1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860
"The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land," says British orator John Bright in a February speech to the House of Commons. He urges withdrawal of British troops from Sevastopol and the Crimea. Prime Minister George Hamilton-Gordon, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen, has not been well informed about the activities of his generals in the field but is constitutionally responsible for their errors; he resigns January 29 after 25 months and Henry J. T. Palmerston, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, now 70, heads a new cabinet that takes office February 5, beginning a ministry that will continue until his death in 1865.
Russia's Nicholas I dies March 2 at age 58 after remarking that "Generals January and February" would be his best allies against British and French troops in the Crimea. Having reigned since 1825, the "Iron Czar" is succeeded by his 36-year-old son, who will reign until 1881 as Aleksandr II, bringing great reforms to the nation (see 1861).
Prince Aleksandr S. Menshikov is relieved of his command in the Crimea in March as Russian casualties mount (he will later be appointed military commander of Kronshtadt), but other Russian forces retake Kars near the Armenian border.
Savoy's premier Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, 45, takes his country into the Crimean War on the side of Britain and France. A 10,000-man Piedmontese force helps win the Battle of Chermaia August 16.
Baron Raglan dies in the Crimea June 28 at age 66 as his forces prepare to storm Sevastopol; former Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor dies at Chiswick, England, August 30 at age 59, having been committed to a mental asylum in 1848.
"Here I am and here I stay" ("J'y suis, j'y reste"), says the French general Marie-Edmé-Patrice-Maurice de MacMahon, 47, September 8 in the trenches before Malakoff. He leads the assault on Malakoff. Russian forces abandon Sevastopol September 11, sinking their ships and blowing up their forts to keep them from falling into enemy hands.
The Treaty of Peshawar signed March 30 creates an Anglo-Afghan alliance against Persia, whose shah Nasir-ad-Din has designs on Herat. Russian forces complete a 5-year conquest of the Syr Darya Valley that marks the beginning of a Russian advance to the Persian frontier in Central Asia, threatening British India (see 1856).
Japan's shōgun Iesada Tokugawa signs treaties with Russia in February and the Netherlands in November; the foreigners call him "tycoon," mistakenly believing him to be the "secular emperor."
Hong Kong governor Sir John Bowring, 62, and British diplomat Harry Smith Parke, 27, negotiate the first treaty with Siam, obtaining rights to establish consuls and trade throughout the kingdom of the Siamese king Mongkut, whose prime minister Somdet Chao Phraya Si Suriyawong has helped the king deal with the British. The Bowring Treaty removes many restrictions imposed by earlier kings, permits British subjects to own land near Bangkok and to move freely about, exempts them from Siamese jurisdiction, and sets a 3 percent duty on all imports. Siam will sign similar treaties next year with the United States and France, and with other countries thereafter, making concessions that will ward off imperialist pressure and bring quick economic development.
Ethiopian chief Ras Kassa, 37, deposes Ras Ali of Gondar, conquers the rulers of neighboring Tigre, Goijam, and Shoa, proclaims himself king of kings, and begins a 13-year reign as the emperor Theodore. Englishmen Walter Plowden and John Bell will help him put down rebellions by subordinates.
Mexicans force dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna into exile once more and return liberals to power as La Reforma continues (see 1854). Guerrero governor Juan Alvarez assumes control of the government as provisional president but soon resigns in favor of his ally Ignacio Comonfort. Benito Juárez comes back from New Orleans, and the legislature enacts the Ley Juárez, ordering the sale of all Church lands not used specifically for religious purposes (the Church has owned practically half the country's real estate) and abolishing special privileges for the clergy and military (the fueros) (see Ley Lerdo, 1856).
Peru has a military coup d'état that ousts President José Rufino Echenique, who has held office since 1851 (see 1845). Former president Ramón Castilla, now 58, seizes presidential power once again, suppresses rebellions, and will rule as benevolent despot until 1862, using the proceeds from guano and sodium nitrate exports to reduce Peru's national debt, promote domestic business, improve transportation, build schools, abolish black slavery, remove the head tax on Indians, and eliminate Church courts and compulsory tithing (see constitution, 1860).
Paraguayan troops on the Paraná River near Fort Itapiru open fire on the U.S.S. Water Witch under the command of Lt. Thomas J. Page, killing one seaman and wounding a few others. Page has been on an exploring mission, he became involved last year in a dispute between the Paraguayan dictator Carlos Antonio López and a North American company, Paraguay has barred foreign war vessels from her waters, but the Water Watch has been in international waters and Page's crew returns fire, killing some Paraguayan soldiers. Washington will send a naval force in 1859 to demand settlement of claims arising from the incident, and the Asunción government will pay the U.S. seaman's family an indemnity of $10,000.
The Massachusetts legislature amends the state's divorce law to make it more equitable for women.
Feminist Lucy Stone gives a speech in mid-October in which she says, "In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer."
Missionary David Livingstone discovers falls on the Zambezi River that will be called Victoria Falls (see religion, 1843). Now 42, Livingstone has gained support from the Royal Geographical Society and organized a great expedition northward from Cape Town through West Central Africa (see Rebmann, 1848; Stanley, 1869; Stanley, 1871; slavers, 1871).
Personal Narrative by British explorer Richard F. (Francis) Burton, 34, describes a pilgrimage he made 2 years ago to the sacred Muslim city of Mecca disguised as a Pathan. Burton is in Somaliland with a Royal Geographical Society party that includes British Indian Army officer John Hanning Speke, 28, who is severely wounded in April by Somalis who break up the expedition (see 1858).
Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane abandons his ice-bound brig Advance in May and travels with the surviving members of his party for 83 days through open water and broken ice before arriving in August at Sanderson's Hope, near Upernavik, Greenland (see 1854).
The Cincinnati credit-rating agency John M. Bradstreet & Company moves to New York, where Bradstreet, 40, will compete with B. Douglass & Company. (see R. G. Dun, 1859; Dun and Bradstreet, 1933).
The great Exhibition Universelle that opens at Paris in May runs to November and hails French technological and economic progress as France gains military prestige in the Crimea.
Banker Karl Mayer Rothschild dies at Naples March 10 at age 66; banker Salomon Mayer Rothschild at Vienna June 27 at age 80; merchant-philanthropist Abbott Lawrence at Boston August 18 at age 62; banker Amschel Mayer Rothschild at Frankfurt December 6 at age 82.
Le Magasin du Louvre opens on the rue de Rivoli across from the Louvre Museum in Paris. Founded by merchant Alfred Chauchard, the new dry goods store employs principles initiated by Aristide Boucicaut at the Bon Marché in 1852, attracts visitors to the Exibition Universelle, and will continue until 1974.
The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York founded January 1 by George H. Bissell and a New York partner is the first company organized to exploit the potential of Pennsylvania's petroleum deposits (see 1854). Higher boiling fractions of petroleum will prove useful as lubricants, but lower boiling frictions such as gasoline will be avoided as a menace that causes lamps to explode and is difficult to eliminate without causing complaints about pollution (see 1859; kerosene, 1855).
Kerosene gets its name from Long Island, New York, physician Abraham Gestner of Newtown Creek, who makes kerosene from raw petroleum, promotes it as a patent medicine (in the absence of any lamp or stove that can burn it efficiently as a fuel), and coins the word kerosene from the Greek keros (wax) (see 1852; 1859; Young, 1851).
The clipper ship Guiding Star disappears in the Atlantic January 9, taking 480 lives.
The Sault St. Marie ("Soo") River Ship Canal opens June 18 to link Lake Huron and Lake Superior, making the Great Lakes a huge inland waterway navigable by large ships. Built by engineer Charles T. Harvey with capital from Chicago, New York State, and St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the "Soo" will give Chicago access to the vast iron-ore deposits of northern Michigan and Minnesota Territory, where iron has been mined and smelted since 1848. Samuel Livingston Mather, 38, has founded the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, which ships the first load of ore to go through the new canal August 17 (although cargoes carried through the canal will be mostly grain and lumber until 1888).
Sailing Directions by hydrographer Matthew F. Maury, U.S. Navy, recommends that eastbound steamers on the North Atlantic travel in separate lanes from westbound steamers in order to avoid collisions (see science, 1853).
The Grace Line has its beginnings in a shipping company established by W. R. Grace, now 23, and a brother to link Callao, Valparaiso, and other South American ports with U.S. ports such as New York (see 1850). Exports of nitrates and other commodities make the trade extremely profitable, but voyages around Cape Horn take 3 to 4 months in each direction (see W. R. Grace & Co., 1865; passenger service, 1918).
The Pacific Railroad & Panama Steamship Company completes its 49-mile railroad across the Isthmus of Panama January 28 after 5 years' construction under the direction of engineers George M. Totten and John C. Trautwine. New York merchant William H. Aspinwall has been chiefly responsible for the success of the speculative venture, which gives its backers a monopoly on the water-rail route to San Francisco; its eastern terminus is named Aspinwall in his honor, and by 1859 it will have returned a net profit of $6 million.
John A. Roebling completes a suspension bridge across Niagara Gorge after Charles Ellet has quit in a dispute over money (see 1849; first Niagara Falls bridge, 1848). A 368-ton train crosses the 821-foot single-span Roebling bridge March 6 and is the first train to cross a bridge sustained by wire cables (see 1897; Cincinnati-Covington bridge, 1867).
Australian rail transport is thrown into confusion as New South Wales changes from a five-foot three-inch gauge to the narrower four-foot 8½-inch standard gauge used in Britain, while South Australia, West Australia, and Queensland adopt a three-foot six-inch gauge for reasons of economy.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad has its beginnings in a line built between Easton and Mauch Chunk by Pennsylvania coal mine operator Asa Packer, 50. The road will grow to have 1,364 miles of track between New York and Buffalo.
An accident on the Camden and South Amboy Railroad near Burlington, New Jersey, August 29 kills 21, injures 75; an accident mars a celebration to mark the opening of the Pacific Railroad between St. Louis and Jefferson City, Missouri, November 1 when the Gasconade Bridge trestle collapses as a 15-car train carrying St. Louis celebrants reaches the first pier, nine wooden cars fall and drag three others off the track, 34 people die in the disaster, and about 100 are injured, including St. Louis mayor Washington King.
The Chicago & Rock Island Railroad extends its line to Iowa City, Iowa, in response to an offer of $50,000 if the road reaches Iowa City by December 3 (see 1852). With only minutes to spare, workers drag the locomotive the final 1,000 feet with ropes in -30° F. weather (see 1856; song, 1863).
Canada's 3-year-old Grand Trunk Railway opens a new Toronto station at the corner of Front and Bay streets (see 1853). The Great Western Railway arrives in December to share the facility and it becomes Toronto's first Union Station (see 1927; Victoria Bridge, 1859; Grand Trunk Pacific, 1903).
French chemist Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville, 36, pioneers commercial aluminum production with a practical method for producing it (see Wöhler, 1827). Economic production of the lightweight metal requires enormous amounts of electricity, however, and although it is introduced to the public at the Paris Exposition, aluminum is far too costly for everyday use. Denmark's Kristian X orders an aluminum crown, and Napoleon III has a dinner service made from it (see Pechiney, 1871; Hall, 1886).
Celluloid is patented by English chemist Alexander Parkes, who has developed the first man-made plastic material from guncotton and camphor. Now 42, Parkes discovered a cold vulcanization process for rubber in 1841 and devised a method 5 years ago for extracting silver from lead ore; he calls his product "Parkesine," and he claims it can do anything rubber can do, but his cost of production is too high for his invention to be practical (see Hyatt, 1872; Bakelite, 1909).
Inventor Joseph R. Brown devises a precision gear cutter that will be widely used to produce clock gears (see 1853; universal milling machine, 1862).
Boston cabinetmaker Leonard Bailey obtains a U.S. patent on woodworking scraper plane with an adjustable cutter (see Falconer, 1846). He has mounted a cutting blade on a plate that pivots near the tool's sole, enabling the user to vary the depth of the cut by changing the blade's angle. Bailey in this decade will devise innovative bench and block planes, scrapers, and spokeshaves (see 1871).
English inventor Samuel Cunliffe Lister receives a sample of silk waste (the cocoon refuse left in silk reeling) (see wool-combing machine, 1845). Asked to find a way to use the fiber in the waste, he will work for about 10 years to solve the problem. The effort will bring him close to bankruptcy, but he will finally succeed in perfecting silk-combing appliances that will permit him to sell for 23 shillings per pound a yarn that costs him between 6d. and 1 shilling to make (see velvet loom, 1878).
Smith & Wesson Company moves to New Haven, Connecticut, and renames itself Volcanic Repeating Arms Company (see 1854); its founders sell their patent rights to Oliver F. Winchester, who will own the majority of Volcanic Arms by 1857, and Smith returns to Springfield, Massachusetts. Wesson remains with Winchester, who employs him as plant supervisor, and while Volcanic Arms produces self-primed cartridges he works to develop the small revolver that he and Smith have patented (see 1856).
The Physical Geography of the Sea by Matthew F. Maury is the first modern text on oceanography, and Maury's observations about the effect of the Gulf Stream will be accepted as gospel for nearly 150 years: "It is the influence of [the Gulf Stream] upon climate," he writes, "that make Erin the 'Emerald Isle of the Sea' and that clothe the shores of Albion in evergreen robes, while on the same latitude, on this side, the coasts of Labrador are fast bound in fetters of ice." But 21st century oceanographer and meteorologists will conclude that prevailing winds related to the Rocky Mountains make the difference, not the Gulf Stream.
A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Paleozoic Rocks by geologist Adam Sedgwick applies the name Cambrian to a geologic period that will later be dated at between 505 and 570 million years ago.
German glassblower and inventor (Johann) Heinrich Geissler, 40, perfects a tube (Geissler tube) in which an electric current produces light when passed through a rarefied gas, demonstrating the principle of the electric discharge lamp (see Picard, 1675). Geissler opened a shop at Bonn last year to make scientific apparatus. He also invents a mercury air pump that produces a perfect vacuum in tubes and will be called the Geissler pump. His other inventions will include the vaporimeter, but it is his Geissler tube that will lead to advances in atomic physics.
Mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss dies at his native Göttingen, Hanover, February 23 at age 77, having stayed overnight outside the city only once in the past 27 years; geologist Sir Henry de la Beche dies at his native London April 13 at age 58.
Continuing epidemics of cholera and typhus in the Crimea take more lives than battle wounds or food poisoning episodes (see 1854), but English physician Edmund A. (Alexander) Parkes, 35, pioneers the science of modern hygiene while serving as superintendent of a civil hospital in the Dardanelles.
English physician Thomas Addison, 62, gives the first description of a kind of anemia that is inevitably fatal and will later be called pernicious (see nutrition [Whipple], 1911; Minot and Murphy, 1924).
Woman's Hospital opens in New York May 4 at 29th Street and Madison Avenue. The world's first institution established by women "for the treatment of diseases peculiar to women and for the maintenance of a lying-in hospital," it has a capacity of 40 beds, one surgeon (the now famous J. Marion Sims; see 1850), a nurse, and two matrons—one to administer to the sick, one to supervise domestic arrangements.
The Amana Community founded on the Iowa frontier will be incorporated in 1859 as the Amana Society. Prussian-born sectarian leader Christian Metz, 61, started a Community of True Inspiration sect in 1817, has led a communal society near Buffalo, New York, for the past 12 years, and christens the site of the new venture Amana.
The utopian communistic colony of La Réunion founded outside Dallas by followers of the late French social philosopher and reformer Charles Fourier will survive only until 1857. Socialist Victor-Prosper Considérant, now 46, has made a second visit to the United States to start a community.
The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) founded at London tries to improve the condition of working girls by providing good food and a decent place to sleep for young women living away from home (see YMCA, 1844; 1851).
The Tukolor leader Umar Tal in West Africa defeats the Bambara pagans of Mali and adds their territory to his realm, converting them by force to Islam (see 1854). He has 300 hostages executed to show his supremacy, but when he removes his armies the Bambara revolt, and continued revolts will force Umar Tal to spend the rest of his life defending his conquests (see 1860).
Keio University has its beginnings in a school opened at Tokyo (see 1871).
Pennsylvania State University is founded.
Michigan State University has its beginnings in a college founded at East Lansing.
The College of California receives a charter April 13 from the state's board of education (see Durant, 1853; University of California, 1857).
English-born U.S. inventor David Edward Hughes, 24, patents a teleprinter. He will later lay out the basic principles of the "loose contact" on which hearing aids, the telephone, and other forms of the microphone will be established (see 1877).
Congress authorizes an electric telegraph line to link the Mississippi River with the Pacific Coast and commissions James Eddy and Hiram Alden to construct it (see San Francisco, 1861).
A telegraph line opens to link London with Balaclava in the Crimea as war continues.
The London Daily Telegraph begins publication June 29 following repeal of Britain's Stamp Act (see repeal of duty on advertisements, 1853). Colonel Arthur Burroughes Sleigh has founded the paper, which sells for tuppence when the Times fetches 7 pence and its competitors 5 pence (see 1861). Other British papers, including the Manchester Guardian, go from weekly publication to daily, and Sleigh drops the price of the Telegraph to 1d September 25 (see 1858).
The Scotsman begins daily publication at Edinburgh after 38 years as a weekly. The maxim beneath its masthead reads, "This not the cause of faction, or of party, or of any individual, but the common interest of every man in Britain," and it promises that "by initiating original discussion with a listing of passing events [it] shall maintain the character of a political and literary journal."
The 8-year-old Chicago Tribune comes under the control of Canadian-born Cleveland publisher Joseph Medill, 32, an ardent abolitionist who will run the paper for the next 44 years as Chicago grows from a town of 80,000 to a city of nearly 2 million (see Chicago fire, 1871).
Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper is started at New York by English-born publisher Frank Leslie, 34, who has changed his name from Henry Carter, gained experience as an engraver for the Illustrated London News, and been a poster artist for P. T. Barnum (see 1842; Borden, 1857).
Familiar Quotations by Plymouth, Massachusetts-born Boston bookseller-publisher John Bartlett, 35, will go through nine editions in Bartlett's lifetime and be updated and reissued from time to time for well over a century.
Nonfiction: The Age of Fable by Boston scholar Thomas Bulfinch, 59, a son of the architect, whose work will be popular for generations as Bulfinch's Mythology; The Epistles of St. Paul by London-born Anglican priest Benjamin Jowett, 38, who comes under attack for his "unorthodox" essay on atonement but is nevertheless appointed regis professor of Greek at Oxford with an annual salary of £40; Principles of Psychology by Herbert Spencer, who has developed a doctrine of evolution as applied to sociology (see Darwin, 1858; 1859); Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser by Boston-born Harvard philologist Francis James Child, 30, who holds the chair of Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory; The History of Rome (Römsche Geshichte; third and final volume) by German historian (Christian Mathias) Theodor Mommsen, 38, who last year was named professor of Roman law at the University of Breslau; The Cicerone (Der Cicerone) by Jacob Burckhardt is a travel guide to Italian art arranged geographically.
Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard dies at his native Copenhagen November 11 at age 42 after years of violent quarrel with the Church of Denmark. He will be recognized as the founder of existentialism.
Fiction: The Warden by English novelist Anthony Trollope, 40, who has been a postal inspector in Ireland since 1841; Westward Ho! by English clergyman-novelist Charles Kingsley, 36, rector of Eversley in Hampshire, who describes in vivid terms a South American landscape he has never seen; "Benito Cereno" by Herman Melville appears in Putnam's Monthly Magazine.
Novelist Charlotte Brontë dies at Haworth March 31 from complications of pregnancy at age 38.
Poetry: Leaves of Grass by former Brooklyn Eagle editor Walt (Walter) Whitman, 36, whose volume of 12 poems has been published at his own expense July 4, receives mixed reviews, and sells few copies. Included are poems that will later be titled "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "There Was a Child Went Forth." An expanded edition will appear next year, a still larger third edition in 1860; "Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who gave up his Harvard teaching post last year: "By the shores of Gitche Gumee,/ By the shining Big-Sea-Water"; Men and Women by Robert Browning, whose poem "Andrea del Sarto" contains the line, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,/ Or what's a heaven for?" The Bells by New Hampshire-born New York poet Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 18, who becomes a junior literary critic for the Evening Mirror; "The Old Canadian Soldier" ("Le vieux soldat canadien") by Quebec-born poet Octave Crémazie (Claude-Joseph-Olivier Crémazie), 28, celebrates the first French naval vessel to visit Quebec in nearly a century.
Painting: The Quarrel by Ernest Meissonier, who enjoys more popular esteem than any of his contemporaries; Gust of Wind, or The Approaching Storm and Interior of the Studio: A Real Allegory Summing up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist by Gustave Courbet, whose work has been rejected by the Paris Exhibition. He has mounted an exhibition of his own in a nearby shed; Lion Hunt by Eugène Delacroix (commisioned by the government for the Universal Exposition, it is the painter's last large canvas); The Lackawanna Valley by upstate New York-born painter George Inness, 30.
Lancashire-born photographer Roger Fenton, 36, arrives by ship in the Crimea as the official British government cameraman, bringing with him an assistant and an array of equipment. Setting up a darkroom in a wagon, he captures some 360 war scenes using the slow wet collodion process of 1851, but action shots are impossible and he avoids the more distressing aspects of the war. He exhibits his pictures at London and Paris upon his return, giving a new sense of reality to war, and although the work cannot be published for lack of technology (see Ives, 1886), wood engravings made from some Fenton photographs appear in the Illustrated London News (see Brady, 1864).
Theater: Francesca da Rimini by playwright George Henry Boker 9/26 at New York's Broadway Theater (see 1901).
Laura Keene opens her own theater at New York under the name Laura Keene's Varieties.
New York-born entertainer Lotta Mignon Crabtree, 8, makes her first public appearance in late November at the Sierra mining settlement of Rapid Creek. She and her mother, Mary Ann, arrived at San Francisco 2 years ago to join her father at the Grass Valley mining camp. Prospectors pay heavily to hear her sing and watch dance numbers taught her by her San Francisco neighbor Lola Montez, now 37, who has toured America with her divertissement Lola Montez in Bavaria and claims to have had lovers who included not only Bavaria's Ludwig I but also an Irish lord, the Russian emperor, a Polish prince, writer Alexandre Dumas, and pianist-composer Franz Liszt (see 1848).
Italian tragédienne Adelaide Ristori, 33, performs in the works of Corneille and Racine, capturing Parisian audiences despite competition from "la grande Rachel" (Félix).
Opera: The Sicilian Vespers (I Vespri Siciliani) 6/13 at the Paris Opéra, with music by Giuseppe Verdi; Hortense Schneider makes her Paris debut 8/31 at the Bouffe-Parisienne.
First performances: Concerto No. 1 for Pianoforte and Orchestra in E flat minor by Franz Liszt 2/17 at Weimar's Grand Ducal Palace, with Liszt at the piano under the direction of Hector Berlioz; "Te Deum" by Hector Berlioz 4/30 at Paris; Prometheus (Symphonic Poem No. 5) by Liszt 10/18 at Braunschweig; Trio in B major by German composer Johannes Brahms, 22, 11/27 at Dodsworth's Hall, New York.
Popular songs: "Listen to the Mockingbird" by Philadelphia barber-composer Richard Millburn, lyrics by Alice Hawthorne (Septimus Winner, who writes under his mother's maiden name); "Star of the Evening" by James M. Sayles; "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming" by Stephen C. Foster.
Composer Sir Henry Rowley Bishop dies at his native London April 30 at age 68.
One of every four New York families has at least one domestic servant (the city has 31,000 domestics, more women are thus employed than in any other occupation, and being able to afford a cook, maid, or nurse defines one's status as middle class).
India House (initially the Hanover Bank, the New York Cotton Exchange beginning in 1872, later still the offices of W. R. Grace & Co.) is completed at 1 Hanover Square to designs by carpenter Richard F. Carman. The brownstone Florentine palazzo will survive into the 21st century.
Philadelphia's five-story Leland Building is completed to designs by Stephen Decatur Button, who has given it a glass façade similar to that of the nearby 241 Chestnut Street Building completed 3 years ago.
Boston hotelman Harvey D. Parker opens the Parker House hotel in School Street (see 1925).
Air-conditioning and artificial refrigeration pioneer John Gorrie dies at Apalachicola, Florida, June 16 at age 51. He received the first U.S. patent for mechanical refrigration 4 years ago but has not profited from his invention.
Engineers dredge the malodorous Chicago River to create landfill on which an enlarged city will rise (see Union Stockyards, 1865).
Fairmount Water Works is built at Philadelphia, where it will be the basis of 3,845-acre Fairmount Park, largest public park within any American city (see 1876) centennial exposition.
London modernizes its sewer system following a new cholera outbreak.
The Milwaukee Wisconsin reports that a New York poultry dealer has received a shipment of 18,000 passenger pigeons in a single day.
Scottish-born mechanic James Oliver, 32, at South Bend, Indiana, obtains a patent May 5 for a steel plow whose working surface is remarkably smooth without being brittle. The surface of Oliver's plow is made from a steel casting that is chilled more quickly than its back-supporting sections (see 1869; Deere, 1837).
John Deere hires his first salesman (see 1852): George W. Vinton will travel across the country from the East Coast to the Pacific and from the Mexican border into Canada, establishing agencies for Deere "ploughs and agricultural implements" (see 1857).
Some 16 million bushels of U.S. wheat are exported to Europe, up from 6 million in 1853 (see 1861).
Scottish-born U.S. horticulturist William Saunders, 32, starts a movement that will lead to the establishment of the Patrons of Husbandry. He will write the preamble to its constitution, and it will spread throughout the country, playing an important role in bringing together the agricultural interests of the various states (see oranges, 1862).
South Carolina agronomist Robert F. W. (Francis Withers) Allston, 54, sends to the Paris Exposition samples of rice he has grown and wins a silver medal. He will win a gold medal next year when the rice remains in perfect condition after a year and will be elected governor of the state. Beginning with 300 acres, he has increased his holdings to 1,500, of which 1,200 are planted in rice, and he has developed more scientific methods of cultivation and better varieties of seed.
Physiologist and nutrition pioneer François Magendie dies at Sannoïs, Seine-et-Oise, October 7 at age 71.
Food and Its Adulterations: Comprising the Reports of the Analytical Sanitary Commission of 'The Lancet' is published at London (see 1850; 1851). A. H. Hassall scandalizes England with reports that all but the most costly beer, bread, butter, coffee, pepper, and tea contains trace amounts of arsenic, copper, lead, or mercury, but Crosse & Blackwell announces that it has stopped coppering pickles and fruits and will no longer use bole armenian to color sauces.
Former Reform Club chef Alexis Soyer writes to the Times, offering his services and goes off on his own to assist Florence Nightingale at Scutari. Like other Britons, Soyer has read news dispatches from the Crimea describing in gruesome detail the poisonous food that British troops often throw away (see naval mutiny, 1797). Dressed in his usual fancy pantaloons and waistcoats (he was always a fop and poseur), he improves the sanitation in hospital kitchens, brings order to the preparation of food, and gives the army's soup so much better flavor that the commanding officer cannot believe it came from the same rations as earlier soup. A military cookstove demonstrated by Soyer August 27 can prepare food for a battalion with 47 pounds of wood instead of the usual 1,760 pounds (his invention will still be used in the British Army in 1935).
A £25 domestic gas oven introduced by the English firm Smith and Phillips is one of the first such stoves to be put on the market in an age of coal and wood stoves (see Reform Club, 1838). Cooking fuel is so costly that hot meals in most British homes are prepared only two or three times a week, but gas ovens will not come into common use for another 40 years.
Cookbook: A Shilling Cookery for the People by Alexis Soyer contains recipes for sheep's head, boiled neck of mutton, and the like; it has sales of 248,000 copies (see 1851).
Prohibition laws are adopted by Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, and the Nebraska Territory (see national party, 1869).
Miller's beer has its beginnings as German-born Milwaukee entrepreneur Frederick (Edward John) Miller, 30, pays $8,000 to buy the Best Brothers brewery, which sent the first shipment of Milwaukee beer to New York in 1852 but has been abandoned. Reputedly the recipient of $3,000 per year from an ancestral estate, Miller determines to produce "a confoundedly good glass of beer" at a time when beer in the Milwaukee area sells for $5 per barrel and 3¢ to 5¢ per glass. Following Miller's death from cancer in 1888 his Plank-Road Brewery several miles west of Milwaukee will be rebuilt and the company reorganized under the name Frederick Miller Brewing Company (see Schlitz, 1856).
Dublin brewer Benjamin Lee Guinness becomes head of the firm started by his grandfather in 1759. Now 59, he took over the domestic brewing business 10 years ago, became first lord mayor of Dublin in 1851, and will develop a large export trade in porter, spreading the fame of Guinness beer and stout worldwide.
Boston's new Parker House serves à la carte meals at all hours of the day instead of requiring that guests sit down at mealtimes to be served a meal dished out by the host. Its kitchen creates the Boston cream pie, with alternating layers of pastry cream and tiers of cake, and will become famous as the birthplace of the soft Parker House roll.
The New York State Immigration Commission leases Castle Garden at the foot of Manhattan to receive immigrants; some 400,000 arrive in the course of the year (see Ellis Island, 1892).
Australia's Victoria colony acts in response to the influx of 33,000 Chinese, who have helped swell the population to 333,000 from 77,000 in 1851, when gold was discovered in New South Wales. A new law restricts immigration of Chinese and provides for a poll tax of £10 on each Chinese immigrant.
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