Timeline 1831-1840
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1831 Jan 1,
William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), 24-year-old reformer of
Massachusetts, began publishing his newspaper The Liberator, dedicated
to the abolition of slavery. Garrison's stridency and uncompromising
position on both the institution of slavery and slave owners offended
many in the North and South, but he vowed to continue the fight until
slavery was abolished. In the first issue of his newspaper, he wrote,
"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is
there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or
speak, or write, with moderation. No! No!" Garrison once burned a copy
of the U.S. Constitution, condemning it as "a covenant with death and
an agreement with hell" because it did not forbid slavery. The
Liberator ceased publication in 1865 after the 13th Amendment was
passed, outlawing slavery. [see 1830]
(HNPD, 12/31/98)
1831 Jan 20, Protocols were signed
in London that recognized Belgium as an independent nation. Belgium
became a nation and combined French and Flemish-speaking lands. The
Rothschild banking empire financed the founding of Belgium.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)(SSFC, 2/24/02,
p.C5)(http://tinyurl.com/3335jt)
1831 Feb 7, The first Belgian
Constitution was ratified.
(http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~noemeetjesland/1830/1830.htm)
1831 Feb 13, John Aaron Rawlins
(d.1969), Bvt. Major General (Union Army), was born.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1831 Feb 19, The 1st practical US
coal-burning locomotive made its 1st trial run in Pennsylvania.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1831 Feb 20, Polish
revolutionaries defeated the Russians in the Battle of Grochow.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1831 Feb 25, The Polish army
halted the Russian advance into their country at the Battle of Grochow.
(HN, 2/25/99)
1831 Mar 2, John Frazee becomes
1st US sculptor to receive a federal commission.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1831 Mar 3, George Pullman
(inventor: railroad sleeping car; industrialist: Pullman Palace Car
Company), was born.
(HC, Internet, 3/3/98)
1831 Mar 4, Georg Michael Telemann
(82), composer, died.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1831 Mar 6, Philip Henry Sheridan,
Union Army General and hero of the Battle of Cedar Creek, was born.
(HN, 3/6/99)
1831 Mar 6, Edgar Allan Poe failed
out of West Point. He was discharged from West Point for "gross neglect
of duty." His parade uniform was supposedly incorrect.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, Z1 p.4)(HN, 3/6/98)
1831 Mar 12, Clement Studebaker,
auto maker, was born. John Studebaker mad a small fortune manufacturing
wheelbarrows and pick axes for the miners in Placerville, Ca., that he
used to found an automobile firm.
(HN, 3/12/98)(SFEC, 4/12/98, p.T7)
1831 Mar 19, The first recorded US
bank robbery occurred at the City Bank, in New York. Some $245,000 is
stolen.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1831 Mar 26, An interim government
was set up in Raseiniai as a Lithuanian revolt against Russian rule
began. There was a major uprising led by the Polish nobility in Warsaw
against Russian rule. Russian forces began to march through Lithuania
and this led many people of Lithuania to join in the rebellion against
Russian rule. Serf uprisings also followed. The rebellion was
eventually quelled by Russian force.
(H of L, 1931, p.85-86)(LHC, 3/26/03)
1831 Mar 31, Archibald Scott,
Scottish chemist, was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1831 Mar 31, Quebec and Montreal
were incorporated.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1831 Apr 7, Pedro I of Brazil
abdicated in favor of his 5-year-old son, Pedro de Alcantara, Pedro II.
(EWH, 4th ed., p.855)
1831 Apr 12, Grenville Mellen
Dodge, Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1831 May 16, David Edward Hughes,
inventor (microphone, teleprinter), was born.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1831 May 26, Russians defeated the
Poles at battle of Ostrolenska.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1831 Jun 1, John B. Hood
Confederate Civil War general, was born.
(HN, 6/1/98)
1831 Jun 1, Captain John Ross,
English explorer, identified the magnetic north pole on the west coast
of the Boothia Peninsula.
(www.collectionscanada.ca/explorers/h24-1810-e.html)
1831 Jun 13, James Clerk Maxwell
(d.1879), Scottish physicist, was born. He showed that electrical,
magnetic and optical phenomena were all united in a single universal
force, electromagnetism, and formulated electromagnetic theory,
(V.D.-H.K.p.269)(HN, 6/13/98)
1831 Jun 28, Joseph Joachim,
violinist (Hungarian Concerto), was born in Kittsee, Germany.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1831 Jul 4, "America (My Country
'Tis of Thee)" was 1st sung in Boston. [see Jul 4, 1832]
(Maggio, 98)
1831 Jul 4, James Monroe, 5th
President of the United States, died in New York City at age 73, making
him the third ex-President to die on Independence Day.
(AP, 7/4/97)(HN, 7/4/98)(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1831 Jul 21, Belgium became
independent as Leopold I was proclaimed King of the Belgians.
(AP, 7/21/97)
1831 Jul 24, Maria Agata
Szymanowska (41), composer, died.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1831 Jul 30, Helene P. Blavatsky,
founder (Theosophist Cooperation), was born.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1831 Aug 1, London Bridge opened
to traffic.
(MC, 8/1/02)
1831 Aug 2, The Dutch army, headed
by the Dutch princes, invaded Belgium, in the so-called "Ten Days
Campaign", and defeated Belgian forces near Hasselt and Leuven. Only
the appearance of a French army under Marchal Gerard caused the Dutch
to stop their advance.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Revolution)
1831 Aug 9, 1st US steam engine
train run was from Albany to Schenectady, NY.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1831 Aug 10, William Driver of
Salem, Massachusetts, was the first to use the term "Old Glory" in
connection with the American flag, when he gave that name to a large
flag aboard his ship, the Charles Daggett.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1831 Aug 21, Nat Turner led a
rebellion in Southampton county, Va. This became known as "Nat Turner's
Rebellion" or the "Southampton Slave Revolt." Turner and about seven
followers murdered 55 white people, including the entire family of his
owners, the Joseph Travis's. Turner had been taught to read by the
Travis children and his studies of the bible led him to have visions of
insurrection. Turner was later executed. A 1998 play by Robert O’Hara
"Insurrection: Holding History" centered on the event.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)(SFC,
1/16/98, p.D1)(AP, 8/21/07)
1831 Aug 24, John Henslow asked
Charles Darwin to travel with him on HMS Beagle.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1831 Aug 29, Michael Faraday,
British physicist, demonstrated the 1st electric transformer. Faraday
had discovered that a changing magnetic field produces an electric
current in a wire, a phenomenon known as electromagnetic induction.
(www.acmi.net.au/AIC/FARADAY_BIO.html)(WSJ, 9/17/01,
p.R6)
1831 Aug 30, Charles Darwin
refused to travel with the HMS Beagle. On Dec 27 he was onboard.
(MC, 8/30/01)(AP, 12/27/97)
1831 Sep 7, Victorien Sardou,
French stage writer (Madame Sans-Gene, Tosca), was born.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1831 Sep 9, Eleven men, accused
and convicted for participating in the revolt led by Nat Turner, were
hanged. The death sentence for 7 others was commuted by the governor to
"transportation," i.e. sale outside the state.
(ON, 10/99, p.10)
1831 Sep 27, Joannis Capodistrias
(55), Greek governor of Troezen, was murdered.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1831 Oct 17, Felix Mendelssohn's
1st Piano concert in G premiered.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1831 Oct 31, Daniel Butterfield
(d.1901), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1831 Oct 31, Nat Turner, rebel
slave, was caught by Mr. Benjamin Phipps and locked up in Jerusalem,
Va. Thomas Gray, his court appointed attorney, spent 3 days talking to
Turner and compiled his notes into "The Confessions of Nat Turner,"
which were published in 1969.
(ON, 10/99, p.10)
1831 Nov 3, Ignatius Donnelly
(d.1901), American social reformer, was born. Donnelly was an important
scholar of the mythical continent of Atlantis. In 1882 he wrote
"Atlantis: The Antediluvian World."
(SFEC, 7/26/98, BR p.3)(HN, 11/3/99)
1831 Nov 5, Nat Turner, rebel
slave, was tried in Southampton county, Va.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)
1831 Nov 8, Edward R.L.
Bulwer-Lytton, English writer, was born.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1831 Nov 11, Nat Turner was hanged
and skinned in Southampton county, Va. Hysteria surrounded this
rebellion and over 200 slaves, some as far away as North Carolina, were
murdered by whites in fear of a generalized uprising. A martyr to the
anti-slavery cause, Turner's actions had the adverse effect of
virtually ending all abolitionist activities in the south before the
Civil War.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)(HN,
11/11/98)
1831 Nov 14, Ignaz Joseph Pleyel
(74), Austrian composer and piano builder, died.
(MC, 11/14/01)
1831 Nov 16, Karl von Clausewitz
(51), Prussian strategist (Campaign 1813), died.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1831 Nov 19, James A. Garfield
(d.1881) the 20th Pres. of the US, was born in Orange Township, Ohio.
(WUD, 1994, p.584)(AP, 11/19/08)
1831 Nov 22, Giacomo Meyerbeer's
opera "Robert Le Diable" was produced (Paris).
(MC, 11/22/01)
1831 Dec 5, Former President John
Quincy Adams took his seat as a member of the U.S. House of
Representatives.
(AP, 12/5/01)
1831 Dec 23, Emilija Pliateryte
(b.1831), Lithuanian rebel leader, died in Kapciamiestis while
retreating to Prussia with the rebel army. She had organized a
detachment in Dusetos with her cousin Cesar Pliateris (1810-1869) and
both took an active part in the uprising. Together with the detachment
of H. Horodeckij they defeated Zarasai. Emilija Pliateryte took part in
many battles: at Maišiagala, Kaunas, and Šauksnai.
(http://www.mmlab.ktu.lt/mmlab/ZarasaiE/zmo/za_pli.htm)
1831 Dec 26, Vincenzo Bellini's
opera "Norma," premiered at La Scala in Milan.
(www.musicabona.com/bellini_vincenzo/13853/cd/index.html.en)
1831 Dec 27, HMS Beagle departed
from Plymouth. Naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a voyage to the
Pacific aboard the HMS Beagle. Darwin's discoveries during the voyage
helped formed the basis of his theories on evolution.
(HN, 12/27/98)(AP, 12/27/97)
1831 Dec 28, Samuel Sharp
(1801-1832) led a slave uprising that was put down at great cost by the
British. The Rebellion lasted for eight days and resulted in the death
of around 186 Africans and 14 white planters or overseers. The white
vengeance convicted over 750 rebel slaves, of which 138 were sentenced
to death.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.73)(http://tinyurl.com/3cu2ds)
1831 Dec 29, Adam Badeau (d.1895),
Bvt Brig General (Union volunteers), was born.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1831 Balzac wrote his story "The
Unknown Masterpiece." It became a parable of modern art.
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1831 The "Hunchback of Notre Dame"
(Notre Dame de Paris) by Victor Hugo was published. Disney released an
animated film based on the classic in 1996.
(WSJ, 6/20/95, p.B-1)
1831 Frederic Chopin at 21
published his Waltz #1 in Eb Major and Waltz #3. These were his third
and fourth published waltzes.
(BAAC PN, Chambers, 1/8/96)
1831 The Sinking Spring
Presbyterian Church was built in Abingdon, Virginia. It was later
bought by the Sons of Temperance. In 1900 it was deeded to the city and
in 1933 became the home of the Barter Theater.
(HT, 3/97, p.14)
1831 Early followers of Joseph
Smith merged with a communal Christian sect and relocated to Kirkland,
Ohio. [see 1838]
(SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)
1831 The International Platform
Association was founded by Daniel Webster and Josiah Holbrook. It is an
organization for those on the lecture platform.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1831 At Yale the Skull and Bones
society was founded. Boneswomen were not admitted until 1991.
(USAT, 1/15/97, p.6D)
1831 The American Railroad Journal
was established.
(Panic, p.7)
1831 US copyright protections were
expanded to cover musical compositions.
(SFC, 4/8/02, p.E1)
1831 The anti-Mason Party met in
Baltimore for the first presidential nominating convention in the US.
The 116 delegates selected William Wirt of Maryland.
(Hem, 8/96, p.86)
1831 New York Senator William L.
Marcy made the statement, "To the victor belong the spoils of the
enemy," on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1831. Marcy was responding
to attacks on Secretary of State Martin van Buren made by Senator Henry
Clay with regard to the use of patronage for party purposes, known as
the "spoils system." Marcy, who retired from the senate in 1833, became
known as the "champion of the spoils system." He went on to serve as
secretary of war and secretary of state.
(HNQ, 9/23/99)
1831 George Calvert Yount of North
Carolina first arrived in the Napa Valley, Ca.
(www.westsong.com/yountville/yountdo.html)
1831 In the US the first federally
financed artwork was a $400 bust John Jay, the first Chief Justice of
the US.
(WSJ, 12/1/95, p.A-1)
1831 Robert A. Kinzie paid $127.68
for 102 acres of land that became much of Chicago.
(SFC, 2/26/00, p.B3)
1831 In New Hampshire Joseph
Foster began building reed organs and melodeons. In 1845 he moved from
Winchester to Keene and was joined by his brother Ephraim. The firm
became known as "J&E Foster." They worked together until Joseph
died in 1875.
(SFC, 2/18/98, Z1 p.3)
1831 The Ohio city of Cincinnati
became known as "Porkopolis". Strategically located on the banks of the
Ohio River, Cincinnati gained the nickname because it was then
America‘s greatest meat packing center.
(HNQ, 3/16/00)
1831 The lawn mower was invented
in England.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1831 Stephen Girard (b.1750),
shipping, real estate, banking and insurance magnate, died. His $7
million estate was the largest in the nation and he bequeathed it to
create and sustain a school for orphan boys. His value in 1999 dollars
totaled $56 billion.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.6)
1831 The original Zouaves, Zouaoua
tribesmen from Algeria, formed their brightly dressed fighting force
and later gained renown for their bravery during the Crimean and
Franco-Austrian wars. American units imitated both the dress and battle
courage of these fierce fighters.
(HNQ, 10/12/01)
1831 James Busby, Scottish-born
father of Australian viticulture, collected 680 different vines from
botanical gardens in Montpellier, Paris and London and brought them to
Australia. These included the syrah grape, called shiraz in Australia.
(SFC, 5/5/05, p.F10)
1831 The Austro-Italian insurance
company Assicurazioni Generali Austro-Italiche was established.
(www.generali.ro/eng_despre_noi/istorie.htm)
1831 In London a 9-bedroom
residence was built for a nobleman that in 1931 became the Abbey Road
recording studio.
(Sky, 9/97, p.53)
1831 The Garrick Club was founded
in London for actors, writers and politicians.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A20)(NW, 4/24/03, p.55)
1831 A cholera epidemic broke out
in London.
(ON, 5/05, p.8)
1831 Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly
(b.1786), Islamic warrior, died in a battle against the Sikhs. Sayeed
Ahmad Shaheed was slain in Balakot (later part of Pakistan) while
failing to repel Sikh invaders.
(WSJ, 4/4/08,
p.W5)(www.turntoislam.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11151)(AP, 4/6/06)
1831 Slaves in Jamaica were
emancipated.
(SFC, 12/10/99, p.AA8)
1831 Takashsimaya was founded in
Kyoto, Japan, as a kimono shop. It grew to become the nation’s largest
department store chain.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1831 Patrick Matthew, a Scottish
landowner, provided a description of natural selection in an appendix
to a book about growing the best trees to make warships.
(Econ, 2/7/09, p.73)
1831-1832 Animals from the Tower of London menagerie
created the core of the London Zoo.
(Hem, 9/04, p.71)
1831-1837 Abraham Lincoln lived in New Salem, Ill.
During this time he enlisted in the Black Hawk War. [see 1832]
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.)(SFEC, 3/22/98, p.T4)
1831-1870 Louis Remy Mignot, painter. He was a
landscape artist of the Hudson River School and painted in North
America, Europe and South America.
(WSJ, 11/5/96, p.A20)
1831-1892 The 16 ½ mile Savannah-Ogeechee
Canal in Savannah, Georgia, was built by slaves and Irish workers to
transport cotton and timber between the 2 rivers. Plans for restoration
of the canal were made in 1998.
(SFEC, 8/23/98, p.T3)
1831-1899 Othniel Charles Marsh, born in Lockwood,
New York, becomes Professor of Paleontology at Yale Univ. and
vertebrate Paleontologist to the US Geological Survey. His expeditions
unearthed 80 new species of dinosaur.
(T.E.-J.B. p.24)
1831-1919 Amelia Edith Barr, American author and
journalist "The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too
much."
(AP, 3/29/98)
1832 Jan 6, Gustave Dore,
illustrator (Inferno, Ancient Mariner), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1832 Jan 13, Horatio Alger, Jr.,
the author of more than 100 inspirational books for young people from
the Civil War to the turn of the 20th century, was born the son of a
Unitarian minister. Rejected by the Union Army because of asthma,
Horatio Alger was a poet, teacher and newspaper correspondent before he
eventually followed in his father's footsteps and became a minister on
Cape Cod. Alger is best-known, however, for his books with
rags-to-riches themes. In Alger's world, everyone, no matter how poor
or powerless, could succeed through hard work, honesty and high moral
values. His "pluck and luck" books of hope in the face of adversity
were always bestsellers and almost every home, school and church owned
a large collection. More than 250 million copies of his books have been
sold worldwide. His books included "Ragged Dick" and "Tattered Tom."
(HNPD, 1/13/99)
1832 Jan 23, Edouard Manet
(d.1883), French impressionist painter. His work was a major influence
on the young artists who created the Impressionist movement. His style
was influenced by the Spanish masters, particularly Velasquez. His work
included the "Execution of Maximilian," "Luncheon on the Grass," the
pastel "Portrait of Mademoiselle Lemaire," "In the Boat," "La
Promenade" and "Le Journal Illustre" (ca. 1878-79).
(WUD, 1994, p.871)(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A11)(SFC, 8/21/96,
p.A9)(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.871)(WSJ, 2/13/97, p.A16)(DPCP 1984)
1832 Jan 27, Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson (d.1898), who wrote "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" in 1865
under the pen name Lewis Carroll, was born in Cheshire, England. He was
also know as a skilled photographer and did nude photography with an
"intense focus on his subjects’ personalities." Dodgson lectured on
mathematics at Oxford from 1855 to 1881 and made up the stories about
Alice in Wonderland for his daughter Alice and her sisters. He wrote
"Through the Looking Glass" in 1872 and other children’s books. His
most important mathematical work was the 1879 "Euclid and His Modern
Rivals." "If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can
possibly find fault with, you will not do much." In 1995 Morton N.
Cohen published an authoritative biography titled "Lewis Carroll: A
Biography."
(WSJ, 11/9/95, p.A-20)(AP, 1/14/98)(AP, 1/27/98)
1832 Feb 6, A US ship destroyed a
Sumatran village in retaliation for piracy.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1832 Feb 6, There was an
appearance of cholera at Edinburgh, Scotland.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1832 Feb 13, Cholera appeared in
London for the 1st time.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1832 Feb 20, Charles Darwin
visited Fernando Noronha in Atlantic Ocean.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1832 Feb 22, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (b.1749), poet, (Faust, Egmont) died in Weimar, Germany. Goethe
had served as minister of mines under Bismarck. He completed "Faust"
just before his death: "When Ideas fail, words come in handy." In 1988
Kenneth Weisinger authored "The Classical Facade: A Non-Classical
Reading of Goethe's Criticism." In 2006 John Armstrong authored “Love,
Life, Goethe: How to Be Happy in an Imperfect World.”
(SFEC, 4/26/98, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 8/7/03, p.A19)(SFC,
12/14/04, p.B1)(WSJ, 1/13/07, p.P10)
1832 Feb 26, Jo George Nicolay,
private secretary to Abraham Lincoln and his biographer, was
born.
(HN, 2/26/98)(SC, 2/26/02)
1832 Feb 26, The Polish
constitution was abolished by Czar Nicholas I.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1832 Feb, A cholera epidemic ended
in Great Britain. Some 800 people died of the disease in London. Dr.
John Snow eventually traced the London epidemic to a water pump on
Broad Street. [see 1849] In 2006 Steven Johnson authored “The Ghost
Map,” a history of London’s cholera outbreak.
(www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/1832chol.html)(WSJ,
10/21/06, p.P8)
1832 Mar 10, Muzio Clementi (79),
Italian composer, died.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1832 Mar 11, Franz Melde, German
physicist (Melde test), was born.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1832 Mar 12, Charles Boycott,
estate manager who caused boycotts, was born in Ireland.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1832 Mar 17, Daniel Conway
Moncure, U.S. clergyman, author, abolitionist, was born.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1832 Mar 24, Mormon founder,
martyr Joseph Smith was beaten, tarred and feathered in Ohio.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1832 Mar 24, The British Reform
Act passed the House of Commons under the Whig government. It
introduced the first changes to electoral franchise legislation in
almost one hundred and fifty years. On June 4 it passed the House of
Lords and on June 7 received Royal Assent.
(www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/refact/campaign.htm)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.93)
1832 Mar 26, Famed western artist
George Catlin began his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the
American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone. Painted Warriors.
(HN, 3/26/99)
1832 Apr 4, Charles Darwin aboard
HMS Beagle reached Rio de Janeiro.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1832 Apr 8, Charles Darwin began a
trip through Rio de Janeiro.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1832 Apr 8, Some 300 American
troops of the 6th Infantry left Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to
confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk
War.
(HN, 4/8/99)
1832 Apr 13, James Wimshurst,
British designer, inventor (electric static generator), was born.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1832 Apr 15, Wilhelm Busch, German
artist, was born. He created the precursor to the cartoon strip.
(HN, 4/15/02)
1832 Apr 19, Lucretia Rudolph,
President Garfield’s first lady, was born.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1832 Apr 21, Abraham Lincoln (23)
assembled with his New Salem neighbors for the Black Hawk War on the
Western frontier. Illinois Governor John Reynolds had called for
volunteers to beat back a new Indian threat. Black Hawk, chief of the
Sac and Fox Indians, had returned to his homeland at the head of a band
of 450 warriors, intent on forcibly reversing the treaty he had signed
28 years earlier that ceded control of the tribe’s ancestral home in
northwestern Illinois to the U.S. government.
(HNQ, 7/21/00)
1832 May 5, H.H. Bancroft,
historian, publisher (History of Pacific States), was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1832 May 7, The Treaty of London
protocol was signed between Bavaria and the protecting Powers. It
basically dealt with the way in which the Regency of Bavaria was to be
managed until Otto of Bavaria reached his majority. Greece was defined
as an independent kingdom, with the Arta-Volos line as its northern
frontier and Otto as king.
(http://wiki.phantis.com/index.php/Treaty_of_London,_1832)
1832 May 12, Gaetano Donizetti's
opera "L'elisir d'amore," premiered in Milan.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1832 May 14, Felix Mendelssohn's
"Hebrides," premiered.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1832 May 18, Bonafacio Asioli,
composer, died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1832 May 21, The first Democratic
National Convention got under way, in Baltimore and re-nominated Andrew
Jackson.
(Hem, 8/96, p.86)(AP, 5/21/97)
1832 May 23, Samuel Sharp was
hanged in Jamaica for leading a slave rebellion. He is survived by his
immortal declaration: "I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live
in slavery."
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.73)(http://tinyurl.com/3cu2ds)
1832 May 31, Evariste Galois
(b.1811), French mathematician who developed a general theory of
equations, died from wounds suffered in a duel. In 2005 Mario Livio
authored “The Equation That couldn’t Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius
Discovered the Language of Symmetry.”
(www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Galois.html)(Econ,
8/27/05, p.68)
1832 Jun 5, In Paris an
insurrection took place during General Lamarque's funeral when
insurgents got as far as the Rue Montorgueil and were then driven back.
(SFC, 6/30/07,
p.E2)(www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/07/01.htm)
1832 Jun 6, Jeremy Bentham
(b.1748), social reformer, died. He had his body preserved at the Univ.
College, London. Bentham was later considered the father of
utilitarianism.
(NG, 1990, p. 121)(WSJ, 4/15/99,
p.A20)(www.britannica.com)
1832 Jun 7, The British Reform Act
received royal assent and became law. The act, pressed through by PM
Earl Grey, forestalled a revolution by increasing the number of people
who were eligible to vote.
(ON, 4/09, p.10)
1832 Jul 4, The song "America" was
sung publicly for the first time at a Fourth of July celebration by a
group of children at Park Street Church in Boston. The words were
written on a scrap of paper in half an hour by Dr. Samuel Francis
Smith, a Baptist minister, and were set to the music of "God Save the
King."
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1832 Jul 5, The German government
began curtailing freedom of the press after German Democrats advocate a
revolt against Austrian rule.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1832 Jul 10, President Andrew
Jackson vetoed legislation to re-charter the Second Bank of the United
States.
(AP, 7/10/97)
1832 Jul 13, Henry Schoolcraft
discovered the source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota. Henry Rowe
Schoolcraft came upon the lake where the Mississippi starts and
intended to call it Veritas Caput, the Latin for "true head." The name
was too long and got shortened at both ends to Itasca.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E3)(HN, 7/13/98)
1832 Jul 22, Napoleon FKJ
Bonaparte (21), [l'Aiglon], king of Rome, died.
(MC, 7/22/02)
1832 Jul 25, The 1st US railroad
accident was at Granite Railway, Quincy, Mass., and 1 died.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1832 Aug 2, Some 1,300 Illinois
militia under General Henry Atkinson massacred Sauk Indian men, women
and children who were followers of Black Hawk at the Bad Axe River in
Wisconsin. Black Hawk himself finally surrendered three weeks later,
bringing the Black Hawk War to an end.
(HN, 8/2/98)(MC, 8/2/02)
1832 Aug 27, Black Hawk, leader of
Sauk-Indians, gave himself up.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1832 Aug 31, Jean Nicolas Auguste
Kreutzer, composer, died at 53.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1832 Aug, In Pennsylvania 57 Irish
immigrants died of cholera after traveling there to build a railroad.
In 2009 their bones were found at a woodsy site known as Duffy's Cut,
named after Philip Duffy, who hired the immigrants from Donegal, Tyrone
and Derry to help build the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad.
(AP, 3/25/09)
1832 Sep 21, Sir Walter Scott
(b.1771), Scottish novelist who wrote "Ivanhoe" and "Rob Roy," died at
Abbotsford near Melrose in the Scottish Borders. Scott was later
credited with inventing the genre of historical fiction.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott)(SSFC,
3/11/07, p.G3)
1832 Sep 25, William Le Baron
Jenney, US, architect and "father of the skyscraper," was born.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1832 Oct 4, William Griggs,
inventor (photo chromo lithography), was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1832 Oct 14, Blackfeet Indians
attacked American Fur Company trappers near Montana’s Jefferson River,
killing one.
(HN, 10/14/98)
1832 Oct 22, Leopold Damrosch,
composer, was born.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1832 Nov 14, Charles Carroll (95),
large landowner and signer Declaration of Independence, died.
(MC, 11/14/01)
1832 Nov 14, The first streetcar—a
horse-drawn vehicle called the John Mason—went into operation in New
York City.
(AP, 11/14/97)
1832 Nov 15, Felix Mendelssohn's
Symphony # 5 ("Reformation") premiered.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1832 Nov 15, Jean-Baptiste Say
(b.1767), French economist, died. He is remembered for what came to be
called Say’s Law: “the supply (sale) of X creates the demand (purchase)
of Y.” This law can be shown by business-cycle statistics. When
downturns start, production is always first to decline, ahead of
demand. When the economy recovers, production recovers ahead of demand.
A society can’t consume if it does not produce.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Say)(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A25)
1832 Nov 24, South Carolina passed
an Ordinance of Nullification. The US government had enacted a tariff.
South Carolina nullified it and threatened to secede. Pres. Jackson
threatened armed force on his home state but a compromise was devised
by Henry Clay that ducked the central problem.
(WSJ, 9/19/97,
p.A13)(www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Nullification.html)
1832 Nov 24, The doctrine of
nullification involved an argument concerning the nature of the union
as defined by the writers of the Constitution and addressed the
question: "Was the US a compact of sovereign states, each retaining
ultimate authority, or was the US one nation formed by the people
through the writing of the Constitution?" John C. Calhoun, supporter of
the doctrine of nullification, was Pres. Jackson's principal opponent
in the nullification crises.
(www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/butowsky2/constitution4.htm#17)
1832 Nov 26, Public streetcar
service began in New York City. The fare: 12 ½ cents.
(AP, 11/26/97)
1832 Nov 29, Louisa May Alcott
(d.1888), American author who wrote "Little Women," was born in
Germantown, Pa. Under the pen name A.M. Barnard she wrote stories of
violence and revenge that included "Pauline’s Passion and Punishment."
"It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and
genius, especially ambitious young men and women."
(WUD, 1994, p.35)(SFC, 6/17/97, p.E3)(AP,
7/12/98)(HN, 11/29/98)
1832 Dec 5, Andrew Jackson was
re-elected US president. The US anti-Mason Party with William Wirt drew
8% of the vote against Henry Clay and the eventual winner, Andrew
Jackson. Clay led the Whig Party which coalesced against the power of
Andrew Jackson. The Whigs came from the conservative, nationalist wing
of the Jeffersonian Republicans. The election served as a referendum on
Jackson’s position against the 2nd Bank of the US.
(Hem, 8/96, p.86)(WSJ, 7/8/99, p.A16)(Panic, p.3)
1832 Dec 15, Alexandre-Gustave
Eiffel, designed named the tower in Paris, was born.
(HN, 12/15/98)
1832 Dec 22, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin reached Barnevelts Islands.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1832 Dec 25, Charles Darwin
celebrated Christmas in St. Martin at Cape Receiver.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1832 Dec 28, John C. Calhoun
became the first vice president of the United States to resign,
stepping down over differences with President Jackson. Van Buren served
as vice president under Andrew Jackson from 1833 to 1837.
(SFC, 9/19/96, p.A18)(AP, 12/28/97)(HNQ, 9/19/99)
1832 Uriah Phillips Levy, a US
naval lieutenant, commissioned a statue of Thomas Jefferson by Paris
sculptor Piere-Jean David D’Anger. In 1847 Pres. Polk set the statue in
front of the white House, where it stood for 27 years.
(SFC, 11/23/01, p.D8)
1832 Delacroix painted the
Moroccan scene "A Street in Meknes."
(WSJ, 9/27/00, p.A24)
1832 Jean Ingres, French artist,
painted the portrait of the self-made newspaperman "Louis-Francois
Bertin."
(WSJ, 5/28/99, p.W12)
1832 The Durham Steer was painted
by Austin Neame for the Kent & Canterbury Show of livestock.
(WSJ, 9/66/96, p.B8)
1832 Jean Giono wrote his 1954
novel: "The Horseman on the Roof." In 1996 it was made into a film
directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau and is set in plague-stricken Provence
in 1832.
(WSJ, 5/17/96,p.A-12)
1832 A lexicon of famous hand
gestures was written by a canon of the Cathedral of Naples. In 2000 it
was translated by to English by Andrea de Jorio.
(SFCM, 3/11/01, p.32)
1832 Berlioz composed "Lelio."
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.E1)
1832 The Hudson Bay Company
founded its trading post of Fort Nisqually. 2nd source has it
established in 1833, 15 miles south of Tacoma as the hub of the Puget
Sound Agricultural Company.
(AM, Vol. 48, No. 3)(HT, 3/97, p.8)
1832 Pres. Jackson dispatched the
US Navy to South Carolina to quash an effort to nullify federal tariffs
within the state.
(WSJ, 5/19/05, p.D8)
1832 Pres. Jackson sent the
frigate Potomac to bombard the pirate lair of Kuala Batu.
(WSJ, 10/9/01, p.A22)
1832 The US Congress passed a law
that required all US citizens to fast and pray one day a week. It was
neither enforced nor observed.
(SFC, 10/31/98, p.D4)
1832 Congress set aside the
thermal springs at Hot Springs, Ark., as a federal reservation.
(USAT, 2/4/04, p.9A)
1832 Phrenology, the "science" of
reading the human personality from bumps on the skull, was brought to
America by German physician Johann Spurzheim. It was founded on the
theory that the brain had 35 to 45 sectors, each the site of a
particular character trait such as appetite, combativeness and
benevolence. Phrenology gained an enthusiastic following in America and
spawned a whole industry producing phrenological paraphernalia. Cranial
"maps" could be purchased to chart the topography of the skull and
reveal the subject's true self. Although phrenology was ultimately
rejected as having no basis in scientific fact, it reflected
19th-century scientists' growing interest in the workings of the human
brain.
(HNPD, 5/20/99)
1832 Alfred Mosher Butts, an
architect in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., invented the game he called "Lexico."
He made millions after the name was changed to "Scrabble." [see 1938]
(SFEC, 2/9/97, z1 p.6)
1832 A cholera epidemic hit
Baltimore and at least 853 people were killed. Fundamentalist
Christians blamed the deaths on the "judgement of God."
(SFEC, 3/5/00, Z1 p.4)
1832 Charles Carroll, one of the
signers of the US Declaration of Independence, died at age 95.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, Z1 p.7)
1832 Franz Sacher, a chef in the
employ of Prince Metternich, invented the torte. Family documents at
the Hotel Sacher in Vienna support the claim.
(SFEM, 10/13/96, p.14)
1832 The United Kingdom passed the
Anatomy Act, which allowed hospitals and workhouses to hand over for
dissection bodies left unclaimed for two days.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.99)
1832 Honore Daumier, French
artist, was imprisoned for 6 months for his barbs against King
Louis-Philippe.
(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)
1832 Charles-Louis Havas sets up a
foreign newspapers translation agency.
(www.afp.com)
1832 Jul 1, The firm Jardine,
Matheson & Co. was founded in Canton following a meeting between
William Jardine and another Scots trader, James Matheson from
Sutherland.
(Econ, 6/30/07, SR p.13)
1832 In Kazakhstan Akmolinsk was
founded. It was later renamed Tselinograd and then Akmola. In 1998 it
became the capital and was renamed Astana, which means capital.
(SFC, 5/22/98, p.A14)
1832 In Sweden King Karl XIV Johan
inaugurated the Göta Canal.
(SFEC, 4/20/97, p.T8)
1832-1889 Juan Montalvo, Ecuadorian essayist and
political writer: "There is nothing harder than the softness of
indifference."
(AP, 7/23/99)
1832-1904 Luigi Palma di Cesnola was born in Italy
and later served for the Union Army in the Civil War. He was appointed
as American Consul to Cyprus in 1865, where he collected many
artifacts. He later sold his collection to the NYC Metropolitan Museum.
(AM, 7/00, p.60)
1832-1907 Moncure D. Conway, American clergyman and
author: "It is the darling delusion of mankind that the world is
progressive in religion, toleration, freedom, as it is progressive in
machinery."
(AP, 3/19/99)
1833 Jan 3, Britain seized control
of the Malvina Islands (Falkland Islands) in the South Atlantic. In
1982 Argentina seized the islands, but Britain took them back after a
74-day war.
(AP, 1/3/98)(SFC, 4/3/02, p.A7)
1833 Jan 8, Boston Academy of
Music, 1st US music school, was established.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1833 Jan 19, Louis J. Ferdinand
Herold (41), French composer (Zampa), died.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1833 Jan 26, Gaetano Donizetti’s
tragic opera "Lucrezia Borgia," premiered in Milan.
(WSJ, 7/27/98, p.A12)(MC, 1/26/02)
1833 Jan 28, Charles George
"Chinese" Gordon, general (China, Khartoum), was born in London.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1833 Feb 11, Melville Weston
Fuller, 8th U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice was born.
(HN, 2/11/97)
1833 Feb 13, William Whedbee
Kirkland (d.1915), Brig Gen (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1833 Feb 17, Lt. George Back
departed Liverpool, England, on the packet ship Hibernia with 4 men to
search for missing Arctic explorer Captain John Ross. Ross had left
England in 1829 to seek a Northwest Passage by way of the Arctic Ocean.
(ON, 5/04, p.10)
1833 Mar 14, Lucy Hobbs Taylor,
first woman dentist, was born.
(HN, 3/14/98)
1833 Mar 16 Susan Hayhurst became
the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1833 Mar 20, The United States and
Siam (now Thailand) concluded a commercial treaty in Bangkok.
(AP, 3/20/97)
1833 Apr 9, The US first
tax-supported public library was founded in Peterborough, N.H.
(AP, 4/9/97)
1833 Apr 22, Richard Trevithick
(b.1771), British engineer, died in Kent, England. In 1804 he built the
first steam locomotive.
(ON, 4/04, p.6)(WSJ, 4/11/09,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick)
1833 Apr 24, A patent was granted
for the first soda fountain.
(HN, 4/24/98)
1833 May 2, Czar Nicholas banned
the public sale of serfs.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1833 May 6, John Deere made his
1st steel plow.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1833 May 7, Composer Johannes
Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, and died on Apr 3, 1897. His works
number through Opus 122 and included: the "Hungarian Dances," the
"Haydn Variations," the "Violin Concerto in D Major," "Lullaby" and
compositions for the pianoforte, organ, chamber music, orchestral
compositions, numerous songs, small and large choral works. A biography
of his life and work was written by Karl Geiringer in 1934 titled:
"Brahms: His Life and Work." In 1997 Jan Swafford published the
biography: "Johannes Brahms." In 1998 Styra Avins published "Johannes
Brahms: Life and Letters."
(BLW, Geiringer, 1963 ed.)(AP, 5/7/97)(WSJ, 12/3/97,
p.A20)(WSJ, 5/4/98, p.A20)(HN, 5/7/99)
1833 May 15, Edmund Kean (46),
English actor (Shylock), died.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1833 May 28, Johann Christian
Friedrich Haeffner (74), composer, died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1833 May 29, William Marshall
(84), composer, died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1833 Jun 27, Prudence Crandall, a
white woman, was arrested for conducting an academy for black women in
Canterbury, Conn. The academy was eventually closed.
(HN, 6/27/99)
1833 Jul 5, Joseph Nicephore
Niepce (b.1765), French inventor most noted as the inventor of
photography, died. He is well-known for taking some of the earliest
photographs, dating to the 1820s.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic%C3%A9phore_Ni%C3%A9pce)
1833 Jul 27, Bartolommea Capitanio
(26), Italian monastery founder, saint, died.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1833 Jul 29, William Wilberforce
(b.1759), English abolitionist, died. He was best known for his efforts
relating to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. A
politician and philanthropist, Wilberforce was prominent from 1787 in
the struggle to abolish the slave trade and slavery itself in British
overseas possessions. He was an ardent and eloquent sponsor of
anti-slavery legislation in the House of Commons until his retirement
in 1825. Wilberforce University in Ohio, an African Methodist Episcopal
Church institution (f.1856), was named for William Wilberforce. In 2008
William Hague authored “William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great
Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner.”
(www.nndb.com/people/824/000049677/)(WSJ, 7/25/08,
p.A13)
1833 Jul, In Australia the native
warrior Yagan was shot dead by teenage bounty hunters. He had been a
go-between for his people and European settlers in Western Australia
and later an implacable foe. His head and the tribal tattoo on his back
were hacked off and taken to Britain for study and display. The body
parts were returned in Sep 1997. A statue was erected in his honor on
an island park in Perth in 1983. It was repeatedly vandalized and its
head was sawed off in 1997 shortly after the homecoming of Yagan’s real
head.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A20)
1833 Aug 7, Powell Clayton, Brig.
General (Union volunteers), (Gov-R-Ark), was born in Pa.
(MC, 8/7/02)(Internet)
1833 Aug 8, Lt. George Back and
his team reached Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake on their
expedition to find Arctic explorer Capt. John Ross.
(ON, 5/04, p.10)
1833 Aug 9, Maximilian, German
Prince of Wied, reached Fort McKenzie, the westernmost outpost of white
settlement on the Missouri River. He was a student of natural history
and planned to collect native plants and animals and to study the
native people. He was accompanied by Swiss artist Karl Bodmer.
Maximilian’s "Travels in the Interior of North America" was published
between 1839 and 1843.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.10)
1833 Aug 11, Robert G. Ingersoll
(d.1899), American lawyer and statesman and advocate of scientific
realism and humanistic philosophy, was born. "Heresy is what the
minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines
of the weak." "The history of the world shows that when a mean thing
was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it." "Courage
without conscience is a wild beast."
(AP, 6/28/97)(AP, 6/7/98)(AP, 7/20/98)(HN, 8/10/98)
1833 Aug 12, Chicago incorporated
as a village of about 350.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago)
1833 Aug 13, The Bank of the US
under Nicholas Biddle began to contract its loans.
(Panic, p.4)
1833 Aug 17, The first steam ship
to cross the Atlantic entirely on its own power, the Canadian ship
Royal William, began her journey from Nova Scotia to The Isle of Wight.
(HN, 8/17/98)
1833 Aug 20, Benjamin Harrison,
the 23rd president of the United States (1889-1893) and grandson of
President William Henry Harrison, was born in North Bend, Ohio.
(HN 8/20/97)(AP, 8/20/99)(MC, 8/20/02)
1833 Aug 23, The British
Parliament ordered the abolition of slavery in its colonies by Aug 1,
1834. This would free some 700,000 slaves, including those in the West
Indies. The Imperial Emancipation Act also allowed blacks to enjoy
greater equality under the law in Canada as opposed to the US.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(MT, 3/96, p.14)(PC, 1992,
p.412)(AH, 10/02, p.54)
1833 Aug 28, Edward Burne-Jones,
British painter, was born.
(RTH, 8/28/99)
1833 Sep 3, The first successful
penny newspaper was published. Benjamin H. Day issued the first copy of
"The New York Sun". By 1826, circulation was the largest in the country
at 30,000. New York’s population was over 250,000, but its 11 daily
newspapers had a combined circulation of only 26,500.
(SFEM, 11/8/98,
p.12)(http://library.nyu.edu/research/news/historical/nyc.html)(WSJ,
11/7/08, p.A15)
1833 Sep 4, Barney Flaherty (10)
answered an ad in "The New York Sun" and became the first newsboy, what
we now call a paperboy.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1833 Sep 8, Charles Darwin
departed to Buenos Aires.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1833 Sep 20, Petroleum V. Nasby
(David Ross Locke), humorist, was born. His work was enjoyed by Abraham
Lincoln.
(HN, 9/20/00)
1833 Sep 20, Charles Darwin rode a
horse to Buenos Aires.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1833 Sep 27, Charles Darwin rode a
horse to Santa Fe.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1833 Sep 28, Lemuel Haynes,
Revolutionary War veteran, died at 88.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1833 Sep 29, King Ferdinand of
Spain died and his daughter Isabella was proclaimed as queen. A civil
war broke out in Spain between Carlisists, who believed Don Carlos
deserved the throne, and supporters of Queen Isabella.
(HNQ, 8/20/98)(HN, 9/29/98)
1833 Oct 1, Charles Darwin reached
Rio Tercero, Argentina.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1833 Oct 2, The NY Anti-Slavery
Society was organized.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1833 Oct 12, Charles Darwin began
his return trip to Buenos Aires.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1833 Oct 19, Adam Lindsay Gordon,
Australian poet, was born.
(HN, 10/19/00)
1833 Oct 20, Charles Darwin
reached the river mouth of Parana.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1833 Oct 21, Alfred Bernhard Nobel
(d.1896) was born in Sweden. The chemist, engineer and industrialist
who invented dynamite, later established the prestigious Nobel prizes
to honor the world’s greatest scientists, writers and peacemakers. In
1859, after four years in the United States, Nobel returned to Sweden
and built a factory to manufacture the explosive nitro-glycerine. In
1864 the factory accidentally blew up, killing Nobel’s youngest brother
and four others. Two years later, Nobel invented dynamite, a safe and
manageable form of nitro-glycerine. A pacifist by nature, Nobel hoped
that the destructive power of his invention would bring an end to
wars. By the time of his death on December 10, 1897, Nobel had
acquired a massive fortune. In his will, he left instructions that the
bulk of his estate should endow the annual Nobel prizes for those who
had most contributed to the areas of physics, chemistry, medicine,
literature and peace. In 1968, a sixth award for economics was
established.
(WUD, 1994, p.969)(SFEC,12/797, Par p.28)(HNPD,
10/21/98)(HNPD, 10/21/99)
1833 Oct, Capt. John Ross
(1877-1856), Arctic explorer, returned to England.
(www.collectionscanada.ca/explorers/h24-1810-e.html)
1833 Nov 12, Aleksandr
Porfirievich Borodin (d.1887), physician, chemist, composer (Prince
Igor), was born in Russia. His work included the "Sunless" and
the opera "Prince Igor,’ which was left incomplete.
(SFEC, 6/27/99, p.T11)(WSJ, 2/6/00, p.A16)(MC,
11/12/01)(LGC, 1970, p.338)
1833 Nov 13, Edwin Thomas Booth,
actor (Hamlet), was born.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1833 Nov 14, Charles Darwin
departed by horse to Montevideo.
(MC, 11/14/01)
1833 Nov 20, Charles Darwin
reached Punta Gorda and saw Rio Uruguay.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1833 Nov 28, Charles Darwin rode
through Las Pietras while returning to Montevideo.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1833 Dec 3, Carlos Juan Finlay,
Cuban epidemiologist, was born.
(HN, 12/3/00)
1833 Dec 3, Oberlin College in
Ohio, the first truly coeducational school of higher learning in the
United States, opened its doors.
(AP, 12/3/98)
1833 Dec 4, American Anti-Slavery
Society was formed by Arthur Tappan in Phila.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1833 Dec 6, John Singleton Mosby
(d.1916), lawyer and Col. ("Grey Ghost" of Confederate Army), was born.
He later gave riding lessons to young George Patton.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1833 Dec 6, HMS Beagle and Charles
Darwin departed Rio de la Plata.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1833 Dec 12, Matthias Hohner
(d.1902), German manufacturer (harmonica), was born.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1833 Dec 13, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin arrived in Port Deseado, Patagonia.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1833 Dec 25, Charles Darwin
celebrated Christmas in Port Desire, Patagonia.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1833 Dec, William Beaumont
(d.1853), a US Army assistant surgeon, published his new book:
"Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology
of Digestion. It was based on the digestive system of Alexis St.
Martin, a fur trader who was accidentally shot in the abdomen at Fort
Mackinac in 1822.
(ON, 1/02, p.6)
1833 John Marshall Harlan
(d.1911), later US Supreme Court Justice, was born.
(WSJ, 5/28/02, p.D7)
1833 John Mohler Studebaker was
born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In 1858 joined his two older brothers
in a South Bend firm producing wagons. The company went on to become
the world’s largest producer of farm wagons and carriages, coining the
slogan: "Always give more than you promise. From the 1920s until its
closing, Studebaker was a leader in styling and engineering. Studebaker
went out of business after its 1966 Avanti model.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A12)(HNQ, 1/21/02)
1833 J.M.W. Turner completed his
1st oil painting "Bridge of Sighs and the Ducal Palace," his 1st
exhibited painting of Venice.
(WSJ, 3/17/04, p.D4)
1833 James Boardman (1801-1855),
English traveler and writer, authored “America and the Americans.”
(http://tinyurl.com/2olhxh)
1833 Alexander Pushkin, Russian
poet, wrote his poem "The Bronze Horseman" (Myedny Vsadnik).
(SFEC, 6/27/99, p.T11)(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.P12)
1833 In NYC Benjamin Day founded
the New York Sun newspaper. He appealed to a general readership and
charged a penny a copy.
(SFEM, 11/8/98, p.12)
1833 The NY Mechanics Institute
opened to encourage the mechanical arts.
(Panic, p.8)
1833 American Navy pensioners
moved into what was then called the Naval Asylum, a 180-room stone
building on the bank of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The name
was later changed to the Naval Home. It closed in 1977.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Naval_Asylum)
1833 Sylvester Graham,
Presbyterian minister, preached against overindulging the appetites and
warned that intemperance would lead to "diseased irritability and
inflammation, painful sensibility, and finally, disorganization and
death." His whole wheat Graham flour was the main ingredient in Graham
crackers.
(WSJ, 9/29/00, p.W17)
1833 George C. Yount built the
first structure in Sonoma, Ca., and planted the first grape vines in
Napa Valley, the coarse Mission variety.
(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.T4)(SSFC, 1/21/01, p.T8)
1833 In New Orleans the Lafayette
Cemetery No. 1 opened to take in the victims of yellow fever.
(Hem., 1/97, p.65)
1833 John Anderson, a
Kentucky-based slave trader, was one of 10 dealers who, during a
cholera epidemic, petitioned to move the Natchez, Miss., slave market
outside the city limits.
(WSJ, 12/2/04, p.D12)
1833 The McKesson Corp. began as a
drugstore in NYC.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.B1)
1833 Charles Babbage abandoned his
calculator project completely in favor of a programmable machine. It
was to be controlled by punched cards adapted from the devices French
weavers used to control thread sequences in their looms.
(I&I, Penzias, p.95)
1833 An improved version of the
typographer (typewriter) was made in France. The early versions were
chiefly for the blind as they produced embossed writing.
(SJSVB, 3/25/96, p.27)
1833 George Fibbleton invented the
first shaving machine. It was an imperfect device that left numerous
scars on his face.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)
1833 Walter Hunt of NY state
invented a lock stitching sewing machine, but it was never patented.
(ON, 11/00, p.9)
1833 M. Tournal published his
paper General Consideration on the Phenomenon of Bone Caverns. His work
is one of the first accounts which produced evidence of the
contemporaneity of man and extinct animals.
(RFH-MDHP, p.84)
1833 John James Audubon visited
Canada’s Grand Manan Island off the southeast coast of New Brunswick to
see herring gulls nesting in trees.
(NH, 9/96, p.58)
1833 England passed stronger
measures regulating child labor.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R28)
1833 In Paris the St. Vincent de
Paul Society was founded to provide aid to the poor.
(SFC, 9/15/98, p.A9)
1833 The slave trade in Ghana
ended.
(AP, 7/11/09)
1833 Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian
revolutionary, was forced to flee Italy following a failed uprising
against Austrian rule in northern Italy. In 1939 he arrived in Brazil
to aid the rebel cause.
(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1833 In Jamaica Annie Palmer, a
"white witch," was murdered in her bed. She had reportedly murdered 3
husbands and various lovers and slaves. She was later said to haunt
Rose Hall.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, p.T7)
1833 Aoki Mokubei (b.1767),
Japanese poet and potter, died.
(NYT, 10/8/04, p.B35)
1833 Mexico took mission property
from the Church and turned out the Acagchemem Indians at Mission San
Juan Capistrano.
(HT, 3/97, p.61)
1833 The people of Iztapalapa,
Mexico, began re-enacting the Passion of Christ, to give thanks for
divine protection during a cholera epidemic.
(AP, 4/5/06)
1833 Sir Henry C. Rawlinson was
sent to Persia as one of a group of British officers charged with
reorganizing the Shah’s army.
(RFH-MDHP, p.193)
1833-1841 Lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key was the
U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia serving under three
presidents. Key penned the verses to "The Star-Spangled Banner" after
watching the British bombardment of Fort McHenry on the night of
September 13, 1814, during the War of 1812. Key’s four-stanza verse was
later put to the tune of a British drinking song and became enormously
popular. It officially became the American national anthem on March 3,
1931. These were the only lyrics Key ever composed.
(HNQ, 8/3/99)
1833-1868 The Carlist Wars comprised the dynastic
struggle in Spain between Isabelline liberalism and the reactionary
rural traditionalism represented by Don Carlos. With the death of
Ferdinand on September 29, 1833, and the proclamation of his daughter
Isabella as queen—excluding Ferdinand’s brother Don Carlos from the
succession—the First Carlist War was ignited.
(HNQ, 8/20/98)
1833-1905 Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, German
geographer and geologist. He coined the expression "Silk Road" to
describe the ancient trade routes between China and the West.
(AM, 7/00, p.72)
1834 Jan 10, Lord Acton [John E.E.
Dalberg], English historian and editor of The Rambler, a Roman Catholic
monthly, was born.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1834 Jan 29, President Jackson
ordered the 1st use of US troops to suppress a labor dispute. Jackson
ordered the War Department to put down a "riotous assembly" near
Willamsport, Maryland, among Irish laborers constructing the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal.
(HNQ, 1/23/99)(MC, 1/29/02)
1834 Jan, New of the failure of
business houses and banks in Philadelphia, NY, and Washington heralded
the newspapers.
(Panic, p.4)
1834 Feb 8, Dmitri Ivanovich
Mendeleyev (d.1907), Russian chemist, was born. He formulated the
periodic table of elements.
(V.D.-H.K.p.324)(HN, 2/8/01)
1834 Feb 9, Franz Xaver Witt,
composer, was born.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1834 Feb 26, New York and New
Jersey ratified the 1st US interstate crime compact.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1834 Mar 6, The city of York in
Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.
(AP, 3/6/98)
1834 Mar 22, Horace Greeley
published "New Yorker," a weekly literary and news magazine and
forerunner of Harold Ross' more successful "The New Yorker."
(HN, 3/22/01)
1834 Mar 24, John Wesley Powell,
US, geologist, explorer, ethnologist, was born.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(MC, 3/24/02)
1834 Mar 24, William Morris,
English craftsman, poet, socialist, was born.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1834 Mar 28, The US Senate voted
to censure Pres. Jackson for the removal of federal deposits from the
Bank of the United States. The Senate declared that Pres. Andrew
Jackson: "in the last executive proceedings in relation to the public
revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by
the constitution and laws, but in derogation of both."
(AP, 3/28/97)
1834 Apr 1, Isidore Edouard
Legouix, composer, was born.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1834 Apr 2, Frederic-Auguste
Bartholdi, sculptor (Statue of Liberty), was born in Colmar,
France.
(HN, 4/2/01)
1834 Apr 13, HMS Beagle anchored
at river mouth of Rio Santa Cruz, Patagonia.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1834 Apr 15, The Honore Daumier
painting "Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834" showed the ghastly
aftermath of a civilian massacre by French government forces.
(WSJ, 5/9/00, p.A24)
1834 Apr 18, William Lamb became
the prime minister of England.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1834 Apr 26, Artemus Ward,
(Charles Farrar Browne), humorist, was born.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1834 Apr 29, Charles Darwin's
expedition saw the top of Andes from Patagonia.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1834 May 5, The first mainland
railway line opened in Belgium.
(HN, 5/5/98)
1834 May 5, Charles Darwin's
expedition continued at Rio Santa Cruz.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1834 May 20, The Marquis de
Lafayette (78), US Revolutionary War hero (Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche
Gilbert du Motier), died in Paris, France. He was the 1st foreigner to
address Congress. In 2002 Congress moved to make him an honorary US
citizen. In 1983 Olivier Bernier authored “Lafayette, Hero of Two
Worlds.” In 200 Harlow Giles Unger authored “Lafayette.”
(WSJ, 1/15/97, p.A12)(SFC, 7/23/02, p.A2)(ON, 2/09,
p.5)(www.marquisdelafayette.net/)
1834 Jun 2, The 5th national black
convention met in NYC.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1834 Jun 21, Cyrus Hall McCormick
received a patent for his reaping machine.
(AP, 6/21/97)(HN, 6/21/98)
1834 Jun 30, Congress passed the
final Indian Intercourse Act. In addition to regulating relations
between Indians living on Indian land and non-Indians, this final act
identified an area known as "Indian country". This land was described
as being "…all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi
and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory
of Arkansas…" This is the land that became known as Indian Territory.
Oklahoma was declared Indian Territory.
(SFCM, 3/9/08,
p.20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Intercourse_Act)
1834 Jul 10, James Abbott McNeil
Whistler (d.1903), US expatriate painter famous for painting his
mother, was born.
(HN, 7/10/98)(WUD, 1994 p.1628)
1834 Jul 15, Lord Napier of
England arrived at Macao, China as the first chief superintendent of
trade.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1834 Jul 19, Hilaire Germain Edgar
Degas (d.1917), French impressionist painter. His mother was a Creole
and he journeyed to New Orleans in 1872. His work included "The
Millinery Shop," "Combing the Hair," "Nude Fixing Her Hair," "Two
Dancers" (c1890-1898), "Frieze of Dancers" (1893-1898), "Self Portrait"
(c1863-1865 & c1895-1900) and "Blue Dancers" (1895). He also
collected art and by the time of his death had amassed more than 500
paintings and 5,000 prints. The collection was auctioned off in Paris
from Mar 1918 to Jul 1919. His time in New Orleans is covered in the
1997 book "Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate
Chopin and George Washington Cable" by Christopher Benfey.
(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A11)(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994,
p.380)(WSJ, 10/2/96, p.B5)(SFC,
10/22/96,p.E8)(WSJ,10/21/97,p.A20)(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)(HN, 7/19/98)
1834 Jul 23, James Gibbons,
American religious leader and founder of Catholic University, was born.
(HN, 7/23/98)
1834 Jul 25, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (b.1772), English poet, died. He and his friend William
Wordsworth were among the founders of the Romantic Movement in England
and later identified, along with Robert Southey, as the Lake School of
poets. Coleridge’s work included "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"
"Frost at Midnight" and "Kubla Khan." In his later life he authored the
"Bibliographia Literaria," a work of literary theory. In 1999 Richard
Holmes published "Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804-1834," which
focused on the poet's later life. His volume "Coleridge: Early Visions"
was published in 1989. In 2007 Adam Sisman authored “The Friendship:
Wordsworth & Coleridge.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor)(WSJ, 4/15/99,
p.A20)(WSJ, 2/20/07, p.D8)
1834 Aug 1, The British
Emancipation Act began. This ended slavery in the West Indies and all
Caribbean holdings. Slavery was abolished throughout the British
Empire. Some 35,000 slaves were freed in the Cape Colony. The Minstrels
Parada in Cape Town, SA, originated as a spontaneous outpouring of
marches, music and dancing to mark the abolition of slavery.
(NH, 7/98, p.29)(HN, 8/1/98)(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)(AP,
1/2/06)
1834 Aug 18, Mt. Vesuvius erupted.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1834 Aug 31, Amilcare Ponchielli,
composer (La Gioconda), was born in Paderno, Italy.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1834 Aug, The barque Charles Eaton
was wrecked on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 2 years later the
schooner Isabella arrived in Sydney with the cabin boy of the lost
ship, a 5-year old child and 17 skulls of passengers murdered on
Boydang Island. This event prompted an expedition to survey the reef,
the Torres Strait and the southern coast of new Guinea. In 2005 Jordan
Goodman authored “The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral
Sea,” an account of the survey expedition.
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.88)
1834 Sep 9, Parliament passed the
Municipal Corporations Act, reforming city and town governments in
England.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1834 Sep 16, The Bank of the US
abandoned its policy of loan curtailment as Nicholas Biddle moved to
secure a new charter from the state of Pennsylvania.
(Panic, p.4)
1834 Sep 27, Charles Darwin
returned to Valparaiso.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1834 Oct 8, Francois-Adrien
Boiledieu (58), composer (La Dame Blanche), died.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1834 Oct 16, In London the Houses
of Parliament caught fire and many historic documents were burned.
J.M.W. created two oil paintings of the burning of the Houses of
Parliament.
(www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/england/london/parliament/barry.html)(Econ,
9/29/07, p.90)
1834 Oct, Constantine Samuel
Rafinisque submitted an essay to the Royal Institute of France on the
language of the Delaware Indians.
(NH, 10/96, p.16)
1834 Nov 1, The 1st published
reference to poker was as Mississippi riverboat game.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1834 Nov 10, HMS Beagle with
Charles Darwin sailed from Valparaiso.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1834 Nov 14, William Thomson
entered Glasgow Univ. at 10 yrs 4 months.
(MC, 11/14/01)
1834 Nov 21, HMS Beagle anchored
at Bay of San Carlos, Chile.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1834 Nov 23, Hector Berlioz's
"Harold in Italy," premiered.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1834 Nov 25, Jean-Baptist Colyns,
composer, was born.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1834 Nov 25, Delmonico's, one of
NY's finest restaurants, provided a meal of soup, steak, coffee &
half a pie for 12 cents.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.6)
1834 Nov, John Heckewelder,
Moravian missionary, published a list of Lenape Indian names, a
Delaware Indian tribe.
(NH, 10/96, p.16)
1834 Dec 3, 1st US dental society
was organized in NY.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1834 Dec 10, Robert Peel
(1788-1850) became prime minister of Britain after launching the first
national election manifesto in British history.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel)
1834 Dec 23, Joseph Hansom of
London received a patent for Hansom cabs.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1834 Dec 25, Charles Darwin
celebrated Christmas on Beagle at Tres Montes, Chile.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1834 Dec 27, Charles Lamb
(b.1775), English critic, poet, essayist, died. "No one ever regarded
the first of January with indifference. It is the nativity of our
common Adam."
(AP,
12/31/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lamb)
1834 Dec 29, Thomas R. Malthus
(b.1766), English vicar, economist ("Essay On Population"), died.
(Internet)
1834 Dec, Constantine Samuel
Rafinisque submitted a supplement to the Royal Institute of France to
his essay on the language of the Delaware Indians.
(NH, 10/96, p.16)
1834 James McNeill Whistler
(d.1903), American painter and etcher, was born in Lowell Mass., the
son of a civil engineer. He grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, where
his father was overseeing a railway line. He attended West Point and
was expelled. He left the US for good at age 21 and painted beside
Gustave Courbet. He worked in France and England after 1855. He painted
"The White Girl."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1628)(WSJ, 5/31/95, p. A-14)
1834 Honore Daumier created his
lithograph "The Legislative Belly."
(WSJ, 5/9/00, p.A24)
1834 Frederick Marryat authored
the novel “Jacob Faithfully.” The term Shiver My Timbers!, an expletive
denoting surprise or disbelief, was first seen in this book. It alluded
to a ship's striking a rock or shoal so hard that her timbers shiver.
In 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson found the term to be the perfect
exclamation for the irascible Long John Silver: "So! Shiver me timbers,
here's Jim Hawkins!" This stereotypical expletive became extremely
popular with writers of sea yarns and Hollywood swashbucklers.
(www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/16871)
1834 "Turkey in the Straw" became
a popular tune in the US.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, Z1 p.8)
1834 Gaetano Donizetti had the
premier of his opera "Rosmonda d’Inghilterra," a story of Rosamond
Clifford, who was put in a tower by her lover King Henry II.
(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)
1834 A new brass plaque was forged
in 1996 for the San Francisco Pioneer Monument that reads: With their
efforts over in 1934, the missionaries left behind about 56,000
converts- and 150,000 dead. Half the original native American
population had perished during this time from diseases, armed attacks
and mistreatment.
(SFC, 4/17/96, p.A-13)
1834 Pres. Jackson had special
1804 silver dollars minted for the sultan of Muscat (later Oman) and
the King of Siam (later Thailand) for trade treaties negotiated by
Edmund Roberts.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.A6)
1834 Roger Brooke Taney was
nominated to the US Supreme Court.
(WSJ, 11/21/06, p.D8)
1834 New York and New Jersey made
a compact over Ellis Island, then a 3-acre site that held that the
surrounding submerged land belonged to New Jersey. By 1998 the island
was 27.5 acres due to landfill and its ownership was under contention.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A2)
1834 California’s 1st printing
press, an old wooden Ramage press, was off-loaded at Monterey, Ca. It
later produced the 1st issues of 5 California newspapers of the gold
rush. It was burned by ruffians in Columbia, Ca, on Nov 13, 1861.
(CVG, Vol 16, p.10)
1834 Orders to secularize the
California missions arrived from Mexico and ended mission ownership by
the Franciscans. General Mariano Vallejo also arrived to Mission San
Francisco Solano de Sonoma. General Vallejo’s job was to establish a
town and so Sonoma was designed around a central plaza.
(WCG, p.58)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W34)
1834 A crippled Hojun-maru junk,
blown off course with 3 Japanese castaways, washed ashore on Cape
Flattery in Washington state. Makah Indians seized the cargo, enslaved
the sailors and then sold them to the Hudson’s Bay Company.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.64)
1834 Bolivia’s Penal Code of
1834, Article 139, stated: "Anyone who conspires directly and in fact
to establish another religion in Bolivia or (promotes) that the
Republic cease to profess the Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Religion,
is traitor and will be punished with the death penalty."
(http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/rihand/Bolivia.html)
1834 Lord Sandys, English governor
of Bengal, took a sample of an Indian sauce to an apothecary in
Worcester, 100 miles northwest of London, and asked the pharmacists
John Wheeley Lea and William Perrins to make a similar batch. The new
batch tasted awful until it was allowed to age for a while. They then
put together what became known worldwide as Worcestershire Sauce. [2nd
source gave an 1835 date]
(WSJ, 7/22/96, p.A1)(SFC, 4/12/97, p.E3)
1834 Sardines were canned in
Europe for the first time.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, Z1 p.8)
1834 Henry Fox Talbot, a wealthy
English gentleman, began experimenting with silver chloride to produce
photographic images.
(ON, 4/00, p.9)
1834 William Russell Birch
(b.1755), English-born artist, died. He had settled in Philadelphia
with his son in 1794 and in 1800 published 28 drawn and engraved
hand-colored images of Philadelphia.
(SFC, 5/18/02, p.E6)
1834 Joseph-Marie Jacquard
(b.1752), French loom maker and inventor, died. In 2004 James Essinger
authored “Jacquard’s Web,” a biography that connects Jacquard’s work to
computer technology.
(WSJ, 11/12/04, p.W10)
1834 Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de
Nemours, founder of a large gun powder operation, died. The company was
re-charted as a partnership and then the French and original
stockholders were all bought out buy the family. General Henry du Pont,
the 2nd son of E.I. du Pont led the company till his death in 1899.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R46)
1834 Banco Economico SA was
founded in Brazil. In 1995 this 8th largest bank in Brazil and the
oldest bank in Latin America failed and was taken over by the central
bank.
(WSJ, 8/15/95, p. A-6)
1834 In London Joe Hansom put his
Hansom cabs onto the streets.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, Z1 p.8)
1834 Mexico granted Don Salvio
Pacheco 18,000 acres in northern California known as Monte del Diablo,
which included what would later became Concord and Walnut Creek. The
family later donated land to the government for roads and public
buildings. The area was originally inhabited by the Bolbones Indians.
(SFC, 12/31/99, p.A22)(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A13)(SFC,
7/17/06, p.B5)
1834 A Frenchman invented a wire
nail-making machine.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, Z1 p.8)
1834 Carl Friedrich Uhlig of
Germany developed the German concertina.
(BAAC, 8/96, p.6)
1834 Slavery was abolished in
Guyana and people from India were brought in to work on sugar
plantations.
(SFC, 3/19/01, p.A8)
1834 At the Shrine of the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem the ceremony of the Holy Fire led to a stampede
in which many people were killed.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.82)
1834 The maharaja of Jammu was
able to annex Ladakh, a West Tibetan kingdom.
(SFEC,12/14/97, p.T4)
1834-1840 10-20,000 Afrikaners set out on the Great
Trek to get away from British rule. This was less than 20% of the
Afrikaners of the frontier districts.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 563)
1834-1858 Imam Shamil (1797-1871) ruled over a
self-proclaimed imamat (Chechnya). He united part of the North
Caucasian highlanders in their struggle against tsarist Russia and set
up a theocratic sharia state known as imamat that resisted Tsarist
Russia for 27 years.
(www.chechnyafree.ru)
1834-1861 The Citizens Bank of Louisiana, a
predecessor of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., secured loans with
mortgages and thousands of slaves. Bernard de Marigny, plantation owner
and one of the richest men of the epoch, put 62 slaves into the banks
books as collateral for borrowed money to support his gambling habit.
(WSJ, 5/10/05, p.A1)
1834-1888 Currier and Ives lithographs, manufactured
in New York and form a sweeping pictorial record of mid-19th century
America. When he first opened his shop, Nathaniel Currier had just
finished an apprenticeship in lithography, an 18th-century printing
process involving making images from inked stones. When an 1835 fire
destroyed much of old New Amsterdam, Currier rushed a lithograph of the
disaster into print. Ruins of the Merchant's Exchange, NY (shown above)
sold briskly and launched Currier's career in pictorial journalism. In
1852, Currier hired bookkeeper and lithographer James Ives, making him
a business partner in 1857. Together the two men built Currier and Ives
into the most successful lithography house of their time and left a
legacy of more than 7,000 prints that document the humor, political
climate, current events and sentiments of mid-19th-century American
life.
(HNPD, 11/15/98)
1834-1894 Philip G. Hamerton, English artist and
essayist: "Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a
wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original
author?"
(AP, 5/2/99)
1834-1896 William Morris, founder of the Socialist
League and active in painting, designing, printing and literature. He
was born in Walthamstow (near London), England. His biography is
written by Fiona MacCarthy in 1995 and titled: William Morris: A Life
for Our Time. She describes Morris as wearing Nietzsche’s "mask of the
great man," i.e. one who embraces a gargantuan cause not out of
conviction but simply because he feels that this is what he is supposed
to do.
(WSJ, 9/15/95, p.A-14)
1834-1896 Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian.
Treitschke coined the word and concept of "lebensraum"-German for
"living space"-which was later embraced by Hitler in his drive for
domination of Europe. Von Treitschke believed Prussia should be a world
power and should seize whatever land it needed. German geographer
Karl Haushofer took the idea to justify Germany’s need for more
territory for a growing population, and that notion was subsequently
taken up by Hitler and the Nazis. Haushofer became one of
Hitler’s closest advisers and his theories, known as "Weltpolitik" were
among the cornerstones of Nazi expansion.
(WUD, 1994, p.1509)(HNQ, 4/9/99)
1834-1902 Lord Acton, English historian: "Liberty is
not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest
political end."
(AP, 10/4/99)
1834-1902 John Wesley Powell, American scientist and
explorer. He explored the canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers. he
was the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology and a director of the
Geological Survey (1881-1892).
(HFA, ‘96, p.127)
1834-1910 Leon Walras, French economist. He founded
the marginalist school of economic thought, which held that prices
depend on the level of customer demand. He developed a mathematical
formulation of the mechanics of the price system with equations that
tied together theories of production, exchange, money and capital. His
general equilibrium theory is called "Walrasion general equilibrium"
and is still part of modern economic theory.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1834-1919 Ernst Haeckel, German biologist,
morphologist and philosopher. He coined the terms ecology and phylogeny
and proposed the theory that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
(WUD, 1994, p.635)(NH, 12/98, p.4,56)
1835 Jan 17, Antanas Baranauskas
(d.1902), Lithuanian poet and bishop, was born in Anyksciai.
(LC, 1998, p.8)(LHC, 1/17/03)
1835 Jan 18, Cesar A. Cui, fort
architect, composer, was born in Vilnius, Lithuania.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1835 Jan 31, Richard Lawrence
misfired at President Andrew Jackson (aka 'Old Hickory') at the White
House. Lawrence fired 2 pistols at Pres. Andrew Jackson during funeral
services for Rep. Warren Davis. Jackson wasn’t hit and Lawrence, who
thought he was the king of England and that Jackson owed him money, was
found to be insane.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A6)(HN, 1/31/99)(SFC, 2/5/00, p.B3)
1835 Jan, Consiguina volcano in
Nicaragua erupted and threw ash as far away as Mexico and Jamaica.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.F5)
1835 Feb 20, Concepcion, Chile,
was destroyed by earthquake and some 5,000 died.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1835 Feb 22, HMS Beagle with
Charles Darwin left Valdivia, Chile.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1835 Mar 3, Congress authorized a
US mint at New Orleans, LA.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1835 Mar 4, HMS Beagle moved into
Bay of Concepcion.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1835 Mar 6, Charles Ewing
(d.1883), Brig General (Union volunteers), was born.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1835 Mar 7, HMS Beagle returned
from Concepcion to Valparaiso.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1835 Mar 10, Charles Darwin in a
letter to Carolyn Darwin described a massive earthquake in Concepcion,
Chile.
(NH, 5/96, p.7)
1835 Mar 12, Simon Newcomb, US
scientist, mathematician, astronomer, was born.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1835 Mar 13, Charles Darwin
departed Valparaiso for Andes crossing.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1835 Mar 18, Charles Darwin
departed Santiago, Chile, on his way to Portillo Pass.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1835 Mar 23, Charles Darwin
reached Los Arenales in the Andes.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1835 Mar 27, The Mexican army
massacred Texan rebels at Gohad.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1835 Mar 29, Elihu Thomson, the
English-born American inventor of electric welding and arc lighting,
was born.
(HN, 3/29/99)
1835 Apr 10, Charles Darwin
returned to Santiago, Chile.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1835 Apr 26, Frederic Chopin’s
"Grand Polonaise Brillante," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1835 Apr, Hans Christian Andersen
(1805-1875) published novel “Improvisatore,” an alternative version of
his own life based on his travel experiences in Italy.
(ON, 7/06, p.7)
1835 May 6, The 1st edition of NY
Herald was priced at 1 cent. The Herald specialized in crime with an
emphasis on murder. James Gordon Bennett was the Scottish-born steward
of the Herald. Within a few years of the 1936 Jewett murder case, a
coalition of clergymen, financiers and rival editors waged a "Moral
War" against Bennett and his newspaper
(SFEM, 11/8/98, p.12)(SFEM, 8/6/00, p.45)(MC, 5/6/02)
1835 May 12, Charles Darwin
visited the copper mines in North Chile.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1835 May 13, John Nash, British
town planner, architect (Regent's Park), died.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1835 May 14, Charles Darwin
reached Coquimbo in Northern Chile.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1835 May 26, Edward Porter
Alexander, brigadier general of artillery, was born.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1835 May 26, A resolution was
passed in the U.S. Congress stating that Congress has no authority over
state slavery laws.
(HN, 5/26/99)
1835 Jun 2, St. Pius X, 257th
Roman Catholic pope (1903-14), was born.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1835 Jun 2, P.T. Barnum and his
circus began 1st tour of US.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1835 Jul 4, The Boston and
Worcester Railroad was inaugurated.
(WSJ, 7/3/96, p.A8)
1835 Jul 6, John Marshall, the 3rd
chief justice of the US Supreme Court, died at the age of 79. Two days
later, while tolling in his honor in Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell
cracked. Marshall served on the court for 34 years.
(HN, 7/6/98)(SFC, 9/5/05, p.A8)
1835 Jul 8, The US Liberty Bell in
Philadelphia cracked while being tolled for Chief Justice John
Marshall. It was never rung again.
(HFA, ‘96, p.34)(HN, 7/6/98)(WSJ, 12/10/96, p.A20)
1835 Jul 28, King Louis Philippe
of France survived an assassination attempt by Giuseppe Maria Fieschi,
who rigged 25 guns together and fired them all with the pull of a
single trigger.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9034220&query=July%20Revolution)
1835 Aug 2, Elisha Grey, inventor
(Telephone), was born.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1835 Aug 10, Mob of whites and
oxen pulled a black school to a swamp outside of Canaan, NH.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1835 Aug 18, The last Pottawatomie
Indians left Chicago.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1835 Aug 25, Ann Rutledge (22),
said to be Lincoln's true love, died in Ill.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1835 Aug 31, Angry mob in
Charleston, South Carolina, seized U-S mail containing abolitionist
literature and burned it in public.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1835 Sep 13, Ladd & Co. began
the 1st sugar cane plantation in Hawaii.
(www.laddfamily.com/Files/Hawaii.htm)
1835 Sep 15, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin reached the Galapagos Islands, a scattering of 19 small
islands and scores of islets.
(SFC, 12/4/94, p. T-5)(www.gct.org/darwinfact.html)
1835 Sep 17, Charles Darwin landed
on Chatham in the Galapagos-archipelago.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1835 Sep 23, HMS Beagle sailed to
Charles Island in the Galapagos archipelago.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1835 Sep 26, Gaetano Donizetti's
opera "Lucia di Lammermoor," premiered in Naples.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1835 Sep, Texans petitioned for
statehood separate from Coahuila. They wrote out their needs and their
complaints in The Declaration of Causes. This document was designed to
convince the Federalists that the Texans desired only to preserve the
1824 Constitution, which guaranteed the rights of everyone living on
Mexican soil. But by this time, Santa Anna was in power, having seized
control in 1833, and he advocated the removal of all foreigners. His
answer was to send his crack troops, commanded by his brother-in-law,
General Martin Perfecto de Css, to San Antonio to disarm the Texans.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Oct 2, The first battle of
the Texas Revolution took place as American settlers fought Mexican
soldiers near the Guadalupe River; the Mexicans ended up withdrawing.
(AP, 10/2/08)
1835 Oct 8, HMS Beagle and Charles
Darwin reached James Island, Galapagos archipelago.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1835 Oct 9, Camille Saint-Saens,
composer (Carnival of the Animals, Organ Symphony, Samson et Dalilah),
was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1835 Oct 20, HMS Beagle left the
Galapagos Archipelago and sailed to Tahiti.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1835 Oct 23, Adlai Ewing
Stevenson, (D) 23rd VP (1893-97), was born.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1835 Oct 29, In NYC Tammany Hall
radicals lit candles with the new self-igniting friction matches, known
as loco-focos, and continued to nominate their own ticket and formulate
their program. The radical urban wing of the Democratic Party, which
emerged in New York in opposition to Andrew Jackson‘s banking policies,
thus became known by the nickname Loco-Focos. Also known as Equal
Rights men, the Loco-Focos fought those financial interests aided by
the regular Democratic Party in applying for bank and corporation
charters from the legislature. They also advocated hard money,
elections by direct popular vote, direct taxes, free trade, abolition
of monopolies and Jeffersonian strict construction. They got the name
Loco-Focos from an incident that occurred at a party primary meeting in
Tammany Hall. After party regulars pushed through a ticket over the
objections of the Equal Rights men, the radicals refused to vacate the
hall. To get them to leave, the party regulars turned out the gas
lights.
(HNQ, 12/17/99)
1835 Oct 31, Adelbert Ames
(d.1933), Bvt Major General (Union Army), was born.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1835 Oct 31, J.F.W. Adolf Ritter
von Baeyer, German chemist (Nobel 1905), was born.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1835 Oct, Before the Alamo,
Mexican General Css led troops against the small community of Gonzales,
since enshrined in history as the "Lexington of Texas." San Antonio de
Bixar went under military rule, with 1,200 Mexican troops under General
Css’ command. When Css ordered the small community of Gonzales, about
50 miles east of San Antonio, to return a cannon loaned to the town for
defense against Indian attack--rightfully fearing that the citizens
might use the cannon against his own troops--the Gonzales residents
refused. "Come and take it!" they taunted, setting off a charge of old
chains and scrap iron, shot from the mouth of the tiny cannon mounted
on ox-cart wheels. Although the only casualty was one Mexican soldier,
Gonzales became enshrined in history as the "Lexington of Texas." The
Texas Revolution was on.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Nov 1, Godfrey Weitzel,
(Union volunteers Major general, died in 1884), was born.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1835 Nov 4, Lunsford Lindsay Lomax
(d.1913), Major General (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1835 Nov 13, Texans officially
proclaimed Independence from Mexico, and called itself the Lone Star
Republic, after its flag, until its admission to the Union in 1845. In
2001 Randy Roberts and James S. Olson authored "A Line in the Sand," a
narrative of the Texas drive for independence.
(HN, 11/13/98)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.W6)
1835 Nov 15, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin reached Tahiti.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1835 Nov 16, Charles Darwin's
voyage account was published in Cambridge Philosophical Society.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1835 Nov 19, Fitzhugh Lee
(d.1905), Major General (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1835 Nov 23, Henry Burden invented
the first machine for manufacturing horseshoes. He then made most of
the horseshoes for the Union Cavalry in the Civil War. Burden patented
a Horseshoe manufacturing machine in Troy, NY.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p.E3)(MC, 11/23/01)
1835 Nov 24, Texas Rangers, a
mounted police force, was authorized by the Texas Provisional
Government. The Mexicans called them Los Diablos Tejanos -The Texas
Devils.
(MC, 11/24/01)(HNQ, 4/7/02)
1835 Nov 25, Andrew Carnegie
(d.1919), American industrialist, was born to a poor weaver in
Dunfermline, Scotland. He emigrated to the US in 1848 and worked as a
superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad. In invested in iron
manufacturing, railroad cars and oil and moved into the steel business
by 1873 where he improved quality and lowered costs. He sold his
interests at age 65 and retired to Scotland. He donated $5 million to a
pension fund for his workers and gave away an estimated $350 million
over the next 2 decades for public libraries, church organs and other
causes: There is no idol more debasing than the worship of money."
(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)(AP, 11/25/99)
1835 Nov 26, HMS Beagle left
Tahiti for NZ.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1835 Nov 30, Samuel Langhorne
Clemens (d.1910), author, -- better known under his penname as Mark
Twain -- was born in Florida, Mo. In 1999 Ron Powers published
"Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain." "Truth
is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick
to possibilities; truth isn't." "Everybody's private motto: It's better
to be popular than right." "Let us be thankful for the fools. But for
them, the rest of us could not succeed." "Why is it that we rejoice at
a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person
involved."
(HFA, '96, p.18)(AHD, 1971, p.1385)(WUD, 1994,
p.276)(AP, 6/2/97)(AP, 10/17/97)(AP, 11/30/97)(AP, 4/1/98)(AP,
4/21/98)(SFEC, 8/8/99, BR p.3)
1835 Dec 1, Hans Christian
Andersen published his 1st book of fairy tales.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1835 Dec 3, 1st US mutual fire
insurance company issued 1st policy in RI.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1835 Dec 4, Samuel Butler
(d.1902), English writer and painter, was born. His work included
"Erewhon" and "The Way of All Flesh." "There are two great rules of
life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that
everyone can, in the end, get what he wants if he only tries. This is
the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more
or less an exception to the general rule." "A hen is only an egg’s way
of making another egg." "Life is one long process of getting tired."
(AP, 4/25/97)(SFEC, 3/1/98, Z1 p.8)(AP, 4/22/98)(HN,
12/4/00)
1835 Dec 7, German railway
Nurnberg-Furth opened.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1835 Dec 13, Phillips Brooks, the
American Episcopal bishop, was born in Boston. He wrote the words to "O
Little Town of Bethlehem."
(AP, 12/13/99)
1835 Dec 16, A fire in New York
City destroyed property estimated to be worth $20,000,000. Beginning in
a store at Pearl and Merchant (Hanover) Streets, it lasted two days,
ravaged 17 blocks (52 acres), and destroyed 674 buildings including the
Stock Exchange, Merchants' Exchange, Post Office, and the South Dutch
Church. 13 acres were scorched. 23 of the city’s 26 fire-insurance
companies were forced into bankruptcy.
(HN, 12/16/98)(WSJ, 9/14/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 9/4/02,
p.B1)
1835 Dec 21, HMS Beagle sailed
into Bay of Islands, New Zealand.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1835 Dec 25, Charles Darwin
celebrated Christmas in Pahia, New Zealand.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1835 Dec 30, Cherokees were forced
to move across the Mississippi River after gold was discovered in
Georgia. A minority faction of Cherokee agreed to the emigration of the
whole tribe from their lands by signing the Treaty of New Echota. The
Treaty of New Echota resulted in the cession of all Cherokee land to
the U.S. and provided for the transportation of the Cherokee Indians to
land beyond the Mississippi. The removal of the Cherokee was completed
by 1838.
(NG, 5/95, p.86)(HNQ, 6/21/98)(MC, 12/30/01)
1835 Dec 30, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin sailed from NZ to Sydney.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1835 Karl Baedeker (1801-1859),
German publisher, published "Travel on the Rhine." It was later widely
considered as the 1st modern guidebook.
(SSFC, 11/30/02, p.C3)
1835 Hagop Melik-Agopian, Armenian
novelist known as "Raffi", helped develop a nationalist literature.
(Compuserve Online Enc. / Armenia)
1835 John Lloyd Stephens authored
"Incidents of Travel in Arabia Petra."
(ON, 12/99, p.5)
1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote
"Democracy in America." He predicted that henceforth equality would
always increase everywhere, and justice be thereby served in the life
of mankind. He also foresaw that democratic man, no longer protected by
traditional institutions, found himself in danger of being exposed to
the absolute tyranny of the state that he himself had created, i.e. a
case of totalitarianism. He also predicted that the extremes of social
diversity would be lost and that more human beings would tend to
cluster around a central norm. He stated that: "Americans of all ages,
all conditions and all dispositions constantly form associations." In
1938 George Wilson Pierson wrote "Tocqueville in America."
(V.D.-H.K.p.233)(Smith., 4/1995, p.134)(SFEC,
6/14/98, Par p.10)
1835 Frederic Chopin composed his
Waltz #2 in C# Minor. Chronologically this was his 5th published waltz.
(BAAC PN, Chambers, 1/8/96)
1835 The San Ysidro church was
built on the outskirts of Santa Fe, NM. It was named after the patron
saint of farmers.
(LP, Spring 2006, p.42)
1835 Pres. Andrew Jackson
succeeded in retiring the national debt largely through the sale of
public land.
(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.C18)(Panic, p.6)
1835 The 1825 Missouri abortion
law was rewritten to prohibit instrumental abortions as well as those
induced by poisons.
(SFEM, 2/1/98, p.13)
1835 There was a
workers’ walkout and strike in Lowell, Mass.
(SFEC, 9/29/96, BR p.10)
1835 The Paine Furniture Co. began
operations in Boston, Mass. It later moved to Cape Cod changed its name
to Paine’s Patio.
(SFC, 10/1/08, p.G6)
1835 The New York Sun hired
Richard Adams Locke, a Briton, as editor. He soon wrote an anonymous
series about a new telescope and observations of the moon that included
the mention of vast forests, fields of poppies and lunar animals.
Circulation soared to 19,360. In 840 he admitted to writing the moon
hoax series. In 2008 Matthew Goodman authored “the Sun and the Moon:
The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists,
and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York.”
(WSJ, 11/7/08, p.A15)
1835 Solomon Laurent Juneau, a fur
trader, laid out the eastern part of Milwaukee and became the first
president of the village in 1837. Juneau was born in Montreal and in
1818 settled on the site of Milwaukee and established a trading
business. Juneau, who became a U.S. citizen in 1831, was elected
the city‘s first mayor in 1846.
(HNQ, 2/6/00)
1835 George Calvert Yount chose to
settle in the heart of the Napa Valley at what is now called Yountville.
(SFC, 6/9/96, DB p.69)
1835 Richard Henry Dana, writer,
arrived in SF aboard the brig Pilgrim.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W34)
1835 Alexander Forbes served as
the British vice-consul in Monterey, Ca.
(SFC, 12/5/03, p.D6)
1835 Ohio and Michigan engaged in
“The Toledo War” (1835–1836), also known as the Ohio-Michigan War, a
bloodless boundary dispute that was settled in 1836.
(WSJ, 5/31/08,
p.W9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War)
1835 Natural gas was used for
cooking.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1835 Riley Whiting (b.1785),
Connecticut clock maker, died.
(SFC, 5/17/06, p.G5)
1835 Orlando Reeves, a soldier,
was shot with an arrow by a Seminole Indian warrior during a fight. The
city of Orlando, Florida is named after Orlando Reeves.
(Hem, Mar. 95, p.27)
1835 The Ottoman Porte divided
Albanian-populated lands into vilayets of Janina, Manastir, Shkodra,
and Kosova with Ottoman administrators.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1835 The French government
prohibited political caricature.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.75)
1835 A foreign newspapers
translation agency, set up by Charles-Louis Havas, became the Agence
Havas, the first worldwide news agency.
(www.afp.com)
1835 The Bertelsmann firm was
founded in Germany. In 2004 it was Europe’s largest media company.
(Econ, 3/6/04, p.61)
1835 Madame Tussaud opened her
London Wax Museum.
(SFEC, 7/18/99, Par p.4)
1835 Lt. Henry Creswicke Rawlinson
(25) began examining the ancient inscriptions on the rock of Behistun
in the Kurdish foothills of the Zagros mountain range. He soon found
that they had been made to honor Darius the Great, Persian ruler in the
5th century BCE.
(ON, 4/04, p.7)
1835 Madagascar’s Queen Ranavalona
I persecuted and expelled foreigners, including the island's
missionaries and extended her rule all over the island with her
20,000-man army.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranavalona_I_Rabodoandrianampoinimerina)
1835 Trinity Cathedral in St.
Petersburg, Russia, was consecrated. In 2006 a fire collapsed the
central dome and one of four smaller cupolas surrounding it.
(AP, 8/26/06)
1835 The wooden Neve Shalom
synagogue was built in Suriname.
(SSFC, 12/7/08, p.E5)
1835 James Hogg (b.1770), Scottish
writer, died. His novels included “The Private Memoirs and Confessions
of a Justified Sinner” (1824).
(www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/arts/writingscotland/writers/james_hogg/)
1835-1853 The Lost Woman of San Nicolas. A report by
a Captain Hubbard, whose schooner carried away the Indians of
Ghalast-at, mentioned a girl who jumped into the sea and returned to
the Island of San Nicolas. Records of a Captain Nidever record that 18
years later, a young woman living alone was picked up from San Nicolas.
She was taken to the Santa Barbara Mission under the protection of
Father Gonzales and died there. Her skirt of green cormorant feathers
was sent to Rome. Her story is told by Scott O’Dell in his novel:
Island of the Blue Dolphins.
(IBD, 1960, p.183)
1835-1868 Adah Isaacs Menken, a Jewish poet and
actress, was born near New Orleans and learned French, German, Spanish
and Hebrew in school. She shocked American and European audiences in
the 1860s for her bold acting style and became notorious for her role
in the play Mazeppa, where she appeared on stage barely clothed tied to
the back of a running horse. Around 1856 she published her first book
of poems and married Alexander Isaacs Menken, whose name she kept
through divorce and subsequent remarriages and liaisons. Called the
most perfectly developed woman in the world, she moved between Europe
and the United States as she performed. Adah Isaacs Menken died of
tuberculosis in Paris and was buried there in the Montparnasse Cemetery.
(HNPD, 11/16/98)
1835-1868 Lesotho acted as a buffer between the
Afrikaner’s and British colonial interests and supplied seasonal farm
workers to both.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A11)(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)
1835-1909 Augusta Jane Evans, American novelist:
"Life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so
grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun."
(AP, 2/11/99)
1835-1916 Hetty Green, investor, was known as the
"Witch of Wall street." She began investing in the financials markets
after inheriting some $10 million from her shi-owner father. She
married a wealthy trader, Edward Green, who went bankrupt, but
maintained her wealth with separate accounts. She refused to treat her
son for a knee injury and the leg was amputated. She left about $100
million when she died.
(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)
1836 Jan 5, Davy Crockett arrived
in Texas just in time to die at the Alamo.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1836 Jan 18, Knife aficionado Jim
Bowie arrived at the Alamo to assist its Texas defenders.
(HN, 1/18/99)
1836 Jan 27, Leopold von
Sacher-Masoch, Austrian writer (masochism), was born.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1836 Feb 7, The essays "Sketches
by Boz" were published by Charles Dickens.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1836 Feb 12, Mexican General Santa
Anna crossed the Rio Grande en route to the Alamo.
(HN, 2/12/99)
1836 Feb 17, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin left Tasmania.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1836 Feb 18, Swami Ramakrishna
[Gadadhar Chatterji], Indian mystic, Hindu leader, was born.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1836 Feb 21, Leo Delibes, ballet
composer (Coppelia), was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, France.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1836 Feb 23, The Alamo was
besieged by Santa Anna. Thus began the siege of the Alamo, a 13-day
moment in history that turned a ruined Spanish mission in San Antonio,
Texas, into a shrine known and revered the world over.
(HN, 2/23/98)(AP, 2/23/98)
1836 Feb 24, Winslow Homer
(d.1910), American painter, was born. He began his career as an
illustrator for Harper's Weekly during America's Civil War. He is
believed to have died a virgin and took up a hermit’s life in his mid
40s. He captured the look and spirit of 19th century American life.
(WSJ, 4/2/96, p.A-12)(HN, 2/24/99)(WSJ, 7/21/00,
p.W2)
1836 Feb 24, Some 3,000 Mexicans
under Gen. Santa Ana launched an assault on the Alamo, with its 182
Texan defenders. The siege lasted 13 days.
(HN, 2/24/98)(MC, 2/24/02)
1836 Feb 25, Samuel Colt patented
the first revolving barrel multi-shot firearm. This allowed the shooter
to fire 5 or 6 times before reloading.
(AP, 2/25/98)(AH, 2/06, p.15)
1836 Mar 2, Texas declared its
independence from Mexico on Sam Houston's 43rd birthday. The first
vice-president was Lorenzo de Zavala. Mexico refused to recognize Texas
but diplomatic relations were established with the US, Britain and
France. Texas was an independent republic until 1845.
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)(SFC,
4/28/97, p.A3)(AP, 3/2/98)(HN, 3/2/99)
1836 Mar 5, Samuel Colt
manufactured the 1st pistol, a 34-caliber "Texas" model.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1836 Mar 6, The Alamo fell after
fighting for 13 days. Angered by a new Mexican constitution that
removed much of their autonomy, Texans seized the Alamo in San Antonio
in December 1835. Mexican president General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
marched into Texas to put down the rebellion. By late February, 1836,
182 Texans, led by Colonel William Travis, held the former mission
complex against Santa Anna’s [3,000] 6,000 troops. At 4 a.m. on March
6, after fighting for 13 days, Santa Anna’s troops charged. In the
battle that followed, all the Alamo defenders were killed while the
Mexicans suffered about 2,000 casualties. Santa Anna dismissed the
Alamo conquest as "a small affair," but the time bought by the Alamo
defenders’ lives permitted General Sam Houston to forge an army that
would win the Battle of San Jacinto and, ultimately, Texas’
independence. Mexican Lt. Col. Pena later wrote a memoir: "With Santa
Anna in Texas: Diary of Jose Enrique de la Pena," that described the
capture and execution of Davy Crockett and 6 other Alamo defenders. In
1975 a translation of the diary by Carmen Perry (d.1999) was published.
Apparently, only one Texan combatant survived Jose María
Guerrero, who persuaded his captors he had been forced to fight. Women,
children, and a black slave, were spared.
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/98)(HNPD, 3/6/99)(SFC, 6/15/99,
p.C6)(MC, 3/6/02)
1836 Mar 6, HMS Beagle and Darwin
reached King George's Sound, Australia.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1836 Mar 16, Andrew S. Hallidie,
inventor (cable car), was born.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1836 Mar 16, The Republic of Texas
approved a constitution.
(AP, 3/16/97)
1836 Mar 23, Coin Press was
invented by Franklin Beale.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1836 Mar 27, The first Mormon
temple was dedicated, in Kirtland, Ohio.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)(NW, 9/10/01, p.48)
1836 Mar 31, The first monthly
installment of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens was published in
London.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1836 Mar, George Yount became the
grantee of the Rancho Caymus (11,814 acres), the first US citizen to be
ceded a Spanish land grant in Napa Valley, Ca., in exchange for making
wooden shingles for Gen. Mariano Vallejo. In Oct 1843 he was deeded the
Rancho de La Jota (4,053 acres).
(WCG, 7/95,
p.21)(www.noehill.com/napa/cal03.asp)(www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/vets.html)
1836 Apr 9-10, Helen Jewett, a
prostitute in a Thomas St. bordello in Manhattan, was murdered. Her
boyfriend, Richard P. Robinson (17), a clerk for a local merchant and
engaged to a woman of good pedigree, was tried for the murder but
acquitted. In 1998 Patricia Cline Cohen published "The Murder of Helen
Jewett," an account of the story.
(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W6)(SFEM, 11/8/98, p.12)
1836 Apr 20, The Territory of
Wisconsin was established by Congress.
(AP, 4/20/97)(HN, 4/20/98)
1836 Apr 20, Johan I Jozef (75),
monarch of Liechtenstein, field marshal, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1836 Apr 21, Texans led by Sam
Houston defeated the Mexican army under Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna at San Jacinto. At the Battle of San Jacinto, Texas, won
independence from Mexico.
(AP, 4/21/97)(HN, 4/21/98)(MC, 4/21/02)
1836 May 6, Christian Ignatius
Latrobe (78), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1836 May 9, HMS Beagle with
Charles Darwin departed Port Louis, Mauritius.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1836 May 16, Edgar Allan Poe (27)
married Virginia Clem (13) in Richmond, Virginia.
(SFEM, 1/25/98, p.67)
1836 May 17, Joseph Norman
Lockyer, discovered helium, was born. He founded Nature magazine.
(HN, 5/17/98)(MC, 5/17/02)
1836 May 18, Wilhelm Steinitz was
born. The Czech-born world chess champion (1866-94) later became a
naturalized American.
(HN, 5/18/99)(SC, 5/18/02)
1836 May 27, Jay Gould, US
railroad executive, financier, was born.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1836 May 31, HMS Beagle anchored
in Simons Bay, Cape of Good Hope.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1836 Jun 10, Yamaoka Tesshu,
Japanese swordsman, was born.
(HN, 6/10/98)
1836 Jun 10, Andre M. Ampere,
French mathematician, physicist (Amp), died.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1836 Jun 15, Arkansas became the
25th state.
(AP, 6/15/97)
1836 Jun 23, Congress approved the
Deposit Act, which contained a provision for turning over surplus
federal revenue to the states.
(AP, 6/23/97)
1836 Jun 26, Claude-Joseph Rouget
de Lisle, author, composer ("La Marseillaise"), died.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1836 Jun 28, James Madison (85),
the 4th president of the United States (1809-17), died in Montpelier,
Va. His writings included the 29 Federalist essays. In 1999 "James
Madison: Writings," edited by Jack N. Rakove, was published. In 2002
Garry Wills authored James Madison."
(AP, 6/28/97)(WSJ, 2/2/95, p.A-16)(WSJ, 9/1/99,
p.A24)(WSJ, 3/26/02, p.A21) (MC, 6/28/02)
1836 Jun, In NYC Richard P.
Robinson was found not guilty of the murder of Helen Jewett by a jury
after 10 minutes of deliberation.
(SFEM, 11/8/98, p.12)
1836 Jul 4, The territorial
government of Wisconsin was established.
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1836 Jul 4, Narcissa Prentiss
Whitman and Eliza Hart Spaulding made a marker at South Pass Wyoming as
the first European women to cross the continent.
(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A8)
1836 Jul 6, French General Thomas
Bugeaud defeated Abd al-Kader’s forces beside the Sikkak River in
Algeria.
(HN, 7/6/98)
1836 Jul 11, Pres. Jackson,
alarmed by the growing influx of state bank notes being used to pay for
public land purchases, issued the Specie Circular shortly before
leaving office. This order commanded the Treasury to no longer accept
paper notes as payment for such sales. This led to the financial panic
of 1837.
(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h967.html)(Panic, p.6)
1836 Jul 15, William Winter, drama
critic and essayist for The New York Times, was born.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1836 Jul 20, Charles Darwin
climbed Green Hill on Ascension.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1836 Aug 7, Evander McIvor Law
(d.1920), Brig General (Confederate Army), was born in South Carolina.
(MC, 8/7/02)(Internet)
1836 Aug 14, Walter Besant
(d.1901), English writer, philanthropist (Rebel Queen), was born.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1836 Aug 22, Archibald M. Willard,
US, artist (Spirit of '76), was born.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1836 Aug 25, Bret Harte (d.1902),
American author and journalist (Outcasts of Poker Flat), was born in
Albany, NY. "The only sure thing about luck is that it will change."
[1839 also given as a birth date]
(WUD, 1994 p.648)(AP, 4/2/98)(SFEC, 9/3/00, BR p.6)
1836 Sep 1, Protestant missionary
Dr. Marcus Whitman led a party to Oregon. His wife, Narcissa, was one
of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail.
(HN, 9/1/99)
1836 Sep 1, Reconstruction began
on Synagogue of Rabbi Judah Hasid in Jerusalem.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1836 Sep 5, Sam Houston was
elected president of the Republic of Texas.
(AP, 9/5/97)
1836 Sep 10, Joseph Wheeler II,
Maj Gen of the Confederacy, Cavalry, Army of Tennessee, was born.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1836 Sep 12, Mexican authorities
crushed the revolt which broke out on August 25.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1836 Sep 14, Aaron Burr, the 3rd
US Vice President, died. He had served as vice-president under Thomas
Jefferson. Burr is alleged to have fathered a black illegitimate son
named John Pierre Burr. In 1999 Roger W. Kennedy authored "Burr,
Hamilton and Jefferson: A Study in Character." In 2007 Nancy Isenberg
authored “Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr.”
(WSJ, 10/27/99, p.A16)(WSJ, 10/5/05, p.A1)(WSJ,
5/24/07, p.D7)
1836 Oct 2, Darwin returned to
England aboard HMS Beagle after 5 years abroad. He visited Brazil, the
Galapagos Islands, and New Zealand. His studies were important to his
theory of evolution, which he put forth in his groundbreaking
scientific work of 1859, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection."
(MC, 10/2/01)
1836 Oct 22, Sam Houston was
inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the
Republic of Texas.
(AP, 10/22/97)(HN, 10/22/98)
1836 Oct 24, A. Phillips patented
the match.
(HN, 10/24/98)(MC, 10/24/01)
1836 Oct, Don Juan Alvarado,
president of the 7-man legislature in the Mexican territory of
California, fled Monterey with his deputies to Mission San Juan
Bautista under threats from Lt. Col. Nicolas Gutierrez, the military
governor. There they formed plans for a coup.
(ON, 4/04, p.9)
1836 Nov 4, Don Juan Alvarado and
a group of followers forced the surrender of Lt. Col. Nicolas
Gutierrez, the military governor Monterey. The quickly drafted a
constitution and proclaimed California independent of Mexico. Officials
in southern California refused to recognize Alvarado's government and
he agreed to make California a territory of Mexico with himself as
governor.
(ON, 4/04, p.10)
1836 Nov 6, Charles X (79), King
of France (1824-30), died.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1836 Nov 10, Charles Louis
Napoleon (1808-1873), nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, failed in an
attempted coup at Strasbourg and was exiled to the US by the government
of Louis Philippe.
(www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0859871.html)
1836 Nov 18, William S. Gilbert
(d.1911), English playwright, librettist and humorist, was born. He was
one half of Gilbert & Sullivan. "Life is a joke that's just
begun."
(HN, 11/18/00)
1836 Nov 27, Carle [Antoine CH]
Vernet, French painter and lithographer, died.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1836 Dec 7, Martin Van Buren
(d.1862) was elected the eighth president of the United States and
served one term. He was known as the "Little Magician" and the "Red Fox
of Kinderhook." The eighth president earned these monikers for his
political adroitness and skill at keeping his thoughts close to the
vest.
(AP, 12/7/97)(HNQ, 9/19/99)
1836 Dec 28, Spain recognized the
independence of Mexico.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1836 Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was
born in Lemberg, Galicia. He was the author of "Venus in Furs." He
voluntarily enslaved himself to Fanny von Pister and later to his bride
Aurore Rumelin. The term masochism was derived from his name.
(WSJ, 2/7/96, p.A-12)
1836 Thomas Cole, Hudson River
School painter, painted "The Course of Empire," a series of 5 paintings
chronicling the rise and fall of a great civilization.
(WSJ, 9/19/02, p.D12)
1836 Auguste Mayer painted "Scene
from the Battle of Trafalgar."
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.D7)
1836 Augustus Pugin (1812-1852),
English Gothic architect and designer, authored “Contrasts,” the first
ever architectural manifesto.
(WSJ, 3/20/09,
p.W14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Pugin)
1836 Constantine Samuel Rafinisque
(1783-1840), naturalist, wrote "The American Nations," which contained
what he claimed to be the deciphered ancient document written by the
Lenape (Delaware) Indians called the Walam Olum.
(NH, 10/96, p.14)
1836 King Kamehameha III formed
the Royal Hawaiian Band.
(WSJ, 3/10/05, p.A1)
1836 Meyerbeer composed his opera
"Les Huguenots" with a libretto by Scribe. It was set around the 16th
century Catholic and Protestant struggle that exploded with the 1572
St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
(WSJ, 11/23/99, p.A21)
1836 In Boston a small group of
New England intellectuals began gathering at the home of minister
George Ripley to discuss issues of religious and philosophical
importance. The group, known as the Transcendental Club, disbanded in
1840. In 2007 Philip F. Gura authored “American Transcendentalism: A
History.”
(SSFC, 12/2/07, p.M3)
1836 Father Veniaminov, later
canonized, as St. Innokenty of Alaska, spent 3 months at Fort Ross,
Ca., baptizing, burying and teaching.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, p.T14)
1836 Pres. Jackson vetoed the bill
to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1836.
Not until the Federal Reserve Act of 1911 did the US Government get
back its monopoly on the creation of money. [see the New York Free
Banking Act of 1838]
(WSJ,11/24/95, p.A-8)
1836 Pres. Jackson named Martin
Van Buren as his successor and Col. Richard Johnson as the vice
presidential candidate, despite Johnson’s mulatto mistress and 2
illegitimate children.
(WSJ, 8/15/00, p.A26)
1836 The US Congress, led by
congressman and former president J.Q. Adams, voted to accept the
100,000 gold sovereign donation of Englishman James Smithson and
establish the Smithsonian Institution for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men. The actual Institution was not established until
1846.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)(ON, 2/06, p.5)
1836 Roger Brooke Taney was
confirmed as US Chief Justice.
(WSJ, 11/21/06, p.D8)
1836 The 4-wheeled steam
locomotive John Hancock was built with vertical boilers, cylinders and
driving rods that gave its class the nickname "grasshoppers."
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.T6)
1836 Isaac Wade Ross,
Revolutionary war hero, died in Mississippi. His will stipulated that
his slaves should be emancipated upon his death, but only if they
agreed to go to Liberia. The 1st of almost 200 were finally set free in
1848. In 2004 Alan Huffman authored "Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of
the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia
Today."
(SSFC, 2/1/04, p.M1)
1836 Nathan Rothschild, son of
Mayer Amschel Rothschild, died in London. His younger brother James
took charge of the business.
(WSJ, 11/17/98, p.21)
1836 The London-based Anti Slavery
International human rights group was founded.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R28)
1836 Britain’s Peninsula and
Oriental Steam Navigation (P&O Line) was founded to carry mail
among Portugal, Spain and England and later expanded to passenger
service. In 2005 Dubai’s DP World purchased the company for $5.7
billion.
(www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/pando.html)(SFC,
11/30/05, p.C2)
1836 The 107-foot-tall Egyptian
Obelisk reached Paris. [see 1829]
(SFC, 5/15/98, p.D3)
1836 The oldest shop in the
Galerie Vivienne, Paris, France, is Librarie Jousseaume (nos.
45,46,47), which opened in 1836 and has been owned for the past 100
years by the Jousseaume family. Books span the 18th century to the
present.
(Hem., 10/’95, p.109)
1836 In France the medieval timber
roof of the Chartres cathedral burned. Architect J.B. Lassus replaced
it with an innovative roof of iron.
(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.W9)
1836 La Fenice opera house in
Venice burned down for the 1st time.
(WSJ, 9/24/05, p.P12)
1836 Spain’s central government
revoked the Basque’s fiscal privileges. These were restored in 1979.
(Econ, 11/8/08, SR p.10)
1836-1838 Sam Houston (1793-1863), US soldier and
political leader, was president of the Republic of Texas.
(WUD, 1994, p.689)
1836-1845 Texas was an independent republic.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A3)
1836-1922 In 2004 the US government said it would
digitize newspapers published over this period and make them available
to the public in 2006.
(SFC, 11/17/04, p.A8)
1836-1926 Joseph G. Cannon, Speaker of the U.S. House
of Representatives: "By descent, I am one-fourth German, one-fourth
Irish, one-fourth English, and another quarter French. My God! If my
ancestors are permitted to look down upon me, they might perhaps
upbraid me. But I am also an American!"
(AP, 2/19/00)
1837 Jan 2, Mili Alexeyevich
Balakirev, composer (Tamara), was born in Nizhny-Novgorod, Russia.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1837 Jan 11, John Field (54),
Irish pianist, composer (Nocturnes), died.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1837 Jan 11, Francois Gerard (66),
French baron, painter, died.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1837 Jan 22, An earthquake in
southern Syria killed thousands.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1837 Jan, 26, Michigan became the
26th state of the US.
(HFA, ‘96, p.22)(AP, 1/26/98)
1837 Feb 5, Dwight L. Moody
(d.1899), evangelist, was born. He founded the Moody Bible Institute.
"No man can resolve himself into Heaven."
(AP, 7/26/00)(HN, 2/5/01)
1837 Feb 7, Sir James Augustus
Henry Murray, Scottish lexicographer and editor, was born. He created
the Oxford Dictionary.
HN, 2/7/01)(MC, 2/7/02)
1837 Feb 8, The Senate selected
Richard Mentor Johnson as the vice president of the United States.
Johnson was nominated for vice president on the Democratic ticket with
Martin Van Buren in 1836. When Johnson failed to receive a majority of
the popular vote, the election was thrown into the Senate for the first
and only time. Johnson won the election in the Senate by a vote of 33
to 16.
(AP, 2/8/99)(HNQ, 3/8/99)
1837 Feb 12, Thomas Moran
(d.1926), American painter, was born in Bolton, England. His paintings
of Yellowstone helped persuade Congress to designate it a national park.
(WSJ, 5/11/95, p. A-14)(SFC,10/15/97, p.D3)
1837 Feb 13, There was a riot in
NY over the high price of flour.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1837 Feb 25, Cheyney University
was established in Pennsylvania through the bequest of Richard
Humphreys, and became the oldest institution of higher learning for
African Americans. It was initially named the African Institute.
However, the name was changed several weeks later to the Institute for
Colored Youth (ICY). In subsequent years, the university was renamed
Cheyney Training School for Teachers (July 1914), Cheyney State
Teacher’s College (1951), Cheyney State College (1959), and eventually
Cheyney Univ. of Pennsylvania (1983).
(www.cheyney.edu/pages/index.asp?p=428)
1837 Mar 1, William Dean Howells
(d.1920), US author, critic and editor, was born. He edited the work of
William James at the Atlantic Monthly. "We are creatures of the moment;
we live from one little space to another; and only one interest at a
time fills these." "If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer;
if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank."
(WUD, 1994, p.689)(SFEC, 11/3/96, BR p.10)(AP,
3/3/98)(AP, 11/13/98)(HN, 3/1/01)
1837 Mar 3, US President Andrew
Jackson and Congress recognized the Republic of Texas.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1837 Mar 3, Congress increased
Supreme Court membership from 7 to 9.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1837 Mar 4, Martin Van Buren was
inaugurated as 8th President.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1837 Mar 4, When Pres. Jackson
left office there followed a financial crash and a bitter depression
and the government was again forced to borrow money. Pres. Jackson had
returned surplus government funds to the state governments as bonuses.
(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.C18)(WSJ, 6/26/00, p.A1)
1837 Mar 4, The Illinois state
legislature granted a city charter to Chicago.
(AP, 3/4/99)
1837 Mar 4, Weekly Advocate
changed its name to the Colored American.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1837 Mar 17, Upon his return to
his home in Tennessee, Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the
U.S., proclaimed that he left office "with barely $90 in my pocket."
The old soldier and war hero who had served as president for eight
years, spoke those words when he returned to his home in Tennessee.
(HNQ, 8/6/98)
1837 Mar 18, Stephen Grover
Cleveland was born in Caldwell, N.J. He was the 22nd (1885-1889) and
24th (1893-1897) president of the United States, the only President
elected for two nonconsecutive terms.
(AP, 3/18/97)(HN, 3/18/02)
1837 Mar 24, Canada gave blacks
the right to vote.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1837 Mar 28, Felix Mendelssohn
married Cecile Jeanrenaud.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1837 Mar 31, John Constable (60),
English painter, water colors painter, died. His work included some 100
studies of the sky done between 1821-1822. In 2009 Martin Gayford
authored “Constable in Love: Love, Landscape, Money and the Making of a
Great Painter.”
(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.D8)(Econ, 3/21/09,
p.92)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constable)
1837 Apr 3, John Burroughs
(d.1921), American author and naturalist, was born. "Time does not
become sacred to us until we have lived it, until it has passed over us
and taken with it a part of ourselves."
(HN, 4/3/01)(AP, 5/28/98)
1837 Apr 5, Algernon Charles
Swinburne (d.1909), English poet (Atalanta in Calydon), was born.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1837 Apr 17, J. Pierpont Morgan
(d.1913), American financier, was born in Hartford, Conn. J.P. Morgan
later owned U.S. Steel and International Harvester. In 1999 Jean
Strouse published the biography "Morgan: American Financier."
(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)(HN,
4/7/99)(www.netstate.com/states/peop/people/ct_jpm.htm)
1837 Apr 15, Horace Porter
(d.1921), Bvt Brig General (Union Army), was born.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1837 May 2, Henry Martyn Roberts,
parliamentarian (Robert's Rules of Order).
(HN, 5/2/02)
1837 May 5, Niccolo Antonio
Zingarelli (85), Italian composer, bandmaster, died.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1837 May 9, "Sherrod" burned in
Mississippi River below Natchez, Miss., and 175 died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1837 May 27, Legendary gunfighter
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok was born in Troy Grove, IL. As a youth,
Hickok helped his father operate an Underground Railroad stop for
runaway slaves and during the Civil War became a daring Union scout.
After the war Hickok's fame as a skilled marksman, Indian fighter and
frontier marshal grew, leading to a stint as a featured attraction with
Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. On August 2, 1876, Hickok was shot
from behind and killed while playing poker in Saloon No. 10 in
Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Contrary to his custom, Hickok was sitting
with his back to the door.
(HNPD, 5/28/99)(MesWP)
1837 May 29, Luca Fumagalli,
composer, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1837 May 29, Alexander F. de
Savornin Lohmann, Dutch minister, party leader (CHU), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1837 May 31, Astor Hotel opened in
NYC. It later became the Waldorf-Astoria. John Jacob Astor bought up
foreclosed properties during the financial bust. He later sold them for
a 10-fold profit.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R43)(MC, 5/31/02)
1837 Jun 17, Vincent Strong, Civil
War Union Colonel (killed in action at Gettysburg in 1863), was born.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1837 Jun 20, Queen Victoria (18)
ascended the British throne following the death of her uncle, King
William IV (b.1765). She ruled for 63 years to 1901.
(AP, 6/20/97)(WSJ, 4/27/00, p.A24)(HN, 6/20/01)
1837 Jul 31, William Clarke
Quantrill (d.1865), Confederate guerrilla leader, was born at Canal
Dover, Ohio.
(www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/QQ/fqu3.html)
1837 Aug 11, Marie Francois
Carnot, engineer, French pres (1887-94), was born.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1837 Aug 18, The Great Western, a
steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was towed out of the
Bristol shipyard and proceeded under sail to London to be fitted with
engines.
(ON, 8/07, p.6)
1837 Aug 28, Pharmacists John Lea
& William Perrins began to manufacture Worcester Sauce. [see 1834]
(MC, 8/28/01)
1837 Sep 6, The Oberlin Collegiate
Institute of Ohio went co-educational.
(AP, 9/6/97)(http://tinyurl.com/lcgnj)
1837 Sep 21, Charles Lewis Tiffany
(1812-1902) founded his jewelry and china stores.
(MC, 9/21/01)(SSFC, 9/7/03, p.I4)
1837 Oct 1, Robert Gould
Shaw was born to a prominent abolitionist family. He became commander
of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first unit of black soldiers in
the Civil War. He was later asked by the governor of Massachusetts to
organize the first regiment of black troops in a Northern state. Shaw
recruited free blacks from all over New England. On May 13, 1863, the
54th Massachusetts Regiment was mustered into service in the Union Army
with Shaw as its commanding officer. After leading the regiment in a
handful of smaller actions, Shaw and the 54th joined two brigades of
white troops in an assault on Confederates holding Battery Wagner on
the South Carolina coast. Although the action was unsuccessful and Shaw
himself died leading the charge, the courage of black troops under fire
was proven beyond any doubt. This Kurz and Allison print honors Shaw
and the 54th Massachusetts at Fort Wagner.
(HNPD, 10/1/98)(HN, 10/1/98)
1837 Oct 1, A treaty was made with
the Winnebago Indians.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1837 Oct 9, Francis Parker,
educator and founder of progressive elementary schools, was born.
(HN, 10/9/00)
1837 Oct 11, Samuel Wesley,
composer (Exultate Deo), died at 71.
(MC, 10/11/01)
1837 Oct 17, Johann Nepomuk
Hummel, Austrian composer, died at 58.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1837 Oct 21, During the
Second Seminole War (1835-1842), under a flag of truce during peace
talks, U.S. troops under Gen. Thomas S. Jesup (1788-1860) sieged the
Indian Seminole Chief Osceola in Florida and sent to a jail in North
Carolina, where he later died. Jesup's trickery outraged the American
public.
(HN, 10/21/98)(DoW, 1999, p.435)
1837 Oct 31, The collision of
river boats Monmouth & Trement on Mississippi left 300 dead.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1837 Nov 7, A mob attack on the
Alton, Illinois, office newspaper editor Elijah P. Lovejoy and the
subsequent killing of Lovejoy was inspired by the editor’s anti-slavery
writings. Several persons were indicted in the killing, but they were
found not guilty. Lovejoy was killed while defending a newly arrived
printing press. People opposed to Lovejoy‘s mission had already
destroyed three previous presses.
(HNQ, 3/18/99)(HNQ, 6/26/00)
1837 Nov 8, Mount Holyoke
Seminary, the 1st US college exclusively for women, opened in South
Hadley, Massachusetts.
(AP, 11/8/00)
1837 Nov 15, Isaac Pitman
introduced his shorthand system for rapid writing. The stenographic
system was based on sounds and was rapidly adopted in India.
(MC, 11/15/01)(WSJ, 8/20/04, p.A1)
1837 Nov 21, Thomas Morris of
Australia skipped rope 22,806 times.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1837 Nov 28, John Wesley Hyatt
(d.1920), inventor (celluloid), was born.
(MC, 11/28/01)(ON, 11/03, p.4)
1837 Dec 2, Dr. Joseph Bell,
British physician, was born. He is believed to be the prototype of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's detective 'Sherlock Holmes.'
(HN, 12/2/99)
1837 Dec 5, Hector Berlioz'
"Requiem," premiered.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1837 Dec 9, Charles Emile
Waldteufel, waltz composer (Skaters), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1837 Dec 25, In the Battle of
Okeechobee US forces defeated the Seminole Indians.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1837 Dec 26, George Dewey, Admiral
of the Navy, was born: Spanish-American War: hero of Manila: "You may
fire when you are ready, Gridley."
(440.com)
1837 Dec 29, Canadian militiamen,
claiming self-defense, destroyed the Caroline, a US steamboat docked at
Buffalo, N.Y. It was being used to ferry supplies to anti-British
rebels in Canada.
(AP, 12/29/97)(Econ, 11/22/03, p.25)
1837 Dec 29, A threshing
machine powered by a single horse treadmill was patented in Winthrop,
Maine, by twins Hiram A. and John A. Pitts.
(DM, 8/5/03)
1837 Mary Harris (d.1931), aka
Mother Jones, was born in County Cork, Ireland. [see May 1, 1830]
(SSFC, 2/25/01, BR p.5)
1837 Reverend George Bush
published “The Life of Mohammed, founder of the religion of Islam and
of the Empire of the Saracens.” It described the Prophet as an
"imposter" and Muslims as "locusts." In 2005 Egyptian newspapers
announced that the highest authority in Sunni Islam had approved
publication of the book. In 2005 the US administration said the author
was "a distant relative of the current president, five generations
removed.
(AP,
6/25/05)(www.muhammadanism.org/bush/bush_mohammed.pdf)
1837 The Dickens novel "Great
Expectations" was set in this year. A 1998 version of the novel by
Australian writer Peter Carey was titled "Jack Maggs."
(WSJ, 2/4/98, p.A20)
1837 Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864) wrote "Twice Told Tales."
(www.novelguide.com)
1837 Tennyson (1809-1892) wrote
his poem “Locksley Hall.” It included a vision of a tranquil world
“lapt in universal law.” It was published as part of a collection in
1842. The poem embodied the pain of lost love and looked forward to a
time when the nations of the world would abandon war and form a
“parliament of man.”
(WSJ, 6/28/06,
p.D10)(www.firstscience.com/site/POEMS/tennyson4.asp)
1837 Noah Webster’s Spelling Book
had an estimated printing of 15 million. First published in 1783 as "A
Grammatical Institute of the English Language," the Spelling Book was
influential in standardizing and differentiating, from the British
forms, English spelling and pronunciation in America. By 1890, more
than 70 million copies of the book had been printed.
(HNQ, 8/9/98)
1837 Oliver Wendell Holmes
referred to a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837 as "our
intellectual Declaration of Independence." Emerson, a philosopher and
author born in Boston on May 25, 1803, gave the speech, entitled "The
American Scholar," to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard. It called
for an indigenous national culture and defined the functions of the
intellectual in the light of Transcendentalism. He urged the mottoes:
"Know Thyself" and "Study Nature." In 1838 Emerson’s address to the
Harvard Divinity School criticized orthodox Christianity and led to
accusations that he was an atheist. It was 30 years before he was
invited again to speak at Harvard. He died on April 27, 1882.
(HNQ, 6/14/98)
1837 Washington Irving wrote "The
Adventures of Captain Bonneville."
(HT, 3/97, p.38)
1837 In Maine the Edwards Dam on
the Kennebec River was constructed.
(SFC,11/26/97, p.A7)
1837 Conflicts broke up the Mormon
communities in Missouri and Ohio.
(NW, 9/10/01, p.48)
1837 The Presbyterian Church split
into two denominations.
(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A11)
1837 A US treaty with the Chippewa
Indians in Minnesota guaranteed their right to hunt and fish and gather
wild rice on territory relinquished to the federal government.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A8)
1837 US Chief Justice Taney
justified the government use of eminent domain in the Charles River
case and wrote: "the object and end of all government is to promote the
happiness and prosperity of the community by which it is established."
(Wired, 10/96, p.133)
1837 John Marsh (1799-1856),
Harvard graduate and Minnesota Indian agent, bought Rancho de Los
Meganos east of Mount Diablo and became the 1st American in the San
Joaquin Valley. He purchased the Rancho Los Meganos from Jose Noriega
for $300 in cowhides. The land stood where the hills of Contra Costa
met the San Joaquin Valley. He built a stone Gothic mansion in 1856. In
2002 plans were made to restore the Marsh House.
(SFC, 12/7/02, p.E4)(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.B3)
1837 A Michigan Public Act
declared that the Univ. of Michigan would "provide the inhabitants of
the State with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the
various branches of literature, science, and the arts... (and) be open
to all residents of this state."
(LSA., Fall 1995, p.11)
1847 City College, later known as
City Univ. of New York (CUNY) was founded in Harlem.
(Econ, 1/21/06, p.29)
1837 The Procter & Gamble
Company was formed in Cincinnati, Ohio. William Procter and James A.
Gamble built a business manufacturing soap and candles from the tallow
produced by the city’s thriving meat packing industry. In 2004 Davis
Dyer, Frederick Dalzell and Rowena Olegario authored “Rising Tide,” a
history of Procter and Gamble.
(WSJ, 1/15/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 7/23/04, p.W12)(Econ,
8/11/07, p.61)
1837 The B&O Railroad and the
C&O Canal both reached Harper's Ferry. At this point the B&O
built a bridge across the Potomac and began an inland route up the
mountains to Martinsburg.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.T7)
1837 English plumber Thomas
Crapper came out with a flush model, valve controlled, water closet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow installed one in his home in 1840 and
sparked public attention. Thomas Crapper, popularly credited with
inventing the water closet, held three patents, although he may simply
have bought the siphon discharge system patent from Albert Giblin and
marketed it himself. In 1969 Wallace Reyburn authored “Flushed with
Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper.”
(HNQ, 11/25/00)(http://tinyurl.com/2ws5w)
1837 Samuel F.B. Morse
incorporated the discoveries of Sturgeon and Henry in the first
practical telegraph, separating the magnet from the switch by some five
hundred yards of wire. [see 1838, 1844]
(I&I, Penzias, p.96)
1837 In California Jose Maria
Amador led a "recapturing expedition." They found and murdered 200
Indians.
(SFC, 12/31/00, BR p.12)
1837 French explorer Dumont
d’Urville (1790-1842) sailed along a coastal area of Antarctica that he
named the Adélie Coast in honor of his wife. He also named the
Adelie penguin after his wife.
(WSJ, 7/1/97,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumont_D'Urville)
1837 In London construction began
on the new Palace of Westminster. Architect Charles Barry and his
assistant A.W.N. Pugin had won the open competition for the design.
(WSJ, 3/20/09, p.W14)
1837 A parliamentary commission’s
report indicated that there were nearly 30,000 charitable endowments in
Britain at this time.
(WSJ,11/24/95, p.A-8)
1837 In St. Petersburg Alexander
Pushkin (b.1799), poet, was killed in a duel with his wife's suitor,
D'Anthes, a French nobleman. Pushkin's work included "Eugene Onegin," a
novel-in-verse, and "Boris Godunov," made famous in the Mussorgsky
opera. In 1993 an English translation of "Strolls With Pushkin" by
Abram Tertz (Andrei Sinyavsky) was published. In 1999 Elaine Feinstein
published "Pushkin: A Biography."
(SFC, 6/3/99, p.C2)(WSJ, 7/15/99, p.A16)(WSJ,
8/3/99, p.A23)
1837 In Scotland Fife Pottery in
Kirkcaldy was purchased by Mary and Robert Heron. They developed a new
style of decoration for pottery and called the pieces Wemyss Ware. the
pottery was decorated on the clay before it was glazed. the factory
closed in 1920 and rights were purchased by a pottery in Devon.
(SFC, 9/2/98, Z1 p.6)
1837 Louis Agassiz (1807-1873),
Swiss paleontologist, proposed to the Helvetic Society that ancient
glaciers had not only flowed outward from the Alps, but that even
larger glaciers had simultaneously encroached southward on the plains
and mountains of Europe, Asia and North America, smothering the entire
northern hemisphere in a prolonged Ice Age.
(ON, 10/08, p.12)
1837-1841 Martin Van Buren became 8th President of
the US. His term was marred by depression and financial panic.
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)(HFA, ‘96, p.46)
1837-1844 Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall published
their 3-volume work: “The Indian Tribes of North American.”
(WSJ, 3/15/06, p.D16)
1837-1863 More than 700 US banks could issue their
own notes during this period and as many as one-third of all bills were
fake.
(Econ, 2/23/08, p.104)
1837-1901 The Victorian Era was covered by Peter Gay
in his 5-volume work: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud." The
5th volume "Pleasure Wars" came out in 1998. Other volumes were titled:
Education of the Sense," "The Tender Passion," and "The Cultivation of
Hatred."
(SFEC, 1/11/98, BR p.9)
1837-1899 The Countess de Castiglione, mistress to
Napoleon III, actively collaborated in the making of some 500 images of
herself in a wide variety of costume and pose mostly photographed by
Pierre-Louis Pierson. She advertised herself as "The Most Beautiful
Woman of the Century."
(SFEC, 9/19/99, p.C13)
1838 Jan 4, Charles Sherwood
Stratton (d.1883), later known as the dwarf Tom Thumb, was born in
Bridgeport, Conn. In 1842, P.T. Barnum discovered Charles, who measured
25
inches
and weighed 15 pounds, only six pounds more than his birth weight.
(www.barnum-museum.org)
1838 Jan 6, Max Bruch, composer
Scottish Fantasy), was born in Cologne, Germany.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1838 Jan 6, Samuel Morse
(1791-1872) first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown,
N.J. In 2003 David Paul Nickles authored "Under the Wire," a history of
the telegraph and its impact on the world.
(AP, 1/6/98)(WSJ, 1/7/04, p.D10)
1838 Jan 7, John Joseph Hughes
(aka "Dagger John") was consecrated as bishop of New York. He
encouraged the formation of the Society for the Protection of Destitute
Catholic Children and helped form the Irish Emigrant Society.
(WSJ, 3/17/97, p.A18)
1838 Jan 26, Tennessee became the
1st state to prohibit alcohol.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1838 Feb 6, Having failed to
obtain land by trickery from the Zulus of South Africa, the Boar leader
Piet Retief was executed as a witch.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1838 Feb 16, Henry Adams (d.1918),
was born. He was the son and grandson of the presidents who became a
U.S. historian and wrote "The Education of Henry Adams."
(HN, 2/16/99)(SFEC, 4/23/00, BR p.6)
1838 Feb 20, Ludwig Boltzmann
(d.1906), Austrian atomic physics engineer, was born. [see 1844]
(HN, 2/20/98)
1838 Feb 21, Alexis De Rochon,
Spyglass Developer, was born.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1838 Feb 23, Gilbert Moxley Sorrel
(d.1901), Brig General (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1838 Feb 24, Thomas Benton Smith,
Brig. General (Confederate Army), was born in Mechanicsville,
Tennessee. He was wounded at Stone’s River/Murfreesboro and again at
Chickamauga. He was captured at the Battle of Nashville (1864) where he
was beaten over the head with a sword by Col. William Linn McMillen of
the 95th Ohio Infantry. His brain was exposed and it was believed he
would die. He recovered partially and spent the last 47 years of his
life in the State Asylum in Nashville, Tennessee, where he died on May
21, 1923. He’s buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, Davidson
County, Tennessee.
(MC, 2/24/02)(Internet)
1838 Mar 3, Rebellion at Pelee
Island, Ontario, Canada.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1838 Mar 7, Soprano Jenny Lind
("the Swedish Nightingale") made her debut in Weber's opera Der
Freischultz.
(HN, 3/7/01)
1838 Mar 16, Nathaniel Bowditch
(b.1773), mathematician, astronomer, polyglot, author (Marine Sextant),
died. In 1802 he published "The New American Practical Navigator."
(SS, 3/26/02)(AH, 12/02, p.22)
1838 Mar 18, Randal Cremer,
British trade unionist, pacifist (Nobel 1903), was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1838 Apr 3, Leon Michel Gambetta,
French attorney, premier (1881-82), was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1838 Apr 3, Francesco Antommarchi
(57), Napoleon's physician on St Helena, died.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1838 Apr 8, The British steamship
"Great Western" set out on its maiden voyage from Bristol,
England, to NYC.
(ON, 8/07, p.7)
1838 Apr 12, John Shaw Billings,
American librarian, army physician, was born.
(HN, 4/12/98)
1838 Apr 17, J. Schopenhauer (71),
writer, died.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1838 Apr 21, John Muir (d.1914),
naturalist, was born in Dunbar, Scotland. He discovered glaciers in the
High Sierras of California.
(HN, 4/21/98)(SFEC, 1/2/00, DB p.23)(SFC, 2/2/00,
p.A21)
1838 Apr 22, The English steamship
"Sirius" docked in NYC after a record Atlantic crossing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Riband)
1838 Apr 23, The British steamship
"Great Western" arrived in NYC on its maiden voyage from Bristol,
England, just hours after the retrofitted steamship Sirius, which had
departed Cork on April 4. The Great Western crossed the Atlantic in a
record 15 days and 12 hours.
(ON, 8/07, p.7)
1838 Apr 27, Fire destroyed half
of Charleston.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1838 May 10, John Wilkes Booth
(d.1865), assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was born near Bel Air, Maryland.
(HN, 5/10/98)
1838 May 17, Pennsylvania Hall in
Philadelphia was burned following an abolitionist meeting.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, BR p.1)
1838 May 17, Charles-Maurice duke
of Talleyrand-Perigord (84), diplomat, revolutionary, bishop and former
PM of France (1815), died. In 2006 David Lawday authored “Napoleon’s
Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand)(Econ,
9/30/06, p.93)
1838 Jun 12, The Iowa Territory
was organized.
(AP, 6/12/97)
1838 Jun 27, Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee, Bengali novelist (Anandamath), was born.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1838 Jun 28, Britain's Queen
Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
(AP, 6/28/98)(http://tinyurl.com/zezjg)
1838 Jul 1, Charles Darwin
presented a paper on his theory of evolution to the Linnaean Society in
London.
(HN, 7/1/01)
1838 Jul 8, Count Ferdinand von
Zeppelin (d.1917), German designer and manufacturer of airships, was
born.
(HN, 7/8/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1660)
1838 Jul 11, John Wanamaker
(d.1922), US merchant who founded a chain of stores in Philadelphia,
was born.
(HN, 7/11/98)(ON, 12/05, p.6)
1838 Aug 1, Slavery was abolished
in Jamaica.
(HFA, ‘96, p.36)
1838 Aug 18, Six US Navy ships
departed Hampton Roads, Va., led by Lt. Charles Wilkes on a 3-year
mission called the US South Seas Exploring Expedition, the "U.S. Ex.
Ex." The mission proved Antarctica to be a continent. Wilkes was tried
in a military court for abuses of power, but was generally acquitted.
In 2003 Nathaniel Philbrick authored "Sea of Glory," an account of the
expedition.
(Econ, 11/8/03, p.80)(WSJ, 11/12/03,
p.D12)(www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/usexex/)
1838 Aug 23, One of the first
colleges for women, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley,
Mass., graduated its first students.
(AP, 8/23/97)
1838 Aug, Some 12,000 Cherokee
Indians in 13 ragtag parties followed the Trail of Tears on a 116-day
journey west 800 miles to eastern Oklahoma. Estimates have placed the
death toll in camps and in transit as high as 4,000. They followed the
trail already set by the Choctaw out of Mississippi, the Creek from
Alabama, the Chickasaw from Arkansas and Mississippi, and the Seminole
from Florida.
(NG, 5/95, p.82)(www.crystalinks.com/cherokee2.html)
1838 Sep 1, William Clark (68),
2nd lt. of Lewis and Clark Expedition, died.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1838 Sep 2, Lydia Kamekeha
Liliuokalani (d.1917), last sovereign before annexation of Hawaii by
the United States, was born. Lili’uokalani, the last monarch of Hawaii
(1891-1893). She composed Hawaii’s most famous song "Aloha Oe."
(WSJ, 1/23/97, p.A12)(HN, 9/2/98)
1838 Sep 3, Frederick Douglass,
American Negro abolitionist, escaped slavery disguised as a sailor. He
would later write "The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass," his
memoirs about slave life.
(HFA, ‘96, p.38)(HN, 9/3/98)
1838 Sep 4, Henrietta d'Angeville
(1794-1871) became the 1st woman to climb to the top of Mt. Blanc,
France. In 1808 mountain guides had carried Marie Paradis, a local
serving girl, to the top.
(ON, 4/04, p.1)
1838 Sep 6, The steamship
Foxfarshire with some 60 passengers and crew suffered engine failure
and drifted onto Big Harkar Rock near the Longstone Lighthouse on the
Farne Islands in northeast England. Over 40 people drowned. Grace
Darling (22) rowed with her father (54), light keeper, to rescue
survivors.
(ON, 10/00, p.9)
1838 Sep 10, The opera "Benvenuto
Cellini," by Hector Berlioz, premiered in Paris. It was based on
Cellini's autobiography.
(MC, 9/10/01)(WSJ, 12/16/03, p.D10)
1838 Sep 11, John Ireland, US
archbishop of St. Paul, was born in Ireland.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1838 Sep 16, James J. Hill,
railroad builder, was born.
(HN, 9/16/00)
1838 Sep 23, Victoria Chaflin
Woodhull (d.1927), American presidential candidate (1872), was born
into a family of charlatans in Ohio. Woodhull, a militant suffragist,
advocated free love and was Wall Street's first female broker after
attracting Cornelius Vanderbilt. She was the first woman to address
Congress. Her story is documented in “The Woman Who Ran for President:
The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull” by Lois Beachy Underhill. In 1998
Mary Gabriel published "Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria
Woodhull, Uncensored. In 1998 Barbara Goldsmith published "Other
Powers--The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the Scandalous Victoria
Woodhull."
(WSJ, 7/25/95, p.A-10)(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.5)(SFEC,
3/8/98, Par p.14)(HNPD, 4/28/00)
1838 Oct 1, Lord Auckland, British
governor general in India, issued the Simla Manifesto, setting forth
the necessary reasons for British intervention in Afghanistan. This led
to the 1st Anglo-Afghan War.
(Econ, 10/7/06,
p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Afghan_War)
1838 Oct 24, Joseph Lancaster
(b.1778), English educator, was fatally injured by a runaway horsedrawn
carriage in NYC.
(http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/KRO_LAP/LANCASTER_JOSEPH_1778_1838_.html)
1838 Oct 25, Georges
Alexandre-Cesar-Leopold Bizet, French composer (Carmen), was born.
(HN, 10/25/98)(MC, 10/25/01)
1838 Oct 31, A mob of about 200
attacked a Mormon camp in Missouri, killing 20 men, women and children.
In the massacre at Haun’s Mill in western Missouri 17 Mormon settlers
were killed. Joseph Smith was arrested and the Mormons were driver from
the state.
(HN, 10/31/98)(NW, 9/10/01, p.48)
1838 Nov 8, Victor Hugo's "Ruy
Blas," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1838 Nov 13, Joseph F. Smith, 6th
president of Mormon church, was born.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1838 Nov 30, Mexico declared war
on France.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1838 Dec 13, Alexis Millardet,
botanist who developed the first successful fungicide, was born.
(HN, 12/13/00)
1838 Dec 16, Boers led by Andreas
Pretorius defeated the Zulus in the Battle of Blood River and settled
in Natal. The Afrikaners while escaping from British rule encountered
resistance from the native black peoples. In the Battle of Blood River
a few hundred Boers repelled an attack by more than 10,000 warriors of
the Zulu king Dingaan.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 563)
1838 Dec, India’s British governor
general dispatched to Kabul the Army of the Indus to protect British
interests from growing Russian influence.
(SSFC, 10/28/01,
p.C8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Afghan_War)
1838 The Norwegian violinist Ole
Bull visited Memphis but the local whites preferred the fiddling of the
slave musicians.
(WSJ, 8/14/97, p.A16)
1838 Charles Babbage published his
paper on Time Reckoning by Tree Ring Counts.
(RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.53)
1838 Charlotte Bronte authored her
novella "Stancliffe’s Hotel." It was published for the 1st time in 2003.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A2)
1838 Edgar Allan Poe became
assistant editor of Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia. In 1998
Ronald Weber published "Hired Pens: Professional Writers in America’s
Golden Age of Print," that covered professional writing in the US from
Edgar Allen Poe to the present.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 4/26/98, Par p.8)
1838 Gustav Schwab, German
historian, authored his compendium "Die Sagen des Klassischen
Altertums" (Stories from Classical Antiquity). The 1st English version
was published in 1946. It was republished in 2001 as "Gods and Heroes
of Ancient Greece."
(WSJ, 11/7/01, p.A20)
1838 The first Braille Bible was
published by the American Bible Society.
(WSJ, 8/7/98, p.W13)
1838 Mammoth Cave in Kentucky was
purchased by Franklin Gorin as a tourist attraction. Stephen L. Bishop,
a slave of Gorin’s, explored and mapped the caves over the next two
decades. His first comprehensive depiction was published in 1845.
Bishop was freed in 1856 and using money earned in tips as tour guide
he bought some adjoining land. Bishop died a year later and was buried
near the cave’s original entrance.
(NG, 5/95,Geographica)
1838 In New Harmony Indiana’s
oldest public lending library was founded. The town was founded by the
millennialist Harmonie Society and later bought by Robert Owen, a
social reformer and educator.
(WSJ, 7/22/98, p.A12)
1838 Frederick Augustus Washington
Bailey escaped from slavery in Maryland and traveled to new England
where he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.
(AHD, 1971, p.394)(ON, 7/02, p.6)
1838 New York passed the Free
Banking Act and the idea of state-chartered banks spread across the
country. Each bank issued its own bills in various shapes and sizes.
[see 1863, the National Bank Act]
(WSJ,11/24/95, p.A-8)
1838 Amid rising debts and rumors
of polygamy, the Mormons moved from Ohio to Far West, Mo., where they
clashed violently with other settlers. [see 1839]
(SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)
c1838 In North Atlanta the head of
a buck was mounted on a post near a settler’s crossing. Now the
intersection of Peachtree, Roswell and Paces Ferry Roads marks the
heart of the Buckhead section of Atlanta.
(Hem., 7/96, p.55)
1838 Francis Drexel founded a bank
that later developed into Drexel Burnham Lambert Corp. His son, Joseph
Drexel, later partnered with J.P. Morgan and in 1876 went on to serve
as the director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.W4)
1838 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel,
German astronomer, made the first reliable parallax measurement for a
star known as 61 Cygni. This gave a distance from the sun of 10.9
light-years. Thomas Henderson, Scottish astronomer, measured the
parallax of Alpha Centauri whose distance is calculated to be 4.3
light-years from the Sun.
(SCTS, p.137)
1838 In California Monterey became
the state capital under Juan Bautista Alvarado. He named Mariano
Vallejo commandante general.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W34)
1838 In California a major
earthquake opened a huge fissure from SF to Santa Clara.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W34)
1838 The Buckeye Brewing Co. of
Toledo, Ohio, began operations. Green Seal Select Beer was one of their
early brands. The company continued until 1972.
(SFC, 2/13/08, p.G8)
1838 In London the National
Gallery opened on Trafalgar Square. It was designed by William Wilkins.
A 10-year renovation was completed in 1999.
(SFC, 9/22/99, p.E3)
1838 The London Prize Ring Rules
were instituted with bare-knuckle rounds of unspecified length. Rounds
ended when a fighter touched ground with a knee. The rules were based
on those drafted by Britain's Jack Broughton in 1743, and governed the
conduct of prizefighting/bare-knuckle boxing for over 100 years. They
were later superseded by the Marquess of Queensberry rules (1865), the
origins of the modern sport of Boxing.
(AH, 2/06,
p.32)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Prize_Ring_rules)
1838 In England William Ridgway,
Son & Co. began using the "Humphrey clock" mark on its dishware.
(SFC, 3/11/98, Z1 p.5)
1838 Gideon Barr of England
borrowed money to buy an oceangoing schooner and sailed to Borneo,
called Kalimantaan by the natives. He put down a rebellion against the
sultan of Brunei and became the rajah of the territory. The 1998 novel
"Kalimantaan" by C.S. Godshalk was based on these events.
(SFEC, 3/22/98, BR p.6)
1838 France agreed to reduce
Haiti's 1825 "debt" to 60 million fold francs to be paid over 30 years.
The final payment was made in 1883.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A6)
1838 Friedrich Bessel, director of
the Konigsberg Observatory, calculated the distance to star 61 Cygni
using parallax and magnitude.
(NH, 4/1/04, p.45)
1838 In Ghana Asante King Nana
Badu Bonsu II had his head cut off by Maj. Gen. Jan Verveer in
retaliation for Bonsu's killing of two Dutch emissaries, whose heads
were then displayed as trophies. In 2008 Dutch author Arthur Japin
discovered Bonsu’s head in a jar of formaldehyde at Leiden Univ.
Medical Center. In 2009 the Dutch government returned the head of
Bonsu’s descendants.
(SFC, 3/21/09, p.A2)(SFC, 7/24/09, p.A2)
1838 Greece made an attempt to
restart the Olympics.
(WSJ, 7/19/96, p.R16)
1838 In Hong Kong obscure oil
paintings show a sophisticated irrigation system on the Island.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.A18)
1838-1840 In Germany Architect Gottfried Semper,
designer of the Dresden Semper Opera House, designed the Dresden Jewish
synagogue that was built over this time.
(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A10)
1838-1916 Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist, proposed
that the inertia of every bit of matter resulted from the mutual
interaction of all matter in the universe. In other words, a mass
resists acceleration because of the influence on it of all the rest of
the masses everywhere. He is also associated with the relationship of
the velocity of aircraft with the velocity of sound.
(TNG, Klein, p.147)
1838-1918 Henry Brooks Adams, American Historian and
philosopher, son of Charles Francis Adams. "One friend in a lifetime is
much; two are many; three are hardly possible." "A teacher affects
eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
(AHD, 1971, p.14)(AP, 3/21/97)(AP, 1/28/99)
1838-1923 John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn,
English journalist: "The great business of life is to be, to do, to do
without, and to depart."
(AP, 8/13/98)
1838-1995 The Tirschenreuth Porcelain Factory
operated in Tirschenreuth, Bavaria, during this period. In 1927 it was
acquired by the L. Hutschenreuther Co.
(SFC, 9/21/05, p.G3)
1839 Jan 2, French photographic
pioneer Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre took the first photograph of the
moon. Soon after his first photograph of people was a shoeshine scene
on a Paris boulevard.
(HN, 1/2/99)(SFEC, 1/16/00, Z1 p.2)(ON, 4/00, p.10)
1839 Jan 9, The Daguerreotype
photo process was announced at the French Academy of Science. Louis
Daguerre had the influential astronomer Dominique-Francois-Argo make an
announcement at the Academy of Sciences in Paris of the daguerreotype,
a photographic process using fumes of iodine to sensitize a silver
plate, vapor of mercury to bring out the image, and common salt to fix
the image. [See 1765-1833, Nicephore Niepce, French lithographer, and
1816].
(http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/Louis_Daguerre)(http://tinyurl.com/arl5k5)(WSJ,
9/14/95, p.A-16)(ON, 10/08, p.9)
1839 Jan 19, Paul Cezanne
(d.1906), French painter, was born in Aix-en-Provence in southern
France. He was considered a founding figure in 20th century art. He
departed from the Impressionists in his desire to render perspective
through color. His work had a profound influence on the Cubists. A
catalogue of his work was made by John Rewald (1912-1994) and published
posthumously as: "The Paintings of Paul Cezanne: A catalogue Raisonne."
His work includes: "The Feast" (late 60s), "Portrait of Achille
Emperaire" (1869-70), "Self-Portrait" (c1875), "Rocks at L’Estaque"
(1879-82), "Flowerpots" (c1885), "Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan"
(1885-86), "The Kitchen Table" (1888-90), "Madame Cezanne in a Yellow
Chair" (1893-95), "The Lac d’Annecy" (1896), "Pyramid of Skulls"
(1898-1900), "Garden at Le Lauves" (c1906), "Large Bathers" (1906),
"Mont Ste.-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves." He is best remembered for
his works Card Players and L'Oeuvre.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.E1)(WSJ, 2/10/96, p.A16)(DPCP
1984)(HN, 1/19/99)
1839 Jan 20, Chile defeated a
confederation of Peru and Bolivia in the Battle of Yungay.
(AP, 1/20/98)
1839 Jan 24, Charles Darwin was
elected member of Royal Society.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1839 Jan 28, William Henry Fox
Talbot (1800-1877), English inventor, presented his discoveries and
methods of photography to the Royal Society of London. His callotype, a
negative to positive process, allowed multiple reproductions of a
single image for the 1st time. Talbot suggested a daguerreotype camera
with extra parts to hold mercury.
(ON, 4/00, p.10)(SFC, 6/12/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC,
12/26/02, p.E9)
1839 Jan 29, Charles Darwin
married Emma Wedgwood.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1839 Feb 7, Henry Clay declared in
Senate "I had rather be right than president."
(MC, 2/7/02)
1839 Feb 12, Aroostook War took
place over a boundary dispute between Maine and New Brunswick.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1839 Feb 20, Congress prohibited
dueling in the District of Columbia.
(AP, 2/20/98)
1839 Feb 24, A steam shovel was
patented by William Otis, Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1839 Mar 8, James Mason Crafts, US
chemist (Friedel-Crafts-synthesis), was born.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1839 Mar 9, Felix Huston Robertson
(d.1928), Brig General (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1839 Mar 9, Modest Petrovich
Moussorgsky (Mussorgsky), Russian composer, was born (d.1881). His work
included "Boris Godunov" and "Songs and Dances of Death." His work
"Khovanshchina" was finished and orchestrated by Shostakovich. [see Mar
21]
(WUD, 1994, p.936)(WSJ, 3/24/99, p.A25)(MC, 3/9/02)
1839 Mar 9, Prussian government
limited the work week for children to 51 hours.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1839 Mar 21, Modest Mussorgsky,
composer (Boris Godunov, Night on Bald Mt), was born. [see Mar 9]
(MC, 3/21/02)
1839 Mar 23, 1st recorded use of
"OK" [oll korrect] was in Boston's Morning Post.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1839 Mar 25, William Bell Wait,
educator of the blind, was born.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1839 Spring, In Japan a craze for
costume dancing swept Kyoto for a few weeks.
(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)
1839 Apr 5, Robert Smalls, black
congressman from South Carolina, 1875-87, was born.
(HN, 5/5/97)
1839 Apr 11, John Galt (59),
Scottish writer (Last of the Lairds), died.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1839 Apr 17, Guatemala formed a
republic.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1839 Apr 20, Giuseppe Rossini,
father of Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini, died.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1839 May 1, Louis-Maire-Hilaire
Bernigaud, French chemist, inventor of rayon, was born.
(HN, 5/1/01)
1839 May 18, Carolina [Maria A]
Bonaparte (57), countess of Lipona (anagram of Napoli), died and was
buried in Bologna.
(SC, 5/18/02)(http://gutenberg.net)
1839 May 25, John Eliot, English
meteorologist, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1839 Jun 7, Hawaiian Declaration
of Rights was signed.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1839 Jun 12, Baseball was said to
have been invented. According to legend Abner Doubleday chased cows out
of Elihu Phiney’s pasture and invented the game of baseball at
Cooperstown, New York, later home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
and the Cooperstown Bat Company. In 1939 on the 100th anniversary of
the day Abner Doubleday supposedly invented the sport, the National
Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was dedicated in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Americans began playing baseball in the 1840s. It was derived from the
British game called rounders.
(SFE, 10/1/95, p.T-11)(AP, 6/12/97)(WSJ, 1/11/99,
p.R34)(WSJ, 7/19/01, p.A20)
1839 Jun 28, Cinque, originally
Senghbe, and 52 other Africans were kidnapped in Sierra Leone and sold
into slavery in Cuba. They were carried on a Spanish ship to Cuba where
43 surviving slaves revolted. They killed the captain and ordered the
crew back to Africa but the ship sailed north and ran aground [was
captured by the US Navy] on Long Island. A legal battle ensued in New
London, Conn., that went to the Supreme court where former Pres. John
Quincy Adams argued for their freedom and won. An 1855 novella by
Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" looked at the rebellion through the
eyes of an American interloper. Barbara Chase-Ribaud later wrote "Echo
of Lions," a novel based on the Amistad. In 1996 Steven Spielberg
announced plans to direct a film based on the incident titled
"Amistad." The film was to be released in 1997. A 1997 opera
production, "Amistad," by Anthony Davis premiered in Chicago.
(SFC, 11/13/96, p.E2)(SFC, 9/5/97,
p.C3)(SFEC,10/26/97, DB p.57)(USAT, 11/19/97, p.2D)(WSJ, 12/5/97,
p.A16)(SFEC,12/797, DB p.44)(WSJ, 12/16/97, p.A18)(SFC,12/26/97,
p.C6)(HN, 6/28/99)
1839 Jul 5, British naval forces
bombarded Dingai on Zhoushan Island in China and occupy it.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1839 Jul 8, John D. Rockefeller
(d.1937), financier, philanthropist, founder of Standard Oil, was born
on a farm in Richford, New York. He moved into the refining end of the
oil business and gobbled up competitors. The 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust
Act forced the breakup of his Standard Oil Co. Ron Chernow later
published "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller." His philanthropy
totaled over $500 million and included the founding of the Univ. of
Chicago and the Rockefeller Inst. For medical Research, later
Rockefeller Univ.
(HN, 7/8/98)(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)(AP, 7/8/99)
1839 Jul 27, Chartist riots broke
out in Birmingham, England.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1839 Jul 30, Slave rebels took
over the slave ship Amistad.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1839 Aug 19, At a meeting of the
French Academy of Sciences in Paris a new photographic process was
unveiled by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre. He "was able to capture
images directly onto small, silvered plates; and in England where
William Henry Fox invented what he called "photogenic drawing." This
process produced a negative image on paper from which positive images
could be made... but it took more than an hour to take a picture and
the fuzzy prints were difficult to see. The daguerreotype enabled the
photographer to create a highly detailed image. The process consisted
of polishing a copper plate, using iodine to sensitize it, and
developing it over mercury after exposing it to light in a camera.
Daguerreotypes became so popular in the United States that New York
City boasted more than 70 daguerreotype studios by 1850.
(Smith., 5/95, p.72)(HNQ, 10/28/98)
1839 Aug 23, The British captured
Hong Kong from China.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1839 Aug 26, The slave ship
Amistad was captured off Long Island. The U.S.S. Washington, a U.S.
Navy brig, seized the Amistad York, and escorted it to New London,
Connecticut.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1839 Aug 28, William Smith,
British geologist, died. In 1815 he made the 1st geological map of
England and became impoverished in the process. In 2001 Simon
Winchester authored "The Map That Changed the World."
(RTH, 8/28/99)(WSJ, 8/17/01, p.W6)
1839 Sep 9, John Herschel
(1792-1871), English astronomer, took the 1st glass plate photograph.
(www.getty.edu)
1839 Sep 18, John Aitken,
physician and meteorologist, was born.
(HN, 9/18/00)
1839 Sep 28, Frances E.C. Willard,
founder of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, was born in NY.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1839 Oct 1, The British government
decided to send a punitive naval expedition to China.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1839 Oct 3, John Lloyd Stephens
and Frederick Catherwood departed NYC for Central America. They arrived
in Guatemala 3 weeks later.
(ON, 12/99, p.5)
1839 Oct 21, Georg von Siemens,
founder of Deutsche Bank, was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1839 Oct 30, Alfred Sisley
(d.1899), impressionist artist, was born in Paris of English parents.
He studied in London and then in Paris in the studio of Charles Gleyre.
He painted landscapes almost exclusively. His work included "A Turn in
the Road" (1873)..
(DPCP 1984)(HN, 10/30/00)
1839 Oct, The London Treaty, in
which all the European powers guaranteed Belgian neutrality, was
signed. The final Dutch-Belgian separation treaty divided Luxembourg
and Limburg between the Dutch and Belgian crowns, settled debt
arrangements and guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium.
(HNQ, 7/24/98)(http://tinyurl.com/3335jt)
1839 Nov 3, The first Opium War
between China and Britain broke out in and around Guangzhou. Lin Zexu,
a Qing official, started the Opium War when he ordered the dumping of 3
million pounds of Western-owned opium into the sea. 2 British frigates
engaged several Chinese junks.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.D4)(AP, 11/3/97)(SSFC, 8/30/09,
p.A21)
1839 Nov 16, Louis-Honore
Frechette, Canadian poet, was born.
(HN, 11/16/00)
1839 Nov 17, Catherwood and
Stephens arrived at Copan, Honduras, and proceeded to explore the Mayan
ruins in the area.
(ON, 12/99, p.7)
1839 Nov 27, The American
Statistical Association was founded in Boston.
(AP, 11/27/97)
1839 Nov 30, John Lloyd Stephens
left Copan for Guatemala City to locate the government of the United
Provinces of Central America.
(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1839 Nov, In India’s city Coringa
a gigantic 40-foot tidal wave caused by an enormous cyclone wiped out
the harbor city that was never entirely rebuilt; 20,000 vessels in the
bay were destroyed and some 300,000 people died.
(www.emergency-management.net/cyclone.htm)
1839 Dec 4, The Whig Party opened
a national convention in Harrisburg, Pa., where delegates nominated
William Henry Harrison for president. Soon after the Whigs constructed
a 10-foot ball of twine, wood and tin, covered with Whig slogans, and
rolled it from Cleveland to Columbus, Ohio, and across the country.
This led to the expression "Keep the ball rolling."
(AP, 12/4/99)(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.D6)
1839 Dec 5, George Armstrong
Custer, Union cavalry leader who met his fate against Native Americans
at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, was born.
(HN, 12/5/98)
c1839 H. Biberstein created an
allegorical portrait of Marquis de Sade.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, BR p.3)
1839 J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
painted "The Fighting Temeraire," a portrait of the ship, which had
gained fame in the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), as it was towed for
demolition.
(WSJ, 8/21/03, p.D8)
1839 The original printing of John
James Audubon’s “Birds of America” was completed in Europe. Fewer than
200 subscribers ordered the complete set of 400 prints.
(ON, 12/05, p.10)
1839 Cesar Otway wrote "Tour of
Connacht."
(SFEC, 4/12/98, p.T8)
1839 Stendhal, Marie-Henri Beyle,
wrote his novel "Charterhouse of Parma" in 52 days. A 1st edition from
the library of Marie Louise, 2nd wife of Napoleon, sold for $157,310 in
1999.
(WSJ, 1/2/96, p. A-7)(WSJ, 3/25/97, p.A16)
1839 Giuseppe Verdi’s 1st opera,
"Oberto, Conte de San Bonifaccio," was produced.
(SFEM, 9/10/00, p.20)
1839 Felix Mendelssohn conducted
the premier of the "C Major Symphony" by Franz Schubert (d.1828).
(SFEM, 9/10/00, p.20)
1839 Jean Vioget laid out the 1st
plan of Yerba Buena (San Francisco) and showed the later Union Square
site as a future park.
(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.F2)
1839 A granite structure was
erected at Fort Trumbull in New London, Conn. The fort was later turned
into a submarine base.
(AH, 10/01, p.A10)(Econ, 2/19/05, p.31)
1839 In Washington DC the Gen’l.
Post Office Building was constructed. In 1998 it was leased by the
Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group for conversion into a 172-room
luxury hotel.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B2)
1839 In the US the Virginia
Military Institute (VMI) for young men was founded in Lexington,
Virginia.
(WSJ, 6/27/96, p.B7)(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.A20)
1839 John Neely Byron started a
trading post on what later became known as the grassy knoll near Dealy
Plaza in Dallas, Tx., near the site of JFK's 1963 assassination.
(SSFC, 11/16/03, p.C8)
1839 Richard Henry Dana, author,
obtained a grant of 37,887 acres near San Luis Obispo, Ca., built an
adobe house, and raised a family of 21 children.
(SFEC,12/14/97, BR p.7)
1839 The Bernal Heights area of
SF, Ca., began to be developed as part of a Mexican land grant
belonging to Don Jose Cornelio Bernal.
(SFC, 6/29/06, 96 Hours p.41)
1839 Capt. John Sutter
(1803-1880), a Swiss who claimed to have been an officer in the French
army arrived in California. Sutter was born in present-day Germany and
lived much of his early years in Switzerland. He convinced the Mexican
governor to grant him lands on the Sacramento River. He established a
fort on a hill near the American River east of Sacramento Ca. A
biography of Sutter was later written by Richard Dillon.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, p.T3)(SFC, 12/28/98, p.A13)(HNQ,
11/18/00)
1839 Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled
against slavery.
(Econ, 4/11/09, p.31)
1839 New York Gov. William Seward
(1801-1872) made his 1st inaugural address.
(WSJ, 11/20/01, p.A16)
1839 The Cherokee Nation moved to
Oklahoma.
(www.crystalinks.com/cherokee2.html)
1839 Joseph Smith escaped from a
Missouri prison and the Mormons left Far West, Mo., and started buying
land for a new settlement in Nauvoo, Ill. [see1844]
(SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)(NW, 9/10/01, p.48)
1839 William Knabe opened his own
piano company in Baltimore. It later became part of Samick Musical
Instruments.
(SFC, 10/29/08, p.G2)
1839 Charles Goodyear (1800-1860)
found the right formula for making rubber impervious to temperature, a
combination of chemicals and heat that became know as vulcanization.
(WSJ, 7/31/02, p.D10)(ON, 6/07, p.11)
1839 Photography first appeared in
1839 as something of a miracle.
(SFE Mag., 2/12/95, p. 8)
1839 Erastus Bigelow invented the
1st power loom. It doubled carpet production within a year.
(SFCM, 10/10/04, p.8)
1839 The photoelectric effect was
1st discovered by French physicist Alexandre Becquerel. He observed
that light could generate an electric current between 2 metal
electrodes immersed in a conductive fluid.
(Econ, 3/10/07, TQ p.23)
1839 The basic idea for
electrocombustion, the combination of oxygen and hydrogen to generate
electricity and water, was discovered. This later provided the basis
for fuel cell technology.
(Wired, 10/96, p.128)(SFC, 9/28/01, p.B9)
1839 The annual Miner’s Circular,
published by the USDI, listed the mining disasters of the previous
year. 50 gas explosions and mine fires caused 200 deaths in the US.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.135)
1839 Italian revolutionary
Garibaldi arrived in Brazil to aid the rebels.
(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1839 A British army marched to
Kabul and replaced Dost Mohammad, the Amir of Afghanistan, with a more
docile ruler. Britain had decided that Persian and Russian intrigues
posed a threat to their control of India.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)
1839 Britisher Sir James Brooke
arrived in an armed schooner to Sarawak, Malaysia, and helped the
Sultan of neighboring Brunei subdue rebel, headhunting Iban (Dayak)
tribes. As a reward he was made the Raja of Sarawak, and his heirs
continued to rule until 1946.
(Hem, 6/96, p.133)
1839 The British and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society was founded.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.13)
1839 The British & North
America Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. formed. It later became Cunard and
then a unit of Carnival Corp.
(WSJ, 10/2/03, p.B4)
1839 The Elder Pottery in
Cobridge, Staffordshire, began operating and continued to 1846. John
and George Alcock created platters there.
(SFC, 10/10/07, p.G3)
1839 Joseph Bourne began making
salt glazed pottery at Denby, England. A line called Danesbury Ware was
begun in the 1920s. It later became known as the Denby Pottery Co.
(SFC, 10/29/08, p.G2)
1839 France began to mass produce
women’s corsets about this time. See the discussion by Marilyn Yalom in
her 1997 book: "History of the Breast."
(SFEC, 2/9/97, z1 p.3)
1839 Parisian tailors revolted and
destroyed the new sewing machines.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R25)
1839 John Lloyd Stephens and
Frederick Catherwood explored Copan. John L. Stephens attempted to
purchase the Mayan city of Copan in Honduras.
(RFH-MDHP, p.217)(NG, 12/97, p.80)
1839 In India a Sikh kingdom under
Ranjit Singh ruled the Punjab until this time.
(WSJ, 10/12/01, p.W17)
1839 Jews in Mashad, Iran, were
forcibly converted to Shiite Islam following a pogrom.
(SFC, 10/20/01, p.A10)
1839 In the Netherlands the
locomotive named "De Arend" was the first and pulled a train from
Amsterdam to Haarlem with a top speed of 23 mph.
(SFC, 6/18/99, p.D4)
1839 Mikhail Lermontov
(1814-1841), Russian writer, authored “A Hero of Our Time.” It is an
example of the superfluous man novel, noted for its compelling Byronic
hero (or anti-hero) Pechorin and for the beautiful descriptions of the
Caucasus.
(Econ, 10/18/08,
p.35)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hero_of_Our_Time)
1839-1840 The Liberals of the United Provinces of
Central America under leader Francisco Morazan were defeated in a civil
war led by Rafael Carrera. The confederation dissolved into its 4
component states: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
(EWH, 1968, p.857)
1839-1842 First Anglo-Afghan War. After some
resistance, Amir Dost Mohammad Khan surrendered to the British and was
deported to India. In 1990 John H. Waller (1923-2004) authored “Beyond
the Khyber Pass: The Road to British Disaster in the First Afghan War.”
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(SSFC, 11/7/04, p.A23)
1839-1842 Shah Shuja was installed as Afghan "puppet
king" by the British.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)
1839-1842 The Opium War between Britain and China
started when Beijing tried to stop Western imports of the narcotic. The
British won by steaming gunboats up the Yangtze River to the Grand
Canal an then cutting off grain and other supplies to Beijing.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.D4)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R51)
1839-1843 The Erebus and Terror Expedition had aboard
the botanist-surgeon J.D. Hooker, who described the diatoms of the sea.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.158)
1839-1861 Abdul Meçid succeeded Mahmud II in
the Ottoman House of Osman.
(Ot, 1993, xvii)
1839-1897 Henry George, American economist.
(V.D.-H.K.p.253)
1839-1902 Thomas B. Reed, American lawyer and
legislator: "One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has
been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted."
(AP, 7/27/99)
1839-1908 Joaquin Maria Machado de Assis, mulatto
writer. His novels included "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas,"
(1880) and "Dom Casmurro," (1899). The works were republished in 1998
by the Oxford Library of Latin America.
(WSJ, 2/3/98, p.A20)
1839-1908 Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramee), English
writer, "queen of the romantic potboiler." "A cruel story runs on
wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run."
(WSJ, 11/15/96, p.A14)(AP, 2/7/01)
1839-1911 William Keith, American landscape painter.
(SSFC, 2/4/01, DB p.65)
1839-1912 Frank Furness, American architect. His
students included Louis Sullivan and George Howe. His work included the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Univ. of Pennsylvania
Library. In 2001 Michael J. Lewis authored "Frank Furness: Architecture
and the Violent Mind."
(WS, 6/26/01, p.A21)
1839-1925 Edward S. Morse, educator. He introduced
modern ideas in archaeology and zoology to Japan at Tokyo Univ.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.34)
1840 Jan 16, Officers Henry Eld
and William Reynolds sighted mountains on Antarctica from their ship,
the Peacock. Their captain, William Hudson, did not bother to confirm
the sighting.
(ON, 3/00, p.7)
1840 Jan 18, "Electro-Magnetic
Intelligencer", 1st US electrical journal, appeared.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1840 Jan 19, Charles B. Wilkes,
captain of the US flagship Vincennes, claimed the discovery of
Antarctica. Wilkes Land was later named in his honor. The American
explorer, born April 3, 1798, coasted along part of the Antarctic
barrier from about 150 degrees east to 108 degrees east, the areas that
were subsequently named Wilkes Land. Wilkes’ officers disputed the Jan
19 sighting but acknowledged that land was sighted Jan 28 and Feb 15.
(HNQ, 1/12/99)(ON, 3/00, p.8)
1840 Feb 5, Hiram Stevens Maxim
(d.1916), inventor of the automatic single-barrel rifle, was born in
Sangerville, Maine. He invented the hair-curling iron, and patented
such items as a mousetrap, a locomotive headlight, a method of
manufacturing carbon filaments for lamps, and an automatic sprinkling
system.
(V.D.-H.K.p.267)(MC, 2/5/02)
1840 Feb 5, In Damascus, Syria,
Father Thomas, originally from Sardinia, and the superior of a
Franciscan convent at Damascus, disappeared with his servant. 13
prominent Jews were falsely accused of the ritual murder of the
Franciscan monk and his servant. The “Damascus Affair” inspired
international protests. In 2004 Ronald Florence authored “Blood Libel:
The Damascus Affair of 1840.”
(SSFC, 6/28/09,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair)
1840 Feb 10, Britain’s Queen
Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
(HN, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/97)
1840 Feb 11, Gaetano Donizetti's
Opera "La Fille du Regiment," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1840 Mar 23, Draper took 1st
successful photo of the Moon (daguerreotype).
(SS, 3/23/02)
1840 Mar 30, "Beau" Brummell
(b.1778), English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent, died
of syphilis in a French lunatic asylum for paupers. In 2006 Ian Kelly
authored the biography “Beau Brummel.”
(HN, 3/30/99)(WSJ, 5/7/06, p.P9)
1840 Mar 31, 1840, American
President Martin Van Buren issued an executive order extending the
"10-hour system" to all laborers and mechanics employed on federal
public works. The movement for the 10-hour workday grew after Eastern
city building trades workers and the municipal government of
Philadelphia instituted it in the early 1830s. The average daily hours
of factory workers in 1840 was estimated at 11.4. By 1860 the 10-hour
day was standard among most skilled workers and laborers.
(HNQ, 3/15/99)
1840 Apr 2, Emile Zola (d.1902),
French novelist, reporter (Nana) , was born. He tried to wake the
consciousness of the fin de siecle.
(HN, 4/2/98)(SFC, 12/29/00, p.C6)(V.D.-H.K.p.279)
1840 Apr 7, John Lloyd Stephens
and Frederick Catherwood left Guatemala City and traveled north into
Mexico where they explored Palenque.
(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1840 Apr 25, Peter Ilyich
Tchaikovsky, Russian composer (1812 Overture), was born. [see May 7]
(SS, 4/25/02)
1840 Apr 27, Edward Whymper, first
to climb the Matterhorn on the border of Switzerland and Italy, was
born.
(WUD, 1994, p.885)(HN, 4/27/98)
1840 May 1, The 1st adhesive
postage stamps, the" Penny Blacks" from England, were issued.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1840 May 5, Matthaus Fischer (76),
composer, died.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1840 May 6, Frederick William
Stowe, was born He was the son of the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe and
fighter in the Civil War for the Union.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1840 May 7, Peter Ilyich
Tchaikovsky (d. Nov 6,1893) was born in Kamsko-Votinsk, the Ural region
of Russia (d.1893). His family moved to St. Petersburg in 1850 and
there he studied until he graduated from the school of Jurisprudence
where he entered the Ministry of Justice as a clerk, first-class in
1859. He didn't start to study music seriously until he was 21 under
Nicolai Zaremba, and enrolled into the St. Petersburg Conservatory when
it opened in 1862. His work included the 1812 Overture. In 1985 Roland
John Wiley wrote "Tchaikovsky’s Ballets." [see Apr 25]
(LGC-HCS, p.354-355)(AP, 5/5/97)(WSJ, 11/18/97,
p.A20)(HN, 5/7/99)
1840 May 7, A tornado struck
Natchez, Miss., killing 317 people and causing over a million dollars
in damage.
(SFC, 5/7/09, p.D8)
1840 May 8, Alexander Wolcott
patented a photographic process.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1840 May 10, Mormon leader Joseph
Smith moved his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities
they experienced in Missouri.
(HN, 5/10/99)
1840 May 13, Alphonse Daudet,
writer, was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1840 May 14, English Lt. Richmond
Shakespear left Herat (later Afghanistan) on a 700-mile mission to
Khiva (later Uzbekistan) to persuade the ruling Khan to free all his
Russian slaves. The Khan continued to hold a large number of Persian
slaves.
(ON, 4/00, p.7)
1840 May 21, The Treaty of
Waitangi was signed by Maori chiefs of New Zealand and representatives
of Queen Victoria. It granted sovereignty over all New Zealand to Queen
Victoria, but only guaranteed the Maoris the land they wished to
retain. The treaty remained a source of friction to the present day.
(NG, Aug, 1974, p.197)(AP, 5/21/97)(SSFC, 11/14/04,
p.F11)
1840 May 27, Nicolo Paganini (57),
Italian legendary violinist, died in Nice. The local bishop refused to
bury him in consecrated ground due to his scandal-ridden past. His
remains were transferred to Parma in 1876. His 1742 violin, "the
Canon," was put to rest in a museum in Genoa and later played annually
by the winner of the Int'l. Paganini Competition. In 1980 John Sugden
authored the biography "Nicolo Paganini: Supreme Violinist or Devil’s
Fiddler"
(SFC, 8/15/96, p.D5)(SFC, 11/12/98, p.E1)(SFC,
4/26/99, p.E2)(ON, 3/02, p.7)
1840 May 29, Hans Makart, Austrian
painter (Plague in Florenz), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1840 Jun 2, Thomas Hardy, English
novelist and poet, was born in Higher Bockhampton and almost given up
for dead until an observant midwife noticed he was breathing. He was
driven by a sense of somber doom by the failure of his readers to wake
up to the dreary fraud of their beliefs, and he devoted the last half
of his long life to writing poems that expressed his haunted vision.
When Hardy died (1928) his heart was removed and buried in the
churchyard of St. Michael’s in Stinsford in the grave of his first
wife, Emma, and his second wife, Florence. His ashes were buried in the
Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey in London. His work included "Tess
of D'Ubervilles" and "Jude the Obscure."
(SFC, 12/4/94, p. T-4)(V.D.-H.K.p.279)(HN, 6/2/99)
1840 Jun 20, Samuel F.B. Morse, a
popular artist, patented his telegraph.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1840 Jun 29, Lucien Bonaparte
(65), prince of Canino, Musignano, died.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1840 Jul 4, The Cunard Line took
just over 14 days to make its first Atlantic crossing with the paddle
steamer "Britannia", which embarked from Liverpool.
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1840 Jul 25, Flora Adams Darling,
founded Daughters of American Revolution, was born.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1840 Aug 13, Giovanni Verga,
Italian writer (Eros), was born.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1840 Aug 14, Baron Richard
Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, psychiatrist, was born.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1840 Aug 15, English Lt. Richmond
Shakespeare began a 500-mile trek with 416 freed Russian slaves from
Khiva (Uzbekistan) to the Russian Fort Alexandrovsk on the Caspian Sea.
(ON, 4/00, p.8)
1840 Aug 17, Wilfrid Scawen,
writer (Irish Land League), was born in Blunt, England.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1840 Sep 3, Jacob Fabricius,
composer, was born.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1840 Sep 12, Composer Robert
Schumann married Clara Wieck.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1840 Sep 27, Alfred T. Mahan, navy
admiral who wrote "The Influence of Seapower on History" and other
books that encouraged world leaders to build larger navies, was born.
Although a brilliant naval historian and noted theorist on the
importance of sea power to national defense, Alfred Thayer Mahan hated
the sea and dreaded his duties as a ship’s captain.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1840 Sep 27, Thomas Nast,
caricaturist, was born. He created the Democratic donkey and the
Republican elephant.
(HN, 9/27/00)
1840 Oct 8, King William I of
Holland abdicated.
(HN, 10/8/98)
1840 Nov 3, English Lt. Richmond
Shakespeare reached St. Petersburg, Russia, where Czar Nicholas thanked
him for freeing Russian slaves from the Khan of Kiva.
(ON, 4/00, p.8)
1840 Nov 5, Afghanistan
surrendered to the British.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1840 Nov 12, Auguste Rodin, French
sculptor who created "The Kiss," was born.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1840 Nov 14, Claude Monet
(d.1926), French Impressionist painter, best known for his late work
done at Giverney, northwest of Paris after 1890. He came up with the
idea of series pictures, which feature a single subject shown again and
again under varying conditions of light and weather. He studied in
Paris with Charles Gleyre, a Swiss academic painter, and there met
Frederic Bazille, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. Together
they developed open-air painting which came to be known as
Impressionism.
(WSJ, 7/25/95, p.A-10)(HN, 11/14/98)
1840 Dec 2, William Henry Harrison
was elected president of US. Whig candidate William Henry Harrison, Old
Buckeye, and his running mate John Tyler ran and won in a landslide
against Democrat Pres. Martin Van Buren. Depression and financial panic
had marked Van Buren’s term. Fans of the Harrison Party rolled huge
balls of paper, rope and tin through Midwestern towns and into the
Pennsylvania convention. "Hard cider" Whigs disrupted the Democratic
gathering in Baltimore.
(HFA, ‘96, p.46)(Hem, 8/96, p.84)(WSJ, 8/15/00,
p.A26)(MC, 12/2/01)
1840 Dec 2, Gaetano Donizetti's
opera "La Favorita," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 12/2/01)
1840 Dec 7, Hermann Goetz,
composer, was born.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1840 Francis William Edmonds
painted "The City and the Country Beaux."
(WSJ, 2/2/00, p.W2)
1840 John Martin (1789-1854),
British artist, painted "Assuaging of the Waters."
(SFEM, 5/11/97, p.6)
1840 J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
painted "Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of
Shoal Water."
(WSJ, 8/21/03, p.D8)
1840 Richard Dana published his
novel "Two Years Before the Mast." It was based on his voyage from
Boston to California around Cape Horn.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1840 William Whewell wrote his
treatise "The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences."
(SFEC, 3/22/98, BR p.4)
1840 Niels Gade, Dutch composer,
wrote the overture "Echoes of Ossian."
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.B1)
c1840 The Boston rocker appeared
about this time in New England. They had a rolled seat front, arms and
rockers that extended in the back. The backs had 7-9 spindles often
decorated with stencil designs.
(SFC, 12/23/96, z-1 p.5)
1840 John Janey was chairman of
the Whig Party Convention in Virginia that nominated W.H. Harrison for
president. Janey and John Tyler were the nominees for the vice
presidency. The convention vote was a tie and Janey voted for John
Tyler, who became president when William Henry Harrison died in 1841.
(SFC, 12/17/96, p.E8)
1840 In his re-election campaign
Van Buren was attacked for "wallowing lasciviously in raspberries."
(WSJ, 9/9/96, p.A16)
1840 William Wilson Corcoran and
George Washington Riggs formed Corcoran Riggs, the predecessor to Riggs
National Bank. Riggs supplied the gold for the 1868 purchase of Alaska.
(WSJ, 4/7/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/16/04, p.A4)
1840 The US census categorized the
population as "Free White persons, free Colored persons, and slaves."
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A21)
1840 In South Carolina land was
taken from the Catawba Indians. In 1993 they received a $50 million
settlement.
(SFC, 7/4/97, p.A10)
c1840 Railroads in the US began
bringing milk to inland towns.
(SFC, 10/12/96, p.E3)
1840 More than 2,000 ships were
engaged full-time carrying timber from North America to the British
Isles. Human cargo fills the ships on their return journey.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.51)
c1840 The word "tuberculosis"
appeared in print for the first time.
(WP, 1951, p.5)
1840 Louis Agassiz (1807-1873),
Swiss naturalist, author and educator, advanced his theory that Earth
had experienced an ice age.
(DD-EVTT, p.129)(AHD,1971, p.24)(SFC, 1/22/00, p.B3)
1840 Wilhelm Beer of Germany drew
the first full map of Mars. It included dark "seas" and light
"continents."
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.A16)
1840 An earthquake hit the island
of Nevis and destroyed the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton.
(Hem., 12/96, p.30)
1840 Fanny Burney (b.1752),
English writer, died. Her books included "Evelina." In 1911 she
underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia. In 2001 Claire Harman
authored the biography: "Fanny Burney."
(SSFC, 12/23/01, p.M5)
1840 Caspar David Friedrich
(b.1774), German Romantic painter, died.
(WSJ, 9/21/01, p.W2)(WSJ, 10/17/01, p.A24)
1840 In Australia Polish explorer
Paul Strzelecki named the highest peak in honor of the Polish national
hero Tadeusz Kosciusko. Early surveyors messed up the transcription and
the peak was named Mt. Kosciusko. There was a move in 1996 to restore
the missing z to the name.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, T7)
1840 In London the World
Anti-Slavery Convention was held. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton were denied seats because of their sex.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.30)
1840 Britain issued the world's
first postage stamp, "penny black," with a picture of Queen Victoria.
Up to this time postage was collected from the recipient.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
1840 William Hislop established
himself as a clockmaker in Biggar, England.
(SFC, 3/16/05, p.G4)
1840 Zulu king Dingaan was
defeated by his rival Umpanda, who accepted the rule of the Boers.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)
1840 Zanzibar became the capital
of Oman and the sultan ruled from Stone Town.
(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.T6)
1840s Oct 31-Nov 2, The Celts of
Ireland, Great Britain and northern France celebrated Oct. 31 to Nov 2
as their New Year from around 1000-500BC. The pagan harvest event
incorporated masks to ward off evil ones, as dead relatives were
believed to visit families on the first evening. The Catholic holiday
of All Saints' Day, set for Nov. 1, was instituted around 700 AD to
supplant the Druid holiday. Halloween was transplanted to the US
in the 1840s.
(WSJ, 10/28/99, p.A24)(WSJ, 10/29/99, p.W17)
1840s Stereographs were first
developed as parlor entertainment, but did not enjoy widespread appeal
until the 1860s. A stereograph is a pair of photographic images taken
with lenses at slightly different angles. When viewed separately
through a device called a stereoscope—one image for each
eye—stereographs, like the one shown above, provide the illusion of
normal depth perception and three-dimensional viewing. By the late 19th
century, stereoscopes were common in middle-class drawing rooms, with
educational, travel-oriented scenes being the most popular.
(HNPD, 8/10/98)
1840s Painters from the Hudson
River School such as Frederic Church and Thomas Cole arrived on the
Maine coastline at what is now Acadia Nat’l. Park.
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.T6)
1840s Julia Ward Howe wrote her
“Laurence Manuscript.” In 2004 it was edited by Gary Williams and
published for the 1st time as “The Hermaphrodite.”
(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.M4)
1840s A Spaniard shipped the
first grapefruit trees to Florida.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.B3)
1840s A New York merchant brought
the first red bananas to the US from Cuba.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.B3)
1840s Leprosy began to appear in
Hawaii.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, T3)
1840s A native rebellion called
the Caste War broke out in southern Mexico against the ruling hacienda
class. The 22,000 square-foot palacio of Hacienda Tabi in the Yucatan
was sacked.
(Arch, 1/05, p.45)
1840s In Portugal the National
Theater was built in Lisbon.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T7)
1840-1860 The Fourierist system was a phenomena of
the mid 19th century which called for the establishment of small
communities-called phalanxes-of about 1,500 persons devoted to an
agrarian-handicraft economy based on voluntarism. While private
property and inheritance were not abolished, goods produced were the
property of the phalanx. Inspired by French reformer Charles
Fourier and promoted in the U.S. by Albert Brisbane, the Fourierist
system was the most notable example of the Association movement. Some
40 phalanxes were established in America, beginning in the 1840s. All
had disbanded by 1860.
(HNQ, 9/9/99)
1840-1870 In 2005 Liza Picard authored “Victorian
London: The Life of a City 1840-1870.”
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.79)
1840-1876 Myles Keogh was born in County Carlow,
Ireland. He was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and fought
in papal armies before joining the U.S. Army in 1862. He left Ireland
for Italy in 1860 at the age of 20 to fight in the defense of Pope Pius
IX as part of the Saint Patrick Battalion. He distinguished himself at
the siege of Ancona, earning an appointment in the Papal Army. On St.
Patrick’s Day, 1862, Keogh booked passage to the U.S. after being
recruited into the Union Army. "Myles Keogh: The Life and Legend of an
‘Irish Dragoon’ in the Seventh Cavalry," edited by Langellier, Cox and
Pohanka, published by Upton & Sons, El Segundo, CA,1991.
(HNQ, 8/5/99)
1840-1889 Father Demien, a Belgian priest, worked
with lepers on Molokai, Hawaii.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, Par p.2)
1840-1897 Edward Drinker Cope, born in Philadelphia,
competed with Dr. Marsh in search of fossils. He is best know for his
work on Permian reptiles and Cenozoic mammals. He also discovered 56
new species of dinosaur.
(T.E.-J.B. p.25)
1840-1900 The dense forests that covered most of New
Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, east of Christchurch on the country’s east
coast, were cut for timber and burned to make way for sheep grazing.
(PacDis, Spring ‘94, p.3)
1840-1902 German-born illustrator Thomas Nast, widely
recognized as the father of political cartooning, is also responsible
for our modern-day concept of Santa Claus. Nast, who came to the United
States from Germany at age 6, received his art education at New York's
National Academy of Design. At 15, he began working for Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper for $4 a week. During his long career, Nast
illustrated major news stories for many periodicals, but he is perhaps
best remembered for his imaginative Christmas drawings that first
appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1862 and continued for 30 years.
Inspired by Clement Moore's poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas,"
Nast pictured Santa Claus as a jolly, white-bearded elf who lived at
the North Pole and brought gifts only to good children. His drawings
also portrayed many modern symbols we associate with Christmas--holly,
toys under the Christmas tree and the reindeer-drawn sleigh on a snowy
roof.
(WUD, 1994, p.951)(HNPD, 12/25/98)
1840-1910 William Graham Sumner, American sociologist
and economist: "All history is only one long story to this effect: men
have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might
win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the
burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others."
(AP, 8/31/98)
1840-1911 Henry Broadhurst, English politician:
"Praise undeserved is satire in disguise."
(AP, 1/22/00)
1840-1916 Odilon Redon, French painter and etcher.
(WUD, 1994, p.1203)
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