1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860
Piedmont annexes the Central Italian League (Modena, Parma, Romagna, and Tuscany) in January with help from Luigi C. Farini (see 1859). Victor Emmanuel II appoints Gen. Manfredo Fanti minister of war in recognition of his successes at Palestro, Magenta, and San Martino.
Sicilian authorities abort an uprising against the Bourbon monarchy in April, but Giuseppe Garibaldi organizes an army of 1,000 "Redshirts" at Genoa and sails May 5 for Marsala (see 1857). He lands May 11, gathers recruits as he marches inland, defeats the Neapolitans May 15 at Calatafimi, and takes Palermo June 6. Patriot-historian Giuseppe La Farina has helped Garibaldi raise funds in Sicily for his campaign, but he loses favor by circulating a paper (L'Annessione) at Palermo calling for annexation; arrested in July, he is deported to Genoa. Garibaldi crosses the Straits with British connivance August 22, takes Naples September 7, and supports Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont as king of a united Italy. Victor Emmanuel has sent his minister of war Manfredo Fanti south, Fanti wins victories in the papal lands, the king himself takes command of an army that enters Neapolitan territory, Fanti scores further successes, and by November Garibaldi is back on the island of Caprera looking after his donkeys Pius IX, Napoleon III, Oudinot, and the Immaculate Conception (see 1861).
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies is annexed to the new Kingdom of Italy December 17; richest and most industrialized of the Italian states, she will see her industry moved closer to sources of coal and iron in the north, but her 24-year-old Bourbon king Francesco II protests the annexation and holds the fortress of Gaeta (see 1861).
Montenegro's prince Danilo II Petrovic is assassinated August 13 as he boards a ship at Kotor. Having tried to reform and modernize the Balkan state in his 9-year reign, he is succeeded by an 18-year-old nephew who will reign as prince (Nikola I) until 1910 and as king until 1918.
Serbia's Milos Obrenovic dies at Belgrade September 27 at age 80 after taking cruel vengeance on the enemies who deposed him in 1839. He is succeeded by his 37-year-old son, who reigned briefly from 1839 to 1842 and will rule until his assassination in 1868 as Michael III Obrenovic. Michael will abolish the oligarchic constitution of 1839 and work to consolidate the Balkan states under Serbian leadership.
Former British general and historian Sir William F. P. Napier dies at Clapham Park, Surrey, February 10 at age 75.
The French Navy's steam-powered ironclad La Gloire completed at Toulon in August is a 5,630-ton ship whose outer hull is sheathed with four inches of iron, making wooden warships obsolete and challenging the Royal Navy for domination of the seas (see H.M.S. Warrior, 1861). Former French prime minister Elie, duc Decazes dies at Decazeville October 24 at age 80 (the town in the Aveyron region was renamed in his honor 31 years ago).
Former Royal Navy admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th earl of Dundonald, dies at London October 30 at age 84 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. He inherited his father's title in 1831 and was reinstated in the navy the following year; former Royal Navy (and Portuguese Navy) admiral Sir Charles Napier, conde Napier de São Vicente, dies near Catherington, Hampshire, November 6 at age 74; former prime minister George Hamilton-Gordon, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen, at London December 14 at age 76.
Napoleon III increases the powers of the French Parlement in November in an effort to regain support lost by last year's war with Austria. A new commercial treaty with Britain has further weakened his support.
New Zealand's First Taranaki War begins as Maori chieftain Wiremu Kingi, 65, leads his warriors early in the year against Governor Gore Browne, who last year accepted the offer of a Taranaki subchief and purchased the tribal Waitara land block on the North Island in violation of Maori land customs and despite Kingi's objections. Hostilities will continue until next year (see 1861).
Opponents of Japan's 44-year-old prime minister Ii Naosuke ambush him March 24 on his way to the shōgun's castle at Edo, his retainers and bodyguards are unable to protect him, and his attackers cut off his head. Reformer Nariaki Tokugawa dies at Mito in Hitachi Province September 29 at age 60.
British infantry under the command of Gen. Sir James Hope Grant land in China August 1 as the Second Opium War continues (see 1859). The world's first breech-loading rifled artillery pieces go into action August 12 as British forces employ Armstrong 18-pounders to bombard Sinho in an effort to force Beijing (Peking) to comply with the 1858 Treaties of Tianjin (Tientsin) and admit foreign diplomats (William G. Armstrong has produced the cannon at his Elswick works in Northumberland; see 1847). The Taku forts opposite Hong Kong fall to the British August 21; French troops under the command of Charles Cousin-Montauban, 64, defeat a large Chinese army at Palikao outside Beijing September 21 (see 1842; 1853); the Anglo-French force reaches Beijing September 26, some 17,000 French and British soldiers occupy the city October 6, and they later burn the Summer Palace to punish the Chinese for seizing Harry Parkes, 52, the diplomat who has been virtual governor of Guangzhou (Canton) and was taken prisoner despite his flag of truce. Russian diplomat Nikolai, Graf Ignatiev, helps to draft the Convention of Beijing; ratified by the emperor October 18, it recognizes Russian dominion over all territory on the left bank of the Amur River as well as those lands between the Ussuri River and the Pacific, adds part of the Kowloon peninsula to the British colony of Hong Kong, grants foreigners travel rights throughout China, and affirms legalization of the opium trade. A new peace treaty signed October 25 gives the British rights to opium trading in seven-eighths of the country. Beijing yields under pressure to some Western demands, increases its indemnities, and gives Christians the right to hold property and continue proselytizing; Cousin-Montauban becomes a French national hero (see 1864; Hong Kong, 1898).
Cambodia's king Duong dies at Oudong October 19 at age 64 after a 12-year reign in which he has tried to revitalize his realm, gaining assistance from Singapore authorities to resist raids by pirates along his coast and reasserting his country's national identity after decades of dominance by neighboring Siam and Vietnam. Chams and Malays living in the southeastern part of his country have revolted in recent years, his sons have been squabbling, and although his eldest son Norodom has been chosen as his successor, the new king will remain uncrowned (see 1861; France, 1863).
The Tukolor leader Umar Tal in West Africa accepts the Sénégal River as a boundary between his territory and that of the French under terms of a treaty signed with the French colonial administrator Louis Faidherbe, now 42 (see 1858). Despite opposition from Paris, Faidherbe has subjugated Moorish tribes in the north and driven Umar Tal's forces off the lower Senegal River as he extends control southward toward the Gambia and builds an array of scattered trading posts into a major West African military and political power (see Timbuktu, 1863).
Peru adopts a constitution that will remain in force until 1920 (see 1844; Castilla, 1855). Supported by the nation's dictatorial president Ramón Castilla, it establishes a republic, gives broad powers to the chief executive, narrows the franchise, and recognizes the Roman Catholic Church as the state religion.
Argentine president Justo José de Urquiza uses armed force to incorporate Buenos Aires but agrees under pressure to a constitutional revision that emphasizes the federal character of Argentina's government (see 1853; 1861).
Adventurer William Walker lands in Honduras in August, having evaded British and U.S. naval forces sent to thwart him (see 1857). He sets out with his followers along the coast for Nicaragua, but Capt. Norvell Salmon, Royal Navy, captures him September 3 and turns him over to Honduran authorities. Court martialed, he is found guilty and executed by a firing squad at Trujillo September 12 at age 36.
Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln arrives at New York February 26, stays at the Astor House, attends services at Brooklyn's Plymouth Church to hear a sermon preached by Henry Ward Beecher, and visits the Five Points on the Lower East Side. Campaigning for the Republican Party presidential nomination February 27, he receives a new silk hat from Knox's Great Hat and Cap Establishment at Broadway and Fulton Street, has his photograph taken at Matthew B. Brady's studio (643 Broadway), is introduced by William Cullen Bryant that evening to an audience of about 1,500 in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union (admission: 25¢), and gives an address that ends, "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." Now 51, Lincoln does not attend the Republican Convention at Chicago May 16, but his supporters pay "shriekers" on the convention floor to push for his nomination; Sen. William H. (Henry) Seward, 59, (R. N.Y.) has spoken about the "irrepressible conflict" between North and South, but although he is the front runner, his anti-slavery views are considered too extreme and delegates choose Lincoln on the third ballot.
The Democratic Party convention at Charleston nominates Stephen A. Douglas, but Southern party members break away to nominate Senate majority leader John C. (Cabell) Breckenridge, 37 (D. Ky.), who runs on the Alabama Platform drafted 12 years ago by slavery advocate William L. Yancey.
The United States becomes less united following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president November 6 with 41 percent of the popular vote. Lincoln has received 180 electoral votes, his Democratic Party opponent Sen. Stephen A. Douglas 12 (30 percent of the popular vote), and Breckenridge 72 (18 percent of the popular vote). Sen. John Jordan Crittenden, 73, (D. Ky.) introduces the Crittenden Compromise in December, proposing six constitutional amendments that would avert a civil war (e.g., extend the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the Pacific, have the federal government indemnify owners of fugitive slaves, sanction "squatter sovereignty" as a way of deciding where slavery shall exist, and protect slavery in the District of Columbia from congressional action). Lincoln has pledged not to interfere with slavery where it already exists, but Southerners have depicted him as a radical abolitionist, he has not carried a single Southern state, and South Carolina adopts an Ordinance of Secession December 20 to protest the election. Mary Chesnut (née Boykin), 37, returns to the Chesnut family plantation at Camden and begins keeping a diary; her husband, James, has been one of South Carolina's two U.S. senators (see 1861).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton urges woman suffrage in an address to a joint session of the New York State Legislature at Albany (see 1848; Equal Rights Association, 1866).
An antislavery pamphlet written by Lydia Maria Child cites the exploitation of black women under slavery.
Virginia adopts a code providing for a prison term of up to 20 years for a white man convicted of rape, with possible death for any freed black man found guilty of the same crime, but few white men will be convicted.
The U.S. Army's Fort Defiance in New Mexico Territory comes under attack April 30 by 1,000 Navajo warriors, whose sheep and goats have been shot by soldiers from the fort. Led by Manuelito, the tribesmen nearly succeed in taking the fort before being driven off by musketfire (see 1861).
German adventurer Karl Klaus von der Decken, 27, explores East Africa. He will propose plans for a vast German colony in the area, but natives will murder him in 1865.
German traders sent by Woermann and Co. open a factory (trading post) on West Africa's Cameroons coast.
Vladivostok has its beginnings in a settlement founded on the Pacific Coast, where the Chinese have recognized Russian dominion over territory between the Ussuri River and the seacoast under terms of the new Convention of Beijing (Peking) negotiated by diplomat Nikolai, Graf Ignatiev. Nikolai Muravyov, Graf Amursky, plants the Russian flag at the port, which is icebound 3 months of the year but will prove to have strategic importance.
New Hampshire-born Cincinnati businessman-Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall, 39, lands alone from a whaleboat at Frobisher Bay on the southern end of Baffin Island. He fails in his effort to find survivors of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition but does discover remains of Martin Frobisher's 1578 visit (see 1864).
The first expedition to investigate the interior of Australia leaves Melbourne in August with 17 men, 24 camels, 28 horses and wagons, six tons of firewood, and enough food to last 2 years. Its leader is Irish-born police superintendent Robert O'Hara Burke, 40. He soon quarrels with his second in command, and he makes surveyor-meteorologist William John Wills, 26, his lieutenant. Financed with £60,000 in government money, the party reaches Menindee on the Darling River in October, Burke divides the men at that point, and he divides them again when he reaches Coopers Creek 6 weeks later (see 1861).
An Anglo-French treaty of reciprocity signed in January opens up a wider area of trade between the two countries (see 1845). It has been negotiated by English free-trade advocate Richard Cobden, but many Frenchmen oppose the treaty, and it weakens the popularity of Napoleon III.
Lynn, Massachusetts, shoe-factory workers walk off the job February 22 in a strike to protest wage cuts and demand recognition of their union. The strike spreads throughout much of New England, and presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln addresses the issue in a speech March 6 at New Haven, Connecticut, saying, "Now be it understood that I do not pretend to know all about the matter . . . [but] I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers CAN strike when they want to, where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not. I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might prevail everywhere." Dressed in hoopskirts, carrying parasols, and led by the Lynn City Guards, some 800 women parade through a snowstorm March 7 carrying a banner that reads, "AMERICAN LADIES WILL NOT BE SLAVES GIVE US A FAIR COMPENSATION AND WE WILL LABOUR CHEERFULLY," but although manufacturers wind up raising wages they refuse to recognize the workers' union (see 1869).
The Oneida Community grosses $100,000 from sales of the Newhouse trap, named for Vermont-born Community cofounder Sewell Newhouse. He has improved on the leghold device he invented in 1823 for trapping bears, beavers, and wolves, it is fast becoming the standard in North America, will eventually be the world standard, and will be Oneida's chief source of income until 1925. The major enterprise of the 12-year-old religious community is making traps
U.S. cotton exports amount to $192 million out of the nation's export total of $334 million, up from $72 million in 1850 when cotton accounted for less than half the total.
Former Hudson's Bay Company governor Sir George Simpson dies in Oregon September 17 at age 68 (approximate) as negotiations begin to turn over the company's vast North American land holdings to the British Crown (see politics [Red River Rebellion], 1869).
Nevada silver miners suffer disastrous cave-ins and accidents as they continue to dig deeper shafts into the Comstock Lode and other properties and the large, unsteady ore bodies defy their efforts to shore up mines with heavy timbers (see 1859). The Ophir mine installs the first steam-driven hoisting and pumping machinery in the area, using a 15-horsepower donkey engine, the operators lay a track down the inclined shaft that follows the dip of the silver vein, they lower a steam-powered car into it, and by December they have gone down 180 feet into the depth of the lode, where the vein is 40 feet wide, but keeping the shaft drained with a pipe only four and a half inches in diameter presents a problem, as does the weight of so much earth pressing down from above. The company sends to California for German-born engineer Philip Deidesheimer, 28, who arrives in December (see 1861).
Nantucket schoolteacher Margaret Getchell, 19, resigns to seek a less demanding job. Obliged by a childhood injury to wear a glass eye, she travels to New York, where a distant cousin, Rowland H. Macy, has opened a dry-goods store (see 1858). Macy hires her as a cashier, she takes a room across the street and works late to help balance accounts. At her suggestion, Macy will expand his line of ribbons, laces, and other accessories to include toiletries, hats, specialty clothing, and, later, books, china, silver, home furnishings, jewelry, and—most successfully—groceries (see 1867).
Mme. Demorest's Emporium opens on Broadway to sell dry goods. Schuylerville, New York-born entrepreneur Ellen (Louise) "Nell" Demorest (née Curtis), 35, has operated millinery shops at Philadelphia and Troy, New York, married dry-goods merchant William Jennings Demorest in New York 2 years ago, has watched her maid cut out a dress pattern from pieces of wrapping paper, and has come up with the idea of creating accurate patterns that can be copied and used for dressmaking at home. The idea is not new: a 13th century French tailor devised a pattern made of thin wood, the Master Tailors' Guild initially suppressed the invention lest it put tailors out of business; Germans have produced full-scale paper patterns earlier in this century; Demorest's husband has suggested a fashion quarterly that would incorporate her idea, and they begin publishing Mme. Demorest's Mirror of Fashions, with a tissue-paper dressmaking pattern stapled to each copy. The magazine will develop into a monthly, and by 1876 will be selling 3 million patterns per year. Demorest will hire large numbers of women to help her in her enterprise, urging them to seek employment in such "unladylike" occupations as bookkeeping, typesetting, and telegraphy, but sales will drop off after 1876, and Demorest will fail to patent her idea (see Butterick, 1869).
A 10-barrel shipment of crude petroleum from the new Pennsylvania oilfields arrives at the Cleveland lard-oil refinery of English-born merchant C. A. Dean (see Drake, 1859). Dean's self-taught English-born chemist Samuel Andrews uses sulfuric acid to cleanse it (i.e., refine it) and produce the first Cleveland-made kerosene (see 1861; Rockefeller, 1863).
An internal combustion engine patented at Paris by Belgian inventor (Jean-Joseph-) Etienne Lenoir, 38, employs a carburetor that mixes liquid hydrocarbons to form a vapor (see Morey, 1826). Lenoir has taken a double-acting steam engine and added slide valves that admit a mixture of coal gas and air; an electric spark explodes the vapor in a cylinder, the slide valves discharge exhaust products, and although Lenoir's two-stroke cycle engine has no compression it runs smoothly and is durable. By 1865 more than 400 will be in use in France and 1,000 in Britain, performing jobs in pumping and printing that do not require much power. But its electrical ignition system is problematic: it burns nearly 100 cubic feet of costly gas per horsepower per hour, and unless its bearings are oiled frequently it seizes (see Otto, 1861; transportation [automobile], 1862).
The Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express is chartered in February with William Hepburn Russell as president (see 1854). The company begins running first-class stagecoaches through to California.
The United States has 30,000 miles of railway tracks, up from 9,000 in 1850.
American and European Railway Practice by Connecticut-born engineer Alexander Lyman Holley, 28, will quickly become obsolete as railway practices improve (see steel rails, 1867).
French railway trackage reaches 5,918 miles, up from 336 in 1842 (see 1870).
The first Japanese-built ship to reach the United States arrives at San Francisco February 16 after a 34-day voyage under the command of naval officer Kaishu Katsu, 36. The 300-ton wooden steamship Kanrin Maru has battled a storm and puts in for repairs. The U.S. cruiser Powhatan arrives at San Francisco March 9 with a delegation of 80 Japanese men sent by the Tokugawa shogunate to study American customs. She has waited out the storm in the Sandwich Islands and leaves March 18 for the isthmus of Panama, where the delegation crosses by rail to the Atlantic and proceeds to Washington, D.C., where they put up at the Willard Hotel. Katsu remains at San Francisco and will work to modernize the fledgling Japanese Navy upon his return.
More than 1,000 steamboats ply the Mississippi, up from 400-odd in 1840 (see 1878; Sultana, 1865).
The British passenger liner S.S. Great Eastern arrives at New York from Liverpool June 28 on her first transatlantic voyage. Designed by the late English engineer-inventor Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the 680-foot, 22,500-ton iron paddle steamer has made the voyage in just 11 days but has barely cleared the shoals of Sandy Hook. She will prove too costly to operate, her owners will break her up for scrap in 1877, and no larger ship will be built until 1899 (see communications [Atlantic Cable], 1865).
Moran Towing & Transportation Company has its beginnings as Irish-born entrepreneur Michael Moran, 26, takes the $2,700 he has earned working on the Erie Canal, rides a grain boat down the Hudson, and opens a towing brokerage office at 14 South Street. Brought to the United States by his parents at age 3, Moran went to work driving canal-boat horses and mules at age 9.
The marine salvage firm Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corp. has its beginnings in the New York-based Coast Wrecking Company that will be reorganized as Merritt's Wrecking Organization, merge in 1897 with Chapman Derrick & Wrecking Company to form Merritt & Chapman, merge in 1922 with T. A. Scott Company to create Merritt-Chapman & Scott, and go on to become a major contractor for bridge and dam construction.
Vulcanized rubber pioneer Charles Goodyear dies in a New York boarding house July 1 at age 59, leaving his family more than $200,000 in debt. His lawyer, the late Daniel Webster, received more in fees than Goodyear ever earned from his discovery.
The Oneida Community grosses $100,000 from sales of the Newhouse trap named for Community member Sewell Newhouse, who invented the device that is fast becoming the standard in North America and will eventually become so for most of the world. The major enterprise of the 12-year-old Community is making traps. Men of the Community have developed dishwashers and machines for paring apples and washing vegetables to spare themselves the tedium of kitchen chores.
Pratt & Whitney Company is founded at Hartford, Connecticut, by Jay, New York-born mechanical engineer Francis Ashbury Pratt, 33, and Biddeford, Maine-born machinist Amos Whitney, 27 (a cousin of the late Eli Whitney), who have been working for the local Phoenix Iron Works. Pratt has initiated a system for making interchangeable parts that will be used beginning next year in Civil War rifles (see 1869; transportation, 1925).
Volcanic Repeating Arms Company gunsmith B. Tyler Henry obtains a patent October 16 on the first truly practical lever-action rifle (see 1849; Volcanic rifle, 1854). The Henry rifle fires 15 rounds of waterproof cartridges per minute, Henry licenses his patent to Oliver F. Winchester's New Haven Arms Company (see 1854), the repeating rifle goes into production at New Haven, Connecticut, and the company will make about 13,500 of them. Now 49, Winchester sells the rifle for $50, and while it is fairly reliable its open magazine can collect dust and is prone to damage that can cause a malfunction. Connecticut gunsmith Christopher M. (Minor) Spencer, 24, patents a carbine that is even faster than the Henry. Its buttstock contains a magazine carrying seven cartridges, which are fed to the breech by pressure from a spring in the magazine; all seven cartridges can be fired in about 18 seconds, a speed that can be enhanced by the addition of a Blakeslee box, which contains six to 13 tin tubes holding seven cartridges each. The carbine is 39 inches long overall with a 22-inch barrel and is intended primarily as a cavalry weapon; the Spencer rifle is of similar design but has a 47-inch barrel; both will find wide use in the forthcoming Civil War (see 1861; Winchester, 1866).
The French Academy of Sciences offers a prize in January for contributions that will "attempt, by means of well-devised experiments, to throw new light on the question of spontaneous generation" (see Needham, 1748). Chemist Louis Pasteur fills flasks with a sugared yeast solution, exposes them to various conditions, and shows that while some microorganisms exist in the air like yeast, and like yeast can transform whatever they touch, other microorganisms are anaerobic and cannot survive in the presence of air. Any microorganisms that develop in suitable media come from microorganisms in the air, not from the air itself, Pasteur demonstrates (see Tyndall, 1876).
The Edinburgh Review carries a long, anonymous critique of last year's book On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Its author is anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen, who has been a friend and colleague of Darwin but fears being overshadowed. Comments Darwin on the review, "It is extremely malignant, clever, and I fear will be very damaging . . . It requires much study to appreciate all the bitter spite of many of the remarks against me . . . He misquotes some passages, altering words within inverted commas." The British Association for the Advancement of Science meets in a crowded assembly room at Oxford University in June and hears Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, 54, attack Darwin's theory of evolution. A son of the late antislavery activist William Wilberforce, the bishop calls Darwin's theory "dangerous" (he may have been coached by Richard Owen), but T. H. Huxley rises to Darwin's defense, saying, "If . . . the question is put to me, would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence, and yet who employs these faculties and influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape" (see Haeckel, 1862).
University of Naples archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli, 37, ends the often haphazard digging up of relics at Pompeii that has been going on since before 1750 and pioneers modern methods of studying archaeological strata (see 1763). Appointed director of excavations at Pompeii, he divides the site into nine regions, assigns numbers to the blocks (insulae) in each region, gives each housedoor a number, and keeps careful records of materials and building methods. Fiorelli will devise a technique of pouring plaster of paris into hollows left where bodies disintegrated in the volcanic ash of Vesuvius after the eruption of 79 A.D., enabling him to make casts of the bodies that show in startling detail how the victims appeared at the time that they died (see 1951; Nonfiction, 1875).
Anatomist Martin Rathke dies at Königsberg September 3 at age 67, having been the first to describe gill slits and gill arches in the embryos of mammals and birds.
Diabetes is the result of a pancreas disorder, observes Paris physician Etienne Lancereaux, 31 (see 1869; Cawley, 1788).
The clinical symptoms of acute trichinosis are noted for the first time by German pathologist Friedrich Albert von Zenker, 35, but the cause-effect relationship remains unknown (see 1835; Leuckart, 1863).
The Nightingale Nurse Training School is founded at St. Thomas' Hospital, London, where a select few will study without expense for one year each (see 1854). Now 40, Florence Nightingale makes plans to open a school for midwifery nurses at King's College Hospital, also in London.
A Treatise on Mental Illness (Traité des maladies mentales) by Vienna-born French psychologist Benedict Augustin Morel, 50, introduces the term demence-precoce to denote mental degeneration (see Kraepelin, 1899). A friend of physiologist Claude Bernard and an admirer of Charles Darwin's work on evolution, Morel has studied the mentally retarded at the Mareville Asylum near Nancy, examining their family histories and looking at such possible factors as poverty and early physical illnesses.
German-born New York physician Abraham Jacobi, 30, is appointed professor of children's diseases at the New York Medical College and establishes the first U.S. pediatric clinic.
The Seventh Day Adventist Church is founded at Battle Creek, Michigan, by former followers of William Miller (see 1845). Seventh Day Adventists will have an impact on the U.S. food industry (see sanitorium, 1866).
Religious leader and social reformer Theodore Parker dies at Florence, Italy, May 10 at age 49.
Syrians massacre Christians at Damascus, but the former Algerian emir Abdul-Qadar (Abdulkader) and his followers manage to save many who would otherwise have been killed.
Charles Darwin writes to Harvard botanist Asa Gray May 22, "I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the workng out of what we may call chance . . . all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator."
Wheaton College is created by a renaming of the struggling 6-year-old Illinois Institute founded by Wesleyans on land given by Warren L. Wheaton. Vermont-born clergyman Jonathan Blanchard, now 49, headed the World's Anti-Slavery Society at age 32, supported a crusade against Freemasonry, was elected president of Knox College at Galesburg in 1845, founded a periodical under the name Christian Era that he has continued to edit since resigning from Knox 3 years ago, and has proposed the renaming of the school that he will head until 1882. Wheaton will become a center of fundamentalist religious teaching.
The first formal English-speaking kindergarten in America opens at Boston under the direction of Billerica, Mass.-born educator and writer Elizabeth Peabody (née Palmer), 56, who heard last year about the late Friedrich Froebel's work with preschoolers in Germany (see Schurz, 1856). Mrs. Peabody is a sister-in-law of Horace Mann and of author Nathaniel Hawthorne (see San Francisco, 1879).
The United States has only 40 public high schools, classes have at least 30 students each, their textbooks are primarily McGuffey's New High School Reader and The Normal Mental Arithmetic, half their teachers do not have college degrees, teachers use paddles to maintain discipline, and they are poorly paid.
The first Pony Express riders leave from St. Joseph, Missouri, April 3 and from Sacramento, California, April 4, cover the 1,966 miles between the two in 10 days, and deliver mail that would otherwise have taken weeks or even months. William Hepburn Russell, 48, has organized the Pony Express to carry mail at rates of $2 to $10 per ounce depending on distance, keeps 80 riders in the saddle at all times of day and night, and uses fast Indian ponies in relays to cover the 10 miles or so between each of some 190 stations, averaging 10 miles per hour (see 1861).
U.S. Army Signal Corps surgeon Albert James Myer, 30, receives a $4,000 congressional appropriation to develop a wigwag system of visual signaling that he has invented (see semaphore, 1793).
English-born journeyman Portland, Oregon, printer Henry L. (Lewis) Pittock, 24, marries the daughter of a prosperous local citizen in June and later in the year becomes proprietor of the Weekly Oregonian, using a primitive, hand-operated press to publish news obtained by pony express, stage, and steamship in addition to local news (see 1850). Pittock made the 6-month trek to the Northwest with a brother in 1853, walking barefoot most of the way; he will establish the Daily Oregonian next year, use telegraph services when wires reach Portland in 1864, and by 1902 will have driven out competing Portland papers. Harvey Scott will run the paper from 1865 to 1910, and it will survive into the 21st century as the oldest continuously published paper in the western United States.
The United States has 372 daily newspapers, up from 254 in 1850, but newspapers remain generally too expensive for the average man or woman (see 1909).
Nonfiction: "Unto This Last" by art critic and moralist John Ruskin, now 41, whose essay in the Cornhill magazine attacks the unesthetic waste in modern industry; The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt, now 42, who teaches at the University of Basel; The Conduct of Life (nine essays) by Ralph Waldo Emerson includes "Fate," "Power," "Culture," and "Illusions."
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer dies at Frankfurt-am-Main September 21 at age 72, having written a polemic criticizing "Teutonic-Christian stupidity" on female matters, saying that "woman is by nature meant to obey," but conceding that "women are decidedly more sober in their judgment than we are."
Fiction: The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot: "I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out"; On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev; The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Woman in White by English novelist (William) Wilkie Collins, 36, whose pioneer detective novel is serialized in the London magazine All the Year Round; The Dodge Club; or, Italy in 1859 by Canadian novelist James De Mille, 24; Maleska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter by Connecticut-born author Ann Sophia Stephens (née Winterbotham), 50, is the first "dime novel." It is published at New York by Beadle & Adams, whose proprietors Erastus Flavel Beadle, 39, and Robert Adams moved east from Buffalo 2 years ago, have experimented with 10¢ paper-bound song, joke, and etiquette books, but only now have a runaway bestseller. Beadle & Adams will publish hundreds of dime novels and thousands of Dime Library and Half Dime Library titles including the adventures of Deadwood Dick and Nick Carter (see 1886).
Poetry: "Tithonus" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, who writes, "After many a summer dies the swan"; "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother" by New England poet Florence Percy (Elizabeth Chase Akers), 28, who writes, "Backward, turn backward, O time in your flight,/ Make me a child again just for tonight."
Painting: The Guitarist by Edouard Manet; Autumn—On the Hudson River by Jasper Francis Cropsey. Painter Rembrandt Peale dies at Philadelphia October 3 at age 82.
Theater: The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen by Dion Boucicault 3/29 at Laura Keene's Theater, New York, with John Drew in a melodrama based on the 1829 novel The Collegians by Gerald Griffin; Rip Van Winkle 12/24 at New York, with Joseph Jefferson, 31, in the title role of his own dramatization of the Washington Irving story.
First performances: Serenade No. 2 in A major by Johannes Brahms 2/10 at Hamburg; Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in A minor by the late Robert Schumann 6/9 at Leipzig's Royal Conservatory.
St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater opens in October with a performance of the 1840 Glinka opera A Life for the Czar (Ivan Susanin). Named for the wife of Aleksandr II, it has been designed by architect Albert Kaves (or Caves) and will become a major venue for ballet and survive into the 21st century.
Popular songs: "Old Black Joe" and "The Glendy Burk" by Stephen C. Foster; "Annie Lisle" by H. S. Thompson, whose melody will be the basis of the Cornell University song "Far Above Cayuga's Waters."
Minstrel show pioneer Thomas Dartmouth Rice dies in poverty at New York September 19 at age 42.
The first British Open golf tournament opens at Prestwick, Scotland (see 1744; U.S. Open, 1894).
The first world heavyweight boxing championship bout April 17 at Farnborough, Hampshire, pits U.S. champion John C. Heenan, now 26, against the British challenger Tom Sayers, now 33 (see 1811; Heenan, 1858; Sayers, 1859). Standing six feet two and weighing 195 pounds, Heenan appears certain to win, but the bareknuckle fight continues for 42 rounds until the diminutive Sayers is unable to use his right arm, Heenan is blinded from his own blood, and the crowd breaks into the ring to stop the fight, which is declared a draw. Both men are awarded championship belts, Sayers retires from the ring, and a public subscription of £3,000 is raised for him. Heenan will hold his U.S. title until late 1863.
Australia's Melbourne Cup horse race has its first running in the Victoria colony.
U.S. sportsmen begin wearing knickerbockers (plus-fours)
English inventor Frederick Walton, 26, coins the word linoleum for a cheap rubber-like floor-covering material made from a process he has devised for oxidizing linseed oil to form a thick mixture that is then cooled, mixed with pine resin and wood flour, and given a canvas, felt, or jute backing. Walton has by some accounts got his idea from the leathery skin he has seen formed on paint; he derives the name from the Latin words linum (flax) and oleum (oil). His manufacturing process requires weeks of exposure during which fresh oil is added continuously until the thickness of the oil film reaches a thickness of an inch or more (see patent 1863).
Cigarette smoking increases in America (see Philip Morris, 1858). Richmond, Virginia, has more than 50 cigarette factories; North Carolina and Virginia together have more than 348, up from 119 in 1840 (see 1875).
Architect Sir Charles Barry dies at his native London May 12 at age 64 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. His son Edward (Middleton), 29, will complete work on the Houses of Parliament.
Texas cattleman Richard King takes his old steamboat partner Miflin Kenedy into partnership and the two pool their resources to import Durham cattle that will improve their breeding stock (see 1868; 1853).
Kentucky-born Texas rancher Oliver Loving, 47, and John Dawson set out August 29 with 1,500 head of longhorns, winter at Pueblo in Colorado Territory, and will sell the herd next spring for gold to miners at Denver. Loving gave his son William, then 19, responsibility 3 years ago for driving his cattle and those of some neighbors up the Shawnee Trail to Illinois; the drive made a profit of $36 per head, and Loving repeated the trek in 1858 with John Durkee (see 1861).
The growth of the railroad and steamship in the next four decades will encourage expansion of U.S. agriculture for export markets.
The U.S. wheat crop reaches 173 million bushels, more than double its 1840 level. Wheat from California goes mostly to Liverpool, carried in the holds of huge sailing ships that take 4 to 5 months for the voyage of 14,000 nautical miles around Cape Horn. So dependent are California growers on the English market that they use the British cental (100 pounds) rather than the bushel as a standard of measurement.
Reaper inventor Obed Hussey falls under a train in New England and is killed August 4 at age 68 (see 1847). He sold his business 2 years ago and has been working on the invention of a steam plow.
The U.S. corn crop reaches 839 million bushels, up from 377 million in 1840 (see 1870; 1885).
The U.S. cotton crop reaches 3.48 million bales; most is shipped to Liverpool for England's booming textile industry.
Mississippi agronomist Eugene Hilgard urges contour plowing and use of fertilizer: "Well might the Chickasaws and Choctaws question the moral right of the act by which their beautiful, park-like hunting grounds were turned over to another race . . . Under their system these lands would have lasted forever; under ours, in less than a century the state will be reduced to the . . . desolation of the once fertile Roman Campagna" (see Ruffin, 1833).
Parliament passes the first British Adulteration of Food Law after years of editorializing by Thomas Wakley in the Lancet (see medicine, 1823). Physician-scientific writer Edward Lankester, 46, has cited recent cases in which three people have died after attending a public banquet at which green blancmange was served that was colored with arsenite of copper. Lankester has shown that sulfide of arsenic is used to color Bath buns yellow (see 1861).
Louis Pasteur sterilizes milk by heating it to 125° Centigrade at a pressure of 1.5° atmospheres (100° C. is equal to 212° F.). Pasteur will develop methods using lower heats (130° to 140° F.) to "pasteurize" milk, which changes the flavor slightly but has the benefit of preventing the spread of milk-borne diseases. The propagation of myths about pasteurization, especially in Britain, will delay introduction of pasteurized milk on a commercial basis for 50 years (see 1857; 1861; cattle tuberculosis test, 1892; agriculture [Bang's disease], 1896). Pasteurization will also be used to kill the bacteria that spoil wine, beer, cider, and fruit juices, making it possible for such products to be stored without refrigeration and shipped over long distances.
Godey's Lady's Book advises U.S. women to cook tomatoes for at least 3 hours before eating them.
The U.S. population reaches 31.4 million, twice its 1840 level, with 4 million of the total foreign-born. The birth rate among whites is 41.4 per thousand, down from 55 in 1800, but the excess of births over deaths is still the main source of population growth.
U.S. population density is 10.6 people per square mile, up from four to five in 1790 although 16.1 percent of the people live in cities of 2,500 or more. Only nine cities have more than 100,000: New York has 805,651; Philadelphia 562,529; Brooklyn 266,661; Baltimore 212,418; Boston 177,812; New Orleans 168,675; Cincinnati 161,044; St. Louis 160,773; Chicago 109,260; Buffalo 81,129; Newark 71,914; Louisville 68,033; Albany 62,367; Washington 61,122; San Francisco 56,802 (up from 800 in 1848); and Providence 50,666.
The Native American population in the United States and its territories is 300,000, down from between 600,000 and 900,000 in 1607. Hawaii's native population falls below 37,000, down from 150,000 in 1819 and 75,000 in 1850, as a consequence of measles, smallpox, and other contagious diseases introduced to the Sandwich Islands from Europe and America (see 1959).
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