1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850
Mexican forces in California surrender January 13 to Lieut. Col. John C. Frémont, who is appointed governor by Commodore Robert F. Stockton over the protests of General Stephen W. Kearny.
General Santa Anna raises 16,000 men to crush the American invaders who occupied Saltillo after their victory at Monterrey last year. General Zachary Taylor has lost more than 1,000 men to dysentery and other diseases, his 5,000 survivors are outnumbered more than two to one, and they come close to losing the Battle of Buena Vista February 22 to 23 eight miles south of Saltillo, but brilliant action by Mississippi volunteer (and former U.S. congressman) Jefferson Davis, 38, saves the day (Davis was married to Taylor's daughter Sarah but she died 3 months after their marriage); the battle ends in a rout of the Mexicans, who lose 500 killed, 1,000 wounded (U.S. losses: 267 killed, 456 wounded, 23 reported missing). Taylor allows Santa Anna to withdraw along with two of his guns, and thousands of Mexicans defect (hundreds, if not thousands, die for lack of food and water).
Thousands of U.S. troops land on beaches south of Veracruz March 9 under the command of General Winfield Scott, now 60, in the world's first large-scale amphibious operation. U.S. naval guns have destroyed churches and hospitals prior to the landing, and the Mexican garrison puts up little resistance. Scott has a penchant for fancy uniforms and is mocked as "Old Fuss and Feathers," but his men gain possession of Veracruz March 29; he moves them without delay to high ground inland before they can succumb to malaria or yellow fever.
California's Governor Frémont is arrested in March on orders from General Kearny and charged with mutiny, disobedience, and conduct prejudicial to military order (see 1848).
The bloody Battle of Cerro Gordo April 18 ends in another defeat for General Santa Anna, who has set up a strong defensive position in a mountain pass that blocks General Scott's advance on Mexico City over the same route used by Cortéz in 1519. Virginia-born West Point-educated engineer Captain Robert Edward Lee, 40, finds a mountain track that would enable Scott's 8,500-man force to outflank the Mexican lines; he goes back for reinforcements and mounts an artillery attack that takes a terrible toll. The Americans force the pass, about 700 of the 12,000 Mexican defenders are killed or wounded, 3,041 are taken prisoners, and Scott captures some 40 Mexican guns, but he loses 64 men killed, 353 wounded.
President Polk appoints the state department's chief clerk special secret commissioner to negotiate peace with the Mexicans in April. Virginian Nicholas P. (Philip) Trist, 46, served from 1833 to 1841 as U.S. consul at Havana and is fluent in Spanish; he arrives at Veracruz May 6, but General Scott has not been told that he was coming, and Trist manages to offend the general at the outset. President Santa Anna is initially receptive to Trist's peace overtures but goes back on his word; hostilities resume in August.
Los Angeles celebrates its first Independence Day July 4.
The Battle of Chapultepec September 12 and 13 brings victory for General Scott, whose entry into Mexico City has been blocked after further U.S. victories at Contreras, Churubusco (August 20), and Molino del Rey. The 16,000 men deployed by President Santa Anna to hold off Scott's 7,200-man force at Chapultepec Castle include the San Patricio (St. Patrick) Regiment and a company of young Mexican cadets, but the Americans scale the fortified hill on the outskirts of the capital, losing 130 killed and 703 wounded. Mexican casualties are estimated to exceed 2,000, including the cadets and most of the San Patricios; court-martialed September 12 after the U.S. flag is raised above the castle, some of the San Patricios say that they were forced to join the Mexican Army or enlisted while intoxicated, about 50 are convicted of desertion and hanged, but their leader, one John Reilly, and a few others who joined the Mexican cause before the declaration of war are freed after being given 50 lashes and branded with a D for "deserter." Mexico City falls to Scott; President Santa Anna resigns and flees to Jamaica. Secretary of State James Buchanan, 56, and Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker favor total annexation of Mexico, as do many Americans; Nicholas Trist receives word from President Polk November 16 that he has been recalled, but he remains after writing a 60-page letter of explanation, pointing out that he must negotiate with Mexico's moderates lest the country dissolve into anarchy. Scott has patched up his differences with Trist and supports his decision to defy the president's order (see treaty, 1848).
Haitian mulatto leaders set up former slave Faustin-Elie Soulouque, 65, as president in the belief that the military officer will be a puppet head of state, but he will create his own following, free himself from the control of the mulatto clique in 1849, make himself emperor, and rule as Faustin I until 1859.
Irish nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell leaves Ireland for Rome in January but dies at Genoa May 15 at age 71. Remembered as "the liberator," he will be memorialized by a renaming of Dublin's chief thoroughfare. Revolutionaries who include County Clare-born William Smith O'Brien, 43, member of Parliament, and Waterford-born orator Thomas F. (Francis) Meagher, 23, found an Irish Confederation dedicated to independence from Britain. O'Connell last year advised against using force, prompting O'Brien to lead the Young Irelanders out of the anti-union Repeal Association, and the new Confederation agitates for more effective famine relief (see 1848).
Portugal's Septembrist junta surrenders to a combined British and Spanish army at Porto in June (see 1846); the nation's civil war ends June 29 with the Convention of Gramido, and João Carlos, duc da Saldanha, resumes control of the government; he will hold power until 1849.
Former French general Nicolas-Charles Oudinot dies at Paris September 13 at age 80. He has been governor of Les Invalides since 1842.
Baden lawyers Friedrich (Karl Franz) Hecker, 35, and Gustav von Struve, 41, draw up a radical program ("Thirteen Claims Put Forward by the People of Baden") September 12, urging the establishment of a republic. The son of a Russian chargé d'affaires at Karlsruhe, von Struve last year founded the radical journal Deutscher Zuschauer (see 1848).
Paris expels Russian anarchist Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin, 33, for making a violent speech urging overthrow of absolute monarchy in Poland and Russia. Bakunin will be active in European revolutionary movements in the next 2 years; sentenced to death in Austria, he will be turned over to czarist authorities in 1851 and sent to eastern Siberia in 1855 (see 1861).
The Communist Manifesto (Manifest des Kommunismus) published late in the year states: "Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!" The pamphlet is largely the work of Karl Marx, who has been retained (along with Friedrich Engels) to write it by the newly formed Communist League at London (see Marx, 1844; Engels, 1845). Marx has studied writings by the late Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson in the British Museum and written commentaries in the margins; the League adopts the Manifesto's principles December 8.
The emir Abdul Qadar (Abdulkader) returns to Algeria in December and turns himself over to General Christophe de Lamoricière (see 1846). Louis-Philippe's son the duc d'Aumale has succeeded General Bugeaud as governor general and promises the emir transport to the East, but Louis-Philippe welshes on the promise and Abdul-Qadar is taken to the Château de Pau, where he will be imprisoned until he is moved to Amboise and not released until 1852, when he will be authorized to return to Bursa and then to Damascus, where he will live until his death in 1883. Scattered resistance to French rule will continue (see 1954).
Vietnam's third Nguyen dynasty emperor Thieu Tri dies after a 6-year reign and is succeeded by his 17-year-old younger son Nguyen Phuoc Hoang Nham, who is chosen in preference to an older brother and will reign until his death in 1883 as Tu Duc, continuing his late grandfather Minh Mang's persecution of Christian missionaries and opposing diplomatic and trade relations with European powers (see 1856).
The late Cambodian king Chan II's younger brother Duong is invested as king at age 52 and begins efforts to throw off the domination of his neighbors Siam and Vietnam (see 1835; 1859).
Liberia is proclaimed an independent republic July 26 under the presidency of Virginia octoroon Joseph Jenkins Roberts (see 1822). The first African colony to gain independence, Liberia has been colonized since 1821 by U.S. freedmen sent across the Atlantic by the American Colonization Society, whose members have decided that the colony should stop being dependent on American aid and support Roberts, who has enlarged the colony and improved its economic position.
Frederick Douglass (originally Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey), 30, begins publication at Rochester, New York, of an abolitionist newspaper, the North Star. Born in Maryland, Douglass escaped to the north 9 years ago with help from Elmira, New York, abolitionist Jarvis Langdon, now 38. The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society published his autobiography 2 years ago, and he has earned enough from lecture fees in Britain, Ireland, and the United States to buy his freedom. In partnership with Virginia-born abolitionist Martin R. (Robinson) Delany, 35, he lends his voice to those opposing the Mexican War on grounds that victory will mean an extension of slavery to the U.S. Southwest.
Indiana merchant Levi Coffin moves to Cincinnati with help from an Indiana Quaker convention and opens a wholesale business that sells only goods made with free labor (see 1826). Now 48, Coffin continues his abolitionist efforts.
Maya tribesmen in the Yucatán rise up against the Mexicans in what will be remembered as the Caste War. There have been Indian uprisings in the past, but none this severe. The Maya lay siege to Merida, whose more prosperous citizens offer to become a U.S. colony in return for protection from the Maya. Several thousand Spanish-speaking Yucatáns will seek refuge in the next few years in northern Belize. Maya will reestablish communities in northern and western Belize. The rebellion will be put down in 1853, but only with great loss of life, and some communities will not be pacified until the end of the century.
Fur trader Charles Bent, now 47, assumes his new post as governor of the New Mexico Territory, but Pueblo tribesmen and Mexicans enter his house at Taos January 19, killing him and 12 other Anglos with arrows (no women or children are touched). A punitive expedition uses howitzers and hand grenades against Pueblo holed up in a church August 19, killing 150, wounding 300 (10 soldiers are killed in the action). Bent's partner Ceran de St. Vrain was granted 4 million acres of land in New Mexico Territory 3 years ago and will retire from the company next year. Bent's brother William will blow up Fort Bent in 1849 and build a new fort a short distance down the Arkansas River.
The "Mormon battalion" under Lieut. Col. Philip St. George Cooke, 38, opens a wagon road from Santa Fe to San Diego (see 1841; commerce [Becknell], 1822). Cooke arrived at the San Diego mission January 29, having left Santa Fe 100 days earlier. Traveling through desert, mountains, and hostile Apache country, he and his 400 men have dug wells along the way to establish the Santa Fe Trail that thousands of California-bound émigrés will soon follow.
A relief expedition reaches the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada February 19 and finds evidence of cannibalism. Trapped for 3 months by heavy snows in the worst winter ever, the wagon train has lost 12 members to starvation; 46 of the group's original 87 members will ultimately survive (see Borden, 1848).
Nearly 15,000 Mormons arrive on the shores of Great Salt Lake in Mexican territory that will soon be ceded to the United States. Frontiersman Jim Bridger has led them across the mountains. "This is the place," says Brigham Young July 24, and he organizes the "State of Deseret," an independent nation with himself as president (see 1846; polygamy, 1871).
Salt Lake City is founded by Brigham Young, who orders that avenues be made wide enough for a wagon and four oxen to make a U-turn.
British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin dies June 11 at age 61 (see 1845). His second in command leads 105 survivors toward a Hudson's Bay Company post on Back's River, but all will die of starvation and scurvy, and others will die on expeditions sent out to find them (see 1850).
Francis Parkman suffers a nervous breakdown in Oregon and is invalided home half-blind to Boston (see 1846; Nonfiction, 1849).
Cayuse warriors in Oregon country kill Marcus Whitman November 27 along with his wife, Narcissa, and 12 other settlers who are blamed for the measles epidemic that has killed many of the tribe (see 1843). Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company rescues remnants of the group in December after they have been held for ransom for more than 2 weeks.
Minneapolis is founded across from St. Anthony's Falls on the west bank of the upper Mississippi (see 1838). The town takes its name from the Falls of Minnehaha combined with the Greek word for city.
Canada Life Insurance Company is founded at Hamilton in Canada West. It is the first Canadian life insurance company.
The Poor Law Amendment Act adopted by Parliament in June makes British landlords solely responsibility for providing for Ireland's impoverished masses, who continue to die by the tens of thousands in the continuing potato famine. The number of people in Irish workhouses has exceeded 100,000 in January, with taxes levied to finance their employment under harsh conditions for meager pay. The amendment provides for the creation of auxiliary workhouses and a system of outdoor relief (although people are often required to labor in workhouses for a time before they may collect outdoor relief), but soup kitchens run by the government ladle out soup made with 12½ pounds of beef per 100 gallons of water (soup provided by U.S. Quakers at their soup kitchens contains 75 pounds per 100 gallons), and the Gregory clause in the act requires that people who own more than one-quarter of an acre of land give up their land before they can receive any type of relief (many cotters tear the thatched roofs off their cottages to prove they are destitute). British public opinion supports the Poor Law Amendment.
The British lord lieutenant (viceroy) of Ireland George (William Frederick) Villiers, 47, 4th earl of Clarendon, invokes coercive legislation to prevent a general outbreak of violence as famine brings a breakdown in law and order; the relief projects that he sponsors are quite ineffective, and his agrarian reform measures merely encourage English speculation in Irish land.
Economic depression engulfs Britain, provincial banks fail, and even the 153-year-old Bank of England comes under pressure. The Ten Hours Act approved by Parliament June 8 goes beyond the Factory Act of 1833, limiting to 10 hours per day the working hours of English women and children factory workers aged 13 to 18; the law crowns efforts by reformers who include Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Fielden, Richard Oastler, Michael T. Sadler, Titus Salt (who has been the first employer in Bradford to introduce the 10-hour day), Prime Minister Russell, and others (see Massachusetts, 1842; Shaftesbury, 1863).
The New Hampshire legislature adopts a law July 9 limiting the workday to 10 hours.
The Communist Manifesto issued late in the year calls for "1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population of the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of child factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc." (see 1848).
Lazard Frères has its beginnings in a dry-goods business opened at New Orleans by émigré French merchant Alexandre Lazard, who will take two of his brothers into partnership next year. A fire in 1849 will destroy a large section of the city, wiping out the firm; one brother will return to Sarrequemines, in Lorraine, but Alexandre and Simon Lazard will move to San Francisco, buy an interest in a fabric house making woolen yard goods, take their youngest brother Elie and their cousin Alexandre Weill into partnership, and shift from dry goods to trading in gold. By the 1880s they will have offices at New York, Paris, and London (see London, Paris, and American Bank, 1884).
Paris jeweler Louis François Cartier opens a small shop that will grow to have branches worldwide. Cartier and his son Alfred will open a shop in the rue Neuve des Petits-Champs, the demands of their growing clientele will force them to open a larger salon on the Boulevard des Italiens, and they will open a clock and watchmaking department in 1880 (see 1898).
New York jeweler Charles Tiffany moves north to 271 Broadway and next year will start manufacturing his own jewelry, adding gold jewelry to his line (see 1837); he will open a Paris branch in 1850, adopt the firm name Tiffany & Company in 1853, and open a London branch in 1868 (see commerce [Tiffany Diamond], 1878; everyday life [Louis Comfort Tiffany], 1878).
Europe's first covered shopping arcade opens at Brussels: the glass-enclosed Royal Galleries of St. Hubert will survive into the 21st century (see architecture [Milan], 1867).
Steam powers a U.S. cotton mill for the first time at Salem, Massachusetts, where the Maumkoag Steam Cotton Mill begins production.
The Ocean Steam Navigation Company founded at New York takes advantage of new U.S. Government mail subsidies and begins service to Bremen. Traveler-author John Lloyd Stephens promotes the line as a director of the company and is aboard the S.S. Washington on her maiden voyage to the German port (see Collins, 1850).
The steamer Phoenix is lost on Lake Michigan November 21, killing 200 passengers and crew.
The first Swiss railway line opens between Zürich and Baden. Private companies in the next 13 years will lay more than 600 miles of track among the Mittelland cities, and by 1876 there will be more than 1,200 miles of rail in use.
Nitroglycerin is discovered by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero, 35, whose highly explosive liquid is prepared from glycerol with nitric and sulfuric acid; it is considered too dangerous to use as an explosive but will be used as such nevertheless (see dynamite, 1866; medicine, 1879).
Elswick Engineering Works is founded at Elswick-on-Tyne by William G. Armstrong, who gives up his Newcastle-on-Tyne law practice to devote full time to scientific experiments (see 1845; energy, 1850).
Systême glaciare by Louis Agassiz is an extension of his 1840 work. Agassiz came to America on a lecture tour last year and has been appointed professor of natural history at Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, where he will remain until his death in 1873.
English cobbler's son George Boole, 32, publishes a paper entitled "The Mathematical Analysis of Logic." He has not received any degree and is largely self-taught. His system of symbolic logic shows a remarkable similarity to the one published by Gottfried W. Leibniz in the 1680s, but Boole will be appointed in 1849 to a professorship in mathematics at Queen's College, Cork, Ireland, and gain renown as a mathematician and logician (see 1854).
"On the Conservation of Force" ("Uber die Erhaltung der Kraft") by German physicist-anatomist-physiologist Hermann (Ludwig Ferdinand) von Helmholtz, 26, enunciates the conservation-of-energy principle stated last year by William R. Grove.
History of Chemistry (Geschichte der Chemie) by German chemist Hermann F. M. (Franz Moritz) Kopp, 29, is published in its fourth and final volume (the first appeared 3 years ago, when Kopp became extraordinary professor of chemistry at Giessen). Kopp's studies of boiling points, specific gravity, specific heat, thermal expansion, and the relation of chemical structure to physical properties are pioneering the science of physical organic chemistry.
Physiologist Henri Dutrochet dies at Paris February 4 at age 70; chemist Charles Hatchett at London March 10 at age 82; mineralogist-geologist-naturalist Alexandre Brongniart at his native Paris October 7 at age 77.
Physiology professor Carl Ludwig at the University of Marburg invents the kymograph, a device that records changes in arterial blood pressure (see 1844; 1867).
New York-born London physician John Snow, 34, introduces ether into British surgery as news of last year's breakthrough by William Morton at Boston reaches Britain and creates a demand for general anesthesia (see Snow, 1853).
Boston Lying-In Hospital cofounder Walter Channing, now 61, becomes the first to use ether as an anesthetic in obstetrics. His "Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth" will appear next year.
Ether is used as an anesthetic in obstetrics by Scottish midwifery professor James Young Simpson, 36, who discovers the anesthetic properties of chloroform and introduces it into obstetric practice with great success in November (see 1831).
London has an influenza epidemic that will take 15,000 lives in the next 2 years.
Oliver Wendell Holmes becomes dean of the Harvard Medical School; his 1843 paper on childbed fever finally gains attention (see Semmelweiss, 1848).
The American Medical Association is founded May 7 under the leadership of upstate New York physician Nathan S. (Smith) Davis, 30, following a Philadelphia convention attended by representatives of medical societies and medical schools.
U.S. newspapers carry advertising for Hostetter's Stomach Bitters, whose ads promote it as a cure-all. The patent medicine is 44 percent alcohol and will make Colonel David Hostetter a millionaire (see 1867).
Smith Brothers Cough Drops have their beginning in a recipe for a good-tasting remedy given to Poughkeepsie, New York, restaurateur James Smith, who is soon offering patrons cough drops that he has made in his kitchen. Smith's sons William and Andrew sell the drops to passengers on the New York-Albany stagecoaches that stop at Poughkeepsie and will soon be installing jarsful in drugstores up and down the Hudson River Valley and in the Catskill Mountains. By the time they inherit the business in 1866 they will have many competitors (see 1870).
French colonial authorities in southeast Asia take reprisals against Vietnam for continuing expulsions of Christian missionaries (see politics, 1841). French Roman Catholic interests have been openly demanding military intervention since 1840 to block persecution of missionaries, and the new Vietnamese emperor Tu Duc has renewed his late father's anti-missionary policies (see politics, 1858).
A new British Museum opens in London's Great Russell Street to replace the Montague House museum that opened in 1759 (see 1823). A pediment frieze surmounts its Ionic colonnade and portico. It is topped by one of the world's largest domes, and its large circular reading room will be completed in the middle of the museum's Great Court in 1857.
Boston parent Benjamin F. Roberts tries to enroll his 5-year-old daughter Sarah in his local school district and is refused in April on the ground that the girl is black (see 1846). Roberts petitions the general primary school committee to have Sarah admitted to one of the five schools nearest his home rather than to the school for black children established 27 years ago in Belknap Street, 2,100 feet from his home; he is again refused (see 1848).
The first U.S. adhesive postage stamps go on sale July 1 in the form of Benjamin Franklin 5¢ stamps and George Washington 10¢ stamps, but use of adhesive stamps will not be obligatory until January 1, 1856 (see England, 1840; Pitney-Bowes, 1920).
Arunah S. Abell's Philadelphia Public Ledger installs Richard Hoe's 1846 rotary press, prints 8,000 papers per hour, and becomes the first newspaper able to publish large daily editions. By reducing the cost of production and thus permitting more penny papers (seeNew York Sun, 1833), the rotary press will enable more working-class people to afford newspapers (see Bullock, 1865).
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin has its beginnings in the Cummings Telegraphic Evening Bulletin published April 12 by Alexander Cummings. One of the first U.S. papers to transmit news by telegraph, and the first evening paper to succeed in Philadelphia, it will become the Daily Evening Bulletin in 1856, the Evening Bulletin in 1870, and continue until 1982.
The Chicago Tribune begins publication June 10 as the Chicago Daily Tribune (see Medill, 1855).
New York has 16 daily newspapers to serve its population of 400,000; included are the Evening Post, Sun, Herald, and Tribune (see Times, 1851).
Times of London publisher John Walter II dies at London July 28 at age 71, having made his paper the first one capable of meeting the circulation demands of advertisers and the reading public and able to refuse both bribes from private individuals and subsidies from political parties. His son John III, 28, takes over the Times and will run it until his death in 1894.
A telegraph line opens January 14 between Buffalo, New York, and Toronto (see 1846), the Nova Scotia Assembly adopts a measure April 11 authorizing the appointment of a commission to establish a line from Halifax to the New Brunswick border, the New Brunswick legislature adopts a measure April 14 incorporating the British North American Electro-Magnetic Telegraph Company, the Montreal Telegraph Company incorporated July 28 opens a line August 3 between Montreal and Toronto, it links Montreal to New York August 20 and will extend the line next year to Quebec. By 1861 it will have absorbed other companies and be operating 3,422 miles of galvanized iron telegraph wire, 32 poles to the mile, with links to New Brunswick, Detroit, Troy, and Portland, Maine.
The Telegraph Construction Firm of Siemens & Halske (Telegraphen-Bau-Anstalt von Siemens & Halske) is founded at Berlin October 1 by Prussian electrical engineer (Ernst) Werner Siemens, 31, and his cousin Johann Georg Siemens, 42, with mechanic Johann Georg Halske, 33, to build telegraph installations and other electrical equipment. Werner Siemens received his first patent 5 years ago for a gold and silver electroplating process he invented while carrying out chemical experiments in his cell after being imprisoned briefly at Magdeburg for acting as a second in a duel between fellow officers in the Prussian Army, and 2 years ago he developed a machine that measures small intervals of time, using it to measure the speed of electricity by means of electric sparks. The new firm lays an underground line for the army, using gutta percha to insulate its cables against moisture, and next year will win a government contract for a 500-kilometer line from Berlin to the National Assembly at Frankfurt-am-Main, for which it will construct a machine that covers copper wire with melted gutta percha under pressure (see 1852; London, 1850).
English engineer Josiah Latimer Clark, 31, installs a 675-foot-long pneumatic tube 1.5 inches in diameter to connect the London Stock Exchange in Threadneedle Street with the 7-year-old Electric Telegraph Co.'s central station in Lothbury (see Medhurst, 1810) Designed to send messages faster than is possible with the overloaded Victorian telegraph system, it employs a steam engine to create a vacuum and speed delivery of commercial intelligence.
Nonfiction: History of the Conquest of Peru by W. H. Prescott (two volumes).
Fiction: Jane Eyre by English novelist Charlotte Brontë, 31, reflects the penury and unhappiness of Brontë's life as governess and school teacher in the story of an orphan girl who becomes a governess and falls in love with her sardonic employer, a married man named Rochester; Wuthering Heights by Charlotte's sister Emily Jane Brontë, 29, is a romance about Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff; Chien-Caillou by French novelist-journalist Champfleury (Jules-François-Félix Husson), 26, whose story of an unhappy love affair is intended to be a "daguerrotype" of everyday life; A Common Story (Obyknovennaya istoriya) by Russian novelist Ivan (Aleksandrovich) Goncharov, 35, who has worked in the Ministry of Finance since his graduation from Moscow University in 1834 and will continue his career as a public official until 1864; Children of the New Forest by Captain Frederick Marryat; Omoo by Herman Melville, who arouses controversy by revealing the hypocrisy and venality of Christian missionaries in the South Pacific. Melville moves back to his native New York, where he will write some minor novels in the next few years before moving to a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Poetry: Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose long poem about the expulsions of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755 and 1784 begins, "This is the forest primeval,/ The murmuring pines and the hemlock."
Painting: The Departure of the Fleet by J. M. W. Turner is based on the Dido and Aeneas story; The Guard Room, Readers, and Smokers by Ernest Meissonier; Raftsmen Playing Cards by George Caleb Bingham; July Sunset by Hartford, Connecticut-born painter Frederick Edwin Church, 21; Pontine Marshes by Staten Island, New York-born painter and architect Jasper Francis Cropsey, 24, who visits England, France, Switzerland, and Italy.
Summerly's Art Manufactures is founded at London to acquaint painters and sculptors with industrialists who may wish to use their designs. Founder Henry Cole of 1843 Christmas card fame has used the pseudonym Felix Summerly since 1845, when he won a Society of Arts competition for the design of a new tea service that was manufactured by Minton's pottery works and attracted many buyers. Its design, Cole said, "had as much beauty and ornament as is consistent with cheapness." He will join with painter Richard Redgrave in 1849 to found The Journal of Design and Manufactures, dedicated to promoting "the germs of a style which England of the 19th century may call its own" (see Great Exhibition, 1851).
Theater: The String of Pearls, or The Fiend of Fleet Street by English playwright George Dibdin Pitt, 48, 3/8 at London, a grisly melodrama about "the demon barber" Sweeney Todd; Box and Cox, a Romance of Life in One Act by English playwright John Maddison Morton, 36, 11/1 at London's Royal Lyceum Theatre (see Opera, 1867); A Caprice (Un Caprice) by Alfred de Musset 11/26 at the Comédie-Française, Paris.
Opera: Macbeth 3/14 at Florence's Teatro della Pergola, with music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto from the 1606 Shakespeare tragedy; I Masnadieri 7/22 at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, with music by Verdi; Martha (oder Der Markt zu Richmond) 11/25 at Vienna's Hofoper, with music by Friedrich von Flotow. The opera's tenor hero sings "The Last Rose of Summer," an old Irish air adapted to verse by Irish poet Thomas Moore, now 68, and incorporated by Flotow into the opera.
Composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy dies at Darmstadt November 4 at age 38, only weeks after returning from a tenth trip to England and hearing that his beloved sister Fanny has died.
Ballet: The Girl of Marble (La Fille de marbre) 10/20 at l'Academie Royale de Musique, Paris, with Fanny Cerrito, choreography by her Paris-born husband, (Charles-Victor-) Arthur (Michel) Saint-Léon, 26.
Popular song: "Liebestraum" ("Dreams of Love") by Hungarian composer Franz (Ferencz) Liszt, 35, lyrics by E. Freiligrath.
Anthem: "Fratelli d'Italia" ("Inno di Mameli," or "Mameli Hymn") by Italian poet-patriot Goffredo Memeli, 20, is set to music by Michele Novaro and overnight becomes the national hymn of revolution and independence.
Hawaii's Parker Ranch has its beginnings in a small parcel of land at the base of Mauna Kea volcano granted January 14 by Kamehameha III to Massachusetts-born kamaaina (long-time resident) John Palmer Parker, now 57, who jumped ship to settle in the Sandwich Islands at age 19, married a granddaughter of Kamehameha 17 years later, and has served the royal family by providing hides and meat from wild cattle put ashore originally by George Vancouver from his ship Discovery in 1793. Parker has developed a ranching operation that will grow to embrace 227,000 acres with more than 50,000 head of Herefords—the largest privately owned ranch in the world.
Cyrus McCormick forms a partnership with C. M. Gray and builds a three-story brick reaper factory on the north bank of the Chicago River near Lake Michigan (see 1834). McCormick has rejected sites at Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, deciding that Chicago may still be a swamp but is receiving great tonnages of grain via William B. Ogden's new Galena and Chicago Union Railroad and is clearly destined to become a grain transportation center (see 1848).
Obed Hussey introduces an improved version of his 1834 reaper, but he has moved his works to Baltimore and lacks the central geographical location (and the capital) to compete successfully with McCormick.
John Deere builds a factory at Moline, Illinois, to produce his self-polishing steel plows (see 1842; 1852).
Horticulturist Henderson Lewelling arrives in Oregon Territory after having traveled by covered wagon from Iowa. He begins an industry in the Willamette Valley by planting 700 grafted fruit trees—apples, sweet cherry, pear, plum, and quince, all less than four feet tall (see 1849).
"This is a real famine, in which thousands and thousands of people are likely to die," writes Charles Edward Trevelyan in January (see 1846). British authorities evict some 6,000 families from their small farms, up from 4,000 last year; Ireland's potato crop is sound for the first time since 1844 but small for lack of seed potatoes in the spring (see 1848).
A new stamping process makes tin cans cheap enough for wider sale (see 1830; Mason, 1858; Solomon, 1861; can opener, 1865). Canned tomatoes are put up in small tin pails with soldered lids by the assistant steward of Lafayette College, established 21 years ago near Easton, Pennsylvania.
The first ring doughnuts are introduced by Camden, Maine, baker's apprentice Hanson C. (Crockett) Gregory, 15, who knocks the soggy center out of a fried doughnut.
Cadbury Brothers moves to larger premises in Birmingham as John Cadbury takes his brother Benjamin into partnership (see 1824). Cadbury has been roasting and grinding cocoa since 1831, he has been preparing sugar-sweetened chocolate powder and unsweetened cocoa powder, and for the past 5 years he has been offering French eating chocolate (see 1866; van Houten, 1828).
Charitable Cookery, or the Poor Man's Regenerator is published at London. Its author is Reform Club chef Alexis Soyer, who establishes a soup kitchen that serves 2,000 to 3,000 starving Londoners per day as the economic depression creates widespread unemployment in the city.
More than 200,000 emigrants leave Ireland, up from 60,000 in 1842, and many come to America. The poor pay a fare of between £3 and £5 ($15 to $25) per head for passage aboard small sailing vessels, few of which are inspected and many of which are not seaworthy. Passengers provide their own food, which is often inadequate when poor winds make the passage a long one.
A great migration from the Netherlands begins to the U.S. Middle West, especially to Michigan.
The New York Commissioners of Emigration begin for the first time to keep accurate records. Between now and 1860 some 2.5 million immigrants will enter the United States through the port of New York alone and more than 1 million of these will be Irish.
New York's first Chinese immigrants arrive July 10 aboard the seagoing junk Kee Ying out of Guangzhou (Canton) with 35 Cantonese whose voyage has taken 212 sailing days. Several crewmen jump ship, and their arrival marks the beginning of New York's Chinatown, which will have 1,000 residents by 1887.
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