Electric Telegraph Co., 1846; Western Union, 1856).
France's first telegraph system is established through the efforts of the 10-year-old news agency Agence Havas.
The Boston Traveller begins publication April 1 and will continue until July 8, 1967.
The New York National Police Gazette begins publication with lurid illustrations. Founded by Richard Kyle Fox and George Wilkes, the weekly scandal sheet will gain wide readership.
The Straits Times begins publication at Singapore July 15 under the direction of Robert Carr Woods, whose hand-printed, single-sheet weekly will become a daily, starting in January 1858. Singapore has a population of 40,000, but no more than 500 are literate in any language. The English-language newspaper will grow to have a circulation of nearly 400,000, a readership of 1.23 million, and wide influence.
The London Library moves from cramped quarters in Pall Mall into a tall, spacious building in St. James's Square, making its private collection accessible to the public.
Nonfiction: Woman in the Nineteenth Century by feminist Margaret Fuller, whose work for the New York Tribune has made her the leading U.S. critic; "Suspiria de Profundis" by Thomas De Quincey appears in Blackwood's Magazine.
Fiction: The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas, who gains his greatest success with his adventure story about the Marseilles sailor Edmond Dantes; The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens, who takes his title from John Milton's 1645 poem "Il Penseroso"; Sybil: or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli, whose "two nations" are the rich and the poor "between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by different food"; Agnes Grey by English novelist Anne Brontë, 25, youngest of the three Brontë sisters; Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, whose story "The Purloined Letter" appears in The Gift.
Poetry: "Home Thoughts, from Abroad" by Robert Browning: "Oh, to be in England/ Now that April's there"; The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, whose title poem has appeared in the January 29 New York Evening Mirror where Poe is assistant editor: "And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,/ And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;/ And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor,/ Shall be lifted—nevermore!"
Poet Thomas Hood dies at his native London May 3 at age 45.
Painting: Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio: Hunting, Rocky Mountains and Prairies of America by painter-author George Catlin, now 49; Fur Traders Descending the Missouri by Virginia-born painter George Caleb Bingham, now 34, who turned to genre painting after 4 years as a Washington portraitist and has lived in what now is Missouri since 1819.
Theater: Fashion, or Life in New York by French-born novelist-playwright Anna Cora Mowatt (née Ogden), 26, 3/24 at New York's Park Theater. The playwright married New York lawyer James Mowatt when she was 15, his business failure in 1841 forced her to earn a living, a friend suggested that she write a play, her 1841 play Gulzara met with indifferent success, but her witty satire on New York society enjoys an unprecedented 3-week run, ridiculing parvenu women who fawn obsequiously over what they think of as titled foreigners (in this case a former barber and cook).
French illusionist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, 39, begins 10 years of performances at the Palais-Royal in Paris, appearing on an empty stage in evening clothes rather than in the costumes worn by earlier conjurers. Trained as a watchmaker but fascinated by magic since his youth, Robert-Houdin will expose "fakes" and reveal the methods of those who suggest that there is something "supernatural" about their feats of "magic." He will create a sensation with his "floating boy" trick (it employs a concealed metal support structure), but for most of his tricks he will use what seem to be common, everyday objects and then give his audiences a plausible explanation of the procedures he has employed.
Opera: Tännhauser 10/19 at Dresden, with music and libretto by Richard Wagner, who has based the work on legends of a medieval German knight-minstrel who died in 1270.
Manual of the Norwich Sol-fa System by English music teacher Sarah Ann Glover, 59, uses the notation method pioneered by the 11th century Benedictine monk Guido Aretino (Guido d'Arezzo) (see 1026). Aimé Paris, 47, will develop another system, and Yorkshire-born Congregational minister John Curwen, now 28, will adopt features of both (see 1853).
Spanish soprano Isabella Colbran dies at Castenaso, near Bologna, October 7 at age 60.
Ballet: Pas de Quatre 7/12 at His Majesty's Theatre, London, with Maria Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Lucile Grahn, now 26 (who is celebrated as "the Taglioni of the North"), Naples-born ballerina Francesca "Fanny" Cerrito, now 24, choreography by Jules Perrot, music by Cesare Pugni.
First performances: Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra by Felix Mendelssohn 3/13 at Leipzig's Gewandhaus; Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in A minor by Robert Schumann 12/4 at Dresden, with Clara Weik Schumann, now 26, playing the work developed by her husband from a "Fantasy" that he composed shortly after their marriage in 1839.
London's Surrey Cricket Club leases the Oval ground at Kennington, between Lambeth and Vauxhall, from the duchy of Cornwall. Together with Lord's in St. John's Wood, it will be the scene of county and international (Test) matches for more than 150 years.
A contributor to Punch suggests that the room in Madame Tussaud's wax museum containing relics of criminals and instruments of torture be called the "chamber of horrors" (see 1802).
The world's first wire cable suspension aqueduct bridge opens in May to span the Allegheny River at Pittsburgh. The bridge has seven spans, each 162 feet long, and is the first built by German-born engineer John Augustus Roebling, 38, who 4 years ago founded the first U.S. factory to make wire rope (see transportation [Ellet], 1842; transportation, [Monongahela bridge], 1846).
Potato crops fail throughout Europe, Britain, and Ireland as the fungus disease Phytophthora infestans rots potatoes in the ground and also those in storage (see 1739). Climatic conditions in Ireland favor the spread of the spores that have apparently been imported by accident from America, and Irish potatoes are even less resistant than potatoes elsewhere, so up to half the crop is lost.
Famine kills 2.5 million from Ireland to Moscow and is generally blamed on the wrath of God. The famine is especially severe in Ireland, where so many peasants depend almost solely on potatoes for food while exporting their grain and meat. Botanist John S. Henslow shows stricken farmers how to extract starch from rotten potatoes, Irish immigrants at New York and Boston send home grain and money to help their families, but the dominant official view at London is that importing cheap food would subvert the free-market economy; British charity and British government relief do little to alleviate the suffering, and tens of thousands perish each month (see 1846).
The first U.S. patent for the manufacture of gelatin is issued to New York inventor Peter Cooper, now 53 (see Jell-O, 1897).
"Infanticide is practiced as extensively and as legally in England as it is on the banks of the Ganges," writes Benjamin Disraeli in his novel Sybil. Disraeli is criticizing the use of laudanum, the opium preparation commonly employed by British mothers and "nannies" to quiet their infants.
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