1851
1851
Portuguese moderates overthrow the right-wing government of António da Costa Cabral in April, restoring João Carlos, duc da Saldanha (see
Former Spanish prime minister Manuel Godoy dies at Paris April 10 at age 83, having lived in exile since 1808; former French general Marshal Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult dies at his native Saint-Amans-Soult November 26 at age 82.
France's Second Republic ends after 3 years in a December 2 coup d'état engineered by President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and his half-brother Count Morny. Army brigades occupy Paris, arresting leading deputies in the middle of the night, and the minister of war quells a popular uprising, sending his troops against the workers' street barricades. Troops fire on unarmed crowds in the Massacre of the Boulevards, and a 9-year period of repression begins (see Napoleon III,
Persia's shah Nasir ad-Din dismisses his prime minister Mirza Taki Khan in October and exiles him to Kashan (see 1848). Taki Khan has taken the title emir, slashed government appropriations, overhauled the central admnistration, curtailed foreign interference in the nation's internal affairs while at the same time encouraging foreign trade, established a new secular college (the Dar el-Fonun) to train new administrators acquainted with Western techniques, and instituted other reforms, but those excluded from the government have organized a coalition to expel the prime minister and gained the ear of the queen mother, who has persuaded the young shah that Taki Khan intended to usurp the throne (see
Siam's Phra Nang Klao (Rama III) dies at his native Bangkok April 2 at age 63 after a 27-year reign that has seen further reopening of his country to contact with the West. He is succeeded by his half-brother Phra Chom Klao Mongkut, 46, a Buddhist monk who will reign until 1868. The new king will build canals and roads, set up a printing press, stimulate education, reform the administration, improve the condition of slaves, issue Siam's first currency, encourage commerce with Europe and the United States, and import an English governess for his children (see education, 1862), but while he will surrender some of his nation's legal and fiscal independence he will keep Siam from invasion or permanent domination by any Western power.
Britain proclaims Victoria a separate Australian colony from New South Wales July 1 (see
Chinese rebel leader Hong Xiuquan (Hung Hsiu-chüan) proclaims his new Taiping dynasty September 25 (see 1850). He calls himself Tienwang (Heavenly King) and gives his former schoolmate Feng Yunshan (Feng Yün-shan), 29, the title Nanwang (Southern King) (see
Former U.S. Navy commodore James Barron dies at his native Norfolk, Virginia, April 21 at age 82. He has lived under a cloud since killing Stephen Decatur in a due1 31 years ago.
Liberia's Maryland Colony governor John B. Russworm dies in Liberia June 17 at age 51 after 15 years in that post; former Republic of Texas vice president and Indian fighter Colonel Edward Burleson dies of pneumonia at Austin December 26 at age 53.
Cincinnati papers report January 29 that a Kentucky slave woman has crossed the frozen Ohio River, been apprehended, and has cut the throat of one of her two children rather than have the girl returned to slavery. She has been stopped before she could kill the other child and local authorities send the distraught woman back to her owner instead of indicting her for murder.
A mob of Boston blacks defies last year's Fugitive Slave Act and rescues the fugitive Shadrach from jail February 15. President Fillmore calls upon Massachusetts citizens and officials 3 days later to execute the law, but abolitionists at Syracuse, New York, rescue another fugitive slave October 1 (see 1854).
British planters in Natal, South Africa, import workers from India to work their sugar plantations under 3-year indentures.
An observation study of 700 homes in a working-class London area reveals that the average housewife works 75 hours per week—15 hours per day—cooking, cleaning, and looking after the children. She spends one-quarter of her day in the kitchen.
Economist-philosopher John Stuart Mill, now 45, marries his longtime confidante, widow Harriet Taylor (née Hardy), 44, whose essays and suggestions have helped him for more than 20 years. Her latest essay, "Enfranchisement for Women," states: "We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion . . . what is and what is not their 'proper sphere.' The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain." The Mills have drafted a formal protest against repressive marriage laws but will live together for only 7 years before Harriet dies at age 51 in Avignon.
Sioux chieftains cede all Sioux lands in Iowa and some in Minnesota Territory to the federal government in a treaty signed July 23.
Frontiersman Thomas Fitzpatrick assembles a great council of Sioux, Mandan, Gros Ventre, Assiniboin, Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and Arapaho chiefs at Fort Laramie in September and uses gifts and arguments to persuade them to accept a treaty providing for each tribe to occupy lands reserved and guaranteed specifically for that tribe. The treaty will actually make it easier for whites to preempt one tribe's land.
Seattle is founded in Oregon Territory. The lumber town will be given its name in 1853 to honor Chief Sealth of the Duwamish and Suquamish, who befriends the first settlers (see 1884).
Surgeon-explorer John Rae leads another expedition to search for the late Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, who died in 1847 (see 1850). Rae's party travels about 5,300 miles in 8 months, mapping 700 miles of Victoria Island's south coast (see 1853).
The London Great Exhibition that opens May 1 is the first world's fair and in 141 days attracts more than 6 million admissions. Proposed 3 years ago by art patron Henry Cole, it features "art applied to industry" and is intended to show British industrial achievement and prosperity, but foreign exhibits in many cases outshine the British. Congress has refused to appropriate funds for a display of U.S. products and inventions, but financier George Peabody has contributed $15,000 to make such a display possible.
A gold rush to California's Kern River brings the first large influx of settlers to Kern County (see agriculture [Baker], 1863).
An Australian gold rush follows the discovery by sheep station manager Edward H. (Hammond) Hargreaves, 35, who has found the yellow metal near Bathhurst in New South Wales. An influx of Chinese attracted by the gold strike brings demands for legislation to keep non-white immigrants out of Australia (see
The Treaty of Kulja regulates trade between China and Russia, whose forces have advanced into Kazakhstan for more than a century, whose merchants have begun trading in Chinese Central Asia, and who now gain their first major foothold in the Orient.
The U.S. Treasury turns out nearly 4 million $1 gold pieces; Congress authorized the tiny coins in 1849. Congress votes March 3 to authorize minting of 3¢ silver coins to reduce the demand for large copper pennies.
Merchant David W. C. Olyphant dies at Cairo June 10 at age 62 while en route home to New York from Guangzhou (Canton), having made a fortune in the China trade without dealing in opium; New York merchant Gardiner G. Howland hears of a friend's death and dies himself of a sudden heart attack at his Washington Square home November 9 at age 64, leaving a fortune estimated at $1 million.
Boston's Jordan Marsh Company has its beginnings in a dry goods shop opened by merchants Eben Dyer Jordan, 28, and Benjamin L. Marsh (see Boston Opera,
The Columbus, Ohio, department store Lazarus Brothers has its beginnings in a one-room menswear shop opened by German-born rabbi Simon Lazarus, who came to America in 1830 (the transatlantic crossing took 49 days), opened a store at Cincinnati, and has come to Columbus to start that city's first Reform temple. By the time he dies in 1877 his sons Fred and Ralph will have turned his 20 x 50-foot store into a dry-goods enterprise occupying seven buildings in a city block (see Federated Department Stores, 1929).
The Corliss steam engine exhibited at the London Great Exhibition by Providence, Rhode Island, engineer George H. Corliss weighs 1,700 tons and produces 2,500-horsepower from cylinders more than three feet in diameter which are operated by 30-foot gear wheels (see
Blacksmith and direct-current electric motor inventor Thomas Davenport dies at Salisbury, Vermont, July 6 at age 48.
German mechanic Heinrich D. (Daniel) Ruhmkorff, 48, receives a 50,000-franc prize from the emperor Napoleon III for an electric induction coil that can produce sparks more than 30 centimeters (one foot) long.
The Flying Cloud launched by Nova Scotia-born Boston shipbuilder Donald McKay, 40, is a 229-foot clipper ship and the greatest of some 40 that will be built this year and next. Forty-one feet wide, 22 feet deep, and displacing 1,783 tons, she is bought by New York merchant Moses H. Grinnell, now 48, sails from Pier 20 on New York's East River under the command of Marblehead master Josiah Creasy, and sets a new record by reaching San Francisco in just under 90 days (see
Visitors to the London Great Exhibition have in many cases booked their travel accommodations through Thomas Cook (see 1841; 1866).
A model flying machine built by English engineer John Stringfellow, 52, and lacemaker William S. (Samuel) Henson, 39, pioneers aviation. They have read the 1809 paper by Sir George Cayley and created a light, steam-driven aircraft (see aeronautical society,
An Irish rail line opens to link Dublin with Galway, where a new hotel attracts some tourists, but the railroad's passengers are mostly would-be emigrés who buy third-class tickets with a view to escaping Ireland's poverty and starvation in the wake of the Great Famine.
The Erie Railroad reaches Dunkirk on Lake Erie May 15—the first line linking New York City with the Great Lakes, providing competition for the 26-year-old Erie Canal. President Fillmore, Daniel Webster, and other notables celebrate the occasion by traveling 20 miles upriver on a steamboat from the foot of Duane Street to Piedmont on the west bank of the Hudson and then riding 447 miles to Dunkirk, stopping overnight at Elmira (Webster travels in a rocking chair secured to an open flat car). Begun in 1832 with state and county money, the Erie is now controlled by New York financier Daniel Drew, 53, who began his fortune as an upstate livestock dealer who watered his stock by feeding the animals salt and letting them drink their fill to put on weight before selling them. Drew has operated steamboats on the Hudson and on Long Island Sound in competition with Commodore van Derbilt (see
The New York and Hudson River Rail Road opens to link New York City with East Albany. Engineers and laborers have laid 144 miles of track along the riverbank, and the Hudson Line tracks—unlike those of the Erie—extend right into Manhattan, carrying steam locomotives and their cars south on Eleventh Avenue to a large depot between 30th and 32nd streets, whence horse cars carry passengers and freight down Tenth Avenue, West Street, and Hudson Street, with stops at 23rd, 14th, Christopher, and Chambers streets (see van Derbilt,
The Pennsylvania Railroad reaches Pittsburgh (see
The Baltimore & Ohio reaches the Ohio River at Wheeling (see
The Missouri Pacific Railway has its beginnings in the Pacific Railway that starts laying track at St. Louis July 4. The first railroad west of the Mississippi, it will grow to serve the Mississippi Valley south to Memphis and New Orleans and the Missouri Valley west to Kansas City and Pueblo, Colorado, will own majority interests in other companies to serve Texas, but will never reach the Pacific.
Railway workers will lay some 4,400 miles of track this year and next between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi.
Completion of the Hudson River Railroad line to East Albany reduces demand for travel on Hudson River steamboats like the Isaac Newton, Alida, New World, and other ships except for recreation. The rail journey takes only 4 hours as compared with 7½ by water, but steamboats and barges will continue to play an important role in freight movement).
Former riverboat captain Henry M. Shreve dies at his retirement home near St. Louis March 6 at age 65.
German steelmaker Alfred Krupp exhibits a 4,300-pound steel ingot at the London Great Exhibition (see 1838); cast almost miraculously in one piece, it dwarfs a 2,400-pound Sheffield "monster" casting and wins world acclaim for Alfred Krupp of Essen (see transportation,
The Colt revolver exhibited at the London Great Exhibition alarms British gun makers, who fear that Colt's mass-production methods will swamp their handmade guns, but gun maker Robert Adams has patented a revolver that re-cocks itself each time the trigger is pulled, while the .36 caliber Colt is a single-action revolver and must be thumb-cocked for each shot (see
Scottish industrial chemist James Young, 40, patents a method for producing paraffin by dry distillation of coal. Young will manufacture naphtha, lubricating oils, paraffin oil, and solid paraffin from Bogshead coal and, later, from Scottish shale (see energy [kerosene],
Corning Glass Works has its beginnings in a company founded at Cambridge, Mass., by Massachusetts farmer's son Amory Houghton, 39, who has met a British glass maker and decided to buy a local factory to make glass himself. He will soon acquire a company at Somerset, Mass., move to New York, acquire the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works, and move in 1868 to upstate Corning, N.Y., in order to take advantage of ample coal for fuel and better transportation facilities (canal and rail) (see energy [light bulb],
I. M. Singer receives a patent on his sewing machine August 12 (see 1850). He has gone into partnership with his New York lawyer, Edward Clark, 41, who will defend I. M. Singer and Company from patent suits brought by Elias Howe (see
William Thomson gives a complete account of thermodynamic theory that coordinates the discoveries of the past half-century. Now 27, the Glasgow mathematics professor has developed the findings reported in 1840 and 1843 by James P. Joule (see Joule-Thomson effect, 1853); Thomson will lay the foundations of the theory of electric oscillations, and his study of the oscillating discharge of condensers will lead to the discovery of radio waves by German physicist Heinrich Hertz in 1887.
German physicist Franz Ernst Neumann, 53, enunciates the law of electromagnetic induction.
German physicist-manufacturer Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff, 48, invents the high-tension induction coil.
The Cannizzaro reaction discovered by Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro, 25, at the National College of Alexandria will lead to a clear definition of the distinction between molecular and atomic weights. Cannizzaro finds that alcoholic potash (potassium carbonate) will dissolve aromatic aldehydes (such as benzaldehyde) into a mixture of the corresponding acid and alcohol (benzoic acid and benzyl alcohol). He will simplify Avogadro's hypothesis of 1811 and apply it to atomic theory. He will also devise a method for deducing atomic weights of elements in volatile compounds from the molecular weights of the compounds (see Millikan, 1917).
The London Great Exhibition raises awareness of the metric system of weights and measures that became compulsory again last year in France and will be used throughout Europe and most of the world (see
French physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, 31, gives the first demonstration of the Earth's rotation, using a pendulum that he has designed (see
Mathematician Karl Jacobi dies of smallpox at Berlin February 18 at age 46; physicist Hans Christian Oersted at Copenhagen March 9 at age 63.
German mathematician (Georg Friedrich) Bernhard Riemann, 24, obtains his doctorate at the University of Gottingen with a dissertation on the "Foundations for a General Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable" ("Grundlangen für eine allgemeine Theori dr Functionerm einer veränderlichen complexen Grosse"). Basing his work on geometrical ideas rather than just on algebraic calculations, Riemann wins praise from Carl Friedrich Gauss for his treatment of the relations between complex numbers (see 1853).
A porcelain denture patented by Cincinnati dentist John Allen, 41, will remain the standard for the next 150 years. Allen cofounded the Ohio College of Dental Surgery 6 years ago.
The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) opens its first American offices at Boston and Montreal (see 1844; YWCA,
Men and women receive equal treatment in the Oneida Community, which has 300 converts living in communal buildings made of timber from the Community's farms and views all classes of work as equally honorable (see 1848). John Humphrey Noyes lectures each Tuesday on love, sex, and the etiquette of complex marriage; children are reared not by their parents but rather in the "children's house," operated by men and women considered best qualified (see
Sarah Josepha Hale organizes the Ladies' Missionary Society of Philadelphia (see 1853).
Irish writer and politician Richard Lalor Sheil dies at Florence May 25 at age 59, having agitated for the cause of Catholic Emancipation. The British Crown has appointed him plenipotentiary to Tuscany and his remains are returned to Tipperary for burial.
England's University of Manchester has its beginnings in Owens College, founded with a £96,942 bequest from the late textile merchant John Owen, a Nonconformist who died in late July 1846 and left the money to establish a school of higher education for young men of at least 14 "without respect to place of birth, and without distinction of rank or condition in society" who would not have "to submit to any test whatsoever of their religious opinions." His Unitarian friends John Fielden and Thomas Ashton share his objections to having education dominated by the Church of England and have raised additional funds to buy the former home of Richard Cobden for use as the college's first home. Its colleges at Leeds and Liverpool will obtain charters as independent universities in 1902 and Manchester itself will grow by the end of the next century to have more than 18,000 full-time students who include some 2,500 from more than 120 different countries.
Northwestern University is founded north of Chicago in an area that will be called Evanston after Ohio-born physician John Evans, 36, professor of obstetrics at Chicago's Rush Medical College, who has founded the new institution with Orrington Lund.
Duke University has its beginnings in North Carolina's Trinity College founded at Durham (see
Educator Thomas H. Gallaudet dies at Hartford, Connecticut, September 10 at age 63. His son Edward Miner Gallaudet, now 14, will join with journalist-philanthropist Amos Kendall, now 62, in establishing the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, which will later become Gallaudet College.
The New York Times (initially the New-York Daily Times) begins publication September 18 in candlelit, fifth-floor loft offices at 113 Nassau Street with Henry J. (Jarvis) Raymond, 31, as editor. Raymond has worked for Horace Greeley's Tribune and James Watson Webb's Courier and Enquirer; elected to the State Assembly at Albany 2 years ago, he was named speaker this year and has gained backing from Albany bankers, who have raised $110,000 to start a paper that will be centrist in its style and political views. Windows in the building have not yet been fitted, nor have gaslight fixtures, the floors are unfinished, there are not enough desks, but Raymond has bought a steam-driven Hoe Lightning Press, hired a large staff, and achieves quick success, doubling his circulation to 10,000 in 10 days by offering more comprehensive reporting than the competition. The first edition of his six-column, 1¢ paper reports on three steamships that have just arrived, an ice-cart accident, two fires (including a forest fire in Flatbush); it misses a fire in an iron foundry at 288 Stanton Street but covers the poisoning of a woman possibly by her estranged husband. The Times doubles its circulation to 20,000 by year's end, supports the Whigs, and will support the new Republican Party beginning in 1854; its price will be 2¢ by 1858, 4¢ by 1865, 2¢ by 1873, 3¢ by 1891 (see 1889).
Vermont-born journalist Wilbur F. (Fisk) Storey, 33, buys an interest in the 22-year-old Detroit Free Press, enlarges it, and begins publication October 2 of a Sunday edition that replaces the Monday edition. Using the telegraph and correspondents to cover events nationwide, Storey will also increase local coverage, assigning a reporter to walk the length of the waterfront each day (thereby creating the first "beat"), publishing court testimony, and denouncing slavery in fiery editorials (seeChicago Times,
A variant of the Morse Code devised in 1837 is adopted for telegraphic and cable use in languages other than English and will become known as the International Morse Code. Within the next 5 years the register in the Morse system will have been replaced by a sounder, permitting a telegrapher to transcribe messages directly from the sounds coming across the wire (see Baudot, 1874).
Reuters News Service is started by German entrepreneur Paul Julius Reuter (originally Israel Beer Josaphat), 35, who last year pioneered in using carrier pigeons to convey messages, notably final stock prices, between Brussels and Aachen to plug the only gap in a telegraph system linking the commercial centers of Berlin and Paris. Reuter moves to London to take advantage of the new cable and establishes a continental cable service that will be extended from stock prices to general news and will become a worldwide news agency that will compete with the Associated Press founded 3 years ago and with other news agencies but will surpass them all as a purveyor of financial information (see INS,
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,
Nonfiction: Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by London University historian Edward (Shepherd) Creasy, 39; Social Statics by sociologist-philosopher Herbert Spencer, who introduces the term survival of the fittest that will be adopted by Charles Darwin; The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland by Edinburgh-born archaeologist Daniel Wilson, 35, who makes one of the first uses of a term (prehistoric) that will come into common use; Parerga und Paralipomena by Arthur Schopenhauer, who gains his first popular success at age 63 with a collection of essays and aphoristic writings in which he states: "History has nothing to record save wars and revolutions: the peaceful years appear only as brief pauses or interludes, scattered here and there" (II); The League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois by Rochester, New York, lawyer-ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan, 33, who will be called the "father of American anthropology."
Fire damages the Library of Congress in the Capitol at Washington December 24, destroying two-thirds of the collection acquired from Thomas Jefferson in 1814 along with thousands of other volumes. Congress appropriates $100,000 to buy new books and create a more fireproof room for the library, which by 1865 will have more than 80,000 books and will add the Smithsonian Institution's 40,000-volume library in 1866 (see
Fiction: Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly (first serial installments) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, now 40, whose sentimental tearjerker about slavery will have record sales (see
Novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley dies at her native London February 21 at age 53; James Fenimore Cooper at Cooperstown, New York, September 14 on the eve of his 62nd birthday.
Poetry: Romanzero by Heinrich Heine.
Poet-playwright Joanna Baillie dies at Hampstead, London, February 23 at age 88.
Painting: Returning from the Fields by Rosa Bonheur; Washington Crossing the Delaware by German painter Emanuel Leutze, 35, who will emigrate to New York and Washington in 1859; Newport Mountain, Mount Desert by Frederick E. Church. John James Audubon dies at New York January 27 at age 65; J. M. W. Turner at Chelsea December 19 at age 76, leaving some 300 paintings plus about 20,000 drawings and watercolors to the British nation with instructions that they are to be kept together in a dedicated gallery (see Tate, 1896).
Sculpture: The Greek Slave exhibited at the London Great Exhibition is a marble figure completed in 1843 by Vermont-born sculptor Hiram Powers, now 45, who took odd jobs at Cincinnati after his father died of malaria, worked from age 16 to 23 for a local clock-and-organ factory, was employed for 5 years by the waxworks of a Cincinnati museum, moved to Washington, D.C., in 1834 to make busts from life of U.S. statesmen, gained immediate success, and moved in 1837 to Florence, where he will live until his death in 1873. Inspired by reports that Greek prisoners were sold in slave markets by the Turks during the 1821-1829 war for Greek independence, the neoclassical nude attracts great attention, authorities set aside special hours for women who are embarrassed at viewing it in the presence of men, the work is sold in London, and Americans by the thousands pay 25¢ each to see full-sized marble copies that tour U.S. cities; The Rescue by Horatio Greenough depicts a pioneer family under attack by Native Americans and is displayed in the portico of the Capitol at Washington, D.C.
Moscow's Armory Museum (Oruzheinaya Palata) opens to display treasures accumulated over the centuries, including the jewel-encrusted helmet of Czar Michael, a throne of inlaid ivory that belonged to Ivan the Terrible, the armor of Boris Godunov, and a gold throne that was presented to Boris Godunov in 1604 by the shah of Persia. Located between the Great Kremlin Palace and the Kremlin wall, the collection is housed in a Russo-Byzantine building designed by architect Konstantin A. Thon that has been under construction since 1844. The collection will be expanded after 1917 to include pieces from the Kremlin cathedrals and the Synodal Treasury.
English architect Frederick Scott Archer, 38, publishes a wet collodion process for developing photographic images that will be used in photomechanical houses for nearly a century. He iodizes a solution of nitrocellulose in alcohol-ether and sensitizes it in the darkroom by immersing it in a bath of silver nitrate to form silver iodide with an excess of silver nitrate. The plate is exposed in the camera, developed by pouring on a solution of pyrogallol containing acetic acid, and fixed with a strong solution of thiosulfate of soda (cyanide of potassium will later be used instead). Archer does not patent his process, which will quickly supplant the calotype and daguerreotype (see Talbot,
Photography pioneer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre dies at Petit-Brie-sur-Marne, near Paris, July 10 at age 61.
Theater: Dame de Pique by Dion Boucicault at London's Drury Lane Theatre; Love in a Maze by Boucicault 3/6 at the Princess' Theatre, London; The Follies of Marianne (Les Caprices de Marianne) by Alfred de Musset 6/14 at the Comédie-Française, Paris; An Italian Straw Hat (Un Chapeau de Paille d'Italie) by French playwright Eugène Labiche, 36, 8/14 at the Théâtre de la Montansier, Paris. The five-act comedy is one of six Labiche plays performed this year (nine were produced last year, 12 will be produced next year); Bettine by Alfred de Musset 10/30 at the Théâtre du Gymnase, Paris.
Opera: Rigoletto 3/11 at Venice's Teatro la Fenice, with music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto from a Victor Hugo drama of intrigue and treachery in the French court of François I.
Composer Gasparo Spontini dies at his native Magolati outside Ancona January 14 at age 76.
First performances: Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Rhenish) by Robert Schumann 2/6 at Düsseldorf's Geisler Hall; Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt, who has settled at Weimar with Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein.
Popular songs: "Old Folks at Home" by Stephen C. Foster.
Boxer James "Yankee Sullivan" Ambrose claims title at age 40 to the U.S. heavyweight championship following the retirement of Tim Hyer (see
The U.S. schooner America wins what will be the most coveted trophy in world ocean racing—the Royal Yacht Squadron's 100 Guinea Cup designed 3 years ago by the London jeweler Robert Garrard (crown jeweler to the queen since 1843) and so called because 100 guineas was its cost. Prince Albert has organized a 53-mile race from Cowes around the Isle of Wight to make a show of British naval power as part of the London Great Exposition, but a six-man syndicate headed by the New York Yacht Club's first commodore John Cox Stevens, now 66, has paid $30,000 to build a challenger, designed by George Steers and skippered by Dick Brown. Not content with the prize of £100 ($500) for the winner of the race, the syndicate has offered to sail the America against any yacht over a 20- to 70-mile course, the winner to take £10,000 ($50,000). There have been no takers. The British have exempted the Americans from three of the rule conditions to encourage their participation and even arranged for a pilot to be on board to help with navigation. The race begins at 10 o'clock in the morning of August 22, the America's 21-man crew includes six men borrowed from the schooner Surprise, she comes in 8 minutes ahead of her closest rival among seven British schooners and eight cutters, and she brings home the bottomless silver ewer, 27 inches tall and 134 ounces in weight, that will be given to the New York Yacht Club by survivors of the syndicate following Stevens's death in July 1857 and remain there until 1983 despite repeated attempts by British, French, Australian, Canadian, and other world yachtsmen to outsail U.S. boats and gain—or regain—the America's Cup (see 1871).
The Aquascutum raincoat challenges the Macintosh raincoat of 1823. The London firm Bax & Company in Regent Street makes the new raincoat from a chemically treated wool fiber trademarked Aquascutum (see Burberry, 1856).
Bally Shoe Factories is founded by Carl Franz Bally at the village of Schoenwend in Switzerland's Aare Valley. The enterprise will grow to become a worldwide shoemaking company, with plants in Austria, France, Britain, South Africa, and the United States.
Amelia Bloomer urges reform of women's clothing in her newspaper The Lily. She will be ridiculed for going about in public wearing full-cut trousers, or pantalettes ("bloomers"), under a short skirt—a costume designed by Elizabeth Gerrit Miller (née Smith), now 28, and introduced 3 years ago at the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Having married a New York lawyer at age 21, Miller designed what she called a "short dress" with "Turkish trousers" extending to the ankle for the feminine task of gardening. She visited Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who liked the costume, as did her houseguest Amelia Bloomer, and both began wearing the pantelettes everywhere, although they were often thrown out of public places for their immodest appearance. Stanton's husband is one of the few husbands who has not refused to be seen with his wife when she was wearing her bloomer costume in public, but Elizabeth now refuses to endorse the costume, saying that women, for their own protection, should wear trousers, jackets, and coats. Sarah Josepha Hale of Godey's Lady's Book takes a dim view of the pantelletes; Bloomer and Miller will both give them up before 1860.
German-born Viennese furniture maker Michael Thonet, 54, scores a great success at the London Great Exhibition with bentwood furniture that he has been making since the early 1830s, steambending veneers and gluing four or five together to produce light, curvilinear chairs.
The Crystal Palace that houses the London Great Exhibition in Hyde Park has been constructed to designs by English gardener Joseph Paxton, 50. The first great building not of solid masonry construction, the structure is actually an immense 108-foot high greenhouse modeled after a conservatory designed by Paxton at Chatsworth in the late 1830s using newly developed techniques for making large sheets of glass, it has taken 2,000 men to build, has consumed one-third of the nation's glass output for a whole year, and is not only the world's largest glass-walled structure but by far the largest single structure of any kind yet seen in the world, enclosing an area four times that of St. Peter's in Rome. The gas-lighted Crystal Palace will be a major influence in European railway station design for decades to come and will be copied almost exactly for a New York exposition in 1853.
Cyrus McCormick exhibits his reaper at the London Great Exhibition, produces 6,000 reapers, and begins to enlarge foreign markets for his product (see
Ireland suffers widespread blindness as a result of the malnutrition experienced in the potato famine that began in 1846.
Diet evangelist Sylvester Graham dies at Northampton, Massachusetts, September 11 at age 57 after several years of declining health (and popularity).
Articles exposing the adulteration of British foods will be published in the next 3 years by British chemist Arthur Hill Hassall and dietitian Henry Letheby, who will document the whitening of bread with alum, the dilution of coffee with chicory, etc. (see 1850;
The Castle & Cooke food empire has its beginnings in a Honolulu mercantile house started June 2 by former lay missionaries Samuel N. (Northrup) Castle, 43, and Amos Starr Cooke, 40, who arrived in the Sandwich Islands aboard the Mary Frazier in April 1837. They sever their ties with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions of Boston.
Several tons of butter from Ogdensburg, New York, arrive at Boston in an ice-cooled wooden railcar insulated with sawdust.
The first U.S. cheese factory opens May 10 on the Erie Canal outside Rome, New York, under the management of entrepreneur Jessie Williams, who has found that when curd is washed or soaked after milling it will produce an open and faster-curing cheese. By 1866 there will be 500 such factories in the United States, that number will double by 1868, and the American success with cheddar and washed-curd cheeses will lead British cheese maker Joseph Harding to systematize cheddar making in Somerset.
Huntley & Palmers biscuit works employs some 300 workers after 25 years in business.
The London Great Exhibition forbids sale of wine, spirits, beer, and other intoxicating beverages but permits tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, lemonade, ices, ginger-beer, and soda water. The 61-year-old firm Messrs. Schweppe & Company sells 177,737 dozen bottles, up from roughly 70,000 last year, and nearly 85,000 dozen of the total are sold at the Exhibition. White Rhine wine (hock) and soda is a popular British beverage, and Schweppe's soda water is a popular mixer (see
Maine legislators adopt the first U.S. state prohibition law June 2. Portland's mayor Neal Dow, 47, has drafted the law, submitted it to the state legislature, and campaigned for its passage; an ardent temperance advocate, he will see his measure followed by other states.
Average per-capita U.S. coffee consumption reaches 6¼ pounds, up from 1¼ in 1821, partly as a result of growing Prohibitionist sentiment. Coffee is served at every meal in some households as well as between meals.
China's population reaches 440 million, having exploded with help from such Western food crops as maize, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, and peanuts, but Chinese census procedures have been disrupted by the Taiping rebellion that began last year.
India has a population of nearly 200 million (no real census will be taken until 1872), Japan 33.5 million, Russia 65, Turkey 27, France 36, the German states and free cities 34, the Italian states 24, Britain 20.9 (with 17.9 in England and Wales), Brazil an estimated 8 million including 2.5 million slaves, the United States 23.6 million, with nearly half living west of the Alleghenies.
More than 250,000 Irish emigrate; the country's population falls to 6.5 million, down from 10,175,000 in 1841. Some go to South Australia, which has a population of 77,000, as does Victoria, while New South Wales has 190,000.
The United States will receive 2.5 million immigrants in this decade, up from 1.7 million in the 1840s.
London is the world's largest city, with a population of 2.37 million. Suzhou (Sochow) has 2 million, Beijing (Peking) 1.65, Guangzhou (Canton) 1.24; Hangzhou, Jiujiang (Kingtehchen), Xian (Sian), and Siangtan 1 million each, Wuhan 997,000, Constantinople 900,000, Calcutta 800,000, Hangzhou (Hangchow) 700,000, Bombay 650,000, Fuzhou (Foochow) 600,000. Paris has nearly 1.3 million and begins a rapid rise (figures include suburban environs).
1851
