1852
1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860
Britain's Russell ministry falls in February after 5½ years in office. A new cabinet headed by Lancashire-born statesman Edward (George Geoffrey Smith) Stanley, 52, 14th earl of Derby, takes office, but it is replaced December 28 by a coalition cabinet headed by Edinburgh-born former foreign secretary George Hamilton-Gordon, 68, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen, whose ministry will rule until 1855.
Former French military leader Auguste F. L. Viesse de Marmont dies in exile at Venice March 2 at age 77, having been accused of treachery when his troops failed to hold Paris for Charles X in July 1830.
Louis Napoleon proclaims a second French Empire December 2 and will reign until 1870 as Napoleon III (see 1851). He has exiled the Orléans family and found support in a November plebiscite for reviving the empire.
The Sand River Convention signed by the British January 17 recognizes the independence of the Transvaal (see 1843; Orange Free State, 1854).
Argentina abandons her designs on Uruguay following the defeat of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas February 3 in the Battle of Monte Caseros. Insurgent Justo José de Urquiza, 51, wins the battle with support from Brazilian and Uruguayan forces. Buenos Aires-born soldier Bartolomé Mitre, 30, leads the Uruguayans (see 1853); educator-writer Domingo Sarmiento returns to Argentina to help oust the tyrannical Rosas, who flees to England. Urquiza issues the Protocol of Palermo in April, gains authorization to regulate relations between the provinces, becomes provisional dictator, recognizes Paraguay's independence and right of free river navigation July 17, and in August convenes a constitutional congress at Santa Fe (see 1853).
The former Persian prime minister Mirza Taki Khan is murdered in Kashan January 9 at age 44 by order of the shah Nasir ad-Din (see 1851).
China's Taiping Rebellion continues (see 1851), but Feng Yunshan (Feng Yün-shan) is mortally wounded in June at age 29 while fighting government forces at Quan Zhou (Chüan-chou) in Guangxi (Kwangsi) Province (see 1853).
Burma deposes her king Pagan Min after a 6-year reign, and British forces take Rangoon as a second Burmese War begins.
New Zealand gains home rule under terms of a new Constitution Act that provides for six provinces, each under the control of a superintendent with a provincial council elected by voters who must be property owners. Colonial governor Sir George Grey, now 40 (he was knighted in 1848), exercises general administrative power with help from a two-chamber legislature (General Assembly), whose Legislative Council and House of Representatives will meet for the first time in 1854, but regulation of the natives is left to the Colonial Office at London, and provincial governments will determine most affairs until 1875. English-born New Zealand Company agent William Fox, 40, has lobbied in England since last year for passage of the act and will be credited with adding Taranaki (New Plymouth) as the sixth province (the others being Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago) (see Taranaki War, 1860).
Sen. Henry Clay (Whig, Ky.) dies at Washington, D.C., June 29 at age 75; former secretary of state Daniel Webster at his Marshfield, Massachusetts, home October 24 at age 70.
Democrats nominate "dark horse" Franklin Pierce, 47, of New Hampshire as their candidate for president, choosing him on the 47th ballot. A Northerner who has expressed sympathy for the South, he wins the November election by defeating Whig candidate Gen. Winfield Scott, now 66, of Mexican War fame with 254 electoral votes to Scott's 42. Abolitionist Gerrit Smith, now 55, has been nominated by what remains of the Liberty Party that he helped to found in 1840 (most of it has been absorbed by the Free Soil Party) and wins election to the House of Representatives as an independent. The Whig Party begins to dissolve over the slavery issue.
Brazil imports her last legal shipment of African slaves, but slaves continue to work the sugar plantations and illegal imports continue (see 1871).
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe contains an episode based on the experience of one Eliza Harris, a fugitive slave who escaped across the ice-choked Ohio River with help from abolitionist Levi Coffin. It ends with an appeal to mothers—"you, who have learned by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all mankind"—to intervene against slavery's injustices. Her book stirs up public opinion in the North against slavery as no book ever has done before. It also stirs up animosity in the South against its author.
The National Woman's Rights Convention at Syracuse, New York, hears speeches from feminists who include Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Gage (née Joslyn), 26.
Reformer Frances Wright dies at Cincinnati December 13 at age 57.
Antarctic explorer Admiral Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen dies at Kronshtadt, Russia, January 13 (January 2 Old Style) at age 73 while serving as governor of Kronshtadt. The Bellingshausen Sea will be named in his honor; explorer-surveyor George W. Evans dies at Hobart, Tasmania, October 16 at age 72.
Wells, Fargo & Co. is founded at New York March 18 by W. G. Fargo to "forward Gold Dust, Bullion, Packages, Parcels & Freight of all kinds, to and from New York and San Francisco . . . and all the principal towns of California and Oregon" (see American Express, 1850; transportation, 1844). The company opens banking offices at San Francisco and Sacramento July 13; Fargo will consolidate with rival stagecoach companies in 1866 and will become president of American Express in 1868 after a larger merger.
French merchant Aristide Boucicaut, 42, joins the small Paris piece-goods shop Au Bon Marché (Good Buy) in the rue de Sèvres and will turn it into the world's first true department store by the mid-1860s. He institutes revolutionary retailing principles that include small markups to encourage high volume and rapid turnover to compensate for smaller gross margins, fixed and marked prices, and free entrance with no moral obligation to buy. Boucicaut will soon begin extending the right to exchange merchandise or obtain a refund, sales will increase from half a million francs this year to 5 million by 1860, and by 1870 Au Bon Marché will occupy an entire city block with sales of 20 million francs in dresses, coats, underwear, shoes, millinery, and the like (see 1876; Louvre, 1855; Au Printemps, 1865; Samaritaine, 1870).
Chicago merchant Potter Palmer, 26, opens a shop that will develop into the city's largest department store (see Marshall Field, 1865).
A Boston pharmaceutical firm distills "coal oil" from coal tar. It will start selling the oil under the brand name kerosene when it is found that the oil is not only a lubricant but will also burn in lamps (see Young, 1851; Gestner, 1855).
German-born U.S. inventor Christopher Dorflinger devises an improved lamp chimney.
The first through train from the east reaches Chicago February 20 by way of the Michigan Southern Railway. Former mayor William B. Ogden has concentrated his efforts on building rail links that will make Chicago more than ever the grain and meat-packing center of America.
The Pennsylvania Railroad begins running trains between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (see 1851). By 1856 the fastest of its three daily express trains will be operating on a regular schedule and averaging just over 25 miles per hour, a speed that for many years will be standard for the best passenger trains (see 1854).
The New Jersey Central Railroad has its beginnings as the Central Railroad of New Jersey opens a line between Elizabeth and Phillipsburg. Its directors will extend the line in 1864 to a few miles east of Jersey City, and they will extend it into Pennsylvania in 1871 by leasing the Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad.
The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad is founded through a merger of the Cayuga & Susquehanna, the Lackwanna & Western, and the Delaware & Cobb's Gap with help from coal-and-iron magnate John I. Blair, 50, who suggests the name. Blair will go on to serve as president of as many as 16 railroad companies at once and individually own more miles of railroad property than other American, traveling about 40,000 miles per year until he is 85 and 20,000 miles thereafter.
Pennsylvania adopts a railroad gauge different from that of New York to prevent the Erie Railroad from passing through the state into Ohio (see 1853).
Canada's Grand Trunk Railway is formally incorporated to build a line between Toronto and Montreal (see 1853).
Inventor William Howe of 1840 and 1846 Howe truss fame dies at Springfield, Massachusetts, September 19 at age 49.
A railroad that will become famous as the Rock Island Line runs its first train October 10. Pulled by a brightly painted locomotive named the Rocket, six yellow coaches travel 40 miles in 2 hours from Chicago to Joliet, Illinois, to start service on the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, which by February 1854 will reach Rock Island in the Mississippi to give Chicago its first rail link to America's key waterway. Built along the 35th parallel and intended to run from Memphis to Tucumcari in New Mexico Territory, the road will grow to have 7,560 miles of track extending north to Minneapolis-St. Paul, south to Galveston, east to Memphis, and west to Denver, Colorado Springs, and Santa Rosa (see Iowa City, 1855).
Wells, Fargo & Company is founded at New York by W. G. Fargo to "forward Gold Dust, Bullion, Specie, Packages, Parcels & Freight of all kinds, to and from New York and San Francisco . . . and all the principal towns of California and Oregon" (see 1844). Fargo will consolidate with rival stagecoach companies in 1866 and will become president of American Express in 1868 after a larger merger.
The National Road that began as the Cumberland Road in 1811 finally reaches Illinois, having reached Wheeling in 1817.
German steelmaker Alfred Krupp at Essen produces the world's first seamless steel railway tire (see technology, 1851). He will adopt three superimposed railway tires as his firm's trademark (see 1862).
London's Paddington and King's Cross railway stations open (see 1848; 1864).
Studebaker Brothers is founded at South Bend, Indiana, by Pennsylvania-born wagon maker Clement Studebaker, 21, with his older brother Henry. Another brother, John M., is making wheelbarrows for gold miners at Placersville, California, and will join the company in 1858 with $8,000 in earnings from the gold fields, brothers Peter I. and Jacob will join thereafter, and the company will become the world's largest wagon and carriage maker (see 1902).
The first Boston street railway begins operations with a single horsecar between Harvard Square, Cambridge, and Union Square, Somerville.
The Société Aerostatique founded at Paris is the world's first aeronautical society (see Stringfellow, Henson, 1851; Cayley, 1853).
The 8-year-old iron-hulled paddlewheel frigate Birkenhead carrying British troops from Queenstown to South Africa strikes a reef while rounding the Cape of Good Hope February 26 and splits in two, killing 455 of the 648 aboard (the 193 survivors include all of the 56 women and children who were aboard, and five horses swim to safety through shark-infested waters).
The Hudson River steamboats Henry Clay and Armenia leave Albany for New York July 28 in a race that ends in tragedy off Yonkers. While the Henry Clay's captain is writhing in pain with food poisoning below decks, her owner pushes her to catch up with the Armenia, the two ships pause only briefly at scheduled stops or skip them altogether, fearful passengers debark, most remain, and they cheer when the Henry Clay cuts across the Armenia's bow five miles above Kingston, splintering the Armenia's larboard woodwork, but a canvas boiler cover on one of the ships catches fire and the disaster leaves some 80 passengers dead, some of them drowned in only a few feet of water.
The world's first tramp steamer is launched July 30 at Jarrow, England; the S.S. John Bowes goes into service as collier.
The 1,155-ton Great Lakes sidewheeler Atlantic collides on Lake Erie August 20 with the steamer Ogdensburg, her skipper is knocked unconscious, 426 of her passengers are immigrants who speak little or no English, her officers and crew cannot maintain order, and 250 to 350 of the 500 to 600 passengers and crew are drowned (exact numbers are unknown because the passenger list is lost). Launched in 1848, the 267-foot ship set a record the following year by steaming between Buffalo and Detroit in just 16½ hours.
The S.S. Pacific goes into transatlantic service for the Collins Line (United States Mail Steamship Co.). A sister ship to the S.S. Atlantic that began service in 1850, the 2,856-ton Pacific is the first ship to cross from New York to Liverpool in less than 10 days (see 1854).
The Sovereign of the Seas launched by Donald McKay of last year's Flying Cloud fame confounds skeptics by showing that a 2,421-ton clipper ship can be practical (but see 1853).
Physicist J. B. L. Foucault invents the gyroscope—a wheel mounted on a set of rings so that its axis of rotation is free to turn in any direction (see science, 1851); when the wheel is spun rapidly, it retains the original direction of the rotation axis no matter which way the ring is turned. The device is initially no more than a scientific curiosity, but it will ultimately find wide use in compasses and in maintaining the stability of ships and other moving vehicles (see Sperry, 1910).
Pennsylvania-born botanist and Moravian clergyman Francis Wolle, 34, obtains the first U.S. patent on a paper bag (see 1844; Crowell, Knight, 1872).
Smith & Wesson Company has its beginnings in a partnership formed at Springfield, Massachusetts, by local toolmaker Horace Smith, 45, and Worcester-born gunsmith Daniel (Baird) Wesson, 29, who has persuaded Smith to help him develop a lever-action pistol that fires a cartridge contained in the gun's tubular magazine. While waiting for the patent on Samuel Colt's revolver to expire, Wesson has become acquainted with Windsor, Vermont, gunsmith B. (Benjamin) Tyler Henry, who has developed a weapon that fires caseless ammunition fed from a magazine by a simple lever-actuated mechanism based on a more complicated (and more fragile) system. The partners apply for patent rights to Henry's mechanism, employ Henry as shop manager, and will open a small factory at Norwich, Connecticut, to manufacture what Scientific American magazine calls the "Volcanic" (see 1854).
Mechanical engineer David Wilkinson of 1798 slide-rest lathe fame dies at Caldedonia Springs, Ontario, February 3 at age 81; clock maker Eli Terry at Plymouth, Connecticut, February 26 at age 79; computer programmer Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, of cancer at Marylebone, London, November 29 at age 36 (the same age her poet father was at his death in 1824).
The Joule-Thomson effect discovered by physicists James P. Joule and William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) will serve as the basis for a huge refrigeration industry (see food [Carré], 1858). Joule and Thomson find that the temperature of a gas will fall when it is permitted to expand without performing external work.
Lancashire-born chemist Edward Frankland, 27, at Manchester establishes a theory of valency that will become the basis of modern structural chemistry. His research in the last few years has brought him to the realization that an atom of any given element can combine only with a certain limited number of atoms of other elements.
Geologist and paleontologist Gideon Mantell dies of an opium overdose (taken to relieve the acute pain of a spinal injury) at London November 10 at age 62.
The fictional Marie St. Clare in Uncle Tom's Cabin satirizes the role of the delicate invalid so popular among U.S. women. Harriet Beecher Stowe's half sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, 40, has a prolapsed uterus and is one of many middle-class women who spend weeks taking "water cures" at hydrotherapy institutions. Pregnant women in America are commonly said (in an excess of modesty not generally found in Victorian Britain) to be in "an interesting condition" or to be "visiting in the country." Newborn infants are said to have been "discovered under the gooseberry bush" or in the "cabbage patch."
Universalist Church leader Hosea Ballou dies at Boston June 7 at age 81.
Queen Victoria grants a charter to Laval University (Université Laval), an outgrowth of the seminary established in 1663 by the late bishop of Quebec François de Montmorency Laval. The French-language institution of higher learning will be recognized by a papal bull in 1872 and be rechartered by the Quebec national assembly in 1970.
Massachusetts adopts the first effective compulsory school-attendance law.
Antioch College is founded at Yellow Springs, Ohio, by Massachusetts educator Horace Mann and will claim to be "the first American college of high rank to grant absolutely equal opportunities to women and men." Antioch's first students will include 11 transferees from Oberlin, including three women who have seen seniors at that college denied the right to sit on the platform at commencement and read their essays because they were women (see Oberlin, 1833).
Educator Louis Braille dies at Paris January 6 at age 43, having provided blind people worldwide with a means of reading, whatever their language, but it will be another 2 years before the Paris school adopts the system that he invented in 1834, and a universal Braille code for the English-speaking world will not be adopted until 1932 (see Braille writing machine, 1892); kindergarten pioneer Friedrich Froebel dies at Marienthal, Thuringia, June 21 at age 70.
Scottish-born Manchester cotton merchant John Pender, 37, invests in the Anglo-Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, beginning an association with telegraphic communication that he will continue until his death in 1896 (see 1851; Bright, 1853; Atlantic Cable, 1854).
Cable enthusiast Frederic N. Gisborne meets engineer John Watkins Brett, 47, in England and returns to St. John's, Newfoundland (see 1851). Backed by Brett and some London and New York businessmen, he establishes a company to which the Newfoundland legislature grants 30 years' exclusivity in telegraph construction, and on the night of November 22 the steamer Ellen Gisborne uses machinery designed by Gisborne to lay the first submarine cable in North America—a line on the floor of the St. Lawrence River that links Carleton Head on Prince Edward Island with Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick, but it is not a success (see 1854).
The 5-year-old Prussian firm Siemens Halske designs a Russian national telegraph network and puts it into operation with a line between St. Petersburg and Warsaw, using automatic fast-speed writers that punch messages onto a paper band by means of a level punch apparatus and then automatically transmit them with a clockwork instrument. Werner Siemens published a paper in 1850 discussing the theory of electrostatic charges in insulated telegraph wires, and last year the firm erected the first automatic fire telegraphs at Berlin (see multiplex telegraphy, 1854).
"Uncle Sam" appears in cartoon form for the first time March 14 in the New York comic weekly Diogenes, Hys Lantern (see 1813; art, 1917).
The Boston Public Library opens with funds raised by public subscription in a drive led by local financier Joshua Bates, 64, who has been a partner in London's Baring Brothers since 1828 (see 1877).
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases by English physician-scholar Peter Mark Roget, 73, will go through 28 editions before its compiler dies at age 90.
Nonfiction: The History of Italy from 1815 to 1850 (Storia d'Italia dal 1815 al 1850) by Sicilian-born Italian journalist-patriot Giuseppe La Farina, 37, who published the first volume of his 10-volume work last year. Exiled for attempting an insurrection against the Austrians in 1837, he received amnesty the following year, was exiled again in April 1848, has been living at Paris, but will return next year.
Philosopher-statesman Vincenzo Gioberti dies in self-imposed exile at Paris November 26 at age 51.
Fiction: Uncle Tom's Cabin appears in book form March 15 and goes through 120 U.S. editions within a year (see 1851): 300,000 copies are sold in America, with similar sales abroad—a popular success never before seen in publishing and rarely to be seen again; The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a critique of the 1841-1847 Brook Farm experiment. It analyzes the urge to seek Utopia and the possibly tragic effects of feminist emancipation (Hawthorne's heroine, Priscilla, is a delicate, sickly type "whose impalpable grace lay so singularly between disease and beauty"); History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray; Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas père, now 50; A Sportsman's Sketches (Zapiski okhotnika) by Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, 33, who is exiled to his estates for an obituary praising Nikolai Gogol.
Novelist-playwright Nikolai Gogol dies of malnutrition at Moscow February 21 at age 42, having starved himself to death (he fell under the spell of a fanatic priest and refused to eat). The whole city turns out for his funeral.
Poetry: Emaux et Camées by Théophile Gautier; Poèmes antiques by French poet Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle, 33; In Women's Hearts (Ce qui est dans le coeur des femmes) by Louise Colet.
Poet Thomas Moore dies at Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire, February 25 at age 72.
Painting: Pietà by French painter Gustave Moreau, 26; Christ Washing Peter's Feet by English painter Ford Madox Brown, 31; The Huguenot and Ophelia by John Everett Millais; Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap by George Caleb Bingham.
The Drouot opens June 1 in the 9th Arondissement at Paris, where it will continue for more than a century and a half, becoming the world's largest auction house. Although Sotheby's and Christie's will sell far more in terms of value worldwide, the Drouot will grow to have some 2,000 auction sales per year, offering not only works of art but also antiquities, estate contents, furniture, gems, even gold teeth.
London's Victoria and Albert Museum has its beginnings in the Museum of Manufactures, established in Marlborough House, St. James, to house decorative arts objects that were displayed last year at the Great Exhibition. The collection will move in 1857 to the South Kensington Museum and be put on display once again as part of a government effort to improve the taste and knowledge of British industrialists. The collection will outgrow the Kensington and be renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1899, when the queen lays the cornerstone for a new structure (see 1909).
The Hermitage art museum founded at St. Petersburg by Catherine the Great in 1764 opens to the public as the State Hermitage (Gosudarstvenny Ermitazh).
Sculptor Horatio Greenough dies at Somerville, Massachusetts, December 18 at age 47.
Theater: Camille, the Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias) by Alexandre Dumas fils 2/2 at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, Paris. Based on last year's novel, the play was published in 1848 but censors have delayed its production; Agnes Bernauer by Friedrich Hebbel 3/25 at Munich's Hoftheater; Uncle Tom's Cabin by George L. Aiken, 22, 9/27 at the Troy, New York, Museum. Adapted from the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel, Aiken's play will be produced throughout the country, with enormous success in the North; Masks and Faces by English playwrights Charles Reade, 38, and Tom Taylor, 35, 11/20 at London's Haymarket Theatre; The Journalists (Die Journalisten) by German novelist-playwright Gustav Freytag, 36, 12/8 at Breslau.
Actor-playwright-songwriter John Howard Payne dies at Tunis April 9 at age 61; English-born actor Junius Brutus Booth November 30 at age 56 aboard a steamboat following an engagement with his son Edwin at New Orleans.
Opera: Dmitri Donskoi 4/30 at St. Petersburg, with music by Russian court pianist Anton Grigorev Rubinstein, 22, who is invited by the Grand Duchess Helena Pavlovich to be music director at Michael Palace and spend the summer with her on Kammeney Island in the Neva River.
First performances: Overture to Byron's Manfred by Robert Schumann 6/13 at Weimar; Overture to Julius Caesar by Schumann 8/3 at Düsseldorf's Male Choral Festival; Melody in F by Anton Rubinstein at St. Petersburg. Composed on Kammeney Island, the piece is played primarily with the thumbs.
Popular song: "Massa's in de Cold Cold Ground" by Stephen C. Foster.
The 12-year-old firm Reckitt & Sons introduces laundry blue, made from a combination of ultramarine and sodium bicarbonate that employs the naturally occurring blue pigment found in the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. French chemist Jean-Baptiste Guimet first discovered the pigment in 1824 and then realized he could synthesize ultramarine by combining china clay, soda ash, and a little sulfur.
Bright tobacco discovered by North Carolina farmers Eli and Elisha Slade near Durham will soon be used in Bull Durham pipe tobacco. The Slade brothers heat some of their tobacco crop over hot flues and find that the clear, golden tobacco which emerges from this curing process is sweet to smoke. They apply the process to other tobaccos but find that none reacts to flue-curing in the same way (see Reynolds, 1875; Camels, 1913).
The safety elevator invented at Yonkers, New York, by master mechanic Elisha Graves Otis, 41, will lead to the development of high-rise buildings. Otis sets up ratchets along each side of an elevator shaft at the Yonkers Bedstead Manufacturing Company, he attaches teeth to the sides of the cage, the rope that holds up the cage keeps the teeth clear of the ratchets so long as the rope remains under tension, and when the tension is released the teeth grip the ratchets and hold the cage securely in place. Otis is about to join the gold rush to California but changes his mind when he receives two unsolicited orders for his "safety hoister" (see 1854).
Philadelphia's five-story 241 Chestnut Street Building is completed to designs by Connecticut-born architect Stephen Decatur Button, 49, who has suppressed the usual spandrels and installed large, squarish windows that give it the appearance of having a façade of glass cells.
Château-sur-Mer is completed on Bellevue Avenue at Newport, Rhode Island, for Vermont-born New York merchant William S. (Shepard) Wetmore, now 51, who has made a fortune in the China trade (see commerce, 1833; Newport, 1839). The elaborate Italianate-style villa will be the scene in 1857 of a Fète Champètre with more than 2,000 guests. It will pass to his son George Peabody Wetmore after William's death in 1862, architect Richard Morris Hunt will augment it in 1872 with Newport's first French ballroom, and it will remain the town's most palatial residence until the 1890s (see 1895).
Architect Alexander Parris dies at Pembroke, Massachusetts, June 16 at age 71; Augustus W. N. Pugin at his self-designed Ramsgate home September 14 at age 40, having spurred the revival of English Roman and Gothic architectural styles.
Napoleon III gives Paris the Bois de Boulogne as a public park and begins his reign with a huge program of public works under the direction of Baron Georges (-Eugène) Haussmann, 42, who is named prefect of the Seine and starts implementing ideas that are in many cases those of the emperor—widening streets, opening new boulevards, and developing plans to give the odor-plagued city a sewer system (including the Cloaca Maxima) and running water, all of which he will have completed by the time he resigns in 1870. Named by its inhabitants in 1308 after a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Boulogne-sur-Mer on the Manche (English Channel), the bois (woods) has been a royal hunting ground for more than 2 centuries, but Baron Haussmann will transform it into a 2,100-acre park modeled after London's Hyde Park.
Hydraulic mining begins to devastate California hillsides as miners complete a 45-mile canal to bring in water at the rate of 60 million gallons per day. Gold miner Anthony Chabot devises a canvas hose with an eight-inch thick nozzle that allows gold-bearing gravel to be washed from stream banks into placer pits. This labor-saving device brings tons of topsoil and gravel into bottomland for every ounce of gold extracted (see 1884).
Horticulturist-architect-landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing drowns July 28 at age 36 while trying to save fellow passengers aboard the steamboat Henry Clay that has caught fire and exploded while racing down the Hudson toward New York. Downing has listed the names of apples indigenous to North America, including the Grand Sachem, the Maiden Blush, the Vittles and Drink, the Sine Qua Non, the Jonathan, and the Mouse, the latter two being native to his native Hudson west bank. His English-born assistant Calvert Vaux, 27, carries on Downing's work, having gained a reputation by his 1841 "Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening" and his 1842 work Cottage Residences (see Central Park, 1853).
The McCormick reaper invented in 1831 is improved by the addition of a self-rake device that sweeps the harvested grain from the reaper's platform to the ground, making it unnecessary for a man to clear the platform with a hand rake (see Marsh harvester, 1858).
John Deere's plow factory at Moline, Illinois, produces 4,000 plows (see 1847; 1855).
Oidium mildew strikes vineyards in the Madeira Islands, dealing a heavy blow to winegrowers (see 1665; phylloxera, 1872).
The "bee-space" patented by former Andover, Massachusetts, school principal Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, 42, makes possible the first practical movable-frame beehive (see Huber, 1789). Honeybees have immobilized the frames of previous hives by filling the space around the thin wooden frame, slipped vertically into the hive, with wax or even honeycombs. Langstroth has retired to Oxford, Ohio, and, after much experimentation, discovered that if he leaves a space of five-sixteenths of an inch in height around the frame, it will not get clogged and bees will be able to slip in and out without getting stuck. His hive will revolutionize the beekeeping industry, making possible economical honey production, but competitors will find it easy to infringe upon his patent and Langstroth will derive little financial benefit from it.
The Holstein cow that will be most significant to the development of the major U.S. dairy breed arrives aboard a Dutch vessel (see 1625).
Gail Borden returns from last year's London Great Exhibition with the Great Council Gold Medal for his meat biscuit (see 1849). He has promoted it as useful for naval expeditions and other voyages (some will go with Elisha Kent Kane to the Arctic), for travelers "on long journeys, through destitute regions," for explorers "in making geological and mineralogical surveys of our newly acquired territories," and for all families, "especially in warm weather." Borden's ship encounters rough seas on the Atlantic, the two cows in the ship's hold become too seasick to be milked, an immigrant infant dies, and the hungry cries of the other infants determine Borden to find a way to produce a portable condensed milk that will keep without spoiling (see 1853).
Hecker's Self-Rising Flour, introduced by the 10-year-old Croton Flour Mill of John and George Hecker, is the first product of its kind.
Service à la Russe arrives in England but will not be common for another 20 or 30 years (see 1811). Instead of dishes being placed in turn on sideboards for waiters to serve to guests, a multitude of dishes will continue to be placed before English diners simultaneously in two or three great courses and several minor courses.
Emigration from Ireland has its peak year but will continue on a large scale for years to come (see 1847).
The governor of California calls for land grants to encourage continued immigration of Chinese, "one of the most worthy of our newly adopted citizens." Close to 50,000 Chinese have defied China's death-penalty law against emigration to make their way to California's gold fields (see transportation [Central Pacific], 1863).
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