Timeline 1841-1849
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1841 Jan 14,
Berthe Morisot (d.1895) French impressionist painter, was born in
Bourges.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.10)
1841 Jan 18, Alexis-Emmanuel
Chabrier, French composer (Louise), was born.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1841 Jan 20, The Convention of
Chuenpi ceded the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain from China as
part of the concessions from the Opium War. It became a capitalist
bastion as opposed to the rest of China. The British won the first
Opium War and forced China to open markets to foreign trade. Britain
soon established a formal police force commanded mostly by British
officers. Hong Kong returned to Chinese control in July 1997.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Chuenpee)(WSJ, 10/26/95,
p.A-1)(SFEC, 11/10/96, Par p.14)(SFC, 3/11/97, p.A12)(SFC, 7/1/97,
p.A8)(AP, 1/20/98)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1841 Jan 26, Britain formally
occupied Hong Kong, which the Chinese had ceded to the British.
(AP, 1/26/98)
1841 Jan 28, Henry Morton
Stanley was born and christened John Rowland to an unwed and
impoverished mother in Wales. A leading explorer and colonizer of
Africa, Stanley is best known for locating the missing British
missionary and explorer David Livingstone in Central Africa in 1871.
He was on assignment for the New York Herald and immortalized the
moment he found Livingstone on November 11, 1871, with the words:
"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley, who was adopted as a youth by
Louisiana cotton merchant Henry Hope Stanley, served in both the
Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War and became an
American citizen in the 1860s. Stanley resumed his British
citizenship in 1892, served in Parliament from 1895-1900, was
knighted in 1899 and died in London on May 10, 1904.
(HNQ, 6/4/98)
1841 Feb 10, Upper Canada and
Lower Canada were proclaimed united under an Act of Union passed by
the British Parliament.
(AP, 2/10/07)
1841 Feb 18, The 1st continuous
filibuster in US Senate began and lasting until March 11.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1841 Feb 24, John Phillip
Holland, inventor of the modern submarine, was born. [see Feb 29]
(HN, 2/24/98)
1841 Feb 25, Pierre Auguste
Renoir (d.1919), French painter, was born. He was an Impressionist
painter, father of Jean Renoir, and founder of the French
Impressionist movement. He was the son of a Paris tailor and began
his career as a porcelain painter in the Sevres china factory. His
paintings included "Luncheon of the Boating Party," "Self-portraits"
(1875 & 1899) and "Sleeping Girl With a Cat" (1880). [see 1894,
J. Renoir]
(HFA, '96, p.22)(WSJ, 8/13/96, p.A9)(DPCP
1984)(HN, 2/25/99)
1841 Feb 27, [Eleanor] Agnes
Lee, daughter of US general Robert E. Lee, was born.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1841 Feb 29, John Philip
Holland (b.1840), inventor of the modern submarine, was born in
Liscannor, County Clare, into a family that had survived the Great
Potato Famine. Following his immigration to America in 1873, Holland
settled in Paterson, New Jersey where he taught school and, with
financial backing from the Irish Fenian Society, began developing
his first submarine. In 1881, Holland launched the Fenian Ram, a
31-foot-long submersible powered by a 15-horsepower internal
combustion engine. With Holland at the controls, the Ram dived 64
feet beneath New York Harbor that summer, only to be seized by the
Fenians when they lost interest in the project. In 1895, the J.P.
Holland Torpedo Boat Company, won a contract from the U.S. Navy to
build a submarine. After one discouraging failure, the second
submarine, the Holland VI, passed her sea trials and was purchased
by the U.S. Navy on April 11, 1900 for $150,000. [see Feb 24]
(HN, 2/29/00)
1841 Mar 1, Blanche K. Bruce,
senator of Mississippi 1875-1881, was born in Farmville, Va.
(HN, 3/1/98)(SC, 3/1/02)
1841 Mar 1, John Quincy Adams
(74), former US president, concluded his defense of "the Mendi
people," a group of Africans who had rebelled and killed the crew of
the slave ship Amistad, while enroute from Cuba to Haiti. They faced
mutiny charges upon landing on Long Island, but Adams won their
acquittal before the Supreme Court. In thanks they bestowed to him
an 1838 English Bible. In 1996 the Bible was stolen from the Adams
National Historic Site in Quincy, Mass.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/adamsarg.html)(WSJ,
1/3/97, p.A7)
1841 Mar 4, Dion Boucicault's
"London Assurance" premiered in London.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1841 Mar 4, Longest
presidential inauguration speech (8,443 words) to date was made by
William Henry Harrison.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1841 Mar 8, Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr. (d.1935), 59th Supreme Court Justice (1902-1932), the
"Great Dissenter," was born in Boston. "To have doubted one's own
first principles, is the mark of a civilized man."
(AP, 3/8/98)(HN, 3/8/98)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)(AP,
3/6/00)
1841 Mar 9, The rebel slaves
who seized a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, two years earlier were
freed by the US Supreme Court despite Spanish demands for
extradition.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.A7)(HN, 3/9/99)
1841 Mar 20, Edgar Allen Poe's
The Murders in the Rue Morgue, considered the first detective story,
was published. [see April 14, 20, 1841]
(HN, 3/20/01)
1841 Mar 22, Cornstarch was
patented by Orlando Jones.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1841 Mar 27, The first U.S.
steam fire engine was tested in New York City.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1841 Mar 31, 1st performance of
Robert Schumann's 1st Symphony in B.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1841 Apr 3, From Nassau,
Bahamas, a British magistrate wrote that 193 shipwrecked African
slaves from the ship Trouvadore were found naked on the shores of
the East Caicos Island. The slaves were then quarantined in a jail
and given food and clothing. The accident set free the slaves who
became ancestors of many later residents of the islands. In 2004 the
wreck was found and in 2008 marine archaeologists identified it as
the remains of the slave ship.
(AP, 8/21/04)(AP, 11/26/08)
1841 Apr 4, President William
Henry Harrison (68), 9th President of the US, succumbed to pneumonia
one month after his inaugural, becoming the first U.S. chief
executive to die in office. VP. Tyler assumed office.
(A&IP, ESM, p.59,96b)(AP, 4/4/97)
1841 Apr 6, Cornerstone was
laid for 2nd Mormon temple at Nauvoo, Missouri.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1841 Apr 10, The NY Tribune
began publishing under editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872). The
abolitionist newspaper editor founded The New York Tribune with
support from powerful political friends. Under Greeley's direction,
The Tribune took a strong stand against slavery, the South and slave
owners in the years leading up to the Civil War. The Tribune and
Greeley also crusaded against liquor, gambling, prostitution and
capital punishment. One of the founders of the Republican Party,
Greeley was also an eccentric who dabbled in many of the fads of his
day.
(HNPD, 2/3/99)(WSJ, 10/26/00, p.W12)(AP,
7/21/98)(MC, 4/10/02)
1841 Apr 14, Edgar Allen Poe's
"Murders in the Rue Morgue," published. [see Mar 20, Apr 20]
(MC, 4/14/02)
1841 Apr 20, Edgar Allen Poe’s
first detective story, "Murders in Rue Morgue," was published. Poe
published in this year 2 secret messages, as the work of W.B. Tyler,
that were not deciphered until 1992 and 2000. [see Mar 20, Apr 14
1841]
(HN, 4/20/98)(SFC, 12/1/00, p.A3)(MC, 4/20/02)
1841 May 1, The 1st emigrant
wagon train left Independence, Missouri, for California.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1841 Jun 14, The first Canadian
parliament opened in Kingston.
(AP, 6/14/97)
1841 Jun 28, The ballet
"Giselle," also called Les Wilis, was premiered in Paris. It was the
brain-child of Theophile Gautier, a leading voice of the Romantic
Age. It told of a dance-loving peasant girl who dies of a broken
heart when Albrecht, a philandering nobleman, betrays her.
(SFEM, 3/28/99, p.12)(WSJ, 4/22/99, A20)
1841 Jul 5, Thomas Cook
(1808-1892) opened the 1st travel agency as he arranged for the rail
company to charge one shilling per person for rail tickets and food
for a group of 540 temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell
Street station to a rally in Loughborough.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cook)
1841 Jul 17, The British humor
magazine Punch was first published.
(AP, 7/17/97)
1841 Jul 27, Mikhail Yuryevich
Lermontov (b.1814), poet, novelist, died.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1841 Aug 21, John Hampson of
New Orleans patented the Venetian blind.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1841 Fall, The 1st classes
commenced at the Univ. of Michigan at Mason Hall, its only building.
30 students attended.
(LSA, Spring/04, p.53)
1841 Aug 30, Robert Peel
(1788-1850) became PM of Britain for a 2nd time. This was the 1st
occasion in which Britain’s government was brought down by the votes
of the electorate.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel)
1841 Sep 8, Antonin Dvorak
(d.1904), Czech composer and violinist, was born in Nelahozeves. His
work included the "New World Symphony."
(WUD, 1994 p.444)(HN, 9/8/00)(MC, 9/8/01)
1841 Sep 9, The Great Lakes
steamer "Erie" sank off Silver Creek, NY., and 300 people died.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1841 Sep 19, The first railway
to span a frontier was completed between Stousbourg and Basle, in
Europe.
(HN, 9/19/98)
1841 Sep 28, Georges
Clemenceau, premier of France during World War I, was born. He
served as premier from 1906-09 and 1917-1920.
(HN, 9/28/98)(MC, 9/28/01)
1841 Sep 30, Samuel Slocum
patented the stapler.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1841 Nov 2, Following
the British occupation of Kabul during the 1st Afghan War
(1839-1842), Afghans revolted and murdered British envoy, Lt. Col.
Sir Alexander Burnes (1805-1841) and some 23 others. By Jan 1842 the
British army decided to withdraw with its 4,500 Anglo-Indian troops
and 10,000 camp followers. The column was wiped out by Ghilzai
tribesmen with their long-barreled rifles called jezails.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)(HN,
11/2/98)(www.indhistory.com/afghan-war-1.html)
1841 Nov 4, The 1st wagon train
arrived in California.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1841 Nov 9, Edward VII, King of
England, was born. He succeeded his mother Victoria and served from
1901-1910.
(HN, 11/9/00)
1841 Nov 16, Life preservers
made of cork were patented by Napoleon Guerin in NYC.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1841 Nov 18, Georg Chistoph
Grosheim (77), composer, died.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1841 Nov, Nancy Kelsey was the
first American woman to walk into California.
(Pac. Disc., summer, ‘96, p.16)
1841 Nov, The first
overland party of settlers arrived at the Rancho Los Meganos in
present day Brentwood, Contra Costa, California. This makes
the Rancho of Dr. John Marsh the first terminus of the California
Trail. They were inspired to make this trip by letter from Dr. John
Marsh the first American to settle in the San Joaquin Valley. His
Stone House is now part of the newest State Park in the California
system.
(www.johnmarshhouse.com/marshnewsbio.htm)
1841 Nov, Freed African
survivors of the slave ship Amistad returned to Sierra Leone,
Africa. Abolitionists had raised money to help the freed slaves of
the Amistad return home. When Cinque, the leader of the revolt,
reached home, he found that his family had been captured and sold
into slavery.
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/amistad/AMI_CHR.HTM)(SFEC,12/797,
DB p.44)
1841 Dec 6, Robert Schumann's
4th Symphony in D, premiered.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1841 Dec 31, Alabama became the
1st state to license dental surgeons.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1841 Theodore Chasseriau
(1819-1856), Dominican-born artist, created his portrait "Comtesse
de LaTour-Mauberg."
(WSJ, 11/26/02, p.D8)
1841 J.M.W. Turner painted his
watercolor “The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise” following a
visit to Switzerland. In 1942 it sold for 1,500 guineas (about
$94,000 in 2006 money). In 2006 it sold at auction for $11 million.
(SFC, 6/6/06, p.D4)
1841 Catharine Beecher wrote
her "Treatise on Domestic Economy."
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.30)
1841 John Lloyd Stephens
published "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and
Yucatan" with illustrations by Frederick Catherwood. He tells of his
plans to purchase the ruins of the great Maya cities of Quirigua and
Palenque and transporting them to New York.
(RFH-MDHP, p.217, illustrations)(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1841 Barend Cornelis Koekkoek,
Dutch artist, authored "Thoughts and Recollections of a Landscape
Artist."
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W16)
1841 Charles Mackay published
his work "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds." The book described John Law’s early 18th century
Mississippi Project, the South Sea Bubble, and the Tulip mania of
the 17th century. It was republished in 1996 in paperback.
(WSJ, 3/5/96, p. A-12)
1841 J.L. Stephens wrote in his
book: "There is but one side to politics in Guatemala, both sides
have a beautiful way of producing unanimity of opinion, by driving
out of the country all who do not agree with them."
(NG, 6/1988, p.798)
1841 The comedy "London
Assurance" was written by 19-year-old Dion Boucicoult of Ireland.
(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.A16)
1841 At Yale Univ. the Scroll
and Key society was founded.
(USAT, 1/15/97, p.6D)
1841 The state of Arkansas,
facing financial difficulties, stopped paying interest on a $500,000
investment that was dedicated to finance the Smithsonian Institute.
Under pressure from congressman J.Q. Adams, Congress repealed the
bill that authorized the Smithson bequest in state bonds and ordered
the US Treasury to take over interest payments. The principal was
lost, but the interest was enough to endow the institute. From
1841-1842 8 states and the territory of Florida defaulted. This led
states to set up strong constitutional barriers to debt
accumulation.
(ON, 2/06, p.6)(Econ, 6/19/10, p.31)
1841 In Indiana Mother Theodore
Guerin (1798-1856), a French nun, established St. Mary-of-the-Woods
College for women. In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI named her a saint.
(SFC, 10/16/06, p.A2)
1841 In Philadelphia Volney B.
Palmer began the first advertising agency. He sold newspaper space
to out-of-town advertisers.
(SFC, 7/5/97, p.E3)
1841 Thomas Fitzpatrick and Joe
Meek led a band of settlers out of Independence, Missouri, heading
west to the Oregon Territory. It was the beginning of a flood of
emigration west.
(HT, 3/97, p.37)
1841 John Sutter built a fort
on the Sacramento River.
(HNQ, 11/18/00)
1841 Capt. William A.
Richardson moved to Sausalito from SF after the Mexican government
gave him a 19,571-acre land grant from the Marin headlands to
Stinson Beach. There he established Rancho del Sausalito.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A23)
1841 William A. Leidesdorff,
originally from the Virgin Islands, arrived in San Francisco. He
became a prominent businessman, built the city’s first hotel, became
a member of the first SF City Council and served as the city’s first
treasurer.
(SFC, 2/16/09, p.B2)
1841 The Russian fur traders
sold Fort Ross, Bodega and all their ranches and livestock in
California to John Sutter. They had made a settlement at Fort Ross
(an archaic form of Russia) in order to develop a source of
provisions for themselves and their Sitka, Alaska settlement.
(WCG, p.58)(SFEC, 3/23/97, p.T15)
1841 The Bartleson-Bidwell
Party made the trek to California. John Bidwell was on the 1st wagon
train over the Sierra Nevada and later founded Chico.
(SFC, 12/7/02, p.E4)(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.B3)
1841 Princess Helena, wife of
the governor-general of Siberia and the Russian colonies on the
Pacific Coast, christened the highest mountain, an extinct volcano,
on Dr. Bale’s Rancho "Mount Saint Helena," reportedly after her
patron saint, mother of Constantine the Great.
(Article on Calistoga by Sybbil McCabe, 7/95)
1841 Dr. Edward Turner Bale was
granted the lands between Rutherford and Calistoga, Ca. which he
named Rancho Carne Humana. He later built the Bale Grist Mill. [see
1846]
(WCG, 7/95, p.21)
1841 The valley stretching
north from Sonoma, Ca. was referred to as "Valle de la Luna."
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.T-3)
1841 William Whitfield, captain
of the whaling ship John Howland, from Fairhaven, Mass., picked up 5
castaways from Japan’s Torishima Island, including a boy named
Manjiro, who returned with Whitfield to Fairhaven. Manjiro later
returned to Japan, and translated Nathaniel Bowditch’s “The New
American Navigator,” known to mariners as the “seaman’s bible.” In
1854 Manjiro acted as interpreter with Commodore Perry and in 1860
joined the 1st Japanese embassy to America.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.66)
1841 In a letter to his cousin,
William Darwin Fox, Charles Darwin wrote: "if your half-bred African
Cat should die... I should be very much obliged for its carcase."
(NH, 5/96, p.7)
1841 The compound
dimethylmercury was first synthesized. It can pass through latex
gloves and is deadly.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A9)
1841 Lord Elgin died in Paris
at age 75. In 1966 Judith Grant authored "A Pillage of Art." In 1985
Epaminondas Vranopoulos authored "The Parthenon and the Elgin
Marbles." In 1998 William St. Claire authored "Lord Elgin and the
Marbles."
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1841 In Austria the Salzburg
Cathedral’s Music Society founded the Mozarteum to preserve the
memory of Mozart and to promote the instruction and performance of
music.
(StuAus, April ‘95, p.91)
1841 The Johann Maresch pottery
company began operating in Aussig, Bohemia (later Usti nad Labem,
Czech Rep.). At this time Bohemia was under Austrian rule and the
firm used the mark “JM Austria.”
(SFC, 9/12/07, p.G7)
1841 In Metlach, Germany, the
firm of Villeroy & Boch Pottery was founded. They made many
types of wares, including the famous Mettlach steins and are still
in business.
(SFC, 5/22/96, Z1, p7)
1841 Italian revolutionary
Garibaldi moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, with Anita Ribeiro.
(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1841 Aker ASA was founded. By
2007 the industrial holding company was Norway’s largest private
employer with some 35,000 employees.
(WSJ, 12/10/07, p.B1)
1841-1845 John Tyler, elected as Vice-President
under Harrison, became the 10th President of the US upon Harrison’s
unexpected death.
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)
1841-1846 The Mormon Temple at Nauvoo, Ill., was
built.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, p.T3)
1841-1846 Capt. Robert E. Lee, Army engineer,
worked on strengthening the defenses of New York Harbor and Fort
Hamilton.
(AH, 2/06, p.20)
1841-1869 Approximately 400,000 settlers crossed
the American West on the Oregon Trail during this period. The influx
of settlers began after legendary mountain men Thomas Fitzpatrick
and Joe Meek guided a small band of settlers out of Independence,
Missouri, in 1841, heading west toward the Oregon Territory, 2,000
miles distant. The route they used, pieced together from Indian and
trapper paths, would become known as the Oregon Trail. By the time
the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, some 400,000
settlers had traveled west on the Oregon Trail.
(HNQ, 4/18/99)
1841-1870 Frederic Bazille, painter. He painted
The Family Reunion.
(AAP, 1964)
1841-1912 Gerard H. Hansen, Norwegian physician.
He discovered the leprosy-causing Mycobacterium leprae (aka Hansen’s
disease).
(WUD, 1994, p.644)
1841-1921 Of the 11 U.S. presidents serving
between 1841 and 1921, seven of them were born in Ohio. The
presidents and their places of birth were: Ulysses S. Grant, Point
Pleasant; Rutherford B. Hayes, Delaware; James A. Garfield, Orange;
Benjamin Harrison, North Bend; William McKinley, Niles; William H.
Taft, Cincinnati; Warren G. Harding, Morrow County. These were the
only Ohio-born presidents. Three of them, Garfield, McKinley and
Harding died in office. Four of the seven presidents hailing from
Ohio died while in office. They were William Henry Harrison, the 9th
president, who died one month after his inauguration in 1841; the
20th president, James Garfield, who was assassinated in 1881;
William McKinley, the 25th president, who was assassinated in 1901;
and Warren G. Harding, who died suddenly in 1923.
(HNQ, 5/9/98)(HNQ, 6/7/99)
1842 cJan 1, Maj. Gen. William
G.K. Elphinstone ordered a 90-mile retreat from Kabul through the
snowy passes to Jalalabad.
(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.C8)
1842 cJan 2-12, Akbar Khan,
Afghan hero, was victorious against the British. Out of 4,500
(16,500) soldiers and 12,000 dependents only one survivor, of a
mixed British-Indian garrison, reached the fort in Jalalabad, on a
stumbling pony. The British retreated from Kabul to Jalalabad. The
incident is the backdrop for George MacDonald Fraser’s novel
"Flashman." [see Jan 13]
(WSJ, 4/10/95, A-16)(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(WSJ,
9/20/01, p.A12)
1842 Jan 7, Gioacchino
Rossini's "Stabat Mater" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1842 Jan 13, Dr. William
Brydon, badly wounded, reached Jalalabad as the only survivor of a
16,000 person retreat from Kabul. In the 1st British-Afghan War
British troops retreating from Kabul were ambushed and nearly all
slaughtered at the Khyber Pass, even though the Afghans had promised
them safe passage during their withdrawal from the Afghan
capital. [see Jan 2-12]
(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.C8)(MC, 1/13/02)
1842 Feb 15, The 1st adhesive
postage stamps in US were made available by a private delivery
company in NYC.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1842 Feb 21, 1st known sewing
machine was patented in US by John Greenough in Wash, DC. [see
1830,1833]
(MC, 2/21/02)
1842 Feb 24, Arrigio Enrico
Boito, composer (Mefistofele), was born.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1842 Feb 26, Camille
Flammarion, Mars researcher and popularizer of astronomy, was born.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1842 Mar 3, 1st performance of
Felix Mendelssohn's 3rd "Scottish" Symphony.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1842 Mar 3, 1st US child labor
law regulating working hours was passed in Massachusetts.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1842 Mar 9, Giuseppe Verdi's
3rd opera "Nabucco," premiered in Milan. It became his 1st big hit.
(WSJ, 3/21/00, p.A20)(MC, 3/9/02)
1842 Mar 15, Maria Luigi
Cherubini (81), Italian composer (Dies Irae), died.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1842 Mar 18, Stephane Mallarme
(d.1898), French essayist and symbolist poet, was born. "Every soul
is a melody which needs renewing."
(AP, 7/17/98)(HN, 3/18/01)
1842 Mar 22, Mykola
Vytal'yevich Lysenko, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1842 Mar 23, Stendhal
[Marie-Henri Beyle], French author (b.1783), died at 59.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal)
1842 Mar 30, Crawford
Williamson Long (1815-1878) of Jefferson, Ga., utilized ether the
first time to remove a tumor from the neck of his patient, Mr. James
M. Venable.
(AP,
3/30/97)(www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/crawford-long.html)
1842 Apr 3, Hermann Karl Vogel,
German astronomer, was born.
(HN, 4/3/01)
1842 Apr 29, Karl Millocker,
conductor, composer (Beggar Student), was born in Austria.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1842 May 5, Johann Nepomuk
Fuchs, composer, was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1842 May 5, City-wide fire
burned for over 100 hours in Hamburg, Germany.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1842 May 12, Jules Massenet
Montaud (d.1912), French composer, was born. His work included
"Manon," "Thais" and "Le Cid."
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1842 May 13, Composer Sir
Arthur Sullivan was born in London. He collaborated with Sir William
Gilbert in writing 14 comic operas that included "HMS Pinafore."
(AP, 5/13/99)(HN, 5/13/99)
1842 May 14, 1st edition of
London Illustrated News.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1842 May 15, Emanuel ADMJ Count
de las Cases (76), French historian (Napoleon), died.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1842 Jun 24, Ambrose Bierce
(d.1914), American writer, satirist, was born in Meigs County, Ohio.
He wrote "The Friend's Delight" and "The Devil's Dictionary."
(SFEC, 11/8/98, BR p.3)(AP, 6/24/99)(HN, 6/24/99)
1842 Aug 9, The United States
and Canada signed the y-Ashburton Treaty, resolving a border dispute
between Maine and Canada's New Brunswick.
(AP, 8/9/97)(HN, 8/9/98)(HNQ, 9/30/99)
1842 Aug 14, Seminole War ended
and the Indians were moved from Florida to Oklahoma.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1842 Aug 29, Britain &
China signed the Treaty of Nanking and ended the Opium war. The
Treaty of Nanking opened the port of Shanghai to foreigners. The
1997 Chinese film "The Opium War" was directed by Xie Jin. It was
about the events leading up to the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty of
Nanking ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity.
(AMNHDT, 5/98)(SFC, 5/20/98,
p.E3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nanjing)
1842 Aug 31, US Naval
Observatory was authorized by an act of Congress.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1842 Aug 31, Micah Rugg
patented a nuts & bolts machine.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1842 Sep 2, A letter by Abraham
Lincoln (31) in the Sangamon Journal satirized the Illinois State
Auditor’s call for state taxes to be paid in silver or gold. This in
part led auditor James Shields to challenge Lincoln to a duel.
(ON, 11/02, p.11)
1842 Sep 4, Work on Cologne
cathedral resumed after 284-year hiatus.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1842 Sep 5, Jesse James,
legendary outlaw of the American West, was born. [see 1847]
(HN, 9/5/00)
1842 Sep 20, Lord James Dewar,
physician who invented the vacuum flask and cordite, the first
smokeless powder, was born.
(HN, 9/20/98)
1842 Oct 15, Karl Marx became
editor-in-chief of Rheinische Zeitung.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1842 Oct 18, US Commodore
Thomas ap Catesby Jones sailed into Monterey, the Mexican
capital of California, on the mistaken belief that the US and Mexico
had gone to war.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.D2)
1842 Oct 19, US Commodore
Thomas ap Catesby Jones ordered the surrender of Mexican officials
in Monterey, Ca., on the mistaken belief that the US and Mexico had
gone to war. He soon learned of his error and returned Monterey to
Mexican authority.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.D2)
1842 Nov 4, Abraham Lincoln
married Mary Todd in Springfield, Ill.
(AP, 11/4/97)(HN, 11/4/98)
1842 Nov 14, Walter Williams
(d.1959), claimed to be last survivor of Civil War, was born.
(MC, 11/14/01)
1842 Nov 17, A grim
abolitionist meeting was held in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, after the
imprisonment under the Fugitive Slave Bill (1793) of a mulatto named
George Latimer, one of the first fugitive slaves to be apprehended
in Massachusetts. Four hundred dollars was collected to buy his
freedom, and plans to storm the jail were prepared as an alternative
to secure his release.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1842 Nov 17, Gaetano
Donizetti's Opera "Linda di Chamounix" was produced (London).
(MC, 11/17/01)
1842 Nov 22, Mount St Helen's
in Washington state erupted. Mount St. Helens began 15 years of
intermittent eruptions and then became relatively quiet for 123
years.
(MC, 11/22/01)(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A15)
1842 Dec 1, Midshipman Philip
Spencer (18) on the brig-of-war Somers, the 1st US naval officer
condemned for mutiny, was hanged. Spencer was the son of John
Canfield Spencer, the Sec. of War under Pres. John Tyler. In 2003
Buckner F. Melton Jr. authored "A Hanging Offense," an account of
the "Somers affair."
(MC, 12/1/01)(WSJ, 4/25/03, W6)
1842 Dec 7, The New York
Philharmonic gave its first concert.
(AP, 12/7/97)
1842 Dec 9, Mikail Glinka's his
epic opera "Russlan & Ludmilla," premiered in Petersburg. It was
based on Pushkin's Russianized version of Ariosto's "Orlando
Furioso."
(WSJ, 9/21/95, p.A-20)(MC, 12/9/01)
1842 Joseph Mallord William
Turner (1775-1851), English painter and printmaker, created his
painting “Snow Storm.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner)
1842 Sidney Lanier (d.1881),
poet, was born in Macon, Georgia.
(WSJ, 3/13/00, p.A24)
1842 Walt Whitman (23)
published his poem "A Sketch" in The New York New World.
(SFC, 3/3/99, p.E4)
1842 Charles Dickens published
his description of the Five Points district of New York City in
"American Notes for General Circulation."
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.H)
1842 Nikolai V. Gogol
(1809-1852), Ukrainian-born Russian writer, published his novel
“Dead Souls.” It appeared in Moscow under the title, imposed by the
censorship, of “The Adventures of Chichikov.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol)(WSJ,
4/14/09, p.D7)
1842 John Lloyd Stephens and
Frederick Catherwood returned to Mexico and later produced a 2nd
book titled: Incidents of Travel in Yucatan," which described their
discovery of 44 additional ruined cities in southeastern Mexico.
(ON, 12/99, p.8)
1842 "Around the World in 80
Days" was written by Jules Verne. It featured the illustrious
science-fiction adventurer Phileas Fogg. In 1956 it was made into a
film.
(Hem., 2/96, p.43)(TOH, 1982, p.1956)
1842 Verdi composed his 3rd
opera, Nabucco, which became his 1st big hit.
(WSJ, 3/21/00, p.A20)
1842 The governor’s mansion in
Jackson, Miss., was built.
(WSJ, 10/14/97, p.A22)
1842 The Maclay Bill in New
York State barred all religious instruction from public schools and
provided no state money to parochial schools.
(WSJ, 3/17/97, p.A18)
1842 Hugh Hardman established
the Hardman Piano Co. in NYC. Leopold Peck joined the company in
1880. The company’s name changed to Hardman, Peck & Co. when
Peck became a partner in 1890.
(SFC, 9/5/07, p.G5)
1842 The Wadsworth Athenium of
Art was established in Hartford, Conn. It was America’s 1st public
art museum.
(WSJ, 2/2/99, p.A20)(WSJ, 6/1/06, p.D7)
1842 Christian Johann Doppler,
mathematician at Prague, proposed the Doppler effect whereby a sound
passing by a stationary observer will appear to change in pitch as
it approaches and passes.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.10)
1842 In Indiana Rev. Edward
Sorin inherited 3 log cabins and envisioned the future development
of Notre Dame. In 2001 Marvin R. O’Connell authored the biography
"Edward Sorin."
(WSJ, 11/8/01, p.A22)
1842 Richard Owen, British
Paleontologist, coined the name "Dinosauria," (terrible reptiles) to
describe the large fossil reptiles.
(T.E.-J.B. p.24)
1842 John C. Fremont met Kit
Carson on a Mexican river steamboat.
(WSJ, 1/10/00, p.A24)
1842 John C. Fremont, on a
mission for the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, scaled a
13,570 foot Wyoming peak, later named after him, and claimed it was
the highest in the Rockies.
(SFEC, 2/13/00, BR p.5)
1842 Gold was found near South
Pass, Wyoming, but the prospector was killed by Indians and the
location stayed secret.
(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A8)
1842 Mount St. Helens began 15
years of intermittent eruptions and then became relatively quiet for
123 years.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A15)
1842 The steamboat Lexington
burned off Long Island Sound and 150 people were killed. Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow missed the boat and lived to tell. The incident
was covered in the 1996 book "The Sea Hunters" by Clive Cussler and
Craig Dirgo.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.E2)
1842 Francisco Morazan
(b.1799), Central American statesman and soldier, died. He served as
the president of the United Provinces of Central America.
(ON, 12/99, p.5)
1842 The British forced their
way through the Khyber Pass. They recaptured Kabul and burned down
the Great Bazaar in retribution before marching back to India.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)
1842 Xiamen, known to the
British as Amoy, was one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by
the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of the First Opium War between
Britain and China. As a result, it was an early entry point for
Protestant missions in China.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiamen)
1842 Jardine, Matheson &
Co., founded in Canton in 1832, built the first substantial house
and established their head office on the recently acquired island of
Hong Kong. This began an era of increased prosperity and expansion.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jardine_Matheson_Holdings)
1842 Italian revolutionary
Garibaldi married Anita Ribeiro and joined the Uruguayan navy in a
war against Argentina. They returned to Italy in 1848.
(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1842 France claimed the
Marquesas Islands.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1842 The French declared a
protectorate over the Wallis and Futuna Islands. They had been
discovered by the Dutch and the British in the 17th and 18th
centuries. In 1959, the inhabitants of the islands voted to become a
French overseas territory.
(www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/wf.html)
1842-1843 John James Audubon made his last
mammal-painting expedition up the Missouri River. He made sketches
and collected specimens for his book: "The Viviparous Quadrupeds of
North America." The work was later completed by his 2 sons and Rev.
John Bachman.
(WSJ, 11/27/95, p.A-1)(WSJ, 8/28/01, p.A12)
1842-1910 William James, US psychologist and
philosopher. He and Charles Saunders Pierce first developed the
ideas of pragmatism, the principle that the meaning of an idea was
to be found in the examination of its consequences in action. This
was later developed by John Dewey. His work included "The Will To
Believe." James’ brother, Henry, was a novelist and critic. "The art
of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." "A great many
people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging
their prejudice." In 1998 Linda Simon published "Genuine Reality: A
Life of William James."
(WUD, 1994, p.762)(AP, 5/10/97)(WSJ, 2/6/98,
p.A20)(AP, 4/25/98)
1842-1912 Jules Massenet, French composer. He
composed "Manon," "Herodiade" (1881), the oratorios "Marie
Magdaleine" and "Eve," and a sequel to Mozart’s "Le Nozze di Figaro"
entitled "Cherubin."
(WSJ,3/13/95, p.A-12)
1842-1912 Karl May, German writer, specialized in
stories about noble Indians struggling to survive against the
advance of modern society.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, DB p.35)
1842-1914 Ambrose Bierce, writer and newspaper
columnist in San Francisco, author of the Devil’s Dictionary. He was
born in Horse Cave Creek, Ohio, and disappeared in revolution torn
Mexico. He was one of the first Union volunteers and fought at
Shiloh and Chickamauga, and won a battlefield commission for
carrying a wounded officer to safety under fire.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-15)(WSJ, 1/30/96,
p.A-16)
1842-1916 Clara Louise Kellogg, the first American
prima donna of importance. She is discussed in the 1997 book "The
American Opera Singer" by Peter G. Davis.
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.A20)
1842-1924 Alfred Marshall, English economist. He
was the chief founder of the neoclassical school of economics. This
school studies both human behavior and wealth to understand human
choices. He introduced such concepts as consumer's surplus,
quasi-rent, elasticity of demand and the representative firm.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1843 Jan 2, Wagner's opera "Der
Fliegende Holländer" premiered in Dresden.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1843 Jan 4, Gaetano Donizetti's
opera "Don Pasquale," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1843 Jan 11, Francis Scott Key
(63), poet of "The Star-Spangled Banner," died in Baltimore.
(HN, 1/11/99)(MC, 1/11/02)
1843 Jan 29, William McKinley,
the 25th president of the United States (1897-1901), was born in
Niles, Ohio. McKinley was the last Civil War veteran to serve as
President of the United States. He had served with the 23rd
Regiment, Ohio Volunteers, eventually rising to the rank of brevet
major. He saw action at South Mountain, Antietam, Winchester and
Cedar Creek. For a time he served on Rutherford B. Hayes' staff.
McKinley was elected the 25th president in 1896. He led the country
in the Spanish-American War. He died in Buffalo, New York, on
September 14, 1901, after being shot by an anarchist assassin on
September 6.
(AP, 1/29/98)(HNQ, 11/13/98)
1843 Feb 11, Giuseppe Verdi's
Opera "I Lombardi," premiered in Milan.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1843 Feb 19, Adelina Patti,
opera soprano (Lucio), was born in Madrid, Spain.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1843 Mar 3, US Congress
appropriated $30,000 "to test the practicability of establishing a
system of electro-magnetic telegraphs."
(SC, 3/3/02)
1843 Mar 21, Robert W. Southey
(b.1774), British poet laureate and historian, died. In 2006 W. A.
Speck authored the biography “Robert Southey.”
(WSJ, 8/12/06,
p.P8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Southey)
1843 Mar 25, Seventeen Texans,
who picked black beans from a jar otherwise filled with white beans,
were executed by a Mexican firing squad. After months of raiding,
captivity and escapes in Northern Mexico, Mexican president Antonio
Lopez de Santa Anna ordered the execution of one tenth of the 176
Texas freebooters of the Mier Expedition. The event was later
depicted by artist Theodore Gentilz.
(HNPD, 3/27/00)
1843 Mar 25, England’s Thames
Tunnel opened 18 years after construction began. It was completed
under engineer Isambard Brunel, the son of Marc Brunel, who began
the project in 1824.
(ON, 4/06,
p.9)(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)
1843 Apr 3, A comet in the
night sky led William Miller and his 50,000 New York religious cult,
the Millerites, to proclaim the end of the world. They put on white
robes and prepared to go to heaven from their rooftops. When nothing
happened Miller concluded that he had made a mistake.
(SFC, 3/28/97, p.A12)
1843 Apr 4, Hans Richter,
composer, was born.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1843 Apr 5, Queen Victoria
proclaimed Hong Kong a British crown colony.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1843 Apr 14, Joseph Franz Karl
Lanner (42), Austria, composer, violist, died.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1843 Apr 15, Henry James
(d.1916), US novelist, writer and critic, was born in England. His
older brother was William James, the psychologist and philosopher.
Henry James Sr. in the 1850s dragged his 4 sons and daughter across
Europe in search a “sensual education.” Henry’s first 40 years are
documented by Sheldon M. Novick in "Henry James: The Young Master."
There is also a 5-vol. biography by William Edel. His novels
included "The Princess Casamassima," a work about the folly of
radical politics. "It takes a great deal of history to produce a
little literature." In 2008 Paul Fisher authored “House of Wits: An
Intimate Portrait of the James Family.”
(WSJ, 10/17/96, p.A20)(WSJ, 2/24/97, p.A20)(HN,
4/15/98)(AP, 8/3/98)(WSJ, 6/17/08, p.A21)
1843 Apr, Eta Carinae, a star
120 times the size of the Sun and 8,000 light-years from Earth,
briefly became the 2nd-brightest star in the night sky of the
southern hemisphere.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.72)
1843 May 9, Belle Boyd,
Confederate spy, was born. She helped 'Stonewall' Jackson during his
Valley campaign.
(HN, 5/9/99)
1843 May 18, United Free Church
of Scotland formed.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1843 May 22, The 1st wagon
train with over 1000 people departed Independence, Missouri for
Oregon. Known as the "Great Emigration," the expedition came two
years after the first modest party of settlers made the long,
overland journey to Oregon.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1843 May 28, Noah Webster (84),
lexicographer (Webster's Dictionary), died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1843 May 29, Emile Pessard,
composer, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1843 Jun 1, Sojourner Truth
left NY to beg in her career as antislavery activist. And dat’s the
truth!
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1843 Jun 1, It snowed in
Buffalo and Rochester N.Y., and also in Cleveland Ohio.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1843 Jun 4, Charles C. Abbott,
American naturalist, was born. He wrote "Days Out of Doors."
(HN, 6/4/00)
1843 Jun 7, Susan Elizabeth
Blow, US pioneer in kindergarten education, was born.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1843 Jun 15, Edvard Grieg
(d.1907), Norwegian composer, was born. He was best known for his
"Peer Gynt" suite. In 1999 over 40 unknown pieces from 1858-1862
were found in Bergen, Germany. Grieg studied at Leipzig during this
period.
(WUD, 1994, p.622)(SFC, 2/23/99, p.B3)(HT,
6/15/00)
1843 Jun 17, The monument at
Bunker Hill had its final dedication. It was begun in 1825.
(HT, 3/97, p.33)(SFC, 4/2/97, Z1 p.6)
1843 Jun 21, In Britain the
Royal College of Surgeons was founded from the original
Barber-Surgeons Company.
(Camelot, 6/21/99)
1843 Jun 26, Hong Kong was
proclaimed a British Crown Colony. [see Apr 5]
(MC, 6/26/02)
1843 Jul 2, Samuel Hahnemann
(b.1755), German physician and founder of homeopathy, died in Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann)
1843 Jul 12, Mormon leader
Joseph Smith said God encourages polygamy.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1843 July 18, Virgil Earp was
born in Kentucky.
(MesWP)
1843 Aug 1, Robert Todd Lincoln
(d.1926), son of Abraham Lincoln, Capt (Union volunteers), was born.
(MC, 8/1/02)
1843 Aug 15, National black
convention met in Buffalo, NY.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1843 Aug 15, The Tivoli Gardens
opened in Copenhagen.
(SFEC, 2/20/00, p.T8)(MC, 8/15/02)
1843 Aug 26, Charles Thurber
patented a typewriter.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1843 Sep 19, Gustave-Gaspard
Coriolis (b.1792), French engineer and mathematician, died. He
showed that the laws of motion could be used in a rotating frame of
reference if an extra force called the Coriolis acceleration is
added to the equations of motion.
(www.gap-system.org/~history/Mathematicians/Coriolis.html)
1843 Sep, James Wilson
(1805-1860), a Scottish hat maker, founded “The Economist” in
London, England, a magazine devoted to free trade and laissez-faire
principles from its very beginning.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist)(WSJ,
6/6/95, p.A-14)(Econ, 6/28/03, p.13)
1843 Oct 13, The Jewish
organization B’nai B’rith was founded in New York City.
(AP, 10/13/97)
1843 Oct 30, A. G. Henri
Regnault, French water colors painter, was born.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1843 Nov 13, Mt. Rainier in
Washington State erupted.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1843 Nov 27, Balfe's opera
"Bohemian Girl" was produced in London.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1843 Dec 4, Manila paper (made
from sails, canvas & rope) was patented in Mass.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1843 Dec 4, Robert Schumann's
"Das Paradied und die Peri," premiered in Leipzig.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1843 Dec 11, Robert Koch
(d.1910), German physician, bacteriologist, and medical researcher,
was born. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
(http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1905/koch-bio.html)
1843 Dec 17, British author
Charles Dickens published “A Christmas Carol” at his own expense. It
was one of many public and private efforts by Dickens to bring about
social reform: prison visits, charity drives, promotion of the
so-called "Ragged Schools" for the poor, cash for a fired worker, or
a child's education.
(www.todayinliterature.com/stories.wk.asp?Event_Date=12/17/1847)
1843 Thomas Haliburton of
Windsor, Nova Scotia, published a novel that described local boys
playing hurley, an early form of hockey, behind Kings Edgehill
School.
(WSJ, 1/23/02, p.A1)
1843 William Hickling Prescott
(1796-1859), American Historian, authored "History of the Conquest
of Mexico."
(ON, 10/00, p.5)(WSJ, 8/16/08, p.W6)
1843 Isabella Van Wagenen,
abolitionist, renamed herself Sojourner Truth. She dictated her
autobiography "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth" to Olive Gilbert, a
white abolitionist. In 1996 Neil Irvin Painter wrote her biography
"Sojourner Truth A Life, A Symbol."
(SFEC, 12/1/96, BR p.5)
1843 Alonzo Blanchard of
Albany, NY, patented a stove design called “Washington.” It featured
a cast-iron statue of George Washington on top.
(SFC, 7/9/08, p.G5)
1843 The J.E. Stevens Co. was
founded in Cromwell, Conn., by John and Elisa Stevens. The company
became famous for its line of cast-iron toys.
(SFC, 8/24/05, p.G6)
1843 The Fruitlands utopia in
rural Massachusetts was begun by Bronson Alcott, his wife Abby,
Englishman Charles Lane and others. Members called themselves the
Consociate Family. It was marked by anti-materialistic credos,
anti-hierarchical family structures, home-schooling and a vegan
diet. Louisa May Alcott later recalled her experiences there in
"Little Women."
(SFC, 12/7/99, p.C1)(ON, 7/03, p.11)
1843 The Univ. of Michigan
enrolled its 1st international student. A Canadian joined the body
of 43 students.
(LSA, Fall/03, p.38)
1843 Norbert Rillieux
(1806-1894) received US patent # 3,237 for a double-effect
evaporator, while overseeing the building of the device for
plantation owner Theodore Packwood.
(www.answers.com/topic/norbert-rillieux)
1843 In California a land grant
established Rancho El Tejon. The area was named El Tejon (the
badger) after Spanish soldiers under Lt. Francisco Ruiz discovered
the species during an 1805 expedition.
(SFC, 5/9/08, p.A1)
1843 In NYC the population grew
to 350,000 and 16 day policemen kept order.
(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)
1843 Belgian police were the
1st to take mug shots of criminals.
(SFEC, 10/22/00, Z1 p.2)
1843 In Canada James McDermott
was convicted and hanged for the murder Dr. Thomas Kinnear and his
lover, Nancy Montgomery. Kinnear’s servant, 16-year-old Grace Marks,
was sentenced to life imprisonment for aiding and abetting her
fellow servant, James McDermott, in the murder. In 1996 Margaret
Atwood wrote a novel: "Alias Grace" based on the incident.
(SFEC, 11/3/96, BR p.1)(WSJ, 11/15/96, p.A14)
1843 Heinrich Schwabe, German
amateur astronomer, published his results of a 17 year study on the
number of sun spots. His results showed that sunspot activity varied
over a period of eleven and a half years. Sunspot activity recorded
since this time indicates the period to average 11.2 years and to
vary from 7.5 to 16 years. This activity correlates to agricultural
activity and the price of wheat.
(SCTS, p.103)
1843 In Iceland a nationalist
movement re-established the Althing.
(HNQ, 4/28/00)
1843 Gaspard G. Coriolus,
French civil engineer, died. He had discovered the effect whereby
bodies in free motion appear to rotate clockwise in the Northern
Hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
(PacDis, Fall/’96, p.10)(WUD, 1994, p.325)
1843 Charles Napier, the
British conqueror of Sindh province (later part of Pakistan),
marveled at the extent of the Bhutto holdings there.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.82)
1843 Sayyid Muhammad ibn Ali
as-Senussi returned to North Africa from Mecca, settling in Jabal
Akhdar in Cyrenaica (Libya). In the mountainous fastness of the area
he founded a center of operations at al-Beida with the organization
of the al-Sanusi Sufi lodge and built the Zawiya al-Baida (White
Monastery).
(http://tinyurl.com/5tkfked)
1843 Alexander Bain, Scottish
inventor, received a British patent for “improvements in producing
and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and
in electric printing and signal telegraphs.” His fax machine evolved
from the telegraph technology.
(http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfax.htm)
1843-1844 A prophecy of the Adventist movement
known as Millerism, which was based on the preaching of William
Miller, was the Second Coming of Christ between 1843-44.
(HN, 9/29/99)
1843-1848 In France the Chateau de Boursault was
built by the widow Clicquot. She contributed to the development of
the champagne-making process.
(Hem., 10/97, p.104)
1843-1901 President William McKinley: "I do not
prize the word cheap. It is not a badge of honor ... it is a symbol
of despair. Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods make for
cheap men; and cheap men make for a cheap country!" Memorial
platters were made with his final words: "It is God’s way, his will
be done."
(AP, 10/16/97)(SFC,11/26/97, Z1 p.7)
1844 Jan 15, The University of
Notre Dame received its charter from the state of Indiana.
(AP, 1/15/98)
1844 Jan 30, Richard Theodore
Greener became the first African American to graduate from Harvard
University.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1844 Feb 17, Aaron Montgomery
Ward, mail order business founder, was born.
(HN, 2/17/98)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)
1844 Feb 21, Charles-Marie
Widor, composer, professor (Paris Conservatory), was born in Lyons,
France.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1844 Feb 27, Dominican Republic
rebels, under the leadership of Francisco del Rosario Sanchez and
Ramon Mella, launched their uprising and gained independence from
Haiti (National Day). [see Nov 6]
(www.onwar.com/aced/data/delta/dominican1844.htm)
1844 Feb 28, A 12-inch gun
aboard the USS Princeton exploded, killing Secretary of State Abel
P. Upshur, Navy Secretary Thomas W. Gilmer and several others. On
the new warship, USS Princeton, the shipboard cannon called the
"Peacemaker" exploded during a demonstration firing. Also aboard the
ship was President John Tyler, additional cabinet members and
hundreds of distinguished guests. The cannon weighed 27,000 pounds,
had a 15-foot-long barrel and could hurl a 225-pound ball six miles.
(AP, 2/28/98)(HNQ, 11/29/98)
1844 Mar 6, Nicolai
Rimsky-Korsakov, orchestrator, composer, was born. His work
included: Flight of the Bumble Bee, Sadko, Mlada, Capriccio
Espagnol, The Tsar's Bride, Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh
and the Maiden Fevronia.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1844 Mar 7, Anthony Comstock,
anti-vice "crusader," was born in New Canaan, Ct.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1844 Mar 9, Giuseppe Verdi's
opera "Ernani," premiered in Venice.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1844 Mar 10, Pablo Martin M de
Sarasate y Navascuez, composer (Spanish Dances), was born.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1844 Mar 28, Jose Zorilla's
"Don Juan Tenorio," premiered in Madrid.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1844 Apr 4, Charles Bulfinch
(80), 1st US professional architect (Mass State House), died.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1844 Apr 6, Joseph Ludwig,
composer, was born.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1844 Apr 8, Ignaz Franz von
Mosel (72), composer, died.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1844 Apr 12, Texas became a US
territory.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1844 Apr 16, Anatole France
(d.1924), French novelist and essayist, was born. He won the Nobel
Prize in literature in 1921. His love for Madame de Caillavet, whose
salon helped make him famous, formed the backdrop for his novel "Le
Lys Rouge," (The Red Lily). "All the historical books which contain
no lies are extremely tedious."
(WSJ, 2/20/96, p.A-14)(AP, 10/11/98)(HN, 4/16/01)
1844 May 1, Whig convention
nominated Henry Clay as presidential candidate.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1844 May 1, Samuel Morse
(1791-1872) sent the 1st telegraphic message as a demonstration
between Washington, DC, and Baltimore [see Jan 6, 1838]. The line
officially opened on May 24, 1844.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Morse)
1844 May 2, Elijah McCoy, black
inventor, held over 50 patents, was born.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1844 May 3, Richard D'Oyly
Carte, opera impresario (Gilbert & Sullivan operas, Ivanhoe),
was born in England.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1844 May 21, Henri Rousseau
(d.1910), French painter (Dream), was born in Laval.
(HN, 5/21/01)
1844 May 22, Mary Cassatt,
impressionist painter, was born in Alleghany City (later
Pittsburgh). [see May 22, 1845]
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(AHD, p.209)(HN, 5/22/98)(WSJ,
11/5/98, p.A20)
1844 May 24, Samuel F.B. Morse,
before a crowd of dignitaries in the chambers of the Supreme Court,
tapped out the message, "What hath God wrought?" to his partner in
Baltimore, Alfred Vail. Congress had appropriated $30,000 for the
experimental line built by Ezra Cornell between Washington and
Baltimore. American portrait artist Samuel F.B. Morse developed the
technology for electrical telegraphy in the 1830s, the first
instantaneous form of communication. Using a key to hold open an
electrical circuit for longer or shorter periods, an operator would
tap out a message in a code composed of dots and dashes. Public
demonstrations of the equipment were made in February 1838, but it
was necessary for Morse to secure financial backing to build the
first telegraph line to carry the signal over distance. In 1843,
Congress appropriated the funds for a 37-mile line between Baltimore
and Washington, D.C. After underground telegraph wires proved
unsuccessful, Morse switched to pole wires.
(AP, 5/24/97)(HN, 5/24/98)(HNPD, 2/6/99)(HNQ,
5/27/00)
1844 May 25, The first
telegraphed news dispatch, sent from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore,
appeared in the Baltimore "Patriot."
(AP, 5/25/97)
1844 Jul 29, Franz Xaver
Wolfgang Mozart (53), composer, died.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1844 Jun 6,
The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London
by George Williams.
(AP, 6/6/97)(www.ymca.int/index.php?id=15)
1844 Jun 15, Charles Goodyear
(1800-1860) received patent #3633 for the vulcanization of rubber,
his process to strengthen rubber. He had perfected the process in
1839 and never took out a European patent.
(AP,
6/15/97)(www.patents4technologies.com/Historical.htm)(ON, 6/07,
p.11)
1844 Jun 26, Julia Gardiner and
President John Tyler were married in New York City.
(HN, 6/26/98)
1844 Jun 27, Mormon Joseph
Smith (38) and his brother, Hyram, were again imprisoned. A mob
stormed the Carthage, Ill. prison and the brothers were killed. [see
1846] James Strang laid claim to being his rightful successor but
Brigham Young soon took control of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. Strang then began evangelizing in the Midwest and
East with some success. His followers were later called
"Strangites."
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.86)(SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)(AP,
6/27/97)
1844 Jul 3, Dankmar Adler,
architect and engineer, was born.
(HN, 7/3/01)
1844 Jul 3, Ambassador Caleb
Cushing successfully negotiated a commercial treaty with China that
opened five Chinese ports to U.S. merchants and protected the rights
of American citizens in China.
(HN, 7/3/98)
1844 Jul 22, William Archibald
Spooner, Anglican clergyman whose slips of the tongue caused words
and syllables to be transposed and gave rise to the term
"spoonerisms," was born in London.
(AP, 7/22/02)
1844 Jul 25, Thomas Eakins
(d.1916), American painter, was born.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.E4)(WUD, 1994, p.447)(HN,
7/25/02)
1844 Jul 25, Louis Napoleon
(b.1779), French king of the Netherlands (1806-10), died.
(www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Louis-Napoleon-Bonaparte)
1844 Aug 8, Brigham Young was
chosen to head the Mormon church following the killing of Joseph
Smith in Illinois.
(AP, 8/8/97)(HN, 8/8/98)
1844 cAug 17, Menelik II, King
of Ethiopia (1896-1913), was born.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1844 Sep 5, Iron ore was
discovered in Minnesota's Mesabi Range.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1844 Sep 23, Count Alexander
von Benckendorff (b.1783), Russian Lieutenant General and statesman,
died. He was Adjutant General of the Svita and a commander in
Patriotic War of 1812 and is best remembered for having established
the Gendarmes in Russia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Benckendorff)
1844 Sep 25-1844 Sep 27, The
first int’l. cricket match was played between the USA and Canada at
the St George's Cricket Club, Bloomingdale Park, NY. Canada won by
23 runs.
(Econ, 7/24/10,
p.83)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v_Canada_%281844%29)
1844 Oct 11, Henry Heinz,
manufacturer, founder of H.J. Heinz Co., was born.
(HN, 10/11/00)
1844 Oct 12, George Washington
Cable, writer and reformer, was born.
(HN, 10/12/00)
1844 Oct 15, Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche (d.1900), German philosopher, poet, and critic, was born.
He wrote 13 books and was driven to madness by a number of factors,
but one was the bland, dishonest complacency of his contemporaries,
who ignored him while honoring writers who seem like comic book
figures today... He shrilled against Christianity and its empty
moral claims. In 1998 two biographies were published: "Nietzsche in
Turin: An Intimate Biography" by Lesley Chamberlain; and "The
Good European: Nietzsche’s Work Sites in word and Image" by David
Farell Krell and Donald L. Bates. In 2000 Robert C. Solomon and
Kathleen M. Higgins authored "What Nietzsche Really Said." "No one
is such a liar as the indignant man." "In individuals, insanity is
rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
"The time for me hasn't come yet. Some are born posthumously."
(V.D.-H.K.p.279)(SFEC, 2/8/98, BR p.9)(AP,
3/19/98)(HN,10/15/98)(AP, 12/3/98) (SFEC, 4/23/00, BR p.4)
1844 Oct 22, The resurrected
Christ failed to show up as anticipated by evangelist William Miller
and his followers. Hiram Edson resolved the dilemma by saying the
great event had taken place in heaven and that Jesus had begun an
“investigative judgement of the dead.” Thus was born the Church of
Seventh Day Adventists.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.34)
1844 Oct 23, Sarah Bernhardt,
French actress, was born. [see Oct 22]
(HN, 10/23/00)
1844 Nov 6, The first
constitution of the new Dominican Republic was signed in San
Cristobal. Pedro Santana, fearing political instability, controlled
revisions to the newly written constitution that allowed him to stay
in power, and declared himself president of the nation, a post he
would hold from 1844-1848, 1853-1856, and 1858-1861. Spain granted
independence to the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic won
independence from next door Haiti after 2 occupations. [see Feb 27]
(http://dr1.com/articles/history_1.shtml)(SFC,
5/16/96, p.A-9)(Econ, 2/20/10, p.35)
1844 Nov 23, Duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein were declared independent from Denmark.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1844 Nov 25, Carl Benz, pioneer
of early motor cars, was born.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1844 Nov, Commandante General
Mariano G. Vallejo dismissed his soldiers at the Sonoma garrison in
California claiming that he could not afford to pay them any longer.
(SFEM, 6/9/96, p.24-28)
1844 Dec 4, James K. Polk was
elected 11th president of US. His wife, Sarah, recognized that James
was insufficiently impressive to draw attention on appearance and
therefore began the tradition of having "Hail to the Chief" played
when he made a public showing.
(HFA, ‘96, p.46)(SFC, 7/14/96, Z 1 p.2)(MC,
12/4/01)
1844 Dec 11, The 1st dental use
of nitrous oxide was at Hartford, Ct.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1844 Dec 18, Ludwig J. von
Brentano, German economist, was born.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1844 Edward Hicks began his
painting "The Peaceable Kingdom." It was completed in 1846, Hicks
painted the same scene over 100 times with major and minor
variations.
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A28)
1844 John Rubens Smith painted
his watercolor: Southwest View of Sanderson’s Franklin House,
Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. [see 1875-1844, Smith]
(Civil., Jul-Aug., ‘95, p.72)
1844 Robert Chambers,
co-founder of the largest mass-circulation publishing house in
Britain, anonymously authored "Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation." It was a history of the cosmos from the formation of the
solar system to the development of life on Earth. In 2001 James A.
Secord authored "Victorian Sensation," an analysis of Vestiges and
its era.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, BR p.5)
1844 Benjamin Disraeli
(1804-1881) authored his novel “Coningsby.” Disraeli used his young
friend George Smythe as the model for the novel’s scrupulously
upright hero.
(WSJ, 9/2/06,
p.P9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coningsby_%28novel%29)
1844 Friedrich Engels
(1820-1895), English socialist, authored “The Condition of the
working Class in England.”
(www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/)
1844 Philip Hone (63) wrote:
“Railroads, steamers, packets, race against time and beat it
hollow…Oh, for the good old days of heavy post coaches and speed at
the rate of six miles and hour.”
(WSJ, 9/23/04, p.D10)
1844 Englishman Alexander
Kinglake (25) authored his travel book “Eothen.” The name was from
the Greek for “from the east.” It told of his adventures traveling
across the Ottoman Empire.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.P8)
1844 John Middleton published a
paper describing how a fluorine test could be used to determine the
geologic age of fossil bones.
(RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.30)
1844 Henry David Thoreau
translated the Lotus Sutra from French to English and published it
in the Transcendentalist journal Dial..
(SSFC, 7/8/01, p.B5)
1844 Robert Schumann published
his Op. 48 which included Dichterliebe, a song of a poet’s love. Its
original form dated back to 1840.
(SFC, 5/9/96, p.E-1)
1844 The Cathedral of St.
Michael the Archangel was built in Sitka, Alaska. It was destroyed
by fire in 1966 and painstakingly rebuilt.
(AH, 6/07, p.69)
1844 Edgar Allan Poe moved back
to New York and took a job with the New York Evening Mirror.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.T5)
1844 The Lincolns purchased a 1
1/2 story Greek Revival home at Eighth and Jackson in Springfield,
Ill. Mary and Abraham Lincoln paid $1,200 in cash and land for the
one-and-half-story, five-room, wood-clapboard structure. It was the
only home the Lincolns ever owned. They spent the next 16 years
enlarging and improving it.
(SFEC, 3/22/98, p.T4)(HNQ, 5/6/01)
1844 The great auk, aka
"penguin of the north," was hunted to extinction.
(NH, 9/96, p.8)
1844 Bishop Dominique Lefevre,
a Catholic missionary and French citizen, engaged in a plot with
other priests to overthrow Thieu Tri, the emperor of Cochin
China (later Vietnam). Lefevre was imprisoned and condemned to
death.
(AH, 12/02, p.25)
1844 The maharaja of Jammu
purchased Kashmir from the East India Company.
(SFEC,12/14/97, p.T4)
1844 In New Zealand beginning
in this year the Ngai Tahu people lost 80% (86 million acres) of
South Island.
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.A10)
1844-1845 The marriage of Friedrich V of Germany
to and English Princess Elizabeth in Heidelberg is the nominal
subject of a Turner (1775-1851) oil painting.
(WSJ, 1/15/96, p. A-10)
1844-1847 Britain experienced a “railway mania” as
Parliament during this period approved 9,500 miles of new railway
lines. About a third never materialized. By 1847 railways soaked up
investments of almost 7% of GDP.
(Econ, 12/20/08, p.116)
1844-1885 Louis Riel, Canadian Metis leader, was
born in Manitoba.
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.B2)
1844-1906 Ludwig Boltzmann (d.1906), Austrian
atomic physics engineer, was born. His Vienna tombstone read
"Entropy is the logarithm of probability." [see 1838]
(WUD, 1994, p.167)(WSJ, 7/28/98, p.A16)
1844-1913 August Bebel was an outstanding
political figure in Western European Socialism and co-founder of the
German Social Democratic Party. Bebel participated in the foundation
of the Social Democratic Party in 1869 and was sentenced to prison
for treason in 1872. As head of the Social Democrats he was chief
opposition leader in the Reichstag in the 1890s and 1900s.
(HNQ, 2/15/99)
1844-1914 Robert Jones Burdette, American
clergyman and author: "There are two days in the week about which
and upon which I never worry. Two carefree days, kept sacredly free
from fear and apprehension. One of these days is Yesterday. ... And
the other ... is Tomorrow."
(AP, 12/20/00)
1844-1915 Anthony Comstock, self-appointed
anti-vice crusader, devoted a lifetime to battling wickedness, to
purify America and protect its youth from sin. [see 1870s]
(HNPD, 2/5/99)
1844-1933 Celestine Chaumette from the French
village of Chassignolles saved her personal letters. They were later
found and published by British writer Gillian Tindall as "Voices
from a French Village."
(SFC, 6/16/96, BR p.4)
1845 Jan 23, US Congress
decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday
after the first Monday in November. The law was signed by Pres. John
Tyler.
(AP, 1/23/98)(WSJ, 3/13/00, p.A1)
1845 Jan 29, Edgar Allan Poe’s
poem "The Raven" was first published, in the New York Evening
Mirror.
(AP, 1/29/98)
1845 Feb 14, Quinton Hogg,
English philanthropist, was born. [see Feb 16]
(HN, 2/14/01)
1845 Feb 15, William Parsons,
Earl of Rosse, 1st used a 72" (183 cm) reflector.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1845 Feb 16, Quinton Hogg,
English philanthropist, was born. [see Feb 14]
(HN, 2/16/01)
1845 Feb 18, John Chapman, aka
Johnny Appleseed, died in Allen County, Indiana. In 1954
Robert Price authored Johnny Appleseed: Man and Myth.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed)(ON, 4/09, p.12)
1845 Feb 26, Alexander III,
Russian tsar (1881-94), was born in St Petersburg. [see Mar 10]
(SC, 2/26/02)
1845 Mar 1, President Tyler
signed a congressional resolution to annex the Republic of Texas.
Texas was annexed as a state of the US on Dec 29.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A3)(AP, 3/1/98)
1845 Mar 3, Georg Cantor
(d.1918), mathematician, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He grew
up in Germany and developed the field of transfinite numbers.
(http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Georg_Cantor)
1845 Mar 3, For the first time,
the U.S. Congress passed legislation on this day overriding a
President's veto. President John Tyler was in office at the time.
(HC, Internet, 3/3/98)
1845 Mar 3, Congress authorized
ocean mail contracts for foreign mail delivery.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1845 Mar 3, Florida became the
27th state.
(AP, 3/3/98)
1845 Mar 4, James K. Polk was
inaugurated as 11th President.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1845 Mar 10, Hallie Quinn
Brown, American educator, women's rights leader, was born.
(HN, 3/10/01)
1845 Mar 10, Alexander III,
Russian tsar, was born. [see Feb 26]
(HN, 3/10/98)
1845 Mar 11, Seven hundred
Maoris led by their chief, Hone-Heke, burned the small town of
Kororareka in protest at the settlement of Maoriland by Europeans,
in breach with the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.
(HN, 3/11/99)
1845 Mar 17, The rubber band
was patented by Stephen Perry of London. [see May 17]
(MC, 3/17/02)
1845 Mar 26, Joseph Francis
patented a corrugated sheet-iron lifeboat in NYC.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1845 Mar 26, Patent was awarded
for adhesive medicated plaster, precursor of band aid.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1845 Mar 27, Wilhelm Conrad
Röntgen (d.1923), German scientist, was born. He discovered
X-rays (Nobel-1901).
(HN, 3/27/99)(MC, 3/27/02)
1845 Mar 28, Mexico dropped
diplomatic relations with US.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1845 Apr 2, H.L. Fizeau and J.
Leon Foucault took the 1st photo of Sun.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1845 Apr 10, Over 1,000
buildings were damaged by fire in Pittsburgh, Pa.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1845 Apr 12, Henry M. Baron the
Kock (65), officer, politician, died.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1845 Apr 18, Wilhelm Gericke,
composer, was born.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1845 Apr, Elias Howe produced
his 1st sewing machine.
(ON, 11/00, p.8)
1845 May 10, During a
celebrated round-the-world tour in 1844-46, the USS Constitution
dropped anchor in the bay outside of Tourane, Cochin China (later
part of Vietnam). While there, Bishop Dominique Lefevre, an
imprisoned French missionary, requested the assistance of the ship's
captain, "Mad Jack" Percival. The Americans attempted to negotiate
with the Cochin Chinese, to no avail. Frustrated, they set sail from
Cochin and continued on their course on May 26 without further word
about or from the missionary, who was eventually retrieved by his
own countrymen.
(HNQ, 10/18/02)(AH, 12/02, p.25)
1845 May 12, Gabriel Urbain
Faure, French composer, was born in Pamiers. His work included
"Requiem" and "Ballade."
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(MC, 5/12/02)
1845 May 12, August Wilhelm
Schlegel (77), German poet, interpreter, critic, died.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1845 May 17, The rubber band
was patented. [see Mar 17]
(MC, 5/17/02)
1845 May 22, Mary Cassatt
(d.1926), American impressionist painter and printmaker, was born in
Alleghany, Pa. Much of Cassatt’s early life was spent in Europe with
her wealthy family. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts from 1861 to 1865 and worked briefly with Charles Joshua
Chaplin in Paris, but preferred working her own way and copying old
masters. She was a close friend of and greatly influenced by Edgar
Degas. He admired her entry in the Salon of 1874, and at his
invitation she joined the Impressionists and afterward showed her
works at their exhibits. Degas’ influence is apparent in Cassatt’s
mastery of drawing and in her unposed, asymmetrical compositions.
Initially, Cassatt was a figure painter whose subjects were groups
of women drinking tea or on outings with friends. After the great
exhibition of Japanese prints held in Paris in 1890, she brought out
her series of 10 colored prints, such as "Woman Bathing," and "The
Coiffure," in which the influence of the Japanese masters Utamaro
and Toyokuni is apparent. Cassatt urged her wealthy American friends
and relatives to buy Impressionist paintings, and in this way, more
than through her own works, she exerted a lasting influence on
American taste. She was largely responsible for selecting the works
that make up the H.O. Havemeyer Collection in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(AHD, p.209)(FAMSF, Mar, 98)
1845 May 28, A fire in Quebec
Canada destroyed 1,500 houses.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1845 May 19, The HMS Erebus and
Terror sailed from England under Sir John Franklin to navigate
through the Arctic and find the elusive Northwest passage. All 133
men in the expedition perished. By 1847 the British Admiralty had
received no reports of Franklin. [see Franklin Jun 11, 1847]
(WSJ, 2/10/95,
p.A-7)(www.coolantarctica.com)
1845 Jun 1, A homing pigeon
completed a 11,000 km trip (Namibia-London) in 55 days.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1845 Jun 8, Andrew Jackson, 7th
president of the US, died in Nashville, Tenn. His health had
deteriorated over the last 30 years and in 1999 scientists cited
lead poisoning from an 1813 wound as the primary cause of his health
problems. In 1945 Arthur Schlesinger Jr. authored “The Age of
Jackson,” for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Dr. Robert Remini later
authored a 3-volume biography. In 2005 H.W. Brands authored “Andrew
Jackson: A Life and Times.” In 2008 Jon Meacham authored “American
Lion: Andrew Jackson in the white House.”
(AP, 6/8/97)(SFC, 8/11/99, p.A2)(SSFC, 10/30/05,
p.M3)(Econ, 3/10/07, p.85)(SSFC, 12/7/08, Books p.1)
1845 Jun 23, The congress of
the Republic of Texas voted to accept annexation by the US after 10
years as an independent republic. [see Jul 4, 1845]
(MC, 6/23/02)
1845 Jul 4, American writer
Henry David Thoreau began his 26 month experiment in simple living
at Walden Pond, near Concord, Mass. He chose this day to move to a
rustic hut in the peace and quiet of Walden Pond. He doubted that
there was a spot in Massachusetts where one could not hear a train
whistle. The Fitchburg trains passed Walden Pond about a hundred
rods south of his cabin. He lived there until September 6, 1947. His
writings about his thoughts and experiences there are still read and
remembered by millions around the world. "I went to the woods
because I wished to see if I could not learn what it [life] had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.76)(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90,
p.53)(AP, 7/4/97)(IB, 12/7/98)
1845 Jul 4, Texas Congress
voted for annexation to US. [see Jun 23, 1845]
(Maggio, 98)
1845 Jul 14, Fire in NYC
destroyed 1,000 homes and killed many.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1845 Jul 17, Earl Grey
(b.1764), former British prime minister (1830-1834), died. A member
of the Whig Party, he backed significant reform of the British
government and was among the primary architects of the Reform Act of
1832. In addition to his political achievements, Earl Grey famously
gives his name to an aromatic blend of tea.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Grey,_2nd_Earl_Grey)
1845 Jul 25, China granted
Belgium equal trading rights with Britain, France and the United
States.
(HN, 7/25/98)
1845 Aug 25, Ludwig II
(d.1886), King of Bavaria (1864-86), was born at Nymphenburg. He was
also called the "Mad King" for his extravagant castles.
(HN, 1/7/99)(SFEC, 4/9/00, p.T4)(MC, 8/25/02)
1845 Aug, The Irish potato crop
was attacked by the Phytophthora infestans fungus. It was first
noticed in County Fermanagh. it blackened the potato leaves and
caused the tubers in the ground to putrefy. In this year 40% of the
crop was infected.
(WSJ, 11/13/96, p.A22)(USAT, 1/15/97, p.2D)
1845 Sep 7, Isabella Colbran,
wife of Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini, died.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1845 Sep 8, A French column
surrendered at Sidi Brahim in the Algerian War.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1845 Sep 10, Joseph Story
(b.1779), US Supreme Court Justice, died after serving over 33
years.
(AP,
7/24/98)(www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/18/)
1845 Sep, James Strang revealed
his "Book of the Law of the Lord." He claimed to his followers to
have unearthed three ancient-appearing brass plates of prophesy.
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.86)
1845 Oct 10, The U.S. Naval
Academy opened in Annapolis, Md., with fifty midshipmen students and
seven professors.
(AP, 10/10/97)(HN, 10/10/98)(MC, 10/10/01)
1845 Oct 12, Elizabeth Fry
(b.1780), English Quaker prisoner reform advocate, died. In 1827 she
published a book called “Observations, on the visiting
superintendence and government of female prisoners.” Since 2002 she
has been depicted on the Bank of England £5 note.
(www.quakerinfo.com/fry.shtml)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Fry)
1845 Oct 13, Texas voters
ratified a state constitution.
(AP, 10/13/97)
1845 Oct 19, Richard Wagner's
opera "Tannhauser," premiered in Dresden.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1845 Oct 22, Sarah Bernhardt
(d.1923), legendary stage actress, was born in Paris. "Life begets
life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one
becomes rich." [see Oct 23]
(AP, 10/22/97)(AP, 2/20/00)(WUD, 1994 p.141)
1845 Nov 4, The 1st US
nationally observed uniform election day was held.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1845 Dec 2, Johannes Simon Mayr
(82), composer, died.
(MC, 12/2/01)
1845 Dec 27, Ether was 1st used
in childbirth in US at Jefferson, Ga.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1845 Dec 29, Texas (comprised
of the present State of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and
Wyoming) was admitted as the 28th state, with the provision that the
area (389, 166 square miles) should be divided into no more than
five states "of convenient size." Sam Houston insisted on
maintaining control of offshore waters as a condition of joining the
union.
(HN, 12/29/98)(AP, 12/29/97)(Econ, 7/1/06, p.29)
1845 William Sidney Mount
(1807-1868), American genre painter, created his work “Eel Spearing
at Setauket.”
(WSJ, 1/13/06, p.P9)
1845 Benjamin Disraeli, future
British prime minister, authored his novel “Sybil,” a look at class
through the lens of a romance between the daughter of a working
class activist and the aristocratic hero.
(WSJ, 1/10/08, p.W2)
1845 Frederick Douglass,
African-American statesman, published “The Narrative Life of
Frederick Douglass.” He then traveled to Ireland where he received a
hero’s welcome. Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell saw common cause
between Ireland’s quest for self-rule and the plight of American
slaves. British admirers raised money to buy his freedom and he was
officially manumitted after Hugh Auld, his alleged owner, received a
payment of $711.66.
(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.W2)(ON, 12/09, p.12)
1845 Der Struwwelpeter, a
popular German children's book, was published by Heinrich Hoffmann.
It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about
children. Each has a clear moral that demonstrates the disastrous
consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way. The title of the
first story provides the title of the whole book. Literally
translated, Struwwel-Peter means Shaggy-Peter.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter)
1845 Alexander von Humboldt,
German explorer, authored “Cosmos,” his 5-volume overview of the
universe.
(WSJ, 7/29/06, p.P8)
1845 The "Handbook for
Travellers in Spain" was first published. It described Valencians
as: "perfidious, vindictive, sullen, mistrustful, fickle,
treacherous, smooth, empty of all good, snarling and biting like
hyenas, and smiling as they murder."
(SSFC, 11/30/02, p.C3)
1845 "King Rene’s Daughter," a
play by Danish playwright Henrik Hertz, was first performed. It was
used as the basis for Tchaikovsky’s opera "Iolanthe."
(WSJ, 7/16/96, p.A9)
1845 Prosper Merimee wrote his
novella that later became the opera "Carmen" by Bizet.
(SFC, 10/24/96, p.D1)(WSJ, 2/5/97, p.A16)
1845 Construction began on Fort
Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas and work continued until 1875. After
the Civil War the fort served as a federal prison for deserters and
political prisoners.
(NH, 4/97, p.38)
1845 The moat of the Tower of
London, built by Edward I, was drained and filled.
(Hem, 9/04, p.71)
1845 In Boston the Eastern
Hotel became the first building heated by steam. Radiators were
used.
(SFEC,12/28/97, Z1 p.2)
1845 Boston outlawed bathing
unless it was done under a doctor’s orders.
(WSJ, 12/11/02, p.B1)
1845 In NYC a real police
department was established.
(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)
1845 Richard Fox, an Irish
immigrant, founded his National Police Gazette.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.10)
1845 John L. O’Sullivan, a New
York newspaperman, first used the term "Manifest Destiny" to
describe the US move to annex Texas. John L. O'Sullivan was the
editor of the Democratic Review in 1845 when he wrote of "Our
manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence
for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
(SFEM, 9/15/96, p.12)(SFEC, 10/20/96, Z 1
p.2)(HNQ, 4/3/01)
1845 Karl Marx, while working
as a political journalist in Paris, was driven out and goes to
Brussels, where he met Engels.
(V.D.-H.K.p.258)
1845 The style of button-fly
pants was introduced to the US "despite protests from the religious
community, who saw the flap as a license to sin."
(WSJ, 11/20/97, p.A20)
1845 The U.S. Naval Academy was
founded at Fort Severn.
(NG, Sept. 1939, J. Maloney p.391)
1845 New Braunfels, Texas, was
founded by German settlers under the leadership of Prince Carl of
Solm-Braunfels.
(Sp., 5/96, p.56)
1845 Mosquito County in Florida
changed its name to Orange County.
(Hem, Mar. 95, p.27)
1845 Don Juan Forster,
brother-in-law of the Mexican governor of California, bought the
Mission of San Juan Capistrano for $710.
(HT, 3/97, p.62)
1845 Henry Lehman, an immigrant
from Germany, opened a dry goods store in Montgomery, Alabama. He
was joined by his two brothers in 1850. The family often accepted
raw cotton instead of cash for merchandise, which resulted in a
successful cotton business on the side. In 1862, the brothers formed
Lehman, Durr & Co. with cotton merchant John Durr, and in 1870,
helped to form the New York Cotton Exchange.
(www.publicbonds.org/major_players/lehman.htm)
1845 George Pray was a member
of the first Univ. of Michigan graduating class. His diary was
recently acquired.
(MT, 3/96, p.14)
1845 Walter Potter, English
taxidermist, opened his stuffed animal museum in Bramble, south of
London. Admission was 2 cents.
(SFC, 11/29/02, p.K8)
1845 Beriah Swift of Millbrook,
N.Y., patented a coffee mill and built a factory to make the mills.
He was joined by William and John Lane about 1880 and the company
moved to Poughkeepsie.
(SFC, 10/14/98, Z1 p.3)
1845 The first hypodermic
syringe entered the market.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A6)
1845 John C. Fremont led his
3rd surveying expedition through the central Great Basin of Nevada.
He was accompanied by Thomas E. Breckenridge, a Missouri fur
trapper.
(BLM, 2001)(ON, 12/06, p.5)
1845 Christoph Buys, Dutch
scientist, used a group of perfect pitch musicians as stationary
observers and arranged for a group of trumpeters to pass by on a
railway car to prove the Doppler effect.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.10)
1845 An account of the murder
of Joseph Smith, Mormon leader, was published at Nauvoo, Ill., by an
eye-witness named William M. Daniels.
(LSA., Fall 1995, p.18)
1845 Albert Tirrell was
accused of murder in the Tirell-Bickkford case of this year and got
an acquittal by his lawyer with the argument that the crimes were
committed while his client was walking in his sleep.
(LSA., Fall 1995, p.21)
1845 Emigrants, led by trapper
Stephen Meek, took a disastrous shortcut from the Oregon Trail.
Stephen H. L. Meek, trapper, mountain man and younger brother of
famed Oregon pioneer Joseph Meek, led a group heading out to the
Oregon Territory. However, by the time they reached Fort Laramie,
Meek was told his services were no longer needed. He rode on ahead,
speaking to the groups he found along the way, telling of a new
route to the settlements in the Willamette Valley. It was shorter,
he told them, and easier. For five dollars per wagon, he would guide
them. By the time he reached Fort Boise on the Snake River, he’d
managed to persuade around 200 families to take his cutoff. In 1967
Keith Clark and Lowell Tiller authored: "Terrible Trail: The Meek
Cutoff, 1845" (Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho, 1967).
(HNQ, 5/20/01)
1845 John Henry Newman
(1801-1890) gave up a brilliant academic career at Oxford University
and the pulpit of the university church to convert to Catholicism,
convinced that the truth that he had been searching for could no
longer be found in the Church of England. In 1847 he was ordained as
a Catholic priest.
(AP,
9/19/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Newman)
1845 The Economist Magazine
began tabulating a food price index.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.11)
1845 The SS Great Britain,
designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, crossed the Atlantic in a
record 14 days. Her protracted construction and high cost had left
her owners in a difficult financial position, and they were forced
out of business in 1846 after the ship was stranded by a
navigational error.
(Econ, 5/7/11,
p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Britain)
1845 In Italy the Cantoni
cotton mill opened in Castellanza. It closed in 1985.
(Econ, 4/16/11, p.70)
1845 George Cato, the 1st mayor
of Durban, South Africa, acquired almost 5,000 acres in an area that
came to be called Cato Manor.
(MT, Fall/99, p.10)
1845-1846 As Ireland’s potato crop was consumed by
blight. The nation’s peasants, who relied on the potato as their
primary food source, starved. The famine took as many as one million
lives from hunger and disease and caused mass emigration. The
British government responded to the calamity too late with too
little aid, even though eyewitnesses reported the suffering in the
press.
(HNPD, 3/17/99)
1845-1848 John James Audubon (d.1851) completed
his folio set titled "Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America." It is
now kept at the Audubon Museum in Henderson, Kentucky.
(WSJ, 11/27/95, p.A-1)
1845-1857 Mary E. Daly, Dublin, covered this
period in her essay on Irish potato famine relief: "The Operations
of Famine Relief."
(WSJ, 11/13/96, p.A22)
1845-1849 James Knox Polk became President of the
US. He offered Mexico $25 million for California, but the offer was
declined. Polk then ordered General Zachary Taylor, known as Old
Rough and Ready, to Texas with troops and an eye on expansion.
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)(HFA, ‘96, p.46)
1845-1850 A fungus of the genus Phytophtora caused
the Irish potato famine.
(SFC, 8/1/00, p.A13)
1845-1855 Some 1.5 million people left Ireland and
many of them made New York City their home. The 2003 film "Gangs of
New York" depicted their struggle.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.49)
1845-1871 William Stanley Jevons gathers several
long-time series of weekly data on securities, deposits and reserves
from 1845-1871 into monthly cross-sections to show typical seasonal
pattern. Oct. asset liquidations are coupled by Jevons to natural
rhythms such as the desire to purchase the produce of the harvest.
(WSJ, 9/28/95, p.A-18)
1845-1879 W.K. Clifford, mathematician,
investigated the idea of space.
(V.D.-H.K.p.270)
1845-1932 Albert Goodwin, a brilliant
watercolorist who traveled widely.
(Hem., 3/97, p.94)
1845-1929 Wilhelm von Bode, German art historian.
He supervised the construction of a museum that later bore his name.
(WSJ, 7/29/98, p.A13)
1845-1998 This period is covered in the 3-part TV
series "The Irish in America: Long Journey Home" by Thomas Lennon.
(WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A16)
1846 Jan 13, President James
Polk dispatched General Zachary Taylor and 4,000 troops to the Texas
Border as war with Mexico loomed. At the outset of the
Mexican-American War, the Mexican army numbered 32,000 and the
American army consisted of 7,200 men. The American army had, since
1815, only fought against a few Indian tribes. Forty-two percent of
the army was made up of recent German or Irish immigrants. In the
course of the war, the total U.S. force employed reached 104,000. In
2008 Martin Dugard authored “The Training Ground: Grant, Lee,
Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846-1848.”
(HN, 1/13/99)(HNQ, 2/28/99)(WSJ, 5/16/08, p.W8)
1846 Jan 21, 1st edition of
Charles Dickens' "Daily News."
(MC, 1/21/02)
1846 Jan 25, The dreaded Corn
Laws, which taxed imported oats, wheat and barley, were repealed by
the British Parliament.
(HN, 1/25/99)
1846 Feb 4, Brigham Young,
Joseph Smith’s successor, led the Mormons overland from Nauvoo,
Ill., to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Mormon pioneer Sam Brannon
gathered some 250 Mormons aboard the ship, Brooklyn, and sailed from
New York to San Francisco. [see 1847]
(SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)(SFEC, 7/21/96, DB p.29)
1846 Feb 5, The first Pacific
Coast newspaper, Oregon Spectator, was published.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1846 Feb 9, Wilhelm Maybach,
German engineer, was born. He designed the first Mercedes
automobile.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1846 Feb 10, Led by religious
leader Brigham Young, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, began an exodus from Nauvoo, Il., to
Utah.
(AP, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/99)
1846 Feb 10, British General
Sir Hugh Gough decisively routed Tej Singh’s Sikhs in the Battle of
Sobraon.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1846 Feb 18, The US Dept. of
the Navy ordered the US Navy to use the word “port” rather than
“larboard” to refer to the left side of a ship.
(AH, 2/06, p.15)
1846 Feb 19, The Texas state
government was formally installed in Austin, with J. Pinckney
Henderson taking the oath of office as governor.
(AP, 2/19/07)
1846 Feb 21, Sarah G. Bagley
became the first female telegrapher, taking charge at the newly
opened telegraph office in Lowell, Mass.
(AP, 2/21/00)
1846 Feb 23, The Liberty Bell
in Philadelphia tolled for the last time, to mark George
Washington’s birthday. A hairline fracture had developed since 1817
and a failed attempt to repair it resulted in the crack. In 2010
Tristram Riley-Smith authored “”The Cracked Bell: American and the
Afflictions of Liberty.”
(HN, 2/23/98)(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.T5)(Econ, 1/30/10,
p.93)
1846 Feb 23, Polish
revolutionaries marched on Cracow, but were defeated.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1846 Feb 24, Luigi Denza,
composer, was born.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1846 Feb 26, William Frederick
Cody, aka "Buffalo Bill," was born in LeClaire, Scott County, Iowa.
He was a "Wild West" frontiersman-turned-showman. Three weeks after
the disaster at the Little Bighorn, Buffalo Bill claimed he had
taken ‘the first scalp for Custer!’
(HN, 2/26/98)(AP, 2/26/98)(MesWP)
1846 Mar 13, Friedrich Hebbel's
"Maria Magdalena," premiered in Konigsberg.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1846 Mar 16, Jurgis
Bielinis, Lithuanian publisher and "king of the (underground) book
carriers" was born in Purviskis. He died there Jan 18, 1918. This
day was later declared "Book Carriers Day."
(LHC, 3/16/03)
1846 Mar 17, Kate Greenway,
painter and illustrator (Mother Goose), was born.
(HN, 3/17/01)
1846 Mar 22, Randolph
Caldecott, illustrator, was born.
(HN, 3/22/01)
1846 Apr 15, The Donner family
set out for California from Springfield, Ill.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.C1)
1846 Apr 16, Domenico
Dragonetti (83), composer, died.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1846 May 4, Michigan ended its
death penalty.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1846 May 5, Henryk Sienkiewicz
(d.1916), author (Quo Vadis, Nobel 1905), was born in Poland:
"The greater the philosopher, the harder it is for him to answer the
questions of common people."
(AP, 2/5/97)(MC, 5/5/02)
1846 May 8, News reached
Washington DC that Mexican troops had attacked a US reconnaissance
patrol near the Rio Grande and killed or captured some 40 men. That
same afternoon Polk and his cabinet had decided to ask Congress for
a declaration of war against Mexico.
(AH, 6/07, p.44)
1846 May 8, The first major
battle of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas;
US forces led by General Zachary Taylor were able to beat back the
invading Mexican forces.
(AP, 5/8/07)
1846 May 9, US forced Mexico
back to Rio Grande in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1846 May 9, Gen. Mariano Arista
crossed the Rio Grande and killed a number of US soldiers in a
surprise attack. Mexico believed that France and Britain would
support it in a war against the US.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)
1846 May 13, The US under Pres.
Polk declared war against Mexico, 2 months after fighting began.
This was in response to an incident where the Mexican cavalry
surrounded a scouting party of American dragoons. $10 million was
appropriated for war expenses by Congress. 50, 000 volunteers
responded to the war effort and Gen. Taylor used his forces to
capture the Mexican town of Monterey [in California] and then moved
south to defeat Santa Anna’s armies at the Battle of Buena Vista.
(WCG, p.59)(HFA, ‘96, p.48)(SS, Internet,
5/13/97)
1846 May 18, US troops attacked
at the Rio Grande and occupied Matamoros.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1846 May 24, General Zachary
Taylor captured Monterey in the Mexican War.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1846 May 29, Albert Gyorgy,
earl Apponyi, Hungarian minister of Education, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1846 May 30, Peter Carl Faberge
(d.1920), Russian master jeweler and goldsmith was born (May 18 OS)
in St. Petersburg. His work includes the Imperial Coronation Easter
Egg (1896-1908), an enameled, diamond-studded golden egg about 5
inches long that opens to reveal a 3-inch-long replica of the
carriage that took the czarina to her coronation in 1896; the rococo
Imperial Catherine the Great Easter Egg (1908-1917) and the
Rectangular Box with a monogram of tiny diamonds (1896-1908).
(SFC, 5/23/96,
p.D1,10)(www.britannica.com/ebi/article?tocId=9274244)
1846 May, Sarah Borginnis was
very big--a red-haired behemoth anywhere from 6 to 7 feet tall,
depending on whose account you read. She first appeared in history
at the beginning of the Mexican War as she traveled with Zachary
Taylor's army as a cook, laundress and occasional nurse. But it was
in May 1846 during the siege of Fort Brown, Texas, that Sarah
distinguished herself by calmly making coffee and bean soup in an
open courtyard as Mexican explosive shells burst around her. In
spite of receiving a "bullet through her bonnet and another through
her bread tray," Sarah, who became known as "The Heroine of Fort
Brown," made her rounds nursing soldiers and feeding the men.
(HNQ, 5/17/99)
1846 Jun 13, Jose Noe, owner of
a 4,000-acre ranch in the center of SF, was the last chief
magistrate under Mexican rule. He became a city official when the
Americans took over and is buried in Mission Dolores.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)
1846 Jun 14, Americans in
Northern California rebelled against Mexican authorities in what is
called the Bear Flag Revolt and proclaimed the Republic of
California. Wagon master William B. Ide, leader of the Bear Flag
Party, was urged to loot the Mexican stronghold but said: "Choose ye
this day what you will be! We are robbers or we must be conquerors."
Although the US had declared war against Mexico in May, word did not
reach California until July. Commodore John Sloat raised the Stars
and Stripes over the American Customs House in Monterey, and three
days later it flew over the Sonoma Plaza. Ide was installed as
president of the new republic.
(WCG, p.59)(SFEM, 6/9/96, p.32)(AP,
6/14/97)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W36)
1846 Jun 14, William L. Todd,
nephew of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln designed a flag for the Bear Flag
Revolt with the words California Republic. With rusty nails and
blackberry juice he painted a grizzly and a star on white cloth. The
lower red border was said to come from the flannel petticoat of
Nancy Kelsey, who sewed the flag. The Bear Flag Revolt got its name
from the presence of a grizzly bear on the standard proposed for the
independent California.
(Pac. Disc., summer, ‘96, p.16)(HN, 6/14/99)
1846 Jun 15, The United States
and Britain signed a treaty settling a boundary dispute between
Canada and the United States in the Pacific Northwest at the 49th
parallel. Great Britain and the U.S. agreed on a joint occupation of
Oregon Territory. President Polk agreed to a compromise border along
the 49th parallel. The debate over the northwestern border of the
United States. The campaign slogan "54-40 or fight" referred to the
debate over the northwestern border of the United States. The slogan
"54-40 or fight" refers to the north latitude degree and minute
where many Americans wanted to place the border between the U.S. and
then Great Britain in the Pacific Northwest.
(AP, 6/15/97)(HN, 6/15/98)(SFC, 1/25/99,
p.A3)(HNQ, 3/28/00)
1846 Jun 15, Washington
diplomats established a straight line border between the US and
Canada in the northwest and thus established Point Roberts, Wa. as
the westernmost corner of the US. The enclave is 4.9 sq. miles.
(SFC, 5/20/96, p.A-6)
1846 Jun 19, The New York
Knickerbocker Club played the New York Club in the first baseball
game at the Elysian Field, Hoboken, New Jersey.
(HN, 6/19/98)
1846 Jun 27, New York City and
Boston were linked by telegraph wires.
(AP, 6/27/07)
1846 Jun 27, Charles Stewart
Parnell (d.1891), Irish nationalist hero, was born.
(HFA, ‘96, p.32)(AHD, 1971, p.954)(HN, 6/27/98)
1846 Jun 28, Near San Rafael,
Ca., a US military detachment was approached by 3 unarmed Mexicans,
Jose de los Reyes Berryessa, Francisco de Haro and his twin brother
Ramon. Captain Fremont was asked by trapper Kit Carson whether he
should take the men as prisoners. Fremont responded that he had no
room for prisoners and Carson shot the men dead and left their
bodies to rot.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A20)(SSFC, 6/25/06, p.E1)
1846 Jun, In the
Mexican-American War during the first month of battle, Taylor sent
Samuel Walker, commander of a regiment of rangers, to Baltimore on a
recruiting mission. Walker looked up Sam Colt and together they
worked out the design for a new pistol. With financial assistance
from Eli Whitney, the first 1000 guns were ordered by Walker without
government permission. The Walker-Colt was very effective in Mexico
and was the ancestor to the late Colt peacemaker.
(HFA, ‘96, p.48)
1846 Jul 1, In Yerba Buena
(later SF) Kit Carson helped Capt. John Fremont scale the walls on
the site of Fort Point to claim the Presidio for the US.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W30)
1846 Jul 7, U.S. annexation of
California was proclaimed at Monterey after Commodore Sloat reached
Monterey and claimed California for the US.
(HFA, ‘96, p.48)(AP, 7/7/97)
1846 Jul 9, Captain J.B.
Montgomery raised the American flag over San Francisco. Montgomery
claimed Yerba Buena (SF) for the US.
(SFEC, 3/1/98,
p.W36)(www.bearflagmuseum.org/History.html)
1846 Jul 21, Mormons founded
the 1st English settlement in the San Joaquin Valley of Calif.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1846 Jul 31, San Francisco,
known as Yerba Buena, had only 459 residents, and with the arrival
of Sam Brannon and 230 Mormons became known as a Mormon town. [see
1848] Printer Brannon later published the first SF newspaper, the
California Star.
(SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)(SFEC, 7/21/96, DB p.29)
1846 Aug 10, President James
Polk signed a measure establishing the Smithsonian Institution. The
US Congress chartered the Smithsonian Institution, named after
English scientist James Smithson (1765-1836), whose bequest of
$500,000 made it possible. The Smithsonian Institute was born and
Joseph Henry became its first secretary.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)(AP, 8/10/07)
1846 Aug 13, The American flag
was raised for the first time in Los Angeles.
(AP, 8/13/97)
1846 Aug 14, Henry David
Thoreau was jailed for tax resistance.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1846 Aug 15, The first
California newspaper was the Californian of Monterey issued by
Colton and Semple. It was written half in English and half in
Spanish.
(SFEC, 3/8/8, BR p.6)(CVG, Vol 16, p.10)
1846 Aug 16, Gioacchino Rossini
married Olympe Pelissier in Paris and stopped composing operas.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1846 Aug 17, US took Los
Angeles. [see Aug 13]
(SC, 8/17/02)
1846 Aug 18, U.S. forces led by
Gen. Stephen W. Kearney captured Santa Fe, N.M. As commander of the
Army of the West during the Mexican War, Brig. Gen. Stephen Watts
Kearny captured Santa Fe without a shot being fired. Kearny
(1794-1848) then served as military governor of New Mexico for a
month.
(AP, 8/18/97)(HNQ, 4/23/00)
1846 Aug 22, Gen. Stephen W.
Kearny proclaimed all of New Mexico a territory of the United
States. The US pledged to honor the land grants in northern New
Mexico that were awarded by the Spanish and Mexican governors of the
territory.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A6)(AP, 8/22/07)
1846 Aug 26, Felix
Mendelssohn's "Elijah," premiered.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1846 Aug, By the end of August
the US Pacific Fleet with the help of General John C. Fremont, had
occupied the entire state of California.
(HFA, ‘96, p.48)
1846 Sep 4, Daniel Burnham, US
architect, city planner and builder of skyscrapers, was born.
(HN, 9/4/00)(MC, 9/4/01)
1846 Sep 10, Elias Howe
(d.1867) of Spencer, Mass., received a U.S. patent for his first
workable lockstitch sewing machine. Howe, a Massachusetts machinist,
developed his sewing machine in 1843-45 and patented it in 1846.
Although Howe’s machine sewed only short, straight lines, tailors
and seamstresses saw it as a threat to their jobs. Unable to market
his machine in America, Howe took it to Britain where he sold the
rights to an English manufacturer in 1847. Upon his return to the
United States, Howe discovered that his patent had been infringed
upon by other sewing machine manufacturers, such as Isaac Singer.
After a lengthy court battle, Howe’s patent was upheld and royalties
from sewing machine sales made him a wealthy man.
(CFA, ‘96, p.54)(AP, 9/10/97)(HNPD, 7/9/98)(HN,
9/10/98)
1846 Sep 19, Elizabeth Barrett
and Robert Browning eloped.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T8)(MC, 9/19/01)
1846 Sep 23, The planet Neptune
was discovered by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle. Neptune
was discovered after John Couch Adams of England and Urbain Jean
Leverrier of France independently figured out where it should be.
(HFA, ‘96, p.38)(AP, 9/23/97)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Par
p.13)(ON, 9/01, p.9)
1846 Sep 25, American General
Zachary Taylor’s forces captured Monterey, Mexico.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1846 Sep 30, Dentist William
Morton (1819-1868) used ether as an anesthetic for the first time on
a dental patient in Boston, Massachusetts.
(AP,
9/30/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._G._Morton)
1846 Oct 6, George Westinghouse
(d.1914) was born. Inventor and manufacturer Westinghouse, a leader
in the development of electric power, also developed a long-distance
transmission system for natural gas. Westinghouse held more than 400
patents including shock absorbers, electric brakes for subway cars,
air brakes and railroad signals. He promoted the development and
construction of electric transformers, enabling the introduction of
high-tension systems using single-phase alternating currents.
(HNQ, 7/6/99)(HN, 10/6/00)
1846 Oct 10, Alexis the
Tocqueville wrote about the "Algerian problem."
(MC, 10/10/01)
1846 Oct 10, Neptune's moon
Triton was discovered by William Lassell. [see Sep 23]
(MC, 10/10/01)
1846 Oct 16, Sulphurous ether
was first administered in public at the Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston by dentist Dr. William Thomas Green Morton during
an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren. Morton was the
1st to take public credit for the use of ether in a medical
procedure and applied for a patent on its use, which was later
nullified. In 2001 Julie M. Fenster authored “Ether Day,” an account
of Dr. Morton and ether. [see Sep 30] Oliver Wendall Holmes son
suggested that that the procedure be called “Anesthesia.”
(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A17)(ON, 10/20/11, p.10)
1846 Oct 28, Auguste Escoffier,
king of chefs and chef of kings, was born.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1846 Oct 31, Heavy snows
trapped the Donner party in the eastern Sierras near what is now
Truckee.
(SFC, 7/20/96,
p.C1)(www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/Chronology.htm)
1846 Nov 4, Benjamin F. Palmer
of Meredith N.H. received a patent on an artificial human leg.
(SFEC, 3/29/98, Z1 p.8)(MC, 11/4/01)
1846 Nov 5, Robert Schumann's
2nd Symphony in C, premiered.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1846 Nov 16, General Zachary
Taylor took Saltillo, Mexico. General, cried Brig. Gen. John Wool in
despair, we are whipped! I know it, replied Maj. Gen. Zachary
Taylor, but the volunteers don't know it. Let them alone; we'll see
what they do.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1846 Nov 25, Carry Nation
(d.1911) was born Carry Amelia Moore in Kentucky. After her first
husband died a drunkard, she married David Nation and they moved to
Medicine Lodge, Kansas. There, she was elected president of the
local chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Even though
Kansas was technically a dry state, Medicine Lodge had seven
saloons. When Carry Nation's appeals to close the saloons were
ignored, she took matters into her own hands--she drove a buggy,
full of bricks and stones she had wrapped in newspapers, up to a
saloon, smashed its mirrors, glasses, bottles and windows, and said
to the proprietor as she left, "I have finished. God be with you."
Nation repeated her barroom attacks across the state and the
country. One of her last actions was at Washington's Union Depot,
where she used three hatchets that she called Faith, Hope and
Charity. Nation was arrested about 30 times for her saloon rampages.
(HNPD, 11/25/98)
1846 Dec 6, Hector Berlioz'
opera "La Damnation de Faust" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 12/6/01)(WSJ, 7/1/03, p.D8)
1846 Dec 10, Norbert Rillieux
(1806-1894), African-American engineer, received a patent for the
Rillieux Process for refining sugar. He won several patents for a
way to refine sugar in a process that later came to be called
multiple-effect distillation.
(Econ, 6/7/08,
p.24)(www.aalbc.com/books/black7.htm)
1846 Dec 11, A herd of wild
cattle stampeded the rear companies of the Mormon Battalion near
Tombstone, Arizona. As a result of what came to be known as the
Battle of the Bulls, approximately 12 bulls were killed, two mules
were gored, and three men were wounded, including future California
governor, Lieutenant George Stoneman.
(HNQ, 2/12/02)
1846 Dec 16, In desperation 10
men and 5 women of the Donner Party left on snowshoes to cross the
Sierra Nevada. The 5 women and 2 men survived. All but one of the
dead were eaten. Of the 89 members in the whole group 42 died.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.C1)
1846 Dec 28, Iowa became the
29th state to be admitted to the Union.
(AP, 12/28/97)
1846 Dec, In California the
town of Francesca (now Benicia) planned to change its name to San
Francisco. William A. Bartlett, the first American alcalde, or mayor
of Yerba Buena, led the town council to beat Francesca and approve a
name change to San Francisco.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.A15)
1846 Edward Hicks completed his
painting "The Peaceable Kingdom." [see 1844] He also did the
portrait of "James Cornell's Prize Bull."
(SFEM, 10/18/98, p.15)(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A28)
1846 Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
of Holland painted his "Portrait of a Young Lady."
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W16)
1846 Charles Dickens authored
"Pictures from Italy."
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.C8)
1846 "The History of British
Fossil Mammals and Birds" by British anatomist Richard Owen was
published.
(NH, 8/96, p.20)
1846 The pier at Monterey,
California was built for trading vessels bringing goods around Cape
Horn.
(SFEC, 11/3/96, DB p.71)
1846 The International Mission
Board was created as part of the Southern Baptist Convention.
(AP, 12/30/02)
1846 The Seventh-Day Adventists
broke from the Adventist Church, stressing legalism and
Sabbatarianism, with strong views on diet, health and medicine.
(HNQ, 9/29/99)
1846 In Woodstock, Conn., Henry
Chandler Bowen (d.1896) built a summertime retreat. He had made a
fortune as a silk importer in Brooklyn. The 19-room cottage was
designed by Joseph Collins Wells and furnished by Thomas Brooks, a
New York cabinet maker.
(HT, 4/97, p.36)
1846 Trinity Church, a Gothic
Revival-style building, was constructed at Broadway and Wall St. in
NYC.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.T4)
1846 Cuthbert Burrel came to
California and served under Gen’l. John C. Fremont. His grandson,
lawyer Harry Haehl, served under Gen’l. Douglas MacArthur and
assisted in the revival of the Japanese merchant marine after WW II.
(SFC, 1/29/98, p.B2)
1846 Sarah Josepha Hale,
editor of the influential Godey's Lady's Book, began a tireless
campaign to establish a national Thanksgiving holiday in November.
She was the editor and founder of the Ladies' Magazine in Boston.
Her editorials in the magazine and letters to President Lincoln
urging the formal establishment of a national holiday of
Thanksgiving resulted in Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863, which
designated the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day.
(HNPD, 11/26/98)
1846 In California Gen’l.
Vallejo married Dr. Edward Turner Bale’s niece, and bestowed upon
him a land grant. Its last remnant in 1998 was the Old Bale Mill,
south of Calistoga. [see 1841]
(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.T5)(AP, 3/5/98)
1846 Robert Semple, a
Kentucky-born printer, dentist, lawyer, physician and riverboat
pilot, helped lead the Bear Flag Revolt. He helped take Gen’l.
Vallejo prisoner and with financier Thomas O. Larkin paid Vallejo
$100 to become co-owner of 5 sq. miles around Benicia. Larkin was
the American ambassador to California and had been sent by Pres.
Polk to encourage the Californios to defect to the US.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W26)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W36)(SSFC,
6/25/06, p.E1)
1846 Lt. Harry Lumsden in the
heat of India’s Punjab dyed his PJs a tawny color. They were made of
cotton and called khaki in Hindi.
(NH, 6/96, p.7)
1846 A US Treaty was signed
with the Cherokee Nation in which the tribe gave up resistance to
forced relocation.
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)
1846 US Army forces under the
command of John C. Fremont conducted a murderous attack on
Sacramento River Maidu Indian villages.
(www.nativeamericancaucus.com/history.shtml)
c1846 General Winfield Scott
called Robert E. Lee "the very best soldier I ever saw in the field"
and suggested the U.S. government, in the event of war, insure his
life for $5 million. Lee served on Scott’s staff in the Mexican War
and inspired Scott’s praise with his reconnaissance skills and good
judgement, which contributed significantly to his Mexican victories.
In 1861 Scott offered Lee command of the Union army, but Lee
declined, deciding to support the Confederacy.
(HNPD, 8/15/99)
1846 Commander John Montgomery
sent a 70-man detachment from the Portsmouth ashore at Yerba Buena,
soon renamed San Francisco, and raised the American flag.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.A15)
1846 In Northern California Don
Rafael Garcia gave a party for Joseph Revere, a newly arrived
American military officer. The large ranch holders were called
"Californios." The old families were named Peralta, Noe, Bernal,
Castro, Berryessa, and all eventually lost their land.
(SFC, 5/26/97, p.A11)
1846 The sons of Francisco de
Haro, the first chief magistrate of Yerba Buena (later renamed San
Francisco), were murdered by Americans under the command of Kit
Carson.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)
1846 Texas was voluntarily
annexed to the US.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)
1846 The Applegate Trail across
northwest Nevada and northeast California was blazed as a southern
approach to Oregon's Willamette Valley.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, p.T7)
1846 Brigadier General Stephen
W. Kearney commissioned a map of the New Mexico territory.
(www.discoveryeditions.com/tpl)(LP, Spring 2006,
p.44)
c1846 In Aroostook County,
Maine, Scottish and Irish immigrants began planting potatoes.
(WSJ, 11/13/96, p.A1)
1846 New York newspapers
collaborated to share costs for reporting on the Mexican war. This
collaboration led to the formation of the Associated Press in 1848.
(Econ, 12/19/09, p.143)
1846 Alexander Turney Stewart
(d.1876), Irish-born entrepreneur, opened the 1st US dept store in
lower Manhattan.
(www.lowermanhattan.info/history)
1846 Moses Gunn (23), a
graduate of the Geneva Medical School in Upstate New York, began a
course of lectures in anatomy at the Univ. of Michigan. In 1867 he
moved to Rush medical College in Chicago.
(MT, Fall/99, p.4)
1846 NYC abandoned the
Lancastrian school system in favor of direct teacher to student
instruction in its tax supported schools.
(ON, 3/06, p.10)
1846 Henry Inman (b.1801),
American artist, died. He copied portraits of American Indian
leaders made by Charles Bird King.
(WSJ, 3/15/06, p.D16)
1846 A British parliamentary
commission decided on a national railway standard with rails
separated by less than 5 feet. This was a cheaper option than the
7-foot spacing used by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) for the
Royal Albert railway bridge linking Cornwall and Devon.
(Econ, 6/20/09, p.60)
1846 Britain passed the “Public
Baths and Wash Houses Act,” which gave local authorities the power
to raise funds to keep the working classes clean and healthy.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.55)
1846 British firms began
selling insurance policies in China.
(Econ, 7/23/11, p.69)
1846 In Ireland people began
starving to death due to the potato famine.
(USAT, 1/15/97, p.2D)
c1846 In Mexico Santa Anna was
recalled to serve as president and to lead the army.
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.W10)
1846 The Kot Massacre took
place in Nepal. The Rana dynasty forced the Shah monarchy from power
and then ruled until 1951.
(SFC, 6/7/01,
p.A12)(www.russojapanesewar.com/lewis-3.html)
1846 Scottish missionaries set
up a school for Africans near Alice, South Africa. The Lovedale
Bible College, a prep school for Blacks interested in going to
seminary, soon followed.
(MT, Fall/99, p.13)
1846 A major immigration of
Swedes to the US began and by the 1920s brought in 1.2 million
people.
(FB, 9/12/96, p.A2)
1846 Ezequiel Zamora
(1817-1860) spearheaded a peasant revolt in Venezuela. After a brief
exile he returned to lead the Federal War (1859-1863) and founded
the Venezuelan state of Barinas.
(SSFC, 8/26/07, p.M2)
1846-1848 US troops invaded and captured Mexico
City.
(SFC, 12/10/96, p.A12)
1846-1848 Ireland experiences the terrible potato
famine. About 1,200,000 people leave Ireland, mostly for the US.
(Compuserve, Online Encyclopedia)
1846-1852 Lord John Russel was Prime Minister of
England from 1846 to 1852 in his first term.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1846-1854 Darwin devoted himself to the study of
barnacles.
(NH, 8/96, p.56)
1846-1859 Ownership of the San Juan Islands was
not settled in the 1846 Oregon Treaty. The Pig War of 1859 forced an
arbitration under Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany. Six Royal Marines and
16 US soldiers died during the 13-year occupation from drownings,
disease and suicides.
(SFEC, 6/18/00, p.T8)
1846-1878 Pope Pius IX, Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti,
allowed archeological excavations of the catacombs by G.B. de Rossi.
Under Pius IX the child Edgardo Mortara was taken from the Jewish
merchant, Momolo Mortara, in Bologna and raised as a foster son of
the pope. The 6-year-old boy had been baptized by a Catholic servant
and canonical law did not allow that he be raised by his Jewish
parents. The story is told by David I. Kertzer in his 1997 book:
"The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara."
(ITV, 1/96, p.58)(SFEC, 8/31/97, BR p.9)(PTA,
1980, p.510)
1846-1911 Carry Nation, early leader of the
American temperance movement, was famous for using a hatchet to
destroy saloons in her home state of Kansas.
(SFC, 1/7/98, Z1 p.6)
1846-1914 George Westinghouse, American inventor
and manufacturer. He introduced the railroad airbrake in 1869. The
device enabled the engineer to brake a train from the locomotive.
((WUD, 1994, p.1623)(THC, 12/2/97)
1847 Jan 3, California town of
Yerba Buena was renamed to San Francisco. [see Jan 30]
(MC, 1/3/02)
1847 Jan 10, General Stephen
Kearny and Commodore Robert Stockton retook Los Angeles in the last
California battle of the Mexican War.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1847 Jan 16, US Navy commodore
Robert Stockton appointed John C. Fremont (1830-1890), the famed
"Pathfinder" of Western exploration, as governor of California.
Fremont, explorer, soldier and politician, earned his nickname "The
Pathfinder" because of his explorations of the Pacific Northwest,
California, and Nevada during the 1840s.
(HN, 1/16/99)(HNQ, 3/11/00)(SSFC, 7/1/07, p.M4)
1847 Jan 19, New Mexico
Governor Charles Bent was slain by Pueblo Indians in Taos.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1847 Jan 24, 1,500 New Mexican
Indians and Mexicans were defeated by US Col. Price.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1847 Jan 30, The California
Star, founded by Sam Brannon, published the official name change of
Yerba Buena to San Francisco on this day. Mayor Washington Bartlett
had the town council approve the change. [see Jan 3]
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.A15)(SFC, 1/25/02, p.G6)
1847 Jan 30, Virginia Poe, wife
and cousin of Edgar Allan Poe, died at age 24.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.T5)
1847 Feb 3, Marie Duplessis
(b.1824), French courtesan, died. She was mistress to a number of
prominent and wealthy men, the inspiration for Marguerite Gautier,
and the main character of La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas
the younger, one of her lovers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Duplessis)
1847 Feb 11, American inventor
Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio. He was the inventor of
the first electric light bulb and pioneer of the motion picture
industry. He also Invented at least 1,300 other items.
(HN, 2/11/97)(AP, 2/11/97)
1847 Feb 14, Anna Howard Shaw,
U.S. suffragette, was born.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1847 Feb 16, Ludwig Philipp
Scharwenka, German composer (Album Polonaise), was born.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1847 Feb 19, The 1st rescuers
finally reached the ill-fated Donner Party in the Sierras, where
many resorted to cannibalism to survive.
(HN, 2/19/99)(ON, SC, p.6)
1847 Feb 22, In the Battle of
Buena Vista US troops beat Mexican army during the Mexican-American
War. Mexican General Santa Anna (of Alamo infamy) surrounded the
outnumbered forces of U.S. General Zachary Taylor ('Old Rough and
Ready') at the Angostura Pass in Mexico and demanded an immediate
surrender. Taylor refused, reported to reply, "Tell him to go to
hell," and early the next morning Santa Anna dispatched some 15,000
troops to move against the 5,000 Americans. The superior US
artillery was able to halt one of the two advancing Mexican
divisions. By the afternoon Taylor had lived up to his word as the
Mexicans began to withdraw.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1847 Feb 23, U.S. troops under
Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican Gen. Santa Anna at the Battle
of Buena Vista in Mexico. The United States and Mexico had been at
war over territorial disputes since May 1846.
(AP, 2/23/98)(HN, 2/23/98)
1847 Feb 28, Colonel Alexander
Doniphan and his ragtag Missouri Mounted Volunteers rode to victory
at the Battle of Sacramento, during the Mexican War.
(HN, 2/28/99)
1847 Mar 1, James Reed reached
Donner Lake and found his two children alive along with 15 other
survivors.
(ON, SC, p.7)
1847 Mar 1, Michigan became the
1st English-speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty
(except for treason against the state).
(SC, 3/1/02)
1847 Mar 3, The inventor of
the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell (teacher of the deaf, inventor:
telephone; founder of Bell Telephone Company), was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland. For two generations the family of Alexander
Graham Bell was recognized as leading authorities on elocution and
speech correction. Graham's father, Alexander Melville Bell's
Standard Elocutionist went through nearly 200 editions in English.
(SFEM, 1/11/98, p.12)(AP, 3/3/98)(HC, Internet,
3/3/98)(HNQ, 12/20/98)
1847 Mar 3, Post Office
Department was authorized to issue postage stamps.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1847 Mar 7, U.S. General Scott
occupied Veracruz, Mexico. Pres. Polk decided to attack the heart of
Mexico. He sent Gen. Winfield Scott, who landed at Veracruz and with
his troops hacked their way to Mexico City. [see Mar 9]
(HFA, '96, p.48)(HN, 3/7/98)
1847 Mar 9, US forces under
General Winfield Scott invaded Mexico (Mexican-American War) 3 miles
south of Vera Cruz. Encountering almost no resistance from the
Mexicans massed in the fortified city of Vera Cruz, by nightfall the
last of Scott's 10,000 men came ashore without the loss of a single
life. It was the largest amphibious landing in U.S. history until WW
II. [see Mar 7]
(MC, 3/9/02)
1847 Mar 29, Some 12,000 US
forces led by General Winfield Scott occupied the city of Vera Cruz
after Mexican defenders capitulated.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(AP, 3/29/97)(MC, 3/29/02)
1847 Mar 31, Jarolslaw
Zielinski, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1847 Apr 10, American newspaper
publisher Joseph Pulitzer (d.1911) was born in Mako, Hungary. "What
is everybody’s business is nobody’s business—except the
journalist’s."
(CFA, ‘96, p.44)(AP, 4/10/97)(AP, 8/30/98)
1847 Apr 18, U.S. forces
defeated the Mexicans at Cerro Gordo in one of the bloodiest battle
of the war.
(HN, 4/18/99)
1847 Apr, A census in San
Francisco, Ca., counted 462 residents.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.A15)
1847 Apr, A cattle market began
in Seville, Spain, that changed over the years to a week long
celebration of Holy Week.
(Hem, 4/96, p.51)
1847 May 1, The cornerstone of
the Smithsonian Institute was laid in Washington, DC. The building
was designed by James Renwick Jr.
(ON, 2/06, p.6)
1847 May 7, The American
Medical Association was founded in Philadelphia.
(AP, 5/7/97)(HN, 5/7/98)
1847 May 14, Fanny Cacilia
Mendelssohn Hensel (41), German pianist, composer and sister of
Felix Mendelssohn, died of a stroke.
(ON, 6/07, p.8)
1847 May 20, Mary Lamb, writer,
died.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1847 May 25, Alphonse
Goovaerts, composer, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1847 May 25, John Alexander
Dowie [Elijah the Restorer], US evangelist, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1847 Jun 10, Chicago Tribune
began publishing.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1847 Jun 11, Dame Millicent
Garrett Fawcett, leader of English women's movement, was born.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1847 Jun 11, A written record
was found in 1859, indicating that Sir John Franklin died on this
day, and that Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848. The
crews' deaths have been attributed to either scurvy or lead
poisoning originating from the solder on food tins. Both ships and
the remains of most of the 129 crewmen have never been found. After
commissioning three unsuccessful search expeditions, the British
Admiralty posted a reward for anyone who could ascertain the fate of
the crewmen of the HMS Erebus and Terror, who had sailed from
England in May 1845 to navigate through the Arctic and find the
elusive Northwest passage. Success was anticipated with Franklin
commanding well-equipped crews and ships, but by 1847, the British
Admiralty had received no reports of Franklin. Subsequent
expeditions found evidence of the Franklin Expedition. Three graves
dug into the permafrost were discovered in 1850, their headstones
dated 1846. [see May 1845 and Franklin expedition 1850]
(HNQ, 6/11/98)(HN, 6/11/99)
1847 Jun 22, The 1st doughnut
with a hole in it was created.
(SFC, 4/26/97, p.E4)(YarraNet, 6/22/00)
1847 Jul 1, The faces of
founding fathers Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were
pictured on the first U.S. government-sponsored postage stamps.
Following a Congressional directive, the Post Office issued a
Franklin five-cent stamp and a Washington 10-cent stamp.
(HNQ, 5/16/98)(HN, 7/1/98)
1847 Jul 20, Max Liebermann,
German impressionist painter, was born.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1847 Jul 24, Mormon leader
Brigham Young and his followers, the first members of Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), arrived in the valley
of the Great Salt Lake in present-day Utah.
(AP, 7/24/97)(HN, 7/24/98)
1847 Jul 26, Liberia became the
first African colony to become an independent state. A mutual
agreement between the settlers and the society created the republic
of Liberia. More than 10,000 free blacks had moved there. Joseph
Jenkins Roberts, the Virginia-born son of free blacks, was elected
the first president of Liberia, an African nation that grew out of
the efforts of the American Colonization Society. Roberts made a
state visit to the United States in 1851. The American Colonization
Society supported setting up a colony for freed slaves in Africa as
an alternative to American integration. The first group of colonists
landed in Liberia in 1822, and founded Monrovia, the colony’s
capital city, named in honor of President James Monroe. [see Aug 26]
(HNPD, 7/26/98)(HN, 7/26/98)
1847 Aug 2, William A.
Leidesdorff launched the first steam boat in San Francisco Bay.
(HN, 8/2/98)
1847 Aug 8, Lt. Col. William M.
Graham was killed in action at the head of the U.S. 11th Infantry at
the Battle of Molino del Rey. On Mar 13, 1865, Graham was given a
brevet brigadier generalcy.
(HNQ, 4/1/01)
1847 Aug 20, General Winfield
Scott won the battle of Churubusco on his drive to Mexico City. The
Mexican War gave future civil war generals their first taste of
combat.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1847 Aug 24, Charlotte Bronte,
using the pseudonym Currer Bell, sent a manuscript of "Jane Eyre" to
her publisher in London.
(HN, 8/24/00)
1847 Aug 26, Liberia was
proclaimed an independent republic. Freed American slaves founded
Liberia. They modeled their constitution after that of the US,
copied the US flag, and named their capital Monrovia, after James
Monroe, who financed early settlers. Over the decades 16,400 former
slaves made the voyage. They assumed that the 16 native tribes were
there to be exploited.
(AP, 8/26/97)(SFC, 4/10/96, p.A-4)(SFC, 4/16/96,
p.A-9)
1847 Sep 5,
Jesse Woodson James (Jesse James, d.1882) was born in Kearney, Mo,
the son of a clergyman. At seventeen, James left his native Missouri
to fight as a Confederate guerrilla in the Civil War. After the war,
he returned to his home state to establish one of history’s most
notorious outlaw gangs. With his younger brother Frank and several
other ex-Confederates, including Cole Younger and his brothers,
James robbed his way across the Western frontier targeting banks,
trains, stagecoaches, and stores from Iowa to Texas. Eluding even
the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the gang escaped with
thousands of dollars.
(WUD, 1994 p.762)(USLC, 9/5/99)(MesWP)
1847 Sep 6, Henry David Thoreau
left Walden Pond and moved back into town, to Concord,
Massachusetts.
(HN, 9/6/00)
1847 Sep 8, The US under Gen.
Scott defeated Mexicans at Battle of Molino del Rey.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1847 Sep 10, John Roy Lynch,
first African-American to deliver the keynote address at a
Republican National Convention, was born.
(HN, 9/10/98)
1847 Sep 11, Stephen Foster’s
"Oh! Susanna" was first performed in a saloon in Pittsburgh.
(HN, 9/11/00)
1847 Sep 13, Milton Hershey,
founder of the famous candy company, was born in central
Pennsylvania. [see Sep 13, 1857]
(HN, 9/13/00)
1847 Sep 13, US General
Winfield Scott took Chapultepec, removing the last obstacle to his
troops moving on Mexico City. Six teenage military cadets later
became known as “Los Ninos Heroes” for their defense of Chapultepec
Castle.
(HN,
9/13/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C3%B1os_H%C3%A9roes)
1847 Sep 14, US forces under
Gen. Winfield Scott took control of Mexico City (the "Halls of
Montezuma"). The Mexican forces fled with their leader, Santa Anna.
(HFA, '96, p.48)(AP, 9/14/97)
1847 Sep 25, Vinnie Ream, who
sculpted President Abraham Lincoln from life shortly before he was
assassinated, was born.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1847 Oct 1, Maria Mitchell
(29), American astronomer living on Nantucket Island, discovered a
new comet that was named after herself. In 1848 she was elected to
the American Academy of Arts, the first woman to be so honored.
Frederick VI, the King of Denmark awarded her a gold medal for her
discovery.
(HN, 10/1/98)(ON, 2/07, p.9)
1847 Oct 2, Paul von
Hindenburg, German Field Marshall during World War I whose brilliant
victories on the Eastern Front promoted him to become the second
president of the Weimar Republic, was born.
(HN, 10/2/98)
1847 Oct 16, Charlotte Bronte's
book "Jane Eyre" was published by Smith, Elder & Co. under the
pen name Currer Bell.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre)(http://tinyurl.com/84e3uwp)
1847 Oct 21, Giuseppe Giacosa
(d.1906), Italian songwriter (libretti opera Puccini), was born.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1847 Oct, financial pressures
exert negative market influences as noted in a letter to the
Economist in 1865.
(WSJ, 9/28/95, p.A-18)
1847 Oct, The German company
Siemens was founded. Johann Georg Halske and Werner von Siemens
formed their own company, Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens &
Halske to develop a new design for the Wheatstone telegraph.
(WSJ, 1/31/07, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/26xq4a)
1847 Nov 4, Felix
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (b.1809), German pianist and composer, died at
age 38. His work included: "Overture to a Midsummer Night's Dream."
(WUD, 1994 p.895)(LGC, 1970, p.201)(ON, 6/07,
p.8)
1847 Nov 8, Bram Stoker,
author, was born. His novels included "Dracula" (1897). [see Nov 24]
(WUD, 1994 p.432)(HN, 11/8/00)
1847 Nov 21, Steamer "Phoenix"
was lost on Lake Michigan. 200 people were killed.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1847 Nov 22, In New York, the
Astor Place Opera House, the city's first operatic theater, was
opened.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1847 Nov 24, Bram Stoker, Irish
theater manager and author (Dracula), was born. [see Nov 8]
(MC, 11/24/01)
1847 Nov 25, Friederich von
Flotow's opera "Martha" was produced in Vienna.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1847 Nov 26, Alfred de Musset's
"Un Caprice," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1847 Nov 28, In Bologna the
church San Francisco dei Minori Conventuali opened with the premier
of Rossini's "Tantum Ergo."
(MC, 11/28/01)
1847 Nov 29, A small group of
Cayuse Indians assaulted the Whitman Mission, Walla Walla,
Washington, at the time sheltering 74 people, most of them
emigrants. The attackers killed 13 people, including Marcus and
Narcissa Whitman. It temporarily ended Protestant missionary efforts
in the Oregon country. The Whitman Creek massacre set off the Cayuse
War (1848).
(www.legendsofamerica.com/wa-whitmanmassacre.html)
1847 Nov, In Ireland Dennis
Mahon, mayor of Strokestown, was shot dead in an ambush. He had
thrown thousands of poor farmers off the land during the famine and
had paid to have some 1000 small farmers shipped to North America so
he could establish larger farms. He was killed after it was learned
that half of the shipped people died enroute.
(USAT, 1/15/97, p.2D)
1847 Dec 1, Julia Moore, poet,
was born.
(HN, 12/1/00)
1847 Dec 3, Frederick Douglass
and Martin R. Delaney established the North Star, an anti-slavery
paper.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1847 Dec 16, Mary Catherwood
(d.1901), American novelist, was born in Luray, Ohio. "Next to the
slanderer, we detest the bearer of the slander to our ears."
(http://ntweb1.cpl.org/ocb/index.php?q=node/11&id=149)(AP,
6/9/97)
1847 Dec 30, John Peter
Altgeld, US Gov-Ill, was born in Germany. He pardoned some of the
Haymarket anarchists.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1847 Nemesia Valle (d.1916) was
born in Italy. She became a nun of the Congregation of the Sisters
of Charity of Saint Giovanna Antida Thouret and was beatified in
2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
1847 Felix-Joseph Barrias
created his painting "Gallic Soldier and his Daughter Imprisoned in
Rome."
(WSJ, 9/9/03, p.D6)
1847 Thomas Cole created his
painting "Prometheus Unbound."
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.A1)
1847 George Bush, a professor
of Hebrew at New York Univ., authored “The Valley of Vision,” in
which he called on the US government to militarily wrench Palestine
from the Turks and return it to the Jews.
(WSJ, 6/2/07, p.P8)
1847 In the US the cookbook
"The Carolina Housewife" by Sarah Rutledge was published.
(SFC, 8/14/96, zz-1 p.1)
1847 "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte
Bronte was published.
(SFEC, 12/8/96, p.C21)
1847 Anthony Trollope
(1815-1882), British writer, published his first novel.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W10)
1847 The Mormon Tabernacle
Choir was founded in Utah. In 2003 the 360-member group received a
National Medal for the Humanities.
(SFC, 11/14/03, p.I10)
1847 Fratelli d’Italia, a song
written to commemorate the bloody unification of Italy. It was
chosen as the Italian National Anthem in 1946.
(WSJ, 11/1/94, p. B1)
1847 The Verdi opera
"Jerusalem" premiered at the Paris Opera.
(WSJ, 1/27/98, p.A20)
1847 Swedish-born Jenny Lind
(1820-1887), the greatest operatic and concert soprano of her age,
was already the toast of Europe when she was approached by American
showman P.T. Barnum in 1847. Even before hearing her voice, Barnum
signed the "Swedish Nightingale" for 150 American concerts at the
enormous sum of $150,000. With the help of Barnum's matchless
marketing, Jenny Lind mania swept America, with crowds of the rich
and famous and ordinary music lovers alike falling at her feet.
(HN, 5/9/99)
1847 Miners of Don Miguel
Peralta discovered gold about this time in the Superstition
Mountains of Arizona. His family abandoned the claim after their
mining party was massacred by Apache Indians.
(AHHT, 10/02, p.16)(AH, 10/02,
p.16)(www.ghostradiox.com/qfg/legend_peralta.asp)
1847 Jasper O’Farrell,
surveyor-general of Northern California, laid out the streets of San
Francisco. He designated the sand dune called O’Farrel’s Mountain as
a public square (later Union Square).
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.W4)(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.F2)
1847 Richard Mitchell
(1811-1899) and Frederick Rammelsberg (1814-1863) founded Mitchell
& Rammelsberg to manufacture furniture in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(SFC, 12/19/07,
p.G5)(http://witherells.com/inventory/popup/hatrack1.htm)
1847 In New Hampshire the North
Conway railroad depot was established.
(SFEC,11/16/97, p.T7)
1847 The American Medical
Association was started.
(SFC, 4/26/97, p.E4)
1847 Sweet chocolate made its
debut.
(NH, 6/03, p.74)
1847 Dr. Thomas Savage,
American doctor and missionary, brought back to the US partial
skeletons of gorillas, and gave them the scientific name Troglodytes
gorilla.
(ON, 11/04, p.11)
1847 The non-Indian population
of California grew to some 15,000.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1847 In Palo Alto (tall tree) a
tamped-earth adobe home was built on the 4,400 acre Rancho Purisima
Concepcion of the Briones family. In 1954 California declared the
site a historic landmark. In 1987 Palo Alto declared the home on Old
Adobe Road a historic landmark. In 2011 the California Supreme Court
cleared the way for demolition of the home.
(SFC, 3/22/99, p.A18)(SFC, 2/25/11, p.C3)
1847 The population of Chicago
numbered about 20,000 people.
(Econ, 3/18/06, Survey p.4)
1847 Hungarian doctor Ignac
(Ignaz) Semmelweis (1818-1865) told his fellow doctors to start
washing their hands.
(SFEC, 12/8/96, Z 1 p.2)(Econ, 3/13/10,
p.57)
1847 In Belgium Europe's oldest
shopping center, the St. Hubertus Royal Galleries, opened in
Brussels.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, p.T14)
1847 John Edwards began
operating a pottery in Longton and later Fenton, Staffordshire,
England. Operations continued to 1900.
(SFC, 12/5/07, p.G2)
1847 Britain passed a Vagrancy
Act to combat begging as famine swept Ireland.
(AP, 11/25/08)
1847 Marx and Engels founded
the Communist League in Brussels. An archive of international
worker’s organizations from this year on is located at the
link.
(HNQ,
1/26/00)(http://marxists.architexturez.net/history/index.htm)
1847 In France Cartier jewelers
opened in Paris.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1847 In Ireland the potato
harvest was only 10% of normal and some 3 million people (40% of the
populace) lined up for free food and soup.
(USAT, 1/15/97, p.2D)
1847 In Ireland a new British
Poor Law dumped the cost of relief on the already strapped Irish
landlords.
(WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A1)
1847 Mauritius, a British ruled
island nation, issued the two-pence “Post Office” Blue Mauritius
postage stamp along with a similar one penny orange stamp. They
became very rare and in 1904 Britain’s King George V acquired a Blue
Mauritius for £1,450. In 2008 Helen Morgan authored “Blue
Mauritius: The Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Stamps.”
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W9)
1847 The Dutchy of Parma was
governed until this year by Marie-Louise of Hapsburg.
(SFEC, 9/15/96, p.T6)
1847 A religious quarrel led to
a short Swiss civil war.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.6)
1847-1852 Durfee’s Knickerbocker root beer was
bottled in Rochester, New York, during this period. Durfee used a
12-sided bottle in Ohio and New York. In 2008 the bottles were
valued at about $125.
(SFC, 3/26/08, p.G3)
1847-1901 The Caste War of Yucatan extended over
this period. it began with the revolt of the native Maya people
against the population of European descent (called Yucatecos) in
political and economic control.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_War_of_Yucat%C3%A1n)
1847-1911 In Portugal Queen Maria Pia lived.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1847-1919 Ralph Blakelock, artist. He suffered a
breakdown and created a set of miniatures in watercolors on
cardboard and paper while hospitalized in Middletown, N.Y.
(WSJ, 3/19/97, p.A16)
1847-1931 Thomas Edison, American inventor, was
born in Milan, Ohio. He obtained 1,100 [actually 1,093] patents in
such fields as telegraphy, phonography, electric lighting, and
photography. The Edison National Historic Site is located in west
Orange, N.J.
(AHD, 1971, p.414)(WSJ, 10/25/95, p.A-1)(WSJ,
1/17/97, p.A1)
1847-1935 Max Lieberman, a Berlin artist, was
influenced but not smothered by the Impressionists.
(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A16)
1848 Jan 9, A people's uprising
took place in Palermo, Sicily.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1848 Jan 24, Gold was
discovered by carpenter James Wilson Marshall at his partner Johann
August Sutter's sawmill on the South Fork of the American River,
near Coloma, California. John [James Wilson] Marshall, while
inspecting the construction of a mill on the American River, being
built for Capt. John Sutter, spotted a gold nugget. Marshall, Sutter
and their workers tried to keep the discovery quiet but gold-seekers
quickly began pouring into California, raising the state's
non-Indian population to about 20,000 in 1848, 100,000 in 1849 and
twice that amount by 1852.
(HFA,'96,p.22)(SFC, 5/19/96,City Guide,
p.16)(SFEC, 11/3/96, DB p.71)(SFC, 1/25/97, p.A17)(SFEC, 7/6/97,
p.T3)(SFEC, 1/4/98, Z1p.4)(HN, 1/24/99)(HNPD, 1/24/99)
1848 Jan 26, Henry David
Thoreau (1817-1862) of Massachusetts presented an essay at the
Concord Lyceum that explained his motives for refusing to pay taxes.
In 1849 it was published as “Resistance to Civil Government.”
(ON, 10/09, p.12)
1848 Jan, John Sutter got a
"lease" for the land around the gold site from the Culumah Indians
in exchange for "some shirts, hats, handkerchiefs, flour and other
articles of no great value." He then tried to get the lease recorded
with General Mason, the American military governor of California at
Monterey. His messenger, Charles Bennett, stopped in Benicia on the
way and displayed the gold after scoffing at talk of coal
discoveries in Contra Costa County. No title was available because a
treaty with Mexico was not yet signed.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.1)
1848 Feb 2, US and Mexico
signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico ceded one-third of
its territory to the US including California, agreed to the Rio
Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico and was awarded $15
million. 25,000 Mexicans and 12,000 Americans lost their lives in
the 17-month old conflict.
(HFA, ‘96, p.48)(SFC, 6/13/96, p.A17)(HN, 2/2/99)
1848 Feb 2, The 1st ship load
of Chinese arrived in SF.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1848 Feb 5, Belle Starr,
Western outlaw, was born.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1848 Feb 14, James Polk became
the first U.S. President to be photographed in office by Matthew
Brady.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1848 Feb 15, Sarah Roberts was
barred from a white school in Boston.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1848 Feb 18, Louis Comfort
Tiffany (d.1933), American painter, stained-glass artist, and glass
manufacturer, was born. He was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany
(1812-1902), founder of the Tiffany & Co. jewelry business
(1837).
(HFA, ‘96, p.22)(AHD, p.1344)(HN, 2/18/98)(WSJ,
8/4/98, p.A13)
1848 Feb 23, John Quincy Adams,
the sixth president of the United States (1825-1829), died of a
stroke at age 80. Samuel Flagg Bemis wrote a biography. In
1997 Paul C. Nagel published a biography.
(AP, 2/23/98)(WSJ, 10/22/97, p.A20)(MC, 2/23/02)
1848 Feb 24, King
Louis-Philippe abdicated and the 2nd French republic was declared.
[see Feb 26]
(MC, 2/24/02)
1848 Feb 26, Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels published "The Communist Manifesto".
(HN, 2/26/98)
1848 Feb 26, The Second French
Republic was proclaimed.
(AP, 2/26/98)
1848 Feb 27, Charles Hubert H.
Parry, musicologist, composer (Jerusalem), was born in England.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1848 Mar 1, Augustus
Saint-Gaudens, US sculptor and designer of the 1907 $20 gold piece,
was born.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1848 Mar 4, Sardinia-Piemonte
got a new Constitution.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1848 Mar 9, Martin Pierre
Joseph Marsick, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1848 Mar 10, The US Senate
ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war with
Mexico.
(AP, 3/10/98)(HN, 3/10/98)
1848 Mar 15, In Hungary an
uprising against Habsburg rule began in front of the national museum
in Budapest.
(Reuters, 3/15/07)
1848 Mar 19, Wyatt Earp (Wyatt
Berry Stapp Earp), later U.S. Marshal, was born the son of a Sheriff
in Monmouth, Illinois. He fought at the Gunfight at the OK Corral
and Paula Mitchell Marks later wrote "And Die in the West," an
account of the incident.
(HN, 3/19/98)(SFEC, 4/12/98, BR p.7)(CHA, 1/2001)
1848 Mar 20, King Ludwig I of
Bavaria abdicated to marry dancer Lola Montez.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1848 Mar 23, Hungary proclaimed
its independence of Austria.
(HN, 3/23/99)
1848 Mar 29, Aleksei
Kuropatkin, Russian general, minister of War, was born (March 17 in
the old style calendar).
(www.russojapanesewar.com/kuro.html)
1848 Mar 29-1848 Mar 31,
Niagara Falls slowed to a trickle for about 30 hours due to an ice
jam from Lake Erie in the Niagara River.
(ON, 12/05, p.10)(SSFC, 3/29/09, p.C10)
1848 Mar 29, John Jacob Astor
(b.1763), America’s richest man, died. The fur and real estate
magnate had a value in 1999 dollars totaled $78 billion. In 2001
Axel Madsen authored "John Jacob Astor: America’s First
Multimillionaire.
(HN, 7/17/98)(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)(SFEC, 5/23/99,
Par p.7)(WSJ, 3/2/00, p.W10)(MC, 3/29/02)
1848 Mar, Italian nationalists
celebrated as Austrian forces fled Milan.
(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.A9)
1848 Apr 1, The SF-based
California Star reported the discovery of a rich silver vein in San
Jose valley. The discovery of rich beds of copper were also reported
near Clear Lake.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.E4)
1848 Apr 6, Jews of Prussia
were granted equality.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1848 Apr 8, Domenico Gaetano
Maria Donizetti (50), Italian composer, died.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1848 Apr 22, The SF-based
California Star reported the discovery of a rich gold mine towards
the head of the American Fork in the Sacramento Valley.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.E4)
1848 Apr 25, A. Graham
discovered asteroid #9: Metis.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1848 Apr 27, Slave trade was
abolished in the French colonies.
(AFP, 3/24/10)
1848 Apr 28, The last slaves in
French colonies were freed.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1848 Apr, The ships Erebus and
Terror of the Franklin Expedition to the Arctic were abandoned. [see
Franklin expedition 1850]
(HNQ, 6/11/98)
1848 May 5, Adalbert von
Goldschmidt, composer, was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1848 May 12, Sam Brannon, an
elder of the Mormon Church in SF, announced the discovery of gold on
the American River. He had just opened a store near the goldfields
stocked with shovels and mining tools. He and members of the Mormon
battalion were the first to profit in San Francisco from the Gold
Rush.
(SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)(SFEC, 1/4/98, Z1p.4)(SFEC,
6/21/98, Z1 p.4)
1848 Mar 19, Wyatt Berry Stapp
Earp was born in Monmouth, IL.
(MesWP)
1848 May 19, Texas was awarded
to the U.S.A. by Mexico thus ending the war.
(DTnet, 5/19/97)
1848 May 20, The California
Star reported that a fleet of launches had left the SF bound up the
Sacramento River due to “Gold Fever.”
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.E4)
1848 May 23, Helmuth J.L. von
Moltke, German general, chief of staff (WW I), was born.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1848 May 27, The SF-based
California Star complained that everybody in the state was under the
spell of gold fever.
(SFC, 12/10/04, p.E4)
1848 May 29, The Californian
newspaper complained that everybody in the state was under the spell
of gold fever and announced suspension of publication because the
staff was heading out to participate. The Californian and the
California Star were based in SF.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, DB p.40)(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1
p.1)(PI, 8/8/98, p.5)
1848 May 29, Wisconsin became
the 30th state of the union.
(AP, 5/29/97)(HN, 5/29/98)
1848 May 29, Battle at
Curtazone: Austrians beat Sardinia-Piemonte.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1848 May 30, William Young
patented the ice cream freezer.
(HN, 5/30/98)
1848 May 30, Mexico ratified
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo giving US: New Mexico, California
and parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona & Colorado in return for $15
million.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1848 May, A Frenchman found
gold in a ravine north of Coloma, Ca., and in a week the town of
Rich Dry Diggings was founded. It later was renamed Auburn.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.4)
1848 May, The Associated Press
was formed in NYC.
(www.historybuff.com/library/refap.html)
1848 Jun 5, Army officer John
C. Fremont submitted his "Geographical Memoir" to the US Senate
where the SF Bay entrance was called Chrysopylae (Golden Gate). He
had in mind the Chrysoceras (Golden Horn) of Constantinople, and
suggested that the SF Bay would be advantageous for commerce.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A20)
1848 Jun 7, Paul Gauguin,
French post-impressionist painter, was born in Paris. He abandoned
his family to focus on his work.
(AP, 6/7/97)(HN, 6/7/99)
1848 Jun 10, The 1st telegraph
link between NYC & Chicago was established.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1848 Jun 17, Austrian General
Alfred Windischgratz crushed a Czech uprising in Prague.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1848 Jun 14, The California
Star newspaper in SF locked its doors due to the gold strike and
lack of working men.
(PI, 8/8/98, p.5)(SFC, 12/17/04, p.E6)
1848 Jun 23, A bloody
insurrection of workers in Paris erupted to protest inflation,
unemployment and corruption. The insurrection was ruthlessly
suppressed by Gen. Cavaignac.
(HN, 6/23/98)(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)(WSJ, 3/13/09,
p.A9)
1848 Jun 24, Brooks Adams,
American historian and son of Charles Francis Adams, was born. He
wrote "The Law of Civilization and Decay."
(HN, 6/24/99)
1848 Jul 1, Ranald MacDonald
(1824-1894), a Chinook-Scottish sailor, separated from an American
whaling ship and arrived at Rishiri Island off Hokkaido, Japan. He
was imprisoned for virtually his whole 10-month stay. In 2003
Frederik L. Schodt authored "Native American in the Land of the
Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening of Japan."
(SSFC, 7/12/03, p.M3)(Econ, 12/22/07, p.63)
1848 Jul 3, Gen. Peter Von
Scholten, faced with the likely destruction of towns and plantations
by a slave revolt, declared the slaves of the Danish West Indies
(later US Virgin Islands) to be freed.
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.A3)
1848 Jul 4, The Communist
Manifesto was published. Marx and Engels predicted that capitalism
would lead to revolution where the workers would take over the means
of production and develop an ideal classless society. "Workers of
the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains."
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1848 Jul 4, The Cornerstone of
the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. was laid by President
Polk. Each state of the union was invited to donate a memorial
stone. The white marble obelisk, which is 555 feet tall and 55 fee
square at the base, was not completed until 1884. The public was
admitted to the monument on October 9, 1888. Architect Robert Mills
(1781-1855) designed the monument.
(ON, 3/00, p.9)(WSJ, 2/16/08, p.W18)
1848 Jul 4,
Vicomte Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (b.1768), French writer and
statesman, 79, died in Paris.
(WUD, 1994, p.250)
1848 Jul 18, W.G. Grace
(d.1915), British cricket player, was born in Bristol. He has been
widely acknowledged as the greatest cricket player of all time.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._G._Grace)
1848 Jul 19, The first women’s
rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, New York. Organized by
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the two-day convention
discussed such topics as voting, property rights and divorce. It
launched the women’s suffrage movement. The convention issued a
"Declaration of Sentiments" based on the Declaration of
Independence. "The ideal newspaper woman has the keen zest for life
of a child, the cool courage of a man and the subtlety of a woman."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton made her first public speech at the Woman's
Rights Convention. After Cady Stanton was denied participation in an
anti-slavery convention and was told that women were
"constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings," she and
four other women, including abolitionist Lucretia Coffin Mott,
planned a convention to challenge that notion. They drafted a
"Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions," 11 resolutions calling
for equal rights for women, including the right to vote. After
lengthy debate, the document was amended and signed by 68 women and
32 men of the approximately 300 attendees, setting the American
women's rights movement in motion. Susan B. Anthony joined the
movement in 1852.
(HNPD, 7/19/98)(SFEC, 7/20/97, Par p.8)(SFEM,
6/28/98, p.30)(SFC, 7/6/98, p.D8)
1848 Jul 25, Arthur James
Balfour (d.1930), the First Earl of Balfour and prime Minister of
Great Britain (1902-1905), was born: "A religion that is small
enough for our understanding would not be large enough for our
needs."
(AP, 11/14/97)(HN, 7/25/98)
1848 Jul 26, Charles Ellet Jr.,
engineer, completed a light suspension bridge over the Niagara
River. A boy’s kite was used to transfer the 1st line across.
(ON, 7/02, p.8)
1848 Jul 26, The French army
suppressed the Paris uprising.
(HN, 7/26/98)
1848 Jul 29, An Irish rebellion
against British rule was put down in a cabbage patch in Tipperary,
Ireland. Irish Nationalists under William Smith O'Brien were
overcome and arrested.
(HN, 7/29/98)(MC, 7/29/02)
1848 Jul, By this time 4,000
people were out hunting gold in California.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.4)
1848 Aug 9, The Barnburners
(anti-slavery) party merged with the Free Soil Party and nominated
Martin Van Buren for president at its convention in Buffalo, N.Y.
The Hunkers and the Barnburners were two factions within the
Democratic Party of New York split over the slavery issue in 1848.
They injected the issue into the Democratic National Convention held
in Baltimore in 1848 when they both sent delegations. The
Barnburners (who were also known as the "Softs" while the Hunkers
were called the "Hards") were firm supporters of the Wilmot Proviso
of 1846 that sought to restrict the spread of slavery to newly
acquired territory.
(AP, 8/9/97)(HNQ, 11/28/98)(MC, 8/9/02)
1848 Aug 12, George Stephenson,
locomotive engineer, died.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1848 Aug 14, The Oregon
Territory was established.
(AP, 8/14/97)
1848 Aug 15, M. Waldo Hanchett
patented a dental chair.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1848 Aug 19, The New York
Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.
(AP, 8/19/97)
1848 Aug, Henry Walter Bates,
British naturalist, traveled the rain forest of the Amazon estuary.
(NH, 6/97, p.30)
1848 Aug, Julia Dent married
Ulysses S. Grant: "Never shall I forget... that hot August night."
(SFEM, 1/25/98, p.29)
1848 Sep 11, Henri-Philippe
Gerard, composer, died at 87.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1848 Sep 13, Dr. John Martyn
Harlow treated Phinneas Gage in Vermont for a head injury from a
tamping iron that had pierced the man’s skull during a blasting
accident. Gage survived until 1860, but with definite personality
changes that Dr. Harlow tracked.
(ON, 10/02, p.9)(Econ, 12/23/06, Survey p.3)
1848 Sep 19, Hyperion, a moon
of Saturn, was discovered by Bond (US) & Lassell (England).
(MC, 9/19/01)
1848 Sep 20, The American
Association for the Advancement of Science was founded to replace
the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. The
Association of American Geologists had been founded in 1840 and in
1842 it became the Association of American Geologists and
Naturalists.
(Econ, 1/9/10,
p.57)(www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/history/1848aaas.html)
1848 Sep 24, Branwell Bronte,
brother of the Bronte sisters and the model for Hindley Earnshaw in
Emily's novel "Wuthering Heights," died of tuberculosis.
(www.bronte.info/brontes/Patrick_Branwell_Bronte.asp)
1848 Oct 16, The 1st US
homeopathic medical college opened in Pennsylvania.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1848 Oct 19, John "The
Pathfinder" Fremont moved out from near Westport, Missouri, on his
fourth Western expedition with 33 volunteers. The goal was to find a
railroad route across the Rocky Mountains. His failed attempt to
open a trail across the Rocky Mountains along the 38th parallel
ended with some of his men cannibalizing their comrades.
(HN, 10/19/98)(SFEC, 2/13/00, BR p.6)(ON, 12/06,
p.5)
1848 Nov 7, General Zachary
Taylor was elected president of US. Millard Fillmore was
vice-president. With the exception of South Carolina, who left the
selection of electors to its legislature, the election of 1848
marked the first time in which every state in the union voted for
President and Vice President on the same day: Taylor won election
over Cass, capturing 163 of the 290 electoral votes cast. Zachary
Taylor, a Southerner, a slaveholder and the hero of the Mexican War,
had been nominated by the Party as a candidate for president of the
US. He was an inoffensive candidate in the anxious years leading up
to the Civil War because he had never taken a position on a
political issue or even cast a vote in his life. During his 16
months as president, Congress addressed the explosive issue of
slavery’s expansion to the west with the Compromise of 1850, but
Taylor himself never had the opportunity to act on this issue.
(http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/U.S._presidential_election,_1848)(HNPD,
7/11/98)
1848 Nov 9, The first U.S. Post
Office in California opened in San Francisco at Clay and Pike
streets. At that time there were only about 15,000 European settlers
living in the state.
(HN, 11/9/98)
1848 Nov 21, The John C.
Fremont expedition, in search of a railraod route across the Rocky
Mountains, reached Pueblo, Colorado. There Fremont hired Bill
Williams (61), a mountaineer with 40 years experience.
(ON, 12/06, p.5)
1848 Nov 21, Alfred de Musset's
"Andre del Sarto," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1848 Nov 23, The Female Medical
Educational Society was established in Boston, Mass., the same year
the all-male American Medical Association formed.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1848 Nov 23, Alfred Julius
Becher (45), composer, died.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1848 Nov 24, Lilli Lehmann,
opera singer, was born.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1848 Nov, Emperor Ferdinand
abdicated in favor of Franz Joseph.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_of_Austria)
1848 Dec 5, President Polk
triggered the Gold Rush of '49 by confirming that gold had been
discovered in California. Paula Mitchell Marks later wrote "Precious
Dust," an account of the gold rush. In 2002 H.W. Brands authored
"The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American
Dream."
(AP, 12/5/97)(SFEC, 4/12/98, BR p.7)(SSFC,
8/18/02, p.M1)
1848 Dec 9, Joel Chandler
Harris, writer, was born. He created the Uncle Remus tales.
(HN, 12/9/00)
1848 Dec 10, Napoleon III,
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte), was elected
president of France. In 1852 he dismantled the Republic and replaced
it with the Second Empire of France, with himself as emperor.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.446)(WUD, 1994, p.950)
1848 Dec 21, William Craft and
his wife Ellen, slaves to separate masters, escaped under disguise
from Macon, Georgia, and made there way to Philadelphia. In 1860
Craft authored “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.”
(ON, 10/04, p.10)
1848 Dec 26, The 1st
California-bound gold seekers arrived in Panama enroute to SF.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1848 Dec 28, A 4-man emergency
relief party from the Fremont expedition reached the valley of the
Rio Grande. On Jan 17 three remaining men met with 4 horsemen
including John Fremont, who had found help from Ute Indians.
(ON, 12/06, p.7)
1848 Dec 29, Gas lights were
1st installed at White House during Polk's administration.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1848 Hugh Bolton Jones (d1927),
American artist, was born.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.E8)
c1848 Ellen Terry (d.1928), one
of the great English actresses of the 19th century, was born. Her
parents, Ben and Sarah Terry, lived on the edge of poverty, earning
meager wages as strolling theatrical players who traveled from town
to town. Ellen was their second child; six more children survived.
All the Terry children expected to follow their parents on to the
stage and by the age of nine, Ellen appeared on the London stage as
Mamillius, the son of King Leontes in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s
Tale.
(WUD, 1994 p.1466)(HNQ, 8/31/01)
1848 Alexandre Cabanel painted
his erotic portrait “Albayde.”
(SFC, 1/22/05, p.E1)
1848 Delacroix painted “Women
of Algiers in Their Apartment.”
(SFC, 1/22/05, p.E1)
1848 Charles B. Gillespie
(~1821-1907) traveled to California from Pennsylvania during the
gold rush and made a number of sketches, including depictions of
Sutter’s Mill, some of which he turned into paintings upon returning
to Freeport in 1851. In 2008 119 pen-and-ink sketches and 5 oil
paintings were put up for auction.
(SSFC, 11/23/08, p.B9)
1848 Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
at age 16 failed the French naval exam and after 3 months at sea
became convinced that he would rather be a painter.
(WSJ, 12/3/03, p.D12)
1848 The Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood was founded. A group of artists led by William Holman
Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, fought
against corrupt academic art based on the work of the Renaissance.
(WSJ, 2/19/97, p.A15)(Econ, 9/20/03, p.82)
1848 Edward Hicks (b.1780)
painted "An Indian Summer View of the Farm & Stock of James C.
Cornell."
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A28)
1848 Anne Bronte wrote her
novel "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."
(WSJ, 10/16/97, p.A20)
1848 Titian Ramsey Peale
published "Mammalia and Ornithology." It was based on his
collections and observations from a South Seas expedition. It was
suppressed by Charles Wilkes, leader of the expedition, due to
adverse criticism by government authorities.
(NH, 5/96, p.75)
1848 Elizabeth Ellet authored
her 2-volume work: "Women of the American Revolution."
(ON, 11/01, p.9)
1848 Turgenev authored his
comedy "A Poor Gentleman." A 2002 Broadway production of the play
was called "Fortune’s Fool."
(WSJ, 4/3/02, p.A20)
1848 "The Brilliant Future of
Cuzco" was published.
(NH, 11/96, p.94)
1848 Fort Kearny was built in
Nebraska. It was named after Stephen Watts Kearny, a US Army hero of
the Mexican War.
(SFC, 8/11/98, p.A7)
1848 In Savannah, Ga., the
Andrew Low House was built on Abercorn St. of stuccoed brick,
elaborate iron-caste railings and shuttered piazzas.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T5)
1848 Spiritualism dates from
the strange rappings that the Fox sisters heard in Hydesville, N.Y.
(WSJ, 10/29/96, p.A21)
1848 John Humphrey Noyes
(b.1811) founded the Oneida Community in upstate New York. The
Perfectionists were organized around communal property and a complex
marriage that wed all members to each other. In 1993 Spencer Klaw
(d.2004) authored “Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida
Community.”
(MC, 9/3/01)(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.A6)(SFC, 6/21/04,
p.B5)
1848 The Associated Press (AP)
was founded.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.B5)
1848 Henry Chandler Bowen, New
York silk merchant, founded the New York Independent, a
Congregationalist journal that became one of the most influential
anti-slavery newspapers in the country.
(HT, 4/97, p.38)
1848 George Caleb Bingham
(1811-1879), artist, won a seat as a Missouri legislator and served
a single term.
(WSJ, 11/3/07,
p.W16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Caleb_Bingham)
1848 The Lazard brothers,
Alexandre Lazard, Simon Lazard, and Elie Lazard, moved to the United
States from Lorraine, France, and formed Lazard Freres & Co. as
a dry goods business in New Orleans, Louisiana, with a combined
contribution of $ 9,000. They moved to SF a year later with their
cousin, Alexander Weill.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazard)(SFC,
12/11/96, p.D1)(WSJ, 6/7/99, p.C1)
1848 In Brooklyn NY Antoine
Zegera set up the 1st macaroni factory in the US.
(SFC, 7/31/99, p.C3)
1848 The W.C. Davis Co. was
founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, to manufacture cast-iron stoves and
cookware. In 1880 the factory was enlarged and the name was changed
to Favorite Stove Works. A new owner, William King Boal, moved the
firm to Piqua in 1889. In 1934 the company went out of business and
sold the Favorite cookware line to Chicago Hardware Foundry Co.
(SFC, 1/10/07, p.G3)
1848 Andrew Carnegie came to
America from Scotland as a teenager. He worked in a variety of jobs
that paid modestly, but prepared him well for future ventures. A few
years after being hired by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1852, he
began to invest in railroads, receiving huge dividends. When a new
steel-making process made cheap steel possible, Carnegie built his
own plant.
(HNPD, 8/11/98)
1848 John Curtis produced the
first commercial chewing gum in his home kitchen in Maine. In 1850
he established the world’s first chewing gum factory in Portland.
(Econ, 10/29/11, p.100)
1848 Up to this time golfers
used balls that were leather lumps packed with feathers. In this
year the solid center ball molded from white gum of the Malayan
gutta-percha tree was introduced.
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.E4)
1848 In Florida a female slave
was executed for killing her owner.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.A6)
1848 The Chicago Board of Trade
(CBOT) began trading grain futures. [see Jun 10,1848]
(Econ, 9/20/03, p.68)
1848 A canal was completed that
linked the Chicago River to the Illinois River.
(Econ, 3/18/06, Survey p.4)
1848 Pacific Mail Steamship Co.
was incorporated. It carried people, goods and mail from San
Francisco to Asia and South America. It was taken over by the US
government in 1932 so as to continue doing government work. The
government renamed it American President Lines and held it until
1952.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R46)(SFC, 4/8/03, p.B5)
1848 Henry P. Angel set up shop
on the banks of the what is today Angel’s Creek, Ca. This site was
the focus for the growth of Angels Camp.
(SFC, 4/28/96, p.T-11)
1848 Pierson B. Reading
discovered gold in northern California’s Trinity River.
(SSFC, 8/1/04, p.D5)
1848 The San Francisco City
Council passed a resolution regarding gambling and heavy fines were
assessed on parties arrested for gambling. The resolution was soon
repealed.
(GTP, 1973, p.53)
1848 William Alexander
Leidesdorff, ship captain, merchant and the first treasurer of SF,
died. He was half Dutch and half black and was buried inside
Mission Dolores. He started the City Hotel, the 1st hotel in SF at
Kearny and Clay.
(SFC, 5/19/98, p.B8)(SFC, 1/31/02, p.D1)(SFL)
1848 Of the 165,000 people in
California, only 15,000 were of European descent, and half of these
were Mexican citizens who called themselves Californios.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.1)
1848 The population of San
Francisco numbered about 850.
(SFC, 10/11/10, p.A9)
1848 One third of the 10,000
Americans in Oregon left by the fall to find gold in California.
This included Peter Burnett who became the first governor of Ca.
(1849-1851).
(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.4)
1848 Joseph Hall founded Hall’s
Safe & Lock Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.G7)
1848 The Memnon locomotive was
built with a long horizontal boiler resting on 4 pairs of wheels. It
was built to haul coal and was one of the first locomotives to use
coal.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.T6)
1848 A new rail line linked
Greenwich, Connecticut, to Manhattan.
(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.A6)
1848 The Smithsonian’s Board of
Regents granted director Joseph Henry a budget of $1000 to establish
“a system of extended meteorological observations for solving the
problem of American storms.”
(ON, 2/06, p.6)
1848 H.E. Strickland was the
senior author of the classic monograph on the dodo bird.
(NH, 11/96, p.26)
1848 Samuel Gregory, a pioneer
in medical education for women, founded the Boston Female Medical
School. The school opened with an enrolment of 12 students. The
establishment merged 26 years later with the Boston University
School of Medicine, to form one of the first coed medical schools in
the world.
(HNQ, 12/27/02)
1848 The Girard College (a
secondary school) was opened with funds from philanthropist Stephen
Girard. In 1984 girls were admitted. Since its founding more than
20,000 indigent boys and hundreds of girls have passed through.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.6)
1848 It was discovered that
palm oil, a native of West Africa, grew well in the Far East. By
2010 Indonesia and Malaysia produced 90% of the world’s palm oil.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.71)
1848 Dolly Madison, wife of
former Pres. James Madison, died.
(ON, 9/02, p.4)
1848 The Austro-Italian
insurance company Assicurazioni Generali Austro-Italiche began
placing a picture of the winged lion of St. Mark on policies.
(www.generali.ro/eng_despre_noi/istorie.htm)
1848 Britain introduced khaki
uniforms for British colonial troops in India.
(WSJ, 5/28/02, p.B1)
1848 England passed a Public
Health Act to improve the lot of the working classes.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.59)
1848 A new cholera epidemic
struck in London.
(ON, 5/05, p.8)
1848 France abolished slavery.
Victor Schoelcher was a major force in the abolition of slavery in
France.
(WSJ, 2/26/02, p.A22)
1848 In Germany a major revolt
occurred. The revolution prompted Marx to write the "Communist
Manifesto."
(V.D.-H.K.p.257,260)
1848 The painter-poet Josef
Victor von Scheffel published cynical poems with titles as
'Biedermann's Evening socializing' and 'Bummelmaier's Complaint' in
the Viennese satirical magazine 'Fliegende Blätter' (Flying
Leaves). These names were combined into the pseudonym 'Gottlieb
Biedermaier' by Ludwig Eichrodt, who together with Adolf Kussmaul
published poems by the schoolmaster Samuel Friedrich Sauter under
this name. The spelling finally changed into 'Biedermeier' in 1869
when Eichrodt published 'Biedermeier's Liederlust'.
(www.rupertcavendish.co.uk/Biedermeier/WhatisBiedermeier/whatisbiedermeier.htm)
1848 In Ireland a group of
writers, poets and orators, collectively known as Young Ireland,
attempted to spark the Irish people into rebelling against Britain.
They included Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825-1868), who had returned to
Ireland from the US to support the cause. A warrant for his arrest
forced him to return to the US.
(WSJ, 5/15/08,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_D'Arcy_McGee)
1848 Mexico was forced to sell
most of the territory that is now Arizona to the United States
following its defeat in the Mexican-American war.
(AP, 5/20/10)
1848 A railroad line was built
along the coast of Barcelona, Spain that separates the city from its
waterfront. It is finally relocated underground.
(Hem., Oct. ‘95, p.17)
1848 A Swiss constitution was
enacted that included a mandate for neutrality. It copied almost
wholesale the American constitution. It was revised in 1874. A new
one was adopted in 1999.
(SFC, 7/6/99, p.C6)(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A15)(Econ,
2/14/04, Survey p.7)(Econ, 4/23/11, SR p.6)
1848-1849 In 2009 Mike Rapport authored “1848 Year
of Revolution.”
(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.A9)
1848-1854 The non-Indian population of California
exploded from an estimated 13,000 to 300,000.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.6)
1848-1870 The native American population in
California dropped from 175,000 to fewer than 30,000, mostly due to
diseases that they had no immunity to.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.6)
1848-1887 Richard Jefferies, English author: "The
very idea that there is another idea is something gained."
(AP, 9/21/98)
1848-1892 William Michael Harnett, American
painter. He painted "After the Hunt."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.647)
1848-1894 Gustave Caillebotte, French
impressionist painter, he was a Jewish lawyer turned painter with a
crisp, almost photographic style. He is best know for "Paris Street:
Rainy Day" done in 1877.
(WSJ, 2/23/95, p.A-10)
1848-1903 Paul Gauguin, French painter. He painted
"Still Life."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.587)
1848-1924 Kate Claxton, American actress. She was
famous for her portrayal of Louise, a blind girl, in the 1874 play:
"The Two Orphans."
(SFC, 4/21/99, Z1 p.6)
1848-1933 Richard R. Bowker, American publisher:
"It's all right to have a train of thoughts, if you have a
terminal."
(AP, 11/12/98)
1849 Jan 23, English-born
Elizabeth Blackwell, the 1st woman to receive medical degree,
graduated at the top of her class from the medical school of Hobart
College in Geneva, N.Y.
(http://campus.hws.edu/his/blackwell/biography.html)(ON, 4/03, p.2)
1849 Jan, In Placerville, Ca.,
a mob ran down 3 men who reportedly tried to rob a local gambler.
The men were flogged and hanged on Main St. Later the Placerville
tavern, The Hangman’s Tree, was built over the site of the hanging
tree.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A20)
1849 Feb 13, Lord Randolph
Churchill, was born. He was an English politician, Winston
Churchill's father and member of Parliament.
(HN, 2/13/99)
1849 Jan, A relief party from
Taos, New Mexico, rescued the remaining members of the John C.
Fremont expedition in the Colorado Mountains. Ten men died from cold
and starvation before the rescue.
(ON, 12/06, p.7)
1849 Feb 21, In the Second Sikh
War, Sir Hugh Gough’s well placed guns won a victory over a Sikh
force twice the size of his at Gujerat on the Chenab River, assuring
British control of the Punjab for years to come.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1849 Feb 28, The steamer
California, sounding the first steamship whistle on the SF Bay,
arrived in SF with San Francisco postmaster John W. Geary on board
carrying mail for the Pacific coast. Steamboat service began from
Panama City to SF. Pacific Mail Steamship Co. sent the side-wheel
steamship California to SF with American gold-seekers and 50
Peruvian miners. Also onboard were preacher Osgood C. Wheeler (32)
and his wife Elizabeth.
(www.maritimeheritage.org/PassLists/ca022849.htm)(SSFC, 3/1/09, DB
p.50)(AP, 2/28/98)(SFEC, 1/11/98, DB p.40)
1849 Feb, Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881), Scottish essayist, anonymously authored the article:
"Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question," in which he 1st used
the phrase "the dismal science" to describe political economics: It
is “not a gay science… no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite
abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence,
the dismal science." Carlyle himself argued in this essay for the
reintroduction of slavery into the West Indies. In 2001 David M.
Levy authored "How the Dismal Science Got Its Name."
(WSJ, 12/10/01,
p.A15)(http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/carlodnq.htm)
1849 Mar 3, The US Home
Department, forerunner of the Interior Department, was established.
(AP, 3/3/98)
1849 Mar 3, US Congress created
the Minnesota Territory.
(AP, 3/3/99)
1849 Mar 3, The US Gold Coinage
Act authorized the $20 Double Eagle gold coin.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1849 Mar 4, The US had no
President. Pres. James K. Polk officially stepped down as the 11th
US president and President Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn-in on
a Sunday. US Sen. Some say David Rice Atchison (1807-1886) of
Missouri then technically held office as president until Zachary
Taylor took his oath the next day. However Atchison’s term as
president pro tempore of the Senate had also expired, and his new
term did not begin until March 5.
(AH, 2/03, p.18)
1849 Mar 5, Zachary Taylor took
the oath of office at his presidential inauguration.
(AP, 3/5/99)
1849 Mar 7, Luther Burbank
(d.1926) American Horticulturist was born in Lancaster, Mass. "For
those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their
prejudices once in a while."
(AP, 3/7/98)(AP, 4/26/98)
1849 Mar 7, The Austrian
Reichstag was dissolved.
(HN, 3/7/99)
1849 Mar 19, Alfred von
Tirpitz, Prussian admiral, was born. He commanded the German fleet
in early World War I.
(HN, 3/19/99)
1849 Mar 23, Battle of Novara
(King Charles Albert of Sardinia vs. Italian republic). Austria’s
Gen. Radetzky (83) crushed the Piedmontese forces. Charles Albert
abdicated and was succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel II, who
reigned until 1861.
(PCh, 1992, p.449)(SS, 3/23/02)
1849 Mar 27, Joseph Couch
patented a steam-powered percussion rock drill.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1849 Apr 6, Giacomo Meyerbeer's
opera "Le Prophete," premiered in Paris. [see Apr 16]
(MC, 4/6/02)
1849 Apr 10, Walter Hunt, a
mechanic, patented the safety pin in NYC. He sold rights for $100.
Hunt’s other inventions included a new stove, paper collar,
ice-breaking boat, fountain pen and nail-making machine.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.3)(SFC, 4/1/00, p.B4)(MC,
4/10/02)
1849 Apr 16, Giacomo
Meyerbeer's Opera "Le Prophete," premiered in Paris. [see Apr 6]
(MC, 4/16/02)
1849 Apr 21, Oskar Hertwig,
embryologist, discovered fertilization, was born.
(HN, 4/21/98)
1849 Apr 27, Italian
revolutionary Garibaldi took control of the defenses of Rome. He and
his family had returned to Italy from Uruguay in 1848 to fight on
behalf of the newly declared Republic of Rome, which had taken
control of Rome and expelled Pope Pius IX, who opposed the goals of
Italian nationalism.
(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1849 Apr 30, Giuseppe
Garibaldi, Italian republican patriot and guerrilla leader, repulsed
a French attack on Rome.
(HN, 4/30/98)(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1849 May 3, Jacob Riis
(d.1914), American reporter and reformer (How the Other Half Lives),
was born in Denmark.
(HN,
5/3/01)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAriis.htm)
1849 May 6, Wyatt Eaton,
artist, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1849 May 10, A mob destroyed
Astor Place opera house in NYC and 22 people were killed. Edward
Z.C. Judson (Ned Buntline) was convicted of leading the riot and was
sentenced to a year in prison. In 2007 Nigel Cliff authored “The
Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century
America.”
(PCh, 1992, p.450)(WSJ, 4/28/07, p.P8)
1849 May 15, Neapolitan troops
entered Palermo, and were in possession of all of Sicily.
(HN, 5/15/98)
1849 May 17, A fire in St.
Louis, Mo., destroyed more than 400 buildings and two dozen
steamships.
(AP, 5/17/99)
1849 May 25, Andreas Michiels
(52), Dutch Military Governor of West Sumatra, died in battle.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1849 May 28, Anne Bronte,
novelist, died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1849 May 29, A patent for
lifting vessels was granted to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln said: "You
can fool some of the people all of the time, & some of the
people some of time, but you can't fool all of the people all of
time"
(HN, 5/29/98)(SC, 5/29/02)
1849 Jun 12, The gas mask was
patented by L. P. Haslett.
(HN, 6/12/98)
1849 Jun 15, James Polk, the
11th president of the United States, died of cholera in Nashville,
Tenn. Following a visit to New Orleans. In 2008 Walter R. Borneman
authored “Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America.”
(AP, 6/15/97)(WSJ, 5/16/08, p.W8)(Econ, 7/30/11,
p.55)
1849 Jun 17, Russian troops
invaded Hungary.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.448)
1749 Jun 25, Massachusetts
residents were asked to fast due to a severe drought.
(SFC, 6/25/09, p.D8)
1849 Jul 5, The sailing ship
Niantic arrived in SF, Ca, and anchored in Yerba Buena Cove. The
ship’s owners soon converted her to a storage and auction house for
imported goods and built a hotel on her deck.
(SFC, 5/9/03, p.E5)(SFC, 2/4/05, p.E16)
1849 Jul 12, William Osler
(d.1919), physician, author (circulatory system), was born in
Canada. "The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of
the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of
tomorrow."
(AP, 10/15/98)(MC, 7/12/02)
1849 Jul 19, F.A. Alphonse
Aulard, French historian, was born.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1849 Jul 22, Emma Lazarus,
American poet, was born of Sephardic Jewish parents in NYC. Her
poem, "The New Colossus," is inscribed on the base of the Statue of
Liberty.
(HN, 7/22/98)(SFEC, 4/30/00, BR p.2)
1849 Jul 23, German rebels in
Baden capitulated to the Prussians.
(HN, 7/23/98)
1849 Jul 28, Memmon became the
1st clipper to reach SF after 120 days out of NY.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1849 Jul 31, Benjamin Chambers
patented a breech loading cannon.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1849 Jul 31, Garibaldi asked
San Marino for asylum from Austrian forces. San Marino brokered for
Garibaldi’s surrender to Austrian forces. Garibaldi and his wife
escaped, and made their way to Ravenna. Anita Garibaldi died
enroute. Garibaldi managed to reach safety in the Kingdom of
Sardinia.
(ON, 10/06, p.7)
1849 Aug 11, Lajos Kossuth,
president of Hungary, abdicated in favor of Gen. Gorgey as Russia
intervened in the Hungarian revolution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajos_Kossuth)
1849 Aug 13, Hungary’s Gen.
Gorgey surrendered to the Russian forces. Russia gave Hungary back
to Austria.
(PC, 1992 ed,
p.448)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajos_Kossuth)
1849 Aug 18, Benjamin Louis
Paul Godard, composer, was born in Paris.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1849 Aug 28, Venice, under
Daniele Manin, surrendered to Austrians under Count Radetsky,
following a siege since July 20 after proclaiming independence.
(HTNet, 8/28/99)(MC, 8/28/01)
1849 Sep 1, Elizabeth Harrison,
US educator (Natal Congress of Parents and Teachers), was born.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1849 Sep 1, California
Constitutional Convention was held in Monterey.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1849 Sep 3, Sarah Orne Jewett,
author of "Tales of New England," was born.
(HN, 9/3/98)
1849 Sep 10, US actor Edwin
Booth (b.1833), brother of Lincoln Assassinator John Wilkes Booth,
made his 1st performance in Richard III.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1849 Sep 14(OS), Ivan Pavlov
(d.1936), Russian physiologist who studied dogs' responses to food
suggestions, was born. He won a Nobel Prize in 1904.
(HN, 9/14/98)(www.crystalinks.com/pavlov1.html)
1849 Sep 17-18, Lt. J.H.
Simpson and R.H. Kern, Philadelphia artist, visited El Morro in New
Mexico during an exploration trip of new US territory. They copied
many of the inscription there.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.F9)
1849 Sep 19, The 1st commercial
laundry was established, in Oakland, California.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1849 Sep 23, Mikhail
Mikhaylovich Ivanov, composer, was born.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1849 Sep 25, Johann Baptist
Strauss, elder, composer (Radetzky March), died at 45.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1849 Oct 7, James Whitcomb
Riley, poet, was born.
(HN, 10/7/00)
1849 Oct 7, Author Edgar Allan
Poe died in Baltimore, Md., at age 40. Never able to overcome his
drinking habits, he was found in a delirious condition outside a
saloon that was used as a voting place. The artist James Carling
later illustrated his poem "The Raven." In 1996 a case was made in
the Sept. issue of the Maryland Med. Journal that his symptoms
indicated that he died of encephalitic rabies. In 1999 John
Evangelist Walsh published "Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of
Edgar Allan Poe."
(FB, 9/12/96, p.A7)(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.T5)(AP,
10/7/97)(HN, 10/7/98)(SFEC, 1/31/99, Par p.15)
1849 Oct 13, The California
state constitution, which prohibited slavery, was signed in
Monterey.
(HN, 10/13/98)
1849 Oct 16, George Washington
Williams, historian, clergyman and politician, was born.
(HN, 10/16/00)
1849 Oct 17, Frederic Chopin
(b.1810), Polish-born composer and pianist, died in Paris of
tuberculosis at the age of 39. The 1945 film "A Song to Remember"
was about Chopin." In 2010 Adam Zamoyski authored “Chopin: Prince of
the Romantics.”
(HN, 10/17/00)(SFC, 11/25/02, p.A15)(Econ,
2/6/10, p.91)
1849 Nov 8, Edward Julius
Biedermann, composer, was born.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1849 Nov 13, Voters approved
the California state constitution 12,061 to 811. The original
Constitution was drafted and signed on 19 hand-written pages of an
animal-skin document. At the constitutional convention 48 delegates
met in San Jose. This was criticized by the state’s first daily
newspaper, the Alta California, as a location among the coyotes. The
"Legislature of a thousand drinks" established a code of laws and a
judicial system, elected 2 senators and voted to relocate to
Vallejo. The constitution abolished slavery but barred blacks from
voting, holding public office and testifying in court against
whites. John Bidwell was elected to the state Senate.
(WSJ, 6/11/97, p.CA1)(SFEC, 1/11/98, DB
p.41)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W26)(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)(SFC, 10/14/99,
p.A27)(SFC, 4/21/07, p.B5)
1849 Nov 23, Harvard chemistry
Prof. John Webster murdered Dr. George Parkman. In 1991 Simon Schama
authored “Dead Certainties,” which chronicled the murder and trial,
in which Webster was convicted and sentenced to hanging. Dental
identification played a key role in the trial.
(WSJ, 11/10/07,
p.W8)(http://jimfisher.edinboro.edu/forensics/webster1.html)
1849 Nov 24, Frances Hodgson
Burnett, author, was born. Her work includes "Little Lord
Fauntleroy" and "The Secret Garden."
(HN, 11/24/00)
1849 Nov 29, Ambrose Fleming,
inventor of the diode, was born.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1849 Dec 3, California asked to
be admitted into the Union as a free state.
(SFC, 2/21/97, p.A25)
1849 Dec 3, Jesuit Fr. John
Nobili and Fr. Michael Accolti (1807-1878) arrived in San Francisco.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1849 Dec 6, Harriet Tubman
escaped from slavery in Maryland.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1849 Dec 8, Giuseppe Verdi's
opera "Luisa Miller," premiered in Naples.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1849 Dec 12, Marc Brunel
(b.1769), the initiating engineer of England’s Thames Tunnel, died.
(ON, 4/06,
p.9)(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)
1849 Dec 15, California's first
legislature convened in San Jose.
(SFC, 9/2/99, p.A12)(SFC, 1/16/04, p.A23)
1849 Dec 19, Henry Clay Frick
(d.1919), coal and steel magnate, was born in West Overton, Penn.
(www.netstate.com/states/peop/people/pa_hcf.htm)
1849 Dec 20, Peter Burnett
(1807-1895), the 1st governor of California, gave his inaugural
address. Burnett was elected governor of California before it had
even become a state. He abruptly resigned from office in 1851.
Burnett, who wrote a book about his passionate conversion to
Catholicism, is honored with a memorial in the church at Mission
Santa Clara. While in office Burnett, a native of Tennessee,
proposed that blacks, whether slave or free, be banned from the
state by statute. He also saw the necessity for exterminating the
state’s Indians if California were to grow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hardeman_Burnett)(SFC, 4/14/98,
p.E5)(SFC, 5/19/11, p.C1)
1849 Dec 28, M. Jolly-Bellin
discovered dry-cleaning. He accidentally upset a lamp containing
turpentine and oil on his filthy clothing and saw a cleaning effect.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1849 Dec 29, Gas light was
installed in the White House.
(HN, 12/29/98)
1849 Johan August Strindberg
(d.1912), novelist, dramatist, essayist and photographer, was born.
In 1985 Michael Meyer authored a Strindberg biography.
(WUD, 1994 p.1407)(SFC, 8/10/00, p.D2)(WSJ,
12/11/01, p.A17)
1849 Gustave Boulanger
(1824-1888), French artist, painted “Ulysses Recognized by
Eeurycleia.”
(WSJ, 12/28/05, p.D8)
1849 Asher B. Durand of the
Hudson River School created his painting “Kindred Spirits.” In 2005
Alice B. Walton, Wal-Mart heiress, purchased it from the NY Public
Library for $35 million.
(WSJ, 12/26/06, p.D8)
1849 Louisa May Alcott at the
age of 18 wrote her first novel "The Inheritance."
(SFC, 4/30/96, p. B-3)
1849 In Canada Josiah Henson
(b.1789), former Maryland slave, authored his autobiography. It
became the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.”
(SSFC, 12/18/05, p.A31)
1849 Alphonse Karr authored the
novel “Les Guepes.” It included the classic line: “The more things
change, the more they stay the same.”
(SSFC, 2/20/05, p.C1)
1849 John Snow (1813-1858),
English obstetrician, authored his 39-page pamphlet “On the Mode of
Communication of Cholera.” He presented evidence that the disease
was spread through contaminated water.
(ON, 5/05,
p.8)(www.johnsnowsociety.org/johnsnow/facts.html)
1849 Henry David Thoreau
published “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” It described
a camping trip made with his brother in 1839.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Week_on_the_Concord_and_Merrimack_Rivers)
1849 "El Dorado," 24 panels
depicting the native vegetation and architecture of Africa, Asia,
Europe and America, was printed.
(WSJ, 8/28/01, p.A12)
1849 In New Orleans the
Baroness Micaela Pontalba began the construction of the Pontalba
apartment buildings.
(Hem., 1/97, p.64)
1849 By this time Maunsel
White, a New Orleans plantation owner, was growing peppers that had
originated in Mexico’s state of Tabasco. He devised a sauce using
the pepper.
(WSJ, 10/9/07, p.D11)
1849 The High Bridge was built
as an aqueduct to carry water to Manhattan.
(USAT, 1/16/04, p.10A)
1849 In Nevada the first white
settlement was by Mormons at Genoa near Carson City, then called
Mormon Station.
(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.1B)
1849 Elizabeth Farnham, a
matron of New York’s Sing Sing prison, formed the California
Association of American Women to bring young women west to civilize
the frontier. The plan failed but Farnham did emigrate to the Santa
Cruz area and later oversaw the Stockton Insane Asylum. In 2004
JoAnn Levy authored “Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and
Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.M4)
1849 A US Swamp Land Act
authorized Louisiana to create a system of levee districts. The sale
of donated federal land financed levee construction and land
reclamation.
(NH, 2/05, p.45)
1849 Peter Lassen pioneered a
new route to California that bypassed the 40 Mile Desert in Nevada.
The trail led from Nevada to Oregon and was combined with another
trail that led past his ranch and trading post near Chico. The trail
however led across more desert and came to be called "The Death
Route."
(SFC, 8/22/98, p.A13)(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A1,9)
1849 In Missouri Henry Shaw, a
British immigrant, established the St. Louis Botanical Garden.
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.M5)
1849 Fort Worth, Texas, was
founded in honor of Major Gen’l. William Jenkins Worth, who never
saw the place. It sat on the bluffs overlooking the Trinity River.
(HT, 4/97, p.45)
1849 In an address before the
American Peace Society in 1849 Charles Sumner urged for the creation
of a "Congress of Nations."
(HNQ, 11/17/98)
1849 The original California
Constitution was drafted and signed on 19 hand-written pages of an
animal-skin document.
(WSJ, 6/11/97, p.CA1)
1849 The first church at the
site of St. Francis of Assisi in North Beach, SF, was built by
Catholics who disliked the 3.5 mile walk to Mission Dolores.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, z1 p.6)(SFL)
1849 The Jewish Congregation
Sherith Israel was founded in SF.
(SFC, 3/12/05, p.E1)
1849 By this time the San
Francisco Board of Supervisors (ayuntamiento) had grown to 16
members from 8 districts.
(SSFC, 2/28/10, p.E2)
1849 The Tadich Grill opened in
SF. It began as the new World Coffee Stand on the edge of what is
now Commercial St.
(Hem., 5/97, p.24)(SFC, 10/8/97, Z1 p.7)
1849 The James Clair Flood, a
former saloon keeper from NY arrived in SF and made a fortune in
the 1859 Nevada Comstock silver mine.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, p.B12)(SFC, 7/4/03, p.E1)
1849 Lazard Freres with a
brother and cousin moved their New Orleans dry goods company to San
Francisco. They opened a Paris office in 1852, a London office in
1877 and operations in New York in 1880.
(SFC, 12/11/96, p.D1)(WSJ, 6/7/99, p.C1)
1849 Englishman George Gordon
arrived in SF. He pursued ventures as a lumber dealer, builder of
wharves, head of an iron foundry and a sugar refinery.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.WBb3)
1849 Joshua Norton, a financier
from the Cape of Good Hope, arrived in San Francisco with $40,000
from trade deals in Africa and South America. Within five years he
amassed $250,000 and invested it all in rice with the hope of
cornering the market. His scheme failed when three ships arrived
from the Orient loaded with rice.
(HFA, '96, p.64)
1849 Oscar Backus (19) arrived
in SF aboard the steamer California, believed to be the first steam
powered ship to pass through the Golden Gate. He brought 750 copies
of a New York newspaper that he’d bought for $5 and sold them for $1
apiece. He then began a successful career in mining and plumbing.
(SFC, 7/3/97, p.A24)
1849 The first stage coach line
from SF to San Jose was begun by John Whistman. The 9-hour trip in
an old French omnibus driven by Henry Ward cost $32 each way.
(Ind, 10/31/98, p.5A)
1849 A Peruvian consulate was
established in SF with Carlos Varea as the first consul.
(Ind, 8/3/99, p.3A)
1849 A Market Street doctor
funded the 1st "city physician" practice with gambling winnings.
This was later considered as the beginning of SF General Hospital.
In 2000 F. William Blaisdell and Moses Grossman published
"Catastrophes, Epidemics, and Neglected Diseases" San Francisco
General Hospital and the Evolution of Public Health.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.6)(SFL)
1849 August Helbing, a SF
Jewish pioneer, rescued an ailing Jewish man who had just arrive by
boat. Helbing went on to help others and created the Eureka
Benevolent Society (1850), which later transformed to the Jewish
Family and Children’s Services organization.
(SFC, 12/30/00, p.A15)(SFL)
1849 Some 23,000 people arrive
in SF by land and 62,000 by sea as the population grew to some
30,000. First Street was at the edge of the Bay and the area was
called Happy Valley.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, Z1 p.6)(SSFC, 4/24/11, DB p.46)
1849 Josiah Gregg and a band of
gold miners explored the north coast of California and settled
around Humboldt Bay.
(Hem., 12/96, p.127)
1849 The Dunham, Carrigan and
Hayden company supplied picks and shovels to the miners of the Gold
Rush.
(SFC, 9/30/97, p.A21)
1849 A mass meeting of miners
working the California Yuba River passed a resolution stating that
"no slave or negro should own claims or even work in the
mines."
(SFEC, 1/11/98, DB p.40)
1849 James Strang settled with
250 followers on Big Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan.
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.86)
1849 A party from Kansas,
headed for the California Gold Rush, called themselves the
Jayhawkers. Another party from Missouri named themselves the
Bugsmashers. Both groups left Salt Lake to late to cross the Sierra
and took the southern route. The stumbled into the Death Valley
region around Christmas. Historian Leroy Johnson later wrote of
their experiences in "Escape From Death Valley."
(SFC, 1/28/99, p.A15)
1849 William Slusher, a farmer
from the East Coast, built a cabin on Nuts Creek (later Walnut
Creek, Ca.) and became the first American settler in the area.
(SFC, 7/17/06, p.B5)
c1849 Numerous Tennesseans went
to California for the gold rush. In 1998 Tennessee historian Walter
T. Durham wrote "Volunteer Forty-Niners," an account of the
Tennesseans experiences in California.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.E5)
1849 A party of 10 African
Americans, an American Indian, a Cook Island native and a Scotsman
named William Downie struck gold in the California Sierra.
(SSFC, 4/29/01, p.T9)
1849 Downieville in Sierra
County was renamed from The Forks, after the 2 rivers that converge
there. Early settlers called the area "Tin Cup Diggings" from
legends that a man could capture a tin cup full of gold from the
Yuba River. Many of the first minors arrived with "Major" William
Downie. Within a few years it became the 5th largest town in
California.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, p.T5)(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T6)(SSFC,
9/1/02, p.C1)
1849 Miners from Sonora,
Mexico, found gold at Woods Hole Creek, Ca. The mining camp of
Sonora was soon assembled and grew into the town of Sonora.
(SSFC, 9/19/10, p.M6)
1849 Prospectors William Manly
and John Rogers stumbled into Death Valley seeking a shortcut to the
gold fields.
(SFC, 4/9/96, C1)
1849 Some 23,000 people arrive
in SF by land and 62,000 by sea.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, Z1 p.6)
1849 The Pfizer drug company
was founded by Charles Pfizer and cousin Charles Erhart in Brooklyn.
(SFEC, 8/27/00, p.B4)
1849 Paul Julius von Reuter
(1816-1899) invested in carrier pigeons to close the gap in the
telegraph system between Brussels and Aachen.
(Econ, 11/1/03, p.81)
1849 A Frenchman built a
successful concrete rowboat.
(Ind, 11/25/00, 5A)
1849 Victor Hugo addressed an
appeal for European unity to Germany, France and Russia.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.50)
1849 Edward Hicks (b.1780),
American Quaker painter, died.
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A28)
1849 Katsushika Hokusai
(b.1760), Japanese printmaker, died.
(SFC, 9/24/98, p.E3)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)(HN,
10/21/00)
1849 Water-borne cholera killed
some 14,000 people in London.
(Hem., 12/96, p.127)
1849 In Vienna, Austria,
balloonists dropped bombs to break up a revolt.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, Z1 p.8)
1849 Britain annexed the
Punjab, the vast territories of what later became known as eastern
Pakistan and northern western India. This put them on the edge of
the tribal territories, mostly claimed by Afghanistan, and forced
them to launch military campaigns almost every year for the next
half century to keep the tribes at bay.
(Econ, 1/2/10, p.18)
1849 The church at Arorangi,
Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands was built. It has the graveyard of
Papeiha, the Christianized Tahitian missionary who first preached
the Gospel to the islanders.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T7)
1849 In Egypt the reign of
Ottoman viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha ended.
(PCh, 1992, p.373)
1849 Joseph Naudet, director
France’s L’Enfer library, which started in the 1830s, described the
library as a hiding place to lock up books that were very bad. The
collection hid books and other documents from the public that were
deemed dangerous for public morality.
(SFC, 12/7/07, p.E9)
1849 French brothers Adolphe
and Edouard-Jean Cointreau created a brand of liqueur called
Cointreau and soon founded their own distillery in Angers. The
liqueur was a secret blend of orange peels and pure sugar-beet
alcohol.
(SFC, 11/1/06, p.G2)
1849 French officer
Claude-Etienne Minie invented a bullet that changed the face of
warfare. The Minie ball was shot from a grooved bore, i.e. a rifle,
and expanded when shot to clean out the grooves of the bore. The
bullet was adopted by most of the European armies—as well as both
sides during the American Civil War. Minié went on to serve
as a military instructor and also a manager for the Remington Arms
Company in the U.S.
(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.W10)(HNQ, 12/23/00)
1849 Auguste Comte of France
proposed to discontinue the calendar of months in favor of a seven
day calendar.
(K.I.-365D, p.110)
1849 Hungary proclaimed
independence from the Great Church in Debrecen, temporarily ending
150 years of Hapsburg rule.
(Hem., 6/98, p.125)
1849 The Anglican Church of
Christ was built in Jerusalem by the British.
(SFEC, 5/21/00, p.T7)
1849-1850 Zacharay Taylor was the12th President of
the US but died of a stroke after 16 months in office. He was
considered the 5th worst president by a rating cited in the
Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to the Presidency.
(A&IP, ESM, p.71,96b, photo)(SFC, 9/26/96,
p.E10)
1849-1853 Fort Worth, Texas, served as an Army
post.
(SFC,11/8/97, p.E4)
1849-1869 In 1997 Ida Rae Egli edited the book:
"No Room of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California."
(SFEC,11/9/97, BR p.9)
1849-1875 Some 100,000 Chinese coolies arrived as
laborers in Peru during this period.
(Econ, 8/15/09, p.21)
1849-1878 Buenaventura Baez served five terms as
president of the Dominican Republic. He sought to have his country
annexed by the United States twice, in 1850 and 1868. In 1878 he was
forced out of office and into permanent exile in Puerto Rico. Baez
helped lead the revolt that established the republic's independence
from Haiti in 1843. Baez is remembered as a thoroughly corrupt
tyrant, having no regard for his people or their property.
(HNQ, 2/1/99)
1849-1891 George Washington Williams was born. He
was the son of a Pennsylvania laborer, and worked as a preacher,
lawyer and Civil War soldier, but is best known for his work on
African-American history. At age 14, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in
time to fight in the Civil War. In 1868, he left he army and trained
at the Newton Theological Institution, becoming an ordained minister
in 1874. While a pastor at several different churches, he became
interested in history. In 1882, after a brief stint in the Ohio
state legislature (1879-1881), he published his History of the Negro
Race in America from 1619 to 1880. His following work, A History of
the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion (1888) was the result
of years of research collecting oral histories from black troops as
well as gathering numerous newspaper clippings of the events. During
the 1880s, Washington’s interests turned more towards his books,
lecturing on related topics and practicing law. He died in 1891 in
England while publicizing human rights abuses in the Belgian Congo.
(HNQ, 2/9/01)
1849-1909 Sarah Orne Jewett, American author:
"Tact is, after all, a kind of mind-reading." "A lean sorrow is
hardest to bear."
(AP, 5/22/98)(AP, 1/18/99)
1849-1917 William Meritt Chase, American painter.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.24)
1849-1922 Frederick Langbridge, English clergyman
and author: "Some seek bread; and some seek wealth and ease; and
some seek fame, but all are seeking rest."
(AP, 6/7/00)
1849-1999 In 1999 Niall Ferguson published his 2nd
volume on "The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker 1849-1999."
(WSJ, 11/9/99, p.A24)
Go to 1850-1854