Timeline 1855-1859
Return to home
1855 Jan 5, King
Camp Gillette, inventor (safety razor), was born.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1855 Jan 9, The clipper ship
Guiding Star disappeared in Atlantic and 480 died.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1855 Jan 21, John M. Browning, US
weapons manufacturer, was born.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1855 Jan 25, Dorothy Wordsworth
(b.1771), English prose writer and the sister of poet William
Wordsworth (1770-1850), died. In 2009 Frances Wilson authored “The
Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth.”
(WSJ, 2/19/09,
p.A17)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dwordsw.htm)
1855 Feb 5, Viscount Palmerston
(70) became Britain's prime minister and served until his death in 1865.
(PC, 1992, p.273)
1855 Feb 10, US citizenship laws
were amended to include all children of US parents born abroad.
(MC, 2/10/02)
1855 Feb 11, Josephine Marshall
Jewell Dodge, American educator, pioneer in the concept of day
nurseries for children, was born.
(HN, 2/11/01)
1855 Feb 19, Nicholas I Pavlovich
(58), tsar of Russia (1825-55), died. Alexander II became tsar of
Russia.
(www2.sptimes.com/Treasures/TC.2.3.17.html)
1855 Feb 22, In Washington DC the
Know-Nothing Party seized control of the Washington Monument
Association and kept control for 3 years.
(ON, 3/00, p.10)
1855 Feb 24, US Court of Claims
was formed for cases against the government.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1855 Feb, There was a run on the
California bank in Columbia and rumors of a failure caused a run
throughout the state.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T9)
1855 Mar 3, Congress approved
$30,000 to test camels for military use. Sec. of War Jefferson Davis
sent agents to northern Africa to purchase a small herd of camels and
sent them to New Mexico to transport goods to California
(SC, 3/3/02)(SFC, 2/20/04, p.A22)
1855 Mar 3, Registration of
letters was authorized by Congress.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1855 Mar 3, Architect Robert Mills
(b.1781) designer of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., died.
The structure, begun in 1848, was not completed until 1884.
(WSJ, 2/16/08,
p.W18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mills_(architect))
1855 Mar 8, The first train
crossed Niagara Falls on a suspension bridge.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1855 Mar 13, Percival Lowell
(d.1916), astronomer, was born. He predicted the discovery of the
planet Pluto. He also wrote "The Soul of the Far East" and "Occult
Japan." He predicted the existence of a planet beyond Neptune before
Pluto was discovered by Tombaugh in 1930.
(NH, 12/96, p.22)(HN, 3/13/99)
1855 Mar 15, Louisiana established
the 1st health board to regulate quarantine.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1855 Mar 24, Andrew Mellon, U.S.
financier and philanthropist, was born. He developed interests in coal,
railroads, steel and water power. He also donated his entire collection
of paintings to the National Gallery of Art.
(HN, 3/24/00)
1855 Mar 24, Manhattan, Kansas,
was founded as New Boston, Kansas.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1855 Mar 27, Abraham Gesner
patented kerosene.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1855 Mar 30, First election in
Territorial Kansas. Some 5,000 "Border Ruffians" invaded the territory
from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery
legislature.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1855 Mar 31, Charlotte Bronte
(b.1816), English author (Jane Eyre), died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1855 Apr 18, Jean-Baptiste Isabey,
painter, died.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1855 Apr 21, The 1st train crossed
the Mississippi River's 1st bridge.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1855 Apr 26, Composer Gioacchino
Rossini left Italy.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1855 Apr 29, Anatol K. Liadov,
Russian composer (Bewitched Lake) [OS], was born.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1855 May 3, Macon B. Allen became
the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.
(HN, 5/3/99)
1855 May 4, Camille Pleyel (66),
Austrian piano builder, composer, died.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1855 May 5, NYC regained Castle
Clinton. It would be used for immigration.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1855 May 10, Anatoli Liadov,
composer (Enchanted Lake), was born in St Petersburg, Russia.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1855 Jun 1, William Walker
(1824-1860), US adventurer, stormed into Granada, Nicaragua. On July
12, 1857, he declared himself president. Walker reestablished slavery
and planned an 18-mile canal from Lake Nicaragua to the Pacific. (SSFC,
4/10/05, p.F4)(www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/walker.html)
1855 Jun 5, The anti-foreign,
anti-Roman Catholic Know-Nothing Party held its 1st convention.
(MC, 6/5/02)
1855 Jun 13, Verdi's opera "Les
Vepres Sicilenne" was produced (Paris).
(MC, 6/13/02)
1855 Jun 14, Robert Marion
"Fighting Bob" La Follette, reform movement leader, Governor of
Wisconsin, U.S. Senator, Progressive Party presidential candidate, was
born.
(HN, 6/14/98)
1855 Jun 15, Stamp duty on British
newspapers was abolished.
(HT, 6/15/00)
1855 Jun 17, Heavy French-British
shelling of Sebastopol killed over 2000.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1855 Jul 4, One of America's
greatest poets -- Walt Whitman -- published the first edition of his
famous "Leaves of Grass", a collection of 12 poems. Whitman published
the edition himself and had about 1,000 copies printed. He later
recalled about the publication, "I don't think one copy was sold, not a
copy." The book was published in Philadelphia after the Boston district
attorney cited 22 passages as violating a state law against obscenity.
The book revealed the poet’s homosexuality in coded verse.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, BR p.7)(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)(SFC,
3/3/99, Z1 p.9)
1855 Jul 4, The Whaling ship
Candace, built in Boston in 1818, entered SF Bay and never left. In
2005 it was found at a SF construction site at Folsom and Spear streets.
(SFC, 1/28/06, p.A1)
1855 Jul 18, In Philadelphia
William Still, a leader in the Underground Railroad, liberated Jane
Johnson and her 2 sons from Col. John H. Wheeler, the recently
appointed US Minister to Nicaragua. Still was tried and acquitted. "The
Underground Railroad" by William Still was published in 1871.
(ON, 10/01, p.5)
1855 Jul 30, Wilhelm von Siemens,
German industrialist, was born.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1855 Aug 4, John Bartlett, a
Cambridge bookseller, published the 1st edition of "Bartlett’s Familiar
Quotations."
(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W17)(MC, 8/4/02)
1855 Sep 3, General William Harney
defeated Little Thunder’s Brule Sioux at the Battle of Blue Water in
Nebraska.
(HN, 9/3/98)
1855 Sep 6, Ferdinand B. Hummel,
composer, was born.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1855 Sep 10, Sevastopol, under
siege for nearly a year, capitulated to the Allies in the Crimean war.
(HN, 9/10/98)
1855 Sep 27, George F. Bristow's
"Rip Van Winkle," 2nd American opera, opened in NYC.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1855 Oct 9, Isaac Singer patented
sewing machine motor.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1855 Oct 9, Joshua Stoddard of
Worcester, Mass., patented the 1st calliope.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1855 Oct 12, Arthur Nikisch, later
conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, was born in Szent-Miklos, Hungary.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1855 Oct 13, Gottfried Rieger,
composer, died at 91.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1855 Oct 17, The Bessemer steel
making process was patented.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1855 Oct 18, Franz Liszt's
"Prometheus," premiered.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1855 Oct 26, Charles Post, creator
of breakfast cereals (Post Cereals), was born. [see Oct 25, 1854]
(MC, 10/26/01)
1855 Nov 5, Eugene V. Debs,
American socialist leader and first president of the American Railway
Union, was born.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1855 Nov 11, Soren A. Kierkegaard
(b.1813), Danish philosopher and theologian, died. In 2005 Joakim Garff
authored “Søren A. Kierkegaard: A Biography.”
(www.connect.net/ron/kierkegaard.html)(WSJ, 2/3/05,
p.D8)
1855 Nov 21, Franklin Colman, a
pro-slavery Missourian, gunned down Charles Dow, a Free Stater from
Ohio, near Lawrence, Kansas.
(HN, 11/22/02)
1855 Nov 26, Several thousand
people staged a parade and banquet at South Park, SF, to celebrate the
Allied victory over the Russians in the Crimean War, the capture of the
Malakoff fortress in Sevastopol.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.WBb3)
1855 Dec 12, Jean de Charpentier
(b.1786), a German-Swiss geologist, died in Bex, Switzerland.
(ON, 10/08,
p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Charpentier)
1855 Dec 14, Ice hockey was played
by 2 military teams in Canada. [see 1875]
(CFA, ‘96, p.60)(WSJ, 1/11/99,
p.R34)(http://library.thinkquest.org/10480/hockey.html)
1855 Dec 27, Paul Ehrenreich,
German ethnologist and mythologist, was born.
(MC, 12/27/01)
c1855 Alexandre Marie Colin
painted a portrait of Napoleon III.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.D8)
1855 Eugene Delacroix painted "The
Riding Lesson."
(WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)
1855 Camille Pissarro (1830-1903),
French impressionist, moved to France from his native St. Thomas in the
Virgin Islands.
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)(Hem., 1/97, p.124)(WUD, 1994,
p.1097)
1855 James McNeill Whistler,
American painter and etcher, moved to France and England.
(WUD, 1994, p.1628)
1855 P.T. Barnum wrote "The Life
of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself."
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1855 Alexander Herzen, the father
of Russian socialism, published "My Past and Thoughts." In 1998 Aileen
M. Kelly published "Toward Another Shore," a collection of writings on
the Russian Revolutionary tradition.
(WSJ, 8/24/98, p.A10)
1855 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
composed his poem "Hiawatha."
(NH, 5/97, p.34)
1855 A novella by Herman Melville,
"Benito Cereno" looked at the 1839 rebellion of the Amistad slave ship
through the eyes of an American interloper.
(WSJ, 12/5/97, p.A16)
1855 The 800 plus-page "The Annals
of San Francisco" was published.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.W4,5)
1855 The Point Bonita Lighthouse
was built for ships approaching the Golden Gate of San Francisco.
(G, Summer ‘97, p.5)
1855 The Hoyt House, overlooking
the Hudson River in Dutchess County, N.Y., was designed by Calvert
Vaux. It was acquired by the state in 1962 for $300,000. It became an
orphan property of the state and in 1998 was offered to private
benefactors on a 40-year lease.
(SFC, 3/11/98, Z1 p.9)
1855 The Lawler House in Suisun
City, Ca. was built at 718 Main St.
(Hem., Nov.’95, p.91)
1855 The Point Pinos Lighthouse on
the Monterey Peninsula began operation.
(Hem., 1/96, p.26)
1855 Dwight L. Moody, Biblicist
and later founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, embraced
Jesus as his personal savior in a Boston shoe store.
(WSJ, 7/7/99, p.A1)
c1855 Black cast iron furniture
moved indoors.
(SFC, 7/17/96, z-1, p.7)
1855 Marshall Field (21) moved to
Chicago from Pittsfield, Mass. Potter Palmer, owner of a retail and
wholesale operation, later sold his business to Marshall Field and
bookkeeper Levi Z. Leiter. In 1947 John Tebbel authored "The Marshall
Fields: A Study in Wealth." In 2002 Axel Madsen authored "The Marshall
Fields: The Evolution of an American Business Dynasty."
(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.D8)
1855 The first white man, surveyor
Henry Washington, arrived in the area of Twenty-Nine Palms of Southern
California.
(Sp., 5/96, p.123)
1855 John Brown moved to Kansas to
join the escalating fight between pro and anti slavery factions.
(ON, 7/02, p.6)
1855 In Oregon some 400 pioneers
arrived via the Oregon Trail and established the first Christian
communal society west of the Mississippi at Aurora.
(SFEC, 10/18/98, p.T6)
1855 In the summer the first
tourists visited Yosemite Valley.
(SFEC,12/28/97, Z1 p.1)
1855 Millard Fillmore, the 13th
president of the United States, declined to accept an honorary degree
from the University of Oxford, proclaiming, "I had not the advantage of
a classical education, and no man should, in my judgment, accept a
degree he cannot read."
(HNQ, 2/17/99)
1855 The US government signed a
treaty with some American Indians that gave them permanent rights to
their existing lands. The Makah tribe of Washington secured a right to
hunt whales in exchange for ceding title to their land. In 1972 the
Marine Mammals Protection Act prohibited the slaughter of whales
without a permit.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, Par. p.5)(SFC,10/24/97, p.A9)(SSFC,
7/13/08, p.E4)
1855 Nez Perce elders agreed to
sell most of their land to the US government. They retained some 10
thousand square miles as a reservation in the area where Washington,
Oregon and Idaho meet. Gold was soon discovered in the area and in 1863
the US government called for a new deal.
(ON, 3/04, p.1)
1855 In northern California
tensions between the Wintu Indians and miners brewed into the Battle of
Castel Crags. This became one of several triggers for the Modoc War
(1872-1873).
(SSFC, 5/14/06, p.G8)
1855 The US built the Panama
Railroad.
(SSFC, 5/14/06, p.G4)
1855 George Calvert Yount
(1794-1865) founded a town he named Sebastopol in Napa Valley, Ca.
Another town already had that name and in 1867 it was renamed
Yountville.
(http://www.westsong.com/yountville/)(SSFC, 12/5/04,
Par p.8)
1855 A depression slowed progress
in San Francisco when the money supply dwindled after banks had
overextended in loans to unprofitable ventures.
(SFC, 5/19/96,City Guide, p.16)
1855 George Hunzinger (d.1898)
moved to New York from Germany and established himself as a cabinet
maker. He patents included a material made by weaving flat wire covered
with woven textile used for furniture seating. His family continued the
business to 1925.
(SFC, 2/4/98, Z1 p.6)
1855 In Connecticut Thomas Day
purchased the Hartford Courant newspaper. He wrote in one editorial:
"We believe the Caucasian variety of the human species superior to the
Negro variety; and we would breed the best stock." In 2000 the Courant
apologized for running ads for the sale of slaves up to 1823.
(SFC, 7/6/00, p.C2)
1855 Anderson Preserve Co.
incorporated. It sold Boston Market Catsup throughout the US.
(SFC, 8/27/03, p.E4)
1855 Chicago Gas was incorporated.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R-45)
1855 Organic chemist Benjamin
Stillman laid the foundations for the Pennsylvania oil rush by his
discovery that petroleum could be distilled into lubricants and
kerosene for cooking and illumination. Suddenly there was a use for the
crude oil that seeped to the surface, annoying farmers by ruining the
land and polluting the water supply.
(HNPD, 10/4/98)
1855 Conical innersprings came
into use in furniture seats.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1855 Dr. Philip Cammann of NYC
improved the design of the Laennec stethoscope by adding rubber ear
pieces and rubber tubing to conduct the sound. [see 1826]
(ON, 9/00, p.11)
1855 Yellow Fever broke out in
Norfolk, Va., after a steamship carrying mosquitoes in its cisterns
docked from the West Indies.
(SSFC, 5/22/05, Par p.4)
1855 Sotos Ochado proposed an
artificial language in which words for related subjects began with the
same letter, e.g. words beginning with a would refer to inorganic
objects, b the liberal arts etc.
(Wired, 8/96, p.86)
1855 Palaeoscincus, one of the
armored dinosaurs, was discovered by Dr. Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden in
the United States.
(T.E.-J.B. p.24)
1855 Some 240 cases of
archeological material was lost when transport rafts were attacked and
sunk by Arab brigands at Kurnah, where the Tigris and Euphrates join to
form the Shatt-al-Arab.
(RFH-MDHP, p.218)
1855 The English Commons voted for
an inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean campaign.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.67)
1855 In England Edward Agar led
the Great Bullion Robbery of a mail train with a railroad guard as an
accomplice. In 1998 Donald Thomas published "The Victorian Underworld,"
on the emergence of the urban criminal class in Britain.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, BR p.8)
1855 The third pandemic of plague
erupted in China.
(NG, 5/88, p.682)
1855 Napoleon III ordered up a
list of the best wines of Bordeaux and ranked the best according to
quality and price. Those at the top became known as the first growths
and included Châteaux Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Latour, and
Margaux. Mouton Rothschild was elevated in 1973.
(WSJ, 4/23/04, p.A1)(SFC, 10/1/04, p.W6)
1855 Paris held the Exposition
Universelle. A series of photographs of Charles Deburau as the mime
Pierrot won a gold medal.
(Smith., 5/95, p.79-80)
1855 The World Alliance of
the YMCA was established at the first International Conference held in
Paris. Jean Henri Dunant (1828-1910), Swiss Calvinist, founded the
Geneva branch of the YMCA in 1852. In 1855 he took part in the Paris
meeting devoted to the founding of its international
organization.
(http://www.ymca.int/index.php?id=15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dunant)
1855 David Livingstone, English
physician and explorer, first saw the 328-foot waterfall on the Zambezi
River. Livingstone named the falls, which straddled the Zambia and
Zimbabwe border, Victoria Falls. The local name is Musi-oa-Tunya (the
smoke that thunders).
(SSFC, 5/29/05,
p.F2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Falls)
1855-1875 The "raising of Chicago" took place. The
town, built on mud, had begun to sink and forced new foundations and
new drainage lines. The work was hailed as one of the wonders of the
19th century.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, Z1 p.2)
1855-1880 Edward "Ned" Kelly was an outlaw folk hero
who was hung for his crimes. Inspired by tales of the American
ironclad, the Monitor, Kelly wore an 80-pound suit of armor during his
final crimes. In 2000 Peter Carey authored the novel "True History of
the Kelly Gang."
(SFC, 5/3/97, p.E4)(WSJ, 1/05/00, p.W8)(SSFC,
1/14/01, BR p.1)
1855-1905 Fiona MacLeod (William Sharp), Scottish
author and poet: "My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely
hill."
(AP, 9/15/98)
1855-1916 Josiah Royce, American philosopher: "Love
is never merely an amiable tolerance of whatever form human frailty and
folly may take."
(AP, 11/3/99)
1855-1920 Olive Schreiner, South African author and
feminist: "My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining
from hurting others, and comforting those that are sad."
(AP, 7/24/98)
1855-1926 Eugene V. Debs, American socialist leader:
"No man ever made a great speech on a mean subject."
(AP, 3/1/99)
1855-1930 George Edward Woodberry, American poet,
critic and educator: "To feel that one has a place in life solves half
the problem of contentment."
(AP, 8/15/97)
1856 Jan 5, Pierre J. David (67),
[David d'Angers], French sculptor, died.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1856 Jan 8, Dr. John A. Veatch
discovered borax in Tuscan Springs, Calif.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1856 Jan 12, John Singer Sargent
(d.1925), American Gilded Age portrait painter (Wyndham Sisters), was
born.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.E1)(MC, 1/12/02)
1856 Jan 18, Daniel Nathan Hale
Williams, surgeon (1st open heart operation), was born.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1856 Feb 5, John Muir wrote about
sawmills encroaching on Redwood forests and the problem of
"sheep-men’s" fires in this day’s issue of the Sacramento Daily Union.
(SFEM, 5/18/97, p.28)
1856 Feb 14, Frank Harris,
journalist, writer (My Life & Loves), was born in England.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1856 Feb 17, Heinrich Heine
(b.1797), German journalist and poet, died in Paris. His prose work
included a series of travel memoirs that began in 1826 with “The Harz
Journey.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine)
1856 Feb 18, The American
(Know-Nothing) Party abolished secrecy.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1856 Feb 19, Tin-type camera was
patented by Hamilton Smith in Gambier, Ohio.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1856 Feb 25, Charles Lang Freer
(1854-1919), U.S. art collector, was born.
(HN, 2/25/98)(WSJ, 11/6/98, p.W10)
1856 Feb 29, Hostilities in
Russo-Turkish war ceased.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1856 Mar 5, Covent Garden Opera
House was destroyed in a fire.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1856 Mar 25, A.E. Burnside
patented the Burnside carbine.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1856 Mar 30, Russia signed Peace
of Paris ending the Crimean War.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1856 Apr 3, Gunpowder in church
exploded killing 4,000 in Rhodes.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1856 Apr 5, Booker T. Washington,
Black American educator, was born in Franklin County, Va. The former
slave later founded the Tuskegee Institute. Booker Taliaferro
Washington later became the 1st black on US stamp.
(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 4/5/99)(MC, 4/5/02)
1856 Apr 11, Battle of Rivas;
Costa Rica beat William Walker's invading Nicaraguans.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1856 Apr 18, Eureka, Ca., was
founded in Humboldt County.
(SSFC, 4/2/06, p.F10)
1856 Apr 23, Free Stater J.N. Mace
in Westport, Kansas shot pro-slavery sheriff Samuel Jones in the back.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1856 Apr 24, Henri Philippe
Pétain, French Marshall, was born. He was known as the 'hero of
Verdun' but collaborated with the Nazis after the fall of France in
1940 and convicted of treason in 1945. Petain was executed in 1951.
(HN, 4/24/99)(Econ, 5/21/05, p.84)
1856 Apr 26, Some 20 settlers of
Honey Lake Valley, California, met at the cabin of Isaac Roop and
formed "the independent Territory of Nataqua." They named the cabin
Fort Defiance, chose Peter Lassen as their surveyor and selected
Susanville, named after Roop's daughter, as the territorial capital.
(SFC, 2/27/04, p.D4)
1856 Apr 28, Yokut Indians
repelled an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in
California.
(HN, 4/28/00)
1856 Apr 29, A peace treaty
between England and Russia was signed.
(HN, 4/29/98)
1856 May 3, Adolphe Charles Adam
(52), French composer, critic (Giselle), died.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1856 May 6, Robert Peary, arctic
explorer, was born. He reached the North Pole in 1909. [see 1909
&1856-1920, Peary]
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(AHD, p.964)(HN, 5/6/98)
1856 May 6, Sigmund Freud
(d.1939), father of psychology and the Viennese physician who
discovered the unconscious, was born. He treated his hysterical
patients by encouraging them to associate freely. He insisted that
sexual desires and fears lay just beneath the surface of everyone’s
mind. A biography of Freud was later written by Peter Gay.
(V.D.-H.K.p.281-282)(SFEC, 1/11/98, BR p.9)(HN,
5/6/98)
1856 May 6, U.S. Army troops from
Fort Tejon and Fort Miller prepare to ride out to protect Keyesville,
California, from Yokut Indian attack.
(HN, 5/6/00)
1856 May 13, Peter Henry Emerson,
1st to promote photography as an independent art, was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1856 May 14, James P. Casey,
editor of the SF Times, shot James King, proprietor of the rival
Evening Bulletin. King died 6 days later. A “Vigilance Committee” of
2,600 later marched up Sacramento St. and broke into the jail where
Casey was held. He was lynched with his unfortunate cell mate.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.1)
1856 May 15, Lyman Frank Baum
(d.1919) was born in Chittenango, NY. He had been a failed storekeeper,
a reporter and, when his first children's book was published in 1897, a
traveling china salesman. Two years later, Baum teamed with poster
artist William Wallace Denslow to produce “Father Goose, His Book,” the
best-selling children's book of the year. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”
in 1900 was the second collaboration for Baum and Denslow. This color
woodcut, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" is one of 24 full-page
color plates that illustrated the first edition of the beloved
children's classic [see 1891].
(HNPD, 5/14/99)(AP, 5/15/07)
1856 May 19, Senator Charles
Sumner spoke out against slavery.
(HN, 5/19/98)
1856 May 20, Henri E. Cross
(d.1910), French painter, was born. His real surname was Delacroix but
was changed in 1881.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1856 May 20, Massachusetts Senator
Charles Sumner (1811-1874), an outspoken antagonist against slavery,
gave the "Crime Against Kansas" speech. [see May 22] Sumner helped form
the Republican Party.
(HNQ, 7/7/99)
1856 May 20, James King, editor of
the Evening Bulletin, died from wounds suffered on May 14. His death
brought about the rising of vigilantes and the take over of the SF
government.
(PI, 8/8/98,
p.5)(http://elane.stanford.edu/wilson/Text/11b.html)
1856 May 21, Grace Hoadley Dodge,
philanthropist, helped organize the YWCA, was born.
(HN, 5/21/01)
1856 May 21, Lawrence, Kansas, was
captured and sacked by pro-slavery forces.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1856 May 22, Massachusetts Senator
Charles Sumner was assaulted on the Senate floor by South Carolina’s
Preston Brooks. Representative Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from
South Carolina, used a cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, a
Republican abolitionist from Mass. Sumner was beaten unconscious and
was unable to resume duties for 3 years. Brooks resigned from his seat
but was re-elected. Sumner's injuries in the attack compelled his
absence from the Senate until December, 1859.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A6)(HNQ, 7/7/99)
1856 May 24, The Potawatomi
Massacre took place in Kansas. John Brown, American abolitionist and
horse thief, presided over the hacking to death with machetes of five
unarmed pro-slavery Border Ruffians in Potawatomi, Kansas.
(WSJ, 4/10/95, A-16)(WSJ, 3/16/98, p.A20)(MC,
5/24/02)
1856 May 26, George Templeton
Strong, composer, essayist, was born.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1856 Jun 5, U.S. Army troops
in the Four creeks region of California, headed back to quarters,
officially ending the Tule River War. Fighting, however, continued for
a few more years.
(HN, 6/5/00)
1856 Jun 8, The British resettled
194 people from Pitcairn Island onto Norfolk Island.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.66)
1856 Jun 14, Ahmad Raza Khan was
born in Bareilly, Rohilkhand, British India, a city now in Uttar
Pradesh, India. He later founded the Barelvi tradition of Islam.
Deobandis and Barelvis are the two major groups of Muslims in the
Subcontinent apart from the Shia. Barelvi Hanafis deem Deobandis to be
kaafir. Those hostile to the Barelvis deprecated them as the
shrine-worshipping, the grave-worshiping, ignorant Barelvis.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Raza_Khan)(Econ,
5/2/09, p.61)
1856 Jun 16, James Strang, king of
Big Beaver Island, Mich., was ambushed by Thomas Bedford and Alexander
Wentworth. They shot him three times and then pistol-whipped him and
fled to Mackinac on the USS Michigan. Bedford and Wentworth were
brought before a justice of the peace and after a brief hearing were
fined $1.25 for court costs and released as public heroes. Soon after,
75 vigilantes sailed to Beaver Island and cleared out the Strangite
adherents.
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.88)
1856 Jun 17, In Philadelphia, the
Republican Party opened its first national convention. John C. Fremont
(1830-1890), American explorer, was the 1st Republican presidential
candidate. He platform pledged to end polygamy and slavery. He lost to
James Buchanan by about 500,000 votes. Fremont went on to serve as
territorial governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1883. In 2003 Lewis L.
Gould authored "Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans."
(AP, 6/17/97)(HN, 6/17/98)(SFEC, 2/13/00, BR
p.5)(HNQ, 3/11/00)(WSJ, 9/7/01, p.W17)(SSFC, 11/23/03, p.M1)
1856 Jun 19, Elbert Hubbard
(d.1915), US, editor, publisher, author (Message to Garcia), was born.
"The love we give away is the only love we keep." "If you want work
well done, select a busy man -- the other kind has not time." "To
escape criticism -- do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
(AP, 7/22/97)(AP, 9/29/97)(AP, 12/12/98)(MC, 6/19/02)
1856 Jul 9, Nikola Tesla,
electrical engineer, inventor (Tesla Coil), was born in Croatia.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1856 Jul 12, William Walker, an
American, declared himself president of Nicaragua. His execution a few
years later in Honduras was rumored to have been staged.
(SFC, 7/7/96, BR
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(soldier))
1856 Jul 26, George Bernard Shaw
(d.1950), Irish-born, English dramatist, critic and social reformer
(Pygmalion-Nobel 1925), was born in Dublin. "The worst sin toward our
fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them;
that's the essence of inhumanity."
(V.D.-H.K.p.237)(HN, 7/26/98)(AP, 3/15/00)
1856 Jul 29, Robert Schumann (46),
German composer, died. He had starved himself to death in a madhouse.
The 1947 film "Song of Love" was based on the Robert and Clara Schuman.
In 2000 J.D. Landis authored "Longing" a novel based on the love affair
between Robert Schuman and Clara Wieck.
(BLW, 1963 ed. p.49)(WSJ, 9/22/00, p.W12)
1856 Aug 11, A band of rampaging
settlers in California killed four Yokut Indians. The settlers had
heard unproven rumors of Yokut atrocities.
(HN, 8/11/99)
1856 Aug 12, Anthony Fass patented
an accordion.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1856 Aug 18, In SF thousands of
armed men paraded through the streets and then formally dissolved the
second Committee of Vigilance. They had run SF for nearly 4 months much
to the distress of Mayor James Van Ness and militia officer William T.
Sherman.
(SFC, 8/18/06, p.B1)
1856 Aug 19, Gail Borden
(1801-1874) received a patent for condensed milk and opened a small
factory for its production in Walcottville, Conn. At this time milk in
NYC sold for 6-7 cents a quart.
(ON, 5/04, p.5)(AP, 8/19/06)
1856 Aug, Henry Bessemer, English
mechanical engineer, presented a paper titled “The Manufacture of Iron
Without Fuel.” In 1860 he established the Bessemer Steel Works in
Sheffield. His Bessemer conversion process revolutionized the steel
industry.
(ON, 9/06, p.6)
1856 Aug, Paul Du Chaillu,
French-American journalist and hunter, hired a large number of men and
women from the Mbondemo tribe to hunt for gorillas in Gabon.
(ON, 11/04, p.11)
1856 Sep 2, Paul Du Chaillu
(1831-1903), French-American journalist and hunter, shot and killed his
1st gorilla in Gabon. Over the next 3 years he killed 31 gorillas. In
1861 he published “Explorations & Adventures in Equatorial Africa.”
(ON, 11/04, p.12)
1856 Sep 3, Louis H. Sullivan,
architect who gained fame for his design of the Chicago Auditorium
Theater, was born in Boston, Mass. The leading figure in the so-called
Chicago style of architecture, Louis Sullivan is regarded as the
spiritual father of modern U.S. architecture and is particularly
identified with the aesthetics of skyscraper design. Born in 1856,
Sullivan attended MIT and was among the first to stress the vertical
lines of steel skeleton construction.
(HN, 9/3/98)(HNQ, 6/11/99)(MC, 9/3/01)
1856 Sep 14, At the Battle of San
Jacinto, Nicaragua defeated invaders. General José Dolores
Estrada led his men against the powerful forces of William Walker and
his filibusters, who sought to take over Nicaragua and all of Central
America.
(http://www.guideofnicaragua.com/0102/MatagalpaEN.html)
1856 Sep 24, John Marsh, Harvard
graduate and pioneer California settler, was murdered on the road
between Pacheco and Martinez while traveling to SF. Marsh was the 1st
non-Hispanic to live in Contra Costa County. He had made a fortune
attracting settlers to Contra Costa and selling them land. His new
7,000 stone mansion in Brentwood was later made the center-piece of the
John Marsh/Cowell Ranch State Park.
(SSFC, 9/24/06, p.B3)
1856 Oct 1, The first installment
of Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (Emma Bovary) appeared in the
Revue de Paris after the publisher refused to print a passage in which
the character Emma has a tryst in the back seat of a carriage. It was
later considered as the first novel of a liberated woman in modern
literature. In 1998 Dacia Maraini published "Searching for Emma." A TV
version for Masterpiece Theater was shown in 2000.
(HN, 10/1/00)(SFEC, 6/28/98, Par p.18)(WSJ, 2/4/00,
p.W6)
1856 Oct 7, Cyrus Chambers Jr.
patented a folding machine that folded books and newspapers.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1856 Oct 8, Chinese police boarded
the British vessel Arrow, arrested 12 Chinese crewmen on suspicion of
piracy and lowered the British flag. This began the 2nd Anglo-Chinese
War.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.911)(MC, 10/8/01)
1856 Oct, Migrants to Utah pulling
handcarts encountered a blizzard and were rescued by a mule train sent
by Brigham Young. More than 200 Mormons died near Martin’s Cove, Wyo.,
as they migrated West using handcarts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_handcart_pioneers)(SFC, 8/13/98,
p.A9)(Econ, 12/22/07, p.39)
1856 Nov 4, Democrat James
Buchanan was elected US president. The American or Know-Nothing Party
had nominated Zachary Taylor over Millard Fillmore. The Know-Nothing
Party was an anti-foreigner, anti-Catholic political organization.
Buchanan easily won the presidential election, gaining 174 electoral
votes to Republican John C. Fremont’s 141, and Fillmore’s eight.
Fremont failed to carry California after Jasper O’Farrell testified
against him in the 1846 murder of 3 Californios.
(http://tinyurl.com/8ku7j)(SFC, 9/26/96, p.E10)(SFC,
2/21/97, p.A25)(HNQ, 6/17/01)(SSFC, 6/25/06, p.E1)
1856 Nov 13, Louis Brandeis, was
born. He became the first Jew to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
(HN, 11/13/00)
1856 Nov 15, The clipper ship
Neptune’s Car arrived in SF after sailing 136 days from NYC. Mary Ann
Patten (1837-1861), the pregnant 19-year-old wife of Captain Joshua
Patten (d.1857), commanded the ship for much of its voyage after the
captain fell ill.
(AH, 2/05, p.60)
1856 Nov 24, Bat Masterson was
born in Quebec, Canada. [see Nov 24, 1853]
(MesWP)
1856 Dec 18, Joseph John Thomson,
English physicist, was born. He discovered the electron and won a Nobel
Prize in 1906.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1856 Dec 22, Frank Kellogg,
Secretary of State (1925-29) who tried to outlaw war with the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, was born. He won a Nobel Prize in 1929.
(HN, 12/22/98)(MC, 12/22/01)
1856 Dec 28, Woodrow Wilson, 28th
president of the United States (1912-1921), who brought the country
into World War I, was born in Staunton, Va. He won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1919. "The American Revolution was a beginning, not a
consummation."
(AP, 12/28/97)(HN, 12/28/98)(AP, 7/2/99)(MC,
12/28/01)
1856 Dec 29, Snow fell in San
Francisco and accumulated to 2-3 inches.
(SFEM, 12/22/96, p.20)
1856 Francois Flameng (d.1923),
French painter, was born. He painted imagined scenes from the domestic
life of Napoleon Bonaparte.
(MT, Fall/03, p.13)
1856 James Pierson Beckwourth
(1798-1866, a mountain man born as a slave, authored his autobiography:
“The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout,
and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians.”
(SSFC, 7/18/04, p.14)(www.beckwourth.org/)
1856 The ballet "Le Corsaire" (The
Corsair) was first performed in Paris to a score by Adolph Adam. It was
based on a work by Lord Byron.
(SFC, 12/20/99, p.E1)
1856 The 1st theater in California
was built in the gold-mining town of Nevada City.
(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.F9)
1856 The St. James Light, a
lighthouse, was built by Irish immigrants on Big Beaver Island in
northern Lake Michigan.
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.88)
1856 The Steinway Mansion was
built in Astoria, NYC, home of the scion of the great piano-making
family.
(SFC, 5/26/96, T-8)
1856 John Breuner, German cabinet
maker, founded his furniture business. It later expanded to a chain of
17 stores and was sold in 1985.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A15)
1856 The D’Agostini Winery in
Amador County, Ca. was founded. It later became the Sobon Estate Winery.
(SFC, 12/10/95, p.T-1)
1856 In California Mifflin W.
Gibbs founded the state’s first black newspaper and lobbied for the
repeal of the state’s "black laws."
(SFC, 7/18/98, p.A15)
1856 St. Pauls prep school was
founded in Concord, New Hampshire. In 2003 headmaster Bishop Craig
Anderson was paid an annual salary of $524,000.
(WSJ, 8/25/03, p.A1)
1856 Mauve began to be used to
describe a purplish color that was the first synthetic dye.
(SFC, 6/29/96, E4)
1856 The last presidential
candidate of the Whig Party was Millard Fillmore in 1856. Fillmore and
his running mate Andrew J. Donelson were also the nominees of the
American (Know Nothing) Party that year. In 1999 Michael F. Hold
published "The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party."
(HNQ, 9/10/98)(WSJ, 7/8/99, p.A16)
1856 Walt Whitman declared that
"Always America will be agitated and turbulent."
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)
1856 Orvis, a fly-tackle
manufacturer, began operations in Manchester, Vermont. In 1993 the
company was a $100 million business.
(WSJ, 2/28/97, p.B7)
1856 The William Mason locomotive
was built.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.T6)
1856 John C. Fremont and Edward D.
Baker passed through the Feather River region of northern California.
Baker was known as the "Gray Eagle of Republicanism" and gave this name
to the town of Graegle around 1916.
(SSFC, 7/7/02, p.C10)
1856 Sam Hughes, a Welsh immigrant
ill with tuberculosis, left his job as a baker in the California Gold
Rush and departed by stage coach to Texas. The stage coach driver
afraid that Sam might die enroute, dumped him in Tucson, Arizona. Later
Sam at age 32 married a Mexican girl age 12 named Atanacia Santa Cruz.
(AWAM, Dec. 94, p.29,32)
1856 William Thomson, later Lord
Kelvin, discovered the property of magneto-resistance. The change in
some materials of electrical resistance under a magnetic field was
later used in data storage systems.
(Econ, 3/31/07, p.89)
1856 The Australian state of
Victoria first adopted paper ballots for voting.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A1)
1856 Australia's Van Dieman's
Island was renamed Tasmania.
(Econ, 1/17/04, p.37)
c1856 Rabbits were let loose in
Australia about 140 years ago.
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.B-6)
1856 Descendants of the Bounty
mutineers moved from Pitcairn to Norfolk Island, 1,000 miles from the
Australia mainland.
(Econ, 7/10/04, p.38)
1856 General limited liability was
introduced in Britain.
(Econ, 12/20/08, p.117)
1856 The Victoria Cross was
created to honor soldiers of the British Empire during the Crimean War
who showed particular gallantry in the face of enemy attack. All the
crosses were made from the bronze of Russian cannons captured in the
Crimea.
(AP, 4/27/05)
1856 A one-cent British Guiana
stamp of this year was purchased in 1980 for $935,000 by chemicals heir
John E. DuPont.
(WSJ, 4/7/00, p.W9)
1856 Near Dusseldorf in the
Neander Valley, limestone minors quarrying in a cave found an unusual
human skeleton. A beetle-browed, low-sloping skullcap, part of a
pelvis, and some remarkably thick and slightly curved limb bones fell
into the hands of the local science teacher.
(NG, Nov. 1985, p. 614)
1856 The order of nuns known as
the "Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration" was founded in France. It was
named after a 13th century saint who jettisoned her family's wealth for
a life of poverty. The nuns spent their time praying on behalf of
others.
(WSJ, 9/19/03, p.A1)
1856 In France Emperor Napoleon
III decided to quell an impending revolt in Algeria by sending a
magician, who would demonstrate the power of the Europeans to the
natives. He sent Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin (1805-1871). The 1998 novel
"The Magician’s Wife" by Brian Moore is based on the historic events.
The magician is named Henri Lambert.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.5)
1856 The Countess de Castiglione
(Virginia Oldoini) became the mistress of Napoleon III. She was chosen
by her cousin Camillo Cavour, prime minister of Sardinia under King
Victor Emanuel, to win the emperor’s support for a war against the
Austrians.
(WSJ, 12/27/00, p.A10)
1856 Theodore Chasseriau (b.1819),
Dominican-born artist, died in Paris. His paintings included "The
Toilette of Esther."
(WSJ, 11/26/02, p.D8)
1856 Christian Schibsted purchased
a hand operated printing press to print a newspaper for somebody else.
When the contract moved elsewhere he began his own newspaper and in
2006 the original press could be seen in the Oslo headquarters of the
Schibsted newspaper firm.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.52)
1856 Lothar von Faber of Germany
bought a graphite mine in Siberia to secure raw material for his pencil
manufacturing operations.
(Econ, 3/3/07, p.73)
1856 In Sweden Andre Wallenberg
founded Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB). By 2006 it was one of the
Nordic region’s biggest banks.
(Econ, 10/14/06, p.73)
1856-1858 The 2nd Anglo-Chinese Opium War.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)
1856-1900 Oscar Wilde, English [Irish] writer, poet
and dramatist, a rebel of every kind, ended up playing the part of a
mocking fool. He despaired of his countrymen ever waking up, but they
did, for they became enraged by his mockery and jailed him, ruining his
life. He wrote the play "The Importance of Being Ernest." He was found
guilty of violating the Criminal Law Amendment Act which prohibited
indecent relations between consenting adult males. He served 2 years in
prison where he read the whole of Dante and wrote the letter "De
Profundis," and the poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." "At every single
moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what
one has been." [see 1854]
(V.D.-H.K.p.279)(HT, 3/97, p.71)(AP, 10/10/99)
1856-1915 Booker T. Washington, American educator:
"To be successful, grow to the point where one completely forgets
himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause."
(AP, 6/6/97)
1856-1915 Frederick Winslow Taylor, American
efficiency expert. In 1997 Robert Kanigel wrote the biography: "The One
Best Way: FW Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency." Taylor was a member
of the first winning US Open doubles tennis duo. "In the past the man
was first. In the future the system will be first."
(WSJ, 6/13/97, p.A17)(Wired, 2/98, p.112)
1856-1920 May 6, Robert Peary, American naval officer
and Arctic explorer, was born. He reached the North Pole in 1909.
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(AHD, p.964)
1856-1922 Tom Watson, US congressman and
quintessential Negrophobe. C. Van Woodward in 1938 authored the
biography: "Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel."
(SFEC, 12/19/99, p.C14)
1855-1926 In Baja, Mexico, an estimated 3,350 gray
whales were harpooned in their spawning grounds in Magdalena Bay.
(SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)
1856-1929 The Children's Aid Society and The New York
Foundling Hospital sponsored Orphan Trains that relocated homeless New
York children to adoptive homes in the sparsely populated West and
Midwest. Needy children were chosen for relocation and if they were not
true orphans, a release for placement was obtained from the remaining
parent or guardian. The train route was chosen and the children, after
being given new clothing, boarded the train accompanied by the
society's agent. Advance notice was placed in local newspapers and a
screening committee was responsible for matching the orphans with
prospective families. When the train arrived, the orphans were
displayed in a church or other public building and if an agreeable
match was made, the child was left with his or her new family. Those
not selected would reboard the train for the next stop. It was up to
the agent to keep tabs on adopted children, and if they were not
determined to be happy and well-treated, they would be removed and,
hopefully, adopted by a new family. While this procedure was risky and
many children were placed in abusive situations, Orphan Train sponsors
believed that youngsters placed with western families had a better
chance than those living on the streets of New York. In the 75 years of
the Orphan Trains, between 150,000 and 200,000 children were relocated.
(HNPD, 12/1/98)
1856-1930 Daniel Guggenheim, American industrialist
and philanthropist.
(AHD, p.585)
1856-1933 Elisabeth Marbury, American writer: "The
richer your friends, the more they will cost you."
(AP, 9/25/98)
1856-1941 US Justice Louis D. Brandeis: "The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding."
(AP, 10/5/99)
1856-1945 Walter Long Williams, veterinarian. He did
pioneering work in identifying equine venereal disease.
(WSJ, 5/5/99, p.A20)
1856-1950 Minna Antrim, American writer: "Experience
is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills."
(AP, 12/14/97)
1857 Jan 6, Patent for reducing
zinc ore was granted to Samuel Wetherill in Penn.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1857 Feb 7, A French court
acquitted author Gustave Flaubert of obscenity for his serialized novel
"Madame Bovary."
(AP, 2/7/08)
1857 Feb 12, Eugene Atget, French
photographer, was born. He took over 10,000 photographs documenting
Paris.
(HN, 2/12/01)
1857 Feb 15, Mikhail Ivanovich
Glinka (53), Russian composer (Russlan & Ludmilla), died.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1857 Feb 18, Max Klinger, German
graphic artist, painter, sculptor, was born.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1857 Feb 22, Heinrich Hertz,
German physicist, was born in Hamburg. He became the first person to
broadcast and receive radio waves. The radio wave unit of frequency was
named after him.
(HN, 2/22/01)(AP, 2/22/07)
1857 Feb 22, Lord Robert
Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout Movement, was born in London.
(AP, 2/22/07)
1857 Feb, Charles Darwin in a
letter to his cousin Fox, wrote: "I am become most deeply interested in
the way facts fall into groups." [indeed]
(NH, 5/96, p.7)
1857 Mar 3, Under pretexts,
Britain and France declared war on China.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1857 Mar 6, After years in
litigation, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Roger Taney,
ruled that Dred Scott did not gain his freedom by living in a free
territory. The essence of the decision was that as a slave, Dred Scott
was not a citizen and therefore could not sue in a federal court. The
opinion also stated that Congress could not exclude slavery in the
territories and that blacks could not become citizens. That ruling
further increased the tension already simmering between the North and
the South. Dred Scott was a slave who accompanied his owner, army
surgeon John Emerson, to military posts in Wisconsin and Illinois in
1834-35. In 1846 Scott, backed by abolitionists, sued for his freedom
on the grounds that he became free when he lived in an area where
slavery was outlawed. Montgomery Blair (b.1813) was one of the lawyers
in the Scott vs. Sanford case. In this case the Supreme Court
invalidated the 1820 Missouri Compromise.
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/98)(HNPD, 3/11/99)(HN,
5/10/99)(SFC, 11/30/00, p.A3)
1857 Mar 8, Ruggiero Leoncavallo,
Italian composer (I Pagliacci/Zaza), was born.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1857 Mar 12, The opera "Simon
Boccanegra," by Giuseppe Verdi, premiered in Venice, Italy.
(AP, 3/12/07)
1857 Mar 21, An earthquake hit
Tokyo and about 107,000 died.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1857 Mar 23, Culinary expert
Fannie Farmer was born in Boston.
(AP, 3/23/07)
1857 Mar 23, Elisha Otis installed
the first modern passenger elevator in the 5-story Haughwout and Co.
building at 488 Broadway in New York City.
(www.theelevatormuseum.org/h/h-2.htm)(ON, 5/05, p.12)
1857 Mar 25, Frederick Laggenheim
took the 1st photo of a solar eclipse.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1857 Apr 18, Clarence S. Darrow,
defense attorney at the Scopes monkey trial, was born near Kinsman,
Ohio.
(AP, 4/18/07)
1857 Apr 21, Alexander Douglas
patented the bustle.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1857 Apr 27, Establishment of
Jewish congregations in Lower Austria prohibited.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1857 Apr, The Royal Society held
their first meeting in Burlington House in London after moving over
from Somerset House. They were soon joined by the Linnean Society and
the Royal Society of Chemistry.
(Econ, 9/15/07,
p.104)(www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=41482)
1857 May 1, William Walker,
conqueror of Nicaragua, surrendered to the US Navy. Cornelius
Vanderbilt helped finance a Costa Rican army, which defeated Walker’s
forces, and paid men under Walker’s command to defect. Walker later
sought protection on a British naval vessel, whose captain turned him
over to Hondurans, who executed him in 1860.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(soldier))(WSJ, 8/30/08,
p.W7)
1857 May 10, Hendrik Zwaardemaker,
Dutch physiologist (olefactometer), was born.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1857 May 10, The Seepoys of India
revolted against the British Army. The Bengal Army, Indian soldiers in
the British army, staged a revolt in what is viewed as the first
attempt at independence. The Rani of Jhansi, a charismatic female
strategist, led the Hindu revolt.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)(HN, 5/10/98)(SSFC, 11/9/03,
p.C9)
1857 May 11, Indian mutineers
against the British seized Delhi.
(HN, 5/11/98)
1857 May 13, Ronald Ross,
bacteriologist, was born.
(HN, 5/13/01)
1857 May 19, William Francis
Channing and Moses G. Farmer were granted the first patent for an
electric fire alarm system.
(DTnet, 5/19/97)
1857 Jun 2, Edward Elgar
Broadheath, English composer (Pomp & Circumstance), was born in
Worcester, England.
(AP, 6/2/07)
1857 Jun 2, Karl Gjellerup, poet,
novelist (Nobel 1917), was born in Denmark.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1857 Jun 2, James Gibbs of
Virginia patented a chain-stitch single-thread sewing machine.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1857 Jun 18, Henry Clay Folger,
American lawyer and businessman, co-founder of the Folger Shakespeare
Library, was born.
(HN, 6/18/01)
1857 Jun 27, H. Goldschmidt
discovered asteroid #45, Eugenia.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1857 Jun 30, Charles Dickens
reads from "A Christmas Carol" at St. Martin's Hall in London--his
first public reading.
(HN, 6/30/01)
1857 Jul 12, George E. Ohr
(d.1918), ceramics artist (the mad potter of Biloxi), was born in
Biloxi, Mississippi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._Ohr)(ON,
11/06, p.11)
1857 Jul 15, British women and
children were murdered in the second Cawnpore Massacre during the
Indian Mutiny.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1857 Jul 15, Carl Czerny (66),
Austrian pianist, composer, died.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1857 Jul 27, Jose Celso Barbosa,
Puerto Rican statesman and humanitarian, was born in Bayamon.
(AP, 7/27/07)
1857 Jul 29, James Holman (1786),
former British lieutenant in the Royal Navy, died in London. An illness
in 1810 left him blind. In 1822 he set off on a journey to travel
around the world. In 2006 Jason Roberts authored “A Sense of the World:
How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler.”
(SSFC, 6/4/06, p.M1)
1857 Jul 30, Thorstein Veblen
(d.1929), political economist and sociologist, was born in Wisconsin to
Norwegian immigrants. He authored "The Theory of the Leisure Class" in
1899.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(SFEC, 7/11/99, BR p.4)(HN,
7/30/01)(MC, 7/30/02)
1857 Aug 25, The California gold
rush town of Columbia burned down in a 2nd fire that was blamed on a
Chinese cook. Miners soon evicted all Chinese from the town.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.T6)(CVG, Vol 16, p.24,34)
1857 Aug 24, The New York branch
of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. failed, sparking the Panic of
1857. Financial pressures exerted negative market influences as noted
in a letter to the Economist in 1865. The sharp but short 1857-58
financial crash in the US was touched off by the failure of the New
York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. Over
speculation in real estate and railroad securities fed the panic.
(AP, 8/24/07)(WSJ, 9/28/95c, p.A-18)(HNQ, 6/6/00)
1857 Aug, A human skeleton was
found in a limestone cave in the Neanderthal, near Hochdal, between
Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. The discovery is described by D. Shaaffhausen
in his paper Discovery of the Neanderthal Skull.
(RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.140-141)
1857 Sep 5, Charles Darwin first
outlined his theory of evolution in a letter to American botanist Asa
Gray dated September 5, 1857. The leading botanist of his time, Gray
was one of the founders of the National Academy of Science.
(HNQ, 3/14/99)
1857 Sep 11, The Mountain Meadows
Massacre of the Fancher emigrant wagon train in Utah Territory was
carried out by Mormons fearful of an impending invasion by the US Army.
Church patriarch and adopted son of Brigham Young, John Doyle Lee,
offered safe passage to the nearly 150 men, women and children on the
Fancher train from Arkansas crossing Mormon Utah bound for California,
if they left their weapons, livestock and wagons behind-ostensibly to
appease hostile Indians. Once unarmed, all but the youngest children
were slaughtered. Lee, who first blamed the massacre on Paiute Indians,
was excommunicated in 1970 and tried, convicted and executed in 1877
for his role in the killings. 120 settlers were killed; 17 children,
all under 7, were spared. In 2002 Will Bagley authored “Blood of the
Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows.”
(HNQ, 9/14/99)(SFC, 10/23/02, p.H4)(AP, 9/11/07)
1857 Sep 12, A wooden-hulled
steamship, the SS Central America under Capt. William L. Herndon, sank
off the coast of Georgia. The ship carried 21 tons of gold from
California to New York. The brig Marine and the Norwegian bark Ellen
rescued some 141 people. 425 (428) of 528 (578) passengers were
drowned. The survivors included Ansel Ives Easton (d.1868) and his new
wife Adeline. The wreck was in 8,000 feet of water and in 1987-1988
salvage operations were begun by Tommy Thompson. He hauled in $500
million worth of gold bars, coins and nuggets. After a court battle he
was awarded 92% of the gold. The story is told in the 1998 book "Ship
of Gold in the Deep Blue sea" by Gary Kinder. The loss of the gold
sparked "The Panic of 1857." The SS Central America sank off Cape
Romain, SC.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.W3)(WSJ, 6/19/98, p.W9)(SFEC,
6/28/98, BR p.3)(WSJ, 12/3/99, p.W16)(WSJ, 1/28/00, p.B1)(ON, 7/01,
p.2)(MC, 9/12/01)(Ind, 12/1/01, 5A)
1857 Sep 13, Milton S. Hershey,
chocolate manufacturer and philanthropist, was born in Dauphin County,
Pa.
(www.hersheys.com/about/milton.shtml)(AP, 9/13/07)
1857 Sep 15, William Howard Taft
was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served as 26th president (R) of the
United States (1909-1913) and as chief justice. He is most remembered
for his "dollar diplomacy."
(AP, 9/15/97)(HN, 9/15/99)
1857 Sep 15, Mormon leader Brigham
Young called out the Nauvoo Legion to fight the U.S. Troops if they
enter Utah Territory.
(http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Utah_War)
1857 Sep 15, Timothy Alden of NYC
patented a typesetting machine.
(www.todayinsci.com/)
1857 Sep 20, Delhi, India, fell to
British forces.
(AP, 9/20/07)
1857 Sep 23, The Russian warship
Leffort disappeared in the Finland Gulf in a storm; 826 died.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1857 Oct 6, The American Chess
Association organized. The 1st major US chess tournament was held in
NYC. [see Oct 10]
(MC, 10/6/01)
1857 Oct 10, The American Chess
Association formed (NYC). [see Oct 6]
(MC, 10/10/01)
1857 Oct 29, Conrad Haebler,
German historian (Early Printers of Spain and Portugal), was born.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1857 Oct 30, Gertrude Atherton,
novelist, was born.
(HN, 10/30/00)
1857 Oct, Paul Morphy won fame as
the first American chess hero. The New Orleans native became the
world‘s leading chess player after he defeated Adolf Anderssen of
Germany. Morphy beat all the world's masters who took him on, although
Englishman Howard Staunton managed to avoid a match. Morphy then issued
a challenge to take on any player, but none responded, and Morphy
retired.
(HN, 1/22/00)
1857 Nov 2, Joseph F.F. Babinski,
Polish-French neurologist (Babinski reflex), was born.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1857 Nov 5, Ida M. Tarbell
(d.1944), muckraking journalist, was born in Erie County, Pa.
(AP,
11/5/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbell)
1857 Nov 9, Atlantic Monthly
magazine was 1st published.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1857 Nov 23, George Smythe
(b.1818), 7th Viscount Strangford, died. In 2006 Mary S. Millar
authored “Disraeli’s Disciple: The Scandalous Life of George Smythe.”
(http://tinyurl.com/mhqn3)(WSJ, 9/2/06, p.P9)
1857 Nov 26, First Australian
Parliament opened in Melbourne.
(AP, 11/26/02)
1857 Dec 3, Joseph Conrad
(d.1924), novelist, was born in Berdychiv, Poland, as Teodor Jozef
Konrad Korzeniowski. He is best known for “Heart of Darkness.” His work
“The Secret Agent” had a profound effect on Unabomber Theodore J.
Kaszynski in the late 20th cent. Conrad also wrote the short story “The
Informer.”
(SFC, 7/9/96, p.A3)(HN, 12/3/98)(AP, 12/3/07)
1857 Dec 8, 1st production of Dion
Boucicault's "Poor of NY."
(MC, 12/8/01)
1857 Dec 17, Sir Francis Beaufort
(b.1774), Irish-born hydrogapher, died in London. In 2004 Scott Huler
authored “Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a
Nineteenth-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry.”
(NH, 11/1/04, p.51)
1857 Dec 29, Franz Liszt's "Die
Hunnenschlacht," premiered in Weimar.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1857 Dec 31, Britain’s Queen
Victoria decided to make Ottawa the capital of Canada.
(AP, 12/31/97)
1857 Augustus Leopold Egg began to
paint his 3-part work "Past and Present." It was completed in 1858.
(WSJ, 2/19/97, p.A15)
1857 Jean-Francois Millet painted
"The Gleaners."
(WSJ, 7/12/99, p.A26)
1857 Thomas Brewer wrote "North
American Oology," a work on bird eggs.
(AH, 6/02, p.40)
1857 Charles Dickens (1812-1870),
English novelist, completed his serial novel “Little Dorrit.”
(WSJ, 7/19/08,
p.W6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Dorrit)
1857 Thomas Hughes authored "Tom
Brown’s School Days." Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman is a
fictional character originally created by the author Thomas Hughes in
his semi-autobiographical work Tom Brown's Schooldays. In this book,
set at Rugby School, Flashman is the notorious bully, who persecutes
its eponymous hero Tom Brown.
(WSJ, 7/111/00,
p.A26)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Paget_Flashman)
1857 Fitz Hugh Ludlow authored
"The Hasheesh Eater."
(SFEC, 1/24/99, BR p.4)
1857 Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868),
Austrian writer, authored his novel “Indian Summer.” He noted the issue
of bureaucracy long before it was covered by sociologists.
(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P8)
1857 Anthony Trollope (1815-1882),
British novelist, authored his novel “Barchester Towers," which
explored the mixed motives of various characters. The book established
his fame.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W10)(WSJ, 9/1/07, p.P9)
1857 The New Dungeness Light
Station was built at the end of the Dungeness Spit in Dungeness Bay,
Washington state.
(SSFC, 11/12/06, p.G8)
1857 Landscape architect Frederick
Law Olmstead and architect Calvert Vaux won the competition to develop
NYC's Central Park.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.T5)(NG, 5/93, p.9)(SFC, 4/5/04,
p.B5)
1857 In SF the cornerstone for the
new St. Francis Church was laid.
(SFC, 10/4/99, p.A21)
1857 The San Francisco Slavonic
Mutual and Benevolent Society, the oldest Croatian society in the US,
was founded.
(SFC, 2/17/05, p.E3)
1857 Count Agoston Haraszthy
founded the Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma, Ca.
(WCG, p.67)
1857 The California Savings and
Land Association at 465 California St. was built. Henry Collins, one of
California’s wealthiest black leaders, served as president of the first
African-American owned bank in the country.
(SFC, 2/16/09,
p.B2)(www.afrigeneas.com/forum-west/index.cgi?md=read;id=43)
1857 The Sisters of Mercy
established the West Coast’s 1st hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital, in the
SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.B8)
1857 Lincoln at Springfield, Ill.
expounded on the idea of equality as equality of opportunity as opposed
to equality of result.
(WSJ, 2/10/95), p.A-8)
1857 Pres. Lincoln made a speech
on the Dred Scott decision where he pointed out that the Declaration of
Independence asserts that all men are equal in their right to "life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
(WSJ,2/12/97, p.A16)
1857 Andrew Johnson, Democrat of
Tennessee, was elected to Senator.
(SFC, 12/21/98, p.A3)
1857 John Thompson was discredited
as a banker in the panic 1857. He later went on with his two sons as
front men to found the forerunners of what are now City Bank and Chase
Manhattan.
(WSJ, 5/8/95, p.A-14)
1857 Dred Scott and his wife
Harriet sued for their freedom after living in free territory. The
Supreme Court ruled that black people were not citizens and could not
expect federal protection. Dred Scott was quoted to have said: "Will
nobody speak for me at Washington, even without hope of other reward
than the blessings of a poor black man and his family." The decision
was overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.
(SFC, 12/31/96, p.A7)
1857 Joseph Henry, head of the
Smithsonian Institute, began providing daily national weather reports
to the Washington Evening Star.
(ON, 2/06, p.7)
1857 Laclede Gas Light Co. was
formed and dominated the natural gas business in St. Louis as late as
1942. It began by providing gas-powered street lamps to the city.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1857 The Stanley Rule & Level
Co. was founded in New Britain, Conn.
(SFC, 11/1/03, p.E4)
1857 Joseph C. Gayette of NYC was
said to have invented toilet paper.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, Z1 p.4)
1857 The earliest horse-drawn
potato planter was patented in the US.
(SFC, 4/30/97, z1 p.6)
1857 Paul Broca, a French
neurologist, discovered that particular regions of the brain are
specialized for particular functions. In 1861 he authored a classical
paper that detailed damage in the brain’s left temporal lobe to loss of
speech.
(WSJ, 10/11/02,
p.AB1)(http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Broca/perte-e.htm)
1857 William Rowan Hamilton, Irish
mathematician, devised the routing conundrum. A simple version of this
is known as the traveling salesman problem. It poses the question:
Given an arbitrary collection of cities a salesman has to travel
between, what is the shortest route linking those cities?
(Wired, 8/95, p.115)
1857 James Hall, president of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, pointed out the
great thickness of the Paleozoic rocks in the Appalacian Mountains
compared with the Mississippi Valley and offered the explanation that
as the weight of the sediment accumulated it had pushed down the crust
beneath it. He believed that eventually the crust could take the strain
no longer. It buckled and the strata were crumpled and raised high
above their original level. This theory is in contrast to Dana’s later
theory of geosynclines in 1873.
(DD-EVTT, p.120)
1857 Lt. Edward F. Beale visited
El Morro, New Mexico, with a camel caravan testing the feasibility of
employing camels as Army animals in the American southwest.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.F9)
1857 Army Lt. Joseph Ives surveyed
the Grand Canyon with "wondering delight," but concluded that it was
"altogether valueless." His chief scientist John Strong Newberry
declared that it was a geological paradise.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, BR p.12)
1857 The Fort Tejon, Ca.,
earthquake, estimated at magnitude 8, ruptured ground for 225 miles
from Parkfield to Tejon Pass. It killed 2 people and destroyed the
Teyon Army post.
(SFC, 5/21/01, p.A4)(SFC, 12/10/04, p.A4)
1857 Franz Kruger (b.1797), German
Biedermeier artist of cityscapes and rural genre scenes, died.
(SSFC, 1/27/02, p.C7)
1857 In Australia the Botanical
Garden in Adelaide was founded.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T5)
1857 In Austria Ludwig Moser
(d.1916) started a glassmaking shop in Carlsbad. The work was intended
for royal families around the world and included intricate gold overlay
and detailed hand painting.
(SFC, 3/5/97, z-1 p.2)
1857 Neuhaus began making
chocolate in Belgium.
(SFC, 9/15/96, p.T9)
1857 The Reading Room of the
British National Library opened. It was designed by Sydney Smirke. His
brother, Sir Robert Smirke, had designed the British Museum 7 years
earlier. The design met the wishes of Sir Anthony Panazzi, the Italian
librarian. Its copper dome, supported by 20 cast iron ribs,
measured 140 feet.
(SFC,10/23/97, p.A17)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.A24)
1857 The British Matrimonial
Causes Act proclaimed that a husband’s legal responsibilities went on
after a marriage ended.
(SFC, 4/12/97, p.E3)
1857 In England Dean Richard
Trench lectured on the need for a complete English dictionary at the
London Library and the project was soon undertaken by The Philological
Society.
(WSJ, 9/14/98, p.A30)
1857 In Montreal, Canada, the
Anglican Christ Church Cathedral was constructed. In the 1980s it was
elevated on pylons to allow for an expansion of the underground city.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, p.D5)
1857 In British Columbia nine
American slaves arrived at Vesuvius Bay on Salt Spring Island to make a
fresh start in a new land. They were later joined by settlers from
Hawaii.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, p.T5)
1857 Ludwig Moser began making
Moser glass in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia.
(SFC, 5/14/08, p.G6)
1857 The coffin of the Egyptian
Pharaoh, Kamose, was discovered outside of Thebes, but the body
crumbled to dust when exposed to the air... a ceremonial dagger from
the site is now in Brussels.
(L.C.W.P.p.67)
1857 The Paris salon of this year
set standards so exclusive that Emp. Napoleon III ordered the rejected
paintings to be hung as a separate show in 1863. [see 1863]
(Calg. Glen., 1996)
1857 In Germany H. Sichel &
Sohne, the producers of the popular Blue Nun white wine, was founded.
(SFC, 10/8/97, Z1 p.4)
1857 In Hong Kong Cheong Ah Lum,
the colony’s foremost baker, so hated the Britons that he tried to
poison 400 of the most important "gwailos" with arsenic laced bread. No
one died but many got sick.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.A18)
1857 In India the 1st madrasah,
religious school, was founded in Deoband in the wake of a jihad against
British colonial government.
(WSJ, 10/2/01, p.A1A14)
1857 In Italy the Lido Palace was
built overlooking Lake Maggiore for the Marquis Durazzo of Genoa.
(SSFC, 12/2/01, p.C6)
1857 The Vienna-Trieste railway
was completed.
(www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Trieste)
1857 Luigi Monti, an Italian Roman
Catholic friar, founded the Congregation of the Children of the
Immaculate Conception in order to provide charitable health services to
orphans and the poor. In 1967 the Congregation opened a factory outside
of Rome to make dermatological drugs and cosmetics, which were sold
commercially. In 2003 Pope John Paul II beatified Monti. In 2004 the
Congregation acquired a biotechnology research firm specializing in
cancer research and renamed it Nerviano Medical Science.
(WSJ, 12/7/06, p.B8)
1857 In Lebanon the modern wine
industry began when a group of Jesuit monks founded Chateau Ksara in
the Bekaa Valley.
(SFC, 1/11/08, p.F4)
1857 Banco Santander was founded
in Spain to finance trade between the port city of Santander and Latin
America.
(WSJ, 5/23/96, p.A-6)
1857-1861 James Buchanon served as the 15th
president. John Cabell Breckinridge (1821-1875) was the US
vice-president under Buchanan. Breckenridge was a Confederate General
in the Civil War. [His ?brother-in-law was Lloyd Tevis, founder of
Wells Fargo]
(WUD, 1994, p.183)(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)(SFC,
11/9/96, p.A12)(WUD, 1994, p.183)
1857-1903 George Gissing, English author and critic:
"That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be
generous."
(AP, 8/18/97)
1857-1922 Arthur Wesley Dow, artist and teacher, was
inspired by William Morris and in turn influenced such artists Georgia
O'Keefe, Max Weber, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Gertrude Kasebier. He was
later considered as one of the greatest art educators of his day. He
considered crafts equal to the fine arts.
(SFEM, 8/15/99, p.4)(SFC, 9/11/99, p.C12)(WSJ,
10/5/99, p.A24)
1857-1926 Emile Coue, French pharmacist. In 1920
[1910] he devised the mantra "Every day, in every way, I’m getting
better and better" to promote his theory of self-improvement through
auto-suggestion.
(NH, 7/98, p.20)(SFEC, 6/20/99, Z1 p.8)
1857-1938 Clarence Darrow, American lawyer: "You can
only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s
freedom. You can only be free if I am free."
(AP, 9/30/97)
1858 Jan 14, Emperor Napoleon III
and Empress Eugenie escaped unhurt after an Italian assassin threw a
bomb at their carriage as they traveled to the Paris Opera. The hoop
skirt was first worn by Empress Eugenie to conceal her pregnancy.
(HN, 1/14/99)(SFEC, 7/23/00, Z1 p.2)(AP, 1/14/08)
1858 Jan 18, Daniel Hale Williams,
the first physician to perform open heart surgery and founder of
Provident Hospital in Chicago, Ill., was born.
(HN, 1/18/99)
1858 Jan 21, Felix Marma Zuloaga
became president of Mexico upon the ouster of Ignacio Comonfort.
(AP, 1/21/08)
1858 Jan 25, Britain's Princess
Victoria (the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert),
married Crown Prince Frederick William (the future German Emperor and
King of Prussia) at St. James's Palace. The ceremony's
tradition-setting music, personally selected by the Princess Royal,
included the "Bridal Chorus" from Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" and the
"Wedding March" by Felix Mendelssohn.
(AP, 1/25/08)
1858 Jan 28, John Brown organized
a plan to raid the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. [see Oct 16, 1859]
(MC, 1/28/02)(ON, 7/02, p.7)
1858 Feb 1, John Brown went to see
Frederick Douglass in Rochester and told him of his plan to steal
weapons at Harper’s Ferry, Va.
(ON, 7/02, p.6)
1858 Feb 11, Bernadette Soubirous
(14), a French miller’s daughter, claimed for the first time to have
seen a vision of the Virgin Mary near Lourdes.
(AP, 2/11/97)(HN, 1/11/02)
1858 Feb 8, A record brawl in the
US House of Representatives erupted over the issue of slavery.
Wisconsin Congressman John F. Potter pulled a wig off a Mississippi
congressman and declared “I’ve scalped him.”
(WSJ, 6/13/06,
p.D6)(www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001067.asp)
1858 Feb, British explorers Sir
Richard Burton and John Speke (1827-1864) explored Lake Tanganyika,
Africa.
(www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/speke_john_hanning.shtml)
1858 Feb 19, Alois Basil Nikolaus
Tomasini (78), composer, died.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1858 Mar 2, Frederick Cook, New
Orleans, patented a cotton-bale metallic tie.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1858 Mar 4, Sen. James Henry
Hammond, D-S.C., declared, "Cotton is king" in a speech to the US
Senate.
(AP, 3/4/08)
1858 Mar 4, Matthew Calbraith
Perry (63), the American naval officer who'd opened trade relations
between the US and Japan, died in New York.
(AP, 3/4/08)
1858 Mar 9, The mailbox was
patented.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1858 Mar 10, Henry David Thoreau
at Fair Haven Pond heard the love call of the red-tailed hawk.
(WSJ, 4/17/96, p.A-18)
1858 May 11, Minnesota became the
32nd state of the Union.
(AP, 5/11/97)(HN, 5/11/98)
1858 Mar 12, Adolph Simon Ochs,
publisher of The New York Times, was born.
(HN, 3/12/01)
1858 Mar 18, Rudolf Diesel, German
mechanical engineer, was born in Paris. He designed the
compression-ignition engine (1893).
(HN, 3/18/99)(AP, 3/18/08)
1858 Mar 21, British forces in
India lifted the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
(HN, 3/21/99)
1858 Mar 17, The Fenian
Brotherhood, a brigade of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a
secret revolutionary group, was founded in Dublin by James Stephens.
John O'Mahony headed the IRB's American wing, popularly known as the
Fenian Brotherhood, which was composed of immigrants and Irish
Americans whose ultimate goal was to free Ireland from British rule.
(HNQ, 4/17/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian)
1858 Mar 23, Eleazer A. Gardner of
Philadelphia patented the cable street car, which ran on overhead
cables.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1858 Mar 30, Hyman L. Lipman of
Philadelphia patented the pencil with an eraser attached on one end.
(HN, 3/30/98)(SFC, 9/16/98, Z1 p.6)
1858 Mar 31, Norddeutscher Lloyd
Bremen launched the SS New York, a passenger cargo vessel. It was sold
to Edward Bates of Liverpool in 1874 and later wrecked near Staten
Island. In 1994 Edwin Drechsel (1914-2006) later authored a 2-volume
history of the North German shipping line.
(www.clydesite.co.uk/clydebuilt/viewship.asp?id=15185)
1858 Apr 5, Washington Atlee
Burpee, founded the world's largest mail-order seed company, was born.
(HN, 4/5/01)
1858 Apr 6, President Buchanan
issued a proclamation declaring Mormons in the Utah Territory to be in
a state of rebellion against the US government.
(AP, 4/6/08)
1858 Apr 7, Anton Diabelli (76),
Austrian publisher, composer, died.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1858 Apr 10, London’s Big Ben bell
was cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in East London. It was placed into
St. Stephen’s Tower at the Houses of Parliament.
(SFC, 4/11/08, p.A16)
1858 Apr 15, At the Battle of
Azimghur, Mexicans defeated the Spanish loyalists.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1858 Spring, Darwin sent advance
proofs of "Origin of the Species" to Asa Gray, Harvard botanist, who
was working up the botanical reports for the Great Exploring Expedition
then surveying northern Japan. Gray was introduced to Darwin’s ideas by
the geologist James Dwight Dana. [see Sep 5, 1857]
(NH, 6/96, p.6)
1858 Apr 23, Max K.E. Ludwig
Planck, German physicist (Planck Constant, Nobel 1918), was born.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1858 Apr 29, Austrian troops
invaded Piedmont (Italy).
(HN, 4/29/98)
1858 Apr 30, Mary Scott Lord
Dimmick, Pres. B. Harrison's first lady, was born.
(HN, 4/30/98)
1858 May 1, Anthony Johnson
Showalter, composer, was born.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1858 May 4, In the Mexican War of
Reform liberals established their capital at Vera Cruz.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1858 May 8, John Brown held an
antislavery convention.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1858 May 11, Minnesota became the
32nd state of the Union.
(AP, 5/11/97)
1858 May 15, Emily Folger,
Shakespeare scholar, was born.
(HN, 5/15/01)
1858 May 28, Dion Boucicault's
"Foul Play," premiered in London.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1858 Jun 2, Donati Comet was 1st
seen and named after it's discoverer.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1858 Jun 15, Ary Scheffer
(b.1795), Dutch-born French Academic painter, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ary_Scheffer)
1858 Jun 16, In a speech accepting
the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Springfield, Ill.,
Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln said the slavery issue had to be
resolved, declaring, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
(AP, 6/16/98)(HN, 6/16/98)
1858 Jun 16, Dr. John Snow
(b.1813), English obstetrician, died of a stroke. He is considered the
father of epidemiology for his efforts in documenting the spread of
cholera in London epidemics.
(ON, 5/05, p.10)
1858 Jun 18, The US and China
signed a treaty promoting "peace, amity and commerce."
(AP, 6/18/08)
1858 Jun 20, Charles Chesnutt,
African-American novelist, was born in Cleveland. In 2002 Werner
Sollors edited "Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays."
(HN, 6/20/01)(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1858 Jun 22, Giacomo Puccini
(d.1924), Italian composer of Madam Butterfly, was born. His work
included the opera "Calaf."
(WUD, 1994, p.1162)(WSJ, 10/22/97, p.A20)(HN,
6/22/98)
1858 Jun 29, George Washington
Goethals, engineer of the Panama Canal, was born.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1858 Jun, The US Army entered Utah
and installed a new governor.
(SFC, 10/23/02, p.H4)
1858 Jul 1, The Darwin-Wallace
theory of evolution was 1st read at a meeting of the Linnaean Society
of London.
(NH, 2/02, p.75)
1858 Jul 2, Czar Alexander II
freed the serfs working on imperial lands.
(HN, 7/2/98)
1858 Jul 6, Lyman Blake patented a
shoe manufacturing machine.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1858 Jul 9, Franz Boas,
anthropologist, was born.
(HN, 7/9/01)
1858 Jul 13, Louis Martin and
Zelie Guerin married in Alencon, France, and for 10 months refrained
from sex in a “Josephite marriage.” Assured by a priest that raising
children was a sacred activity they went on to have 9 children, 5 of
whom joined religious order. Their youngest daughter became famous as
St. Theresa of Liseux, The Little Flower,” canonized in 1925.
(WSJ, 10/17/08, p.W11)
1858 Jul 14, Emmeline Pankhurst,
British suffragist and founder of the Women's Social and Political
Union, was born in Manchester, England.
(HN, 7/14/98)(AP, 7/14/08)
1858 Jul 16, Eugene Ysaye,
violinist, conductor, composer (Pierill Houou), was born in Belgium.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1858 Jul 20, An admission of 50
cents was charged for the first time at the All Star baseball game
between New York and Brooklyn.
(WSJ, 10/15/98, p.B8)
1858 Jul 23, Jewish Disabilities
Removal Act was passed by British Parliament.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1858 Jul 24, During the Illinois
senatorial campaign Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln challenged
Democrat Steven Douglas to a series of joint debates, which covered the
slavery controversy and its impact on the nation. The debates
illuminated the positions of Lincoln and Douglas on slavery, which
Lincoln regarded as "a moral, a social and a political wrong," while
Douglas evaded the moral issue. Even though Lincoln narrowly won the
popular vote, Douglas prevailed in the state legislature 54-41 and thus
the election. The debates propelled Lincoln to national prominence.
(HNPD, 9/4/99)(AP, 7/24/08)
1858 Jul 26, Baron Lionel de
Rothschild became the 1st Jew elected to British Parliament.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1858 Jul 29, Japan signed a treaty
of commerce and friendship with the United States.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 215)(HN, 7/29/98)
1858 Jul, British explorer John
Speke (1827-1864) discovered Lake Victoria, Africa, during a side trip
under the Burton expedition.
(www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/speke_john_hanning.shtml)
1858 Jul-1858 Aug, The summer
Great Stink, aka The Big Stink, took place when the smell of untreated
sewage almost overwhelmed people in central London, England. This
persuaded the government to commission Sir Joseph Bazalgette to lay
down a new network of sewers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink)(WSJ,
10/21/06, p.P8)
1858 Aug 5, Cyrus W. Field
completed the first transatlantic cable. It linked Newfoundland to
Ireland. The cable burned out after several weeks of use.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/cable/peopleevents/e_inquiry.html)(AP, 8/5/08)
1858 Aug 16, A telegraphed message
from Britain’s Queen Victoria to President Buchanan was transmitted
over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable. The cable linked Ireland
and Canada and failed after a few weeks.
(AP,
8/16/97)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/cable/peopleevents/e_inquiry.html)
1858 Aug 17, The 1st bank in
Hawaii opened.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1858 Aug 21, The first of seven
debates between Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen Douglas took place in Ottowa, Ill. Douglas went on to win the
Senate seat in November, but Lincoln gains national visibility for the
first time. Douglas stated in the 1st debate: "I believe this
government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white
men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am
in favor of confining citizenship to white men."
(WSJ, 3/3/00, p.W11)(HN, 8/21/00)(AP, 8/21/08)
1858 Aug 23, "Ten Nights in a
Bar-room," a play about the tragic consequences of consuming alcohol,
opened in New York.
(AP, 8/23/08)
1858 Aug 24, Richmond "Daily
Dispatch" reported 90 blacks arrested for learning.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1858 Aug 27, The 2nd of 7 of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 1858 Illinois senatorial race of took
place in Freeport, Ill. Stephen Douglas formulated what became known as
the Freeport Doctrine, which stated that the people of a territory
could, by lawful means, exclude slavery prior to the formulation of a
state constitution. Douglas first pronounced it in response to a
question posed by Lincoln as to how Douglas could reconcile the
doctrine of "popular sovereignty" with the Dred Scott decision.
(HNQ, 6/4/99)(ON, 4/08, p.2)
1858 Sep 1, The 1st transatlantic
cable failed after less than 1 month.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1858 Sep 8, Lincoln made a speech
about when you can fool people.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1858 Sep 15, The third debate
between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas
was held in Jonesboro, Ill.
(AP, 9/15/08)
1858 Sep 15, The Butterfield
Overland Mail Company began delivering mail from St. Louis to San
Francisco. The company's motto was: "Remember, boys, nothing on God's
earth must stop the United States mail!"
(HN, 9/15/99)
1858 Sep 15, Charles E Vicomte de
Foucauld (d.1916), French explorer and hermit, was born in Strasbourg,
France.
(www.manntaylor.com/foucauld.html)
1858 Sep 17, Dred Scott, US slave,
died. (See Mar 6, 1857, decision US Supreme Court).
(MC, 9/17/01)
1858 Sep 18, Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen A. Douglas held the fourth of their senatorial debates, this
one in Charleston, Ill.
(AP, 9/18/08)
1858 Sep 28, Donati's comet became
the 1st to be photographed.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1858 Sep 29, Rudolf Diesel,
engineer, was born. He invented the diesel engine.
(HN, 9/29/00)
1858 Oct 7, Lincoln and Douglas
held their 5th debate in Galesburg, Ill., on the Knox College campus.
(SFEM, 10/29/00, p.8)(ON, 4/08, p.2)
1858 Oct 9, Gerard L.F. Philips,
Dutch engineer and manufacturer, was born.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1858 Oct 13, The sixth debate
between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas took
place in Quincy, Ill.
(AP, 10/13/08)
1858 Oct 15, John L. Sullivan,
heavyweight boxing champ (1882-92), was born in Mass.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1858 Oct 15, The seventh and final
debate between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen
Douglas took place in Alton, Ill.
(ON, 4/08, p.2)(AP, 10/15/08)
1858 Oct 18, The play "Our
American Cousin" by Tom Taylor premiered at Laura Keene's theater in
New York.
(AP, 10/18/08)
1858 Oct 19, Alice Josephine
McLellan Birney, child welfare worker, was born. Her ideas evolved into
the PTA.
(HN, 10/19/00)
1858 Oct 21, Jacques Offenbach's
opera "Orphee aux Enfers," premiered in Paris. The Can-Can music was
part of the opera. Dancers in Paris displayed their tail feathers in a
high kick routine called the "cancan." The word was a diminutive form
of "canard," the word for duck, whose evenly displayed feathers were
likened to those of the dancers.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)(MC, 10/21/01)
1858 Oct 26, Hamilton Smith
patented rotary washing machine.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1858 Oct 27, Theodore Roosevelt,
26th president of the United States (1901-1909) who was the namesake of
the "Teddy" bear, was born in New York City in a townhouse at 28 East
20th Street. Today a reconstruction of the house is a National Historic
Site and open to the public. The 26th president of the U.S., Roosevelt
died on January 6, 1919. He wrote the 4-volume "The Winning of the
West." In 1996 The American Experience series broadcast a 4-hr.
TV special that covered his life. His pursuit of boxing left him blind
in one eye. He put 230 million acres of land under federal protection.
"Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is
not, then it means that life itself has become one."
(WSJ, 9/30/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/4/96, p.C13)(AP,
10/27/97)(WSJ, 12/18/97, p.A20)(HN, 10/27/98)(HNQ, 11/18/98) (AP,
4/22/99)
1858 Oct 27, Theodore Roosevelt’s
words, "The only one who makes no mistakes is one who never does
anything," were inscribed on the New York City home where he was born.
The Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site is located at
28 E. 20th Street in Manhattan, www.nps.gov/thrb.
(HNQ, 9/28/02)
1858 Oct 28, Rowland Hussey Macy
opened his first New York store at Sixth Avenue and 14th Street in
Manhattan.
(AP, 10/28/08)(SFC, 6/1/04, p.A1)
1858 Oct 31, Jeanie Johnston, a
triple-masted barque, sank in the middle of the Atlantic with a load of
timber. The crew was rescued by a Dutch ship. She was built in Quebec
City for the Donovan family of Tralee. She was the best known of the
"famine ships" that carried Irish refugees to the New World during the
potato famine and returned with timber and food. A copy of the ship,
built in Ireland, was scheduled for completion in 2000.
(SFC, 7/26/99, p.A8,10)
1858 Oct, Coaches of the
Butterfield Overland Stage Co. began serving the SF peninsula. The
Butterfield operation was already charged with carrying the US Mail
from St. Louis to SF via southern Ca.
(Ind, 10/31/98, p.5A)
1858 Nov 2, In Illinois Abraham
Lincoln won 4,085 more popular votes for the Senate than did Sen.
Stephen Douglas; however Illinois senators were elected by the state
legislatures and Douglas won reelection there by 8 votes.
(ON, 4/08, p.3)
1858 Nov 9, NY Symphony Orchestra
made its 1st performance.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1858 Nov 20, Selma Lagerdorf,
Swedish novelist, was born. Her work included "The Story of Gosta
Berling."
(HN, 11/20/00)
1858 Dec 22, Giacomo Puccini,
Italian operatic composer best known for Madam Butterfly, La Boheme and
Tosca, was born in Lucca, Italy. [see Jun 22]
(HN, 12/22/98)(MC, 12/22/01)
1858 Dec 31, Vincas Kudirka
(d.1899), author of the Lithuanian national anthem, was born in
Vilkaviskis County.
(LC, 1998, p.30)(LHC, 12/31/02)
1858 Dec, The French government’s
Council of State limited the ability of Paris to condemn property. Land
could be seized for roads but properties along the projected roads
could not be expropriated.
(ON, 9/06, p.10)
1858 August Czartoryski (d.1893)
was born as a Polish prince. He became a Salesian priest and was
beatified in 2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
1858 Longfellow wrote his poem:
The Courtship of Miles Standish.”
(WSJ, 11/24/04, p.A1)
1858 Francis Frith (1822-1898)
took a six month expedition up the Nile and shot numerous photographs
that included 21 mammoth-plate views (20 x 24 inches).
(WSJ, 12/5/95, p.A-16)(SFC, 9/11/97, p.E3)
1858 The Wornall House, at 61st
Terr., Kansas City, Mo., was built by John B. Wornall as the center of
a 500 acre farm. It was used as a hospital during the Civil War and
survived two battles.
(Postcard, Paragon Products)
1958 In Virginia miners and
financiers settled on the banks of the Levisa Fork River and founded
the town of Grundy to extract local coal deposits. Repeated flooding
forced the town in 1997 to plan for a move to higher ground.
(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A3)
1858 Jacob Gundlach bought a
vineyard in Sonoma, Ca., and called it Rhinefarm. Charles Bundschu from
Mannheim, Germany, known for his prose and keen business sense, joined
the company in 1868, and became part of the family when he married
Jacob Gundlach’s daughter Francisca in 1875.
(SFC, 12/19/02,
p.D4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundlach_Bundschu)
1858 Charles Krug, a German
immigrant, decided to put Napa wine onto a business footing using the
Mission grapes. He served a short apprenticeship under Col. Agoston
Haraszthy in Sonoma.
(WCG, 7/95, p.21)
1858 In NYC Central Park was
opened to the public.
(NG, 5/93, p.32)
1858 Stanford Health Services in
Palo Alto, Ca. was founded as part of the Univ. of the Pacific.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-10)
1858 In Washington DC the original
board of the Washington Monument regained control after the
Know-Nothing Party disbanded due to a split between pro- and
anti-slavery factions.
(ON, 3/00, p.10)
1858 Sen. Seward denounced "an
aristocracy of slaveholders" who controlled the country through their
southern legislators: "I know that the Democratic Party must go down,
and the Republican Party must rise in its place.
(WSJ, 11/20/01, p.A16)
1858 The California Supreme Court
invalidated a law that prohibited the sale of goods on Sunday.
(WSJ, 8/11/00, p.W13)
1858 John Mohler Studebaker
(b1833) joined his two older brothers in a South Bend firm producing
wagons. The company went on to become the world’s largest producer of
farm wagons and carriages.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A12)(HNQ, 1/21/02)
1858 A silver rush happened at Mt.
St. Helena, Ca., but only a small amount of silver was produced.
(WCG, 7/95, p.22)
1858 Pay dirt [silver] was struck
in the Pike’s Peak region of the Colorado Territory.
(WW, 12/96)
1858 The city of Denver began as
one of several prospecting camps on Cherry Creek in what is now
downtown Denver. Gold-seeking settlers at the foot of the Rockies
decided to call their settlement "Denver" after the governor of the
Kansas Territory, in which the settlement was located.
(HNQ, 4/4/00)
1858 Geographer Antonio
Snider-Pellegrini showed how the continents had once fit together.
(NH, 10/02, p.79)
1858 Hadrosaurus, one of the
duck-billed dinosaurs, was unearthed by the Philadelphia anatomist
Joseph Leidy.
(T.E.-J.B. p.24)
1858 John Speake discovered Lake
Victoria, Africa.
(NG, May 1985, p.629)
1858 Gold was reported found on
the sand banks of the Fraser River in BC. The first Chinese arrived in
British Columbia seeking gold along the Fraser River.
(enRoute, 2/96, p.21)(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.T4)
1858 Henry Gray (1827-1861),
English anatomist and surgeon, authored the textbook “Gray’s Anatomy.”
It defined the genre and dissected the body along thematic lines. The
illustrations were by Henry Vandyke (1831-1897) In 2008 Ruth Richardson
authored “The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy: Bodies, Books, Fortune,
Fame.”
(http://streetanatomy.com/blog/?p=48)(Econ,
11/15/08, p.99)(WSJ, 3/27/09, p.W6)
1858 Florence Nightingale
published her “Notes on matters affecting the health, efficiency and
hospital administration of the British army,” in which she presented a
new form of data display later known as “Nightingale’s Rose” or
Nightingale’s coxcomb.” This year she also became the first female
fellow of the Statistical Society of London.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.74)
1858 In England the Covent Garden
Royal Opera House was constructed in London. In 1997 it was scheduled
for a $361 million refurbishment and slated to reopen in Dec, 1999.
(SFC, 7/14/97, p.E3)
1858 Britain made British Columbia
a crown colony.
(SFEC, 9/26/99, p.T4)
1858 The East India Company was
abolished and the British government assumed the administration of
India.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)
1858 Charles Frederick Worth, an
English tailor in Paris, began haute couture. He was hired by Napoleon
to create a suitable wardrobe for Princess Eugenie and trigger a demand
for French fashion.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1858 The Maori responded to
Britain’s colonization of New Zealand by choosing a monarch of their
own.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.B7)
1858 Papal police took Edgardo
Mortara (6), a Jewish boy, from the arms of his father after a Catholic
housemaid claimed to have baptized the boy during an illness. Edgardo
grew up a church ward and later became a priest.
(SFC, 9/1/00, p.D4)
1858-1863 These years are covered in Michael Shaara’s
Civil War era novel "Gods and Generals."
(SFC, 7/4/96, p.D8)
1858-1867 Edgar Degas painted his portrait: "The
Bellelli Family."
(SFC, 10/13/97, p.E1)
1858-1868 Brahms spent about ten years composing his
"Ein Deutsches Requiem, Opus 45," for solo voices, chorus and
orchestra. It is considered his greatest choral work.
(BLW, Geiringer, 1963 ed.p.310 )
1858-1862 In Mexico Benito Juarez served his 1st term
as president. He succeeded in resisting the French and offered a moment
of democracy before bending the constitution to stand for re-election.
(WUD, 1994, p.772)(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A12)
1858-1919 Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Italian composer and
librettist.
(WUD, 1994, p.821)
1858-1922 Allesandro Moreschi, the last castrato
singer. He was a member of the Sistine Chapel Chorus and recorded a few
phonograph records in the first decade of the 20th century. "The sound
on those records makes one shiver."
(LGC-HCS, p.44)
1858-1933 Henry Watson Fowler, English
lexicographer-author: "We tell our thoughts, like our children, to put
on their hats and coats before they go out."
(AP, 7/31/00)
1858-1943 Beatrice Potter Webb, English sociologist:
"Religion is love; in no case is it logic."
(AP, 11/8/98)
1858-1945 Felix Emmanuel Schelling, American
educator and scholar: "True education makes for inequality; the
inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; the glorious
inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity,
individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the
progress of the world."
(AP, 12/15/97)
1858-1947 Max Planck, German physicist. He proved
that in order to fit the theoretical curves of the energy distribution
with the experimental curve of emission of hot bodies, it is necessary
to assume that this minimum amount of radiant energy be equal to hv,
where v is the frequency and h a universal constant known as the
quantum, or Planck’s, constant. This constant is 10-27 cm.-gm.-sec.
(SCTS, p.47)
1858-1950 Agnes Repplier, American essayist: "The man
who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right
time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is
fairly well assured."
(AP, 3/26/99)
1859 Jan 9, Carrie Lane Chapman
Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters, was born.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1859 Jan 20, The Federal War began
in Venezuela. Ezequiel Zamora (1817-1860) led the Federalist Army until
his assassination on Jan 10, 1860.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_War)
1859 Jan 22, Brahms' 1st piano
concerto (in D minor) premiered in Hanover.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1859 Jan 27, Kaiser Wilhelm II,
German emperor (1888-1918) during World War I, was born. He was forced
to abdicate in 1918.
(HN, 1/27/99)(MC, 1/27/02)
1859 Feb 1, Victor Herbert was
born. (cellist, conductor: Pittsburgh Symphony; composer: operettas:
Babes in Toyland, Naughty Marietta; songs: Ah Sweet Mystery of Life (at
Last I’ve Found You)
(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1859 Feb 14, George Washington
Gale Ferris, inventor of the Ferris Wheel, was born.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1859 Feb 14, Oregon was admitted
to the Union as the 33rd state.
(HN, 2/14/98)(AP, 2/14/98)
1859 Feb 17, Giuseppe Verdi's
opera "Un Ballo in maschera" premiered in Napoli.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1859 Feb 18, Shalom Aleichem
(Solomon Rabinowitz, d.1916), Russian-Yiddish playwright, author
and humorist, was born. "To want to be the cleverest of all is the
biggest folly."
(WUD, 1994 p.35)(AP, 1/13/01)
1859 Feb 19, Svante Arrhenius,
Swedish chemist, founder of physical chemistry, was born.
(HN, 2/19/01)
1859 Feb 19, Daniel E. Sickles, NY
congressman, was acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity.
This was the 1st time this defense was successfully used. Sickles had
shot and killed Philip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key, author of
"Star Spangled Banner." He shot Lee, the DC district attorney, in
Lafayette Square for having an affair with his wife. Sickles pleaded
temporary insanity and the sanctity of a man’s home and beat the murder
rap.
(WSJ, 3/29/02, p.W10)(MC, 2/19/02)
1859 Feb 25, The "insanity plea"
was 1st used to prove innocence.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1859 Feb 28, Arkansas legislature
required free blacks to choose exile or slavery.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1859 Mar 1, The present seal of
San Francisco was adopted (its 2nd).
(SC, 3/1/02)
1859 Mar 8, Kenneth Grahame,
Scottish author who created the children’s classic "The Wind in the
Willows," was born.
(HN, 3/8/99)
1859 Mar 10, Henry David Thoreau
recorded in his journal the hearing of his first spring bluebird.
(WSJ, 4/17/96, p.A-18)
1859 Mar 19, The opera "Faust" by
Charles Gounod premiered in Paris.
(AP, 3/19/97)
1859 Mar 21, Zoological Society of
Philadelphia, the 1st in US, was incorporated.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1859 Mar 21, The Scottish National
Gallery opened in Edinburgh.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1859 Mar 26, A.E. Houseman
(d.1936), critic, classics scholar and poet (A Shropshire Lad), was
born. A 1997 fictionalized portrait of Alfred Edward Housman, "The
Invention of Love: Memory Play," was written by Tom Stoppard. He is
best known for his work "A Shropshire Lad."
(SFEC, 3/29/98, p.T9)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.B1)(HN,
3/26/01)
1859 Mar 26, 1st sighting of
Vulcan, a planet thought to orbit inside Mercury.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1859 Mar 28, 1st performance of
John Brahms' 1st Serenade for orchestra.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1859 Apr 3, Reginald De Koven,
composer (Robin Hood), was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1859 Apr 4, Knut Hamsun, Norwegian
writer, was born. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1920. His
work included "From the Cultural Life in Modern America" (1889),
"Hunger," "The Growth of the Soil," "Victoria," and "An Overgrown
Path." A film portrait of his life was produced in 1997.
(SFEC, 4/20/97, DB p.47-49)
1859 Apr 4, Giacomo Meyerbeer's
Opera "Dinorah" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1859 Apr 7, Walter Camp,
father of American football, was born in Connecticut.
(HN, 4/7/97)(MC, 4/7/02)
1859 Apr 9, Realizing that France
had encouraged the Piedmontese forces to mobilize for invading Italy,
Austria began mobilizing its army.
(HN, 4/9/00)
1859 Apr 11, Basil Harwood,
composer, was born.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1859 Apr 14, Charles Dickens' "A
Tale Of Two Cities" was published.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1859 Apr 16, Alexis de Tocqueville
(b.1805), French writer, died in Cannes. His collected writings filled
17 volumes and included "Democracy in America" (1835) and "The Old
Regime and the French Revolution." In 2001 a new English translation by
Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop was published. In 2001 Sheldon
S. Wolin authored "Tocqueville Between Two Worlds." In 2006 Hugh Brogan
authored “Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of
Revolution – A Biography.”
(WSJ, 9/26/01,
p.A18)(www.tocqueville.org/chap1.htm)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.85)
1859 Apr 25,
Ground was broken in Egypt for the Suez Canal.
(AP, 4/25/97)(HN, 4/25/02)
1859 Apr 27, "Pomona" sank in
North Atlantic drowning all 400 aboard.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1859 Apr 29, In the Italian
Campaign some 150,000 Piedmontese troops invaded Piedmontese territory
as the French army raced to support them and the Austrian army
mobilized to oppose them.
(HN, 4/29/00)
1859 May 3, France declared
war on Austria.
(HN, 5/3/98)
1859 May 6, Baron Freidrich von
Humboldt (b.1769), German naturalist and explorer who made the first
isothermic and isobaric maps, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt)
1859 May 9, Threatened by the
advancing French army, the Austrian army retreated across the River
Sesia in Italy.
(HN, 5/9/00)
1859 May 10, French emperor
Napoleon III left Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the
Austrian army in Northern Italy.
(HN, 5/10/02)
1859 May 15, Pierre Curie,
physicist (Nobel 1903), was born. He and his wife discovered
radium.
(HN, 5/15/99)(MC, 5/15/02)
1859 May 20, A scratch force of
Austrians collide with Piedmontese cavalry at the village of
Montebello, in northern Italy.
(HN, 5/20/00)
1859 May 22, Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle (d.1930), author of the Sherlock Holmes series, was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland. He wrote 4 novels featuring Sherlock Holmes.
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly
recognizes genius." In 1999 Daniel Stashower published the biography:
"Teller of Tales."
(AP, 6/17/97)(HN, 5/22/98)(WSJ, 4/12/99, p.A21)
1859 May 26, Captain James Simpson
and his party, looking for the shortest route across Nevada, crossed
the Hickison Summit into Big Smoky Valley. Their path was later
followed by the Pony Express (1860) and the Overland Mail and Stage
(1861).
(BLM, 2001)
1859 May 28, The French army
launched a flanking attack on the Austrian army in Northern France.
(HN, 5/28/00)
1859 May 30, The Piedmontese army
crossed the Sesia River and defeated the Austrians at Palestro, Italy.
(HN, 5/30/00)
1859 Jun 2, French forces crossed
the Ticino River, the last natural barrier between themselves and Milan
with the Austrians in retreat.
(HN, 6/2/00)
1859 Jun 4, The French army under
Napoleon III took Magenta from the Austrian army after a bloody battle
in northern Italy.
(HN, 6/4/99)
1859 Jun 11, Comstock silver load
was discovered near Virginia City, Nevada. Prospector James Finney
stumbled across thick, bluish clay in western Nevada. A fellow minor,
Henry Comstock, gave his name to the lode, the most lucrative silver
ore mine in history. Ott’s Assay Office in Nevada City, Ca., first
assayed samples of the rich Comstock Lode of Nevada. Four Irishmen
known as the Bonanza Kings bought up shares in the Comstock mines and
became rich. They were John Mackay, James Fair, James Flood, and
William O’Brian. Ore from the Comstock lode was hauled by horse-drawn
wagon over Donner Pass to SF.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.T6)(SFC, 4/14/96, T-3)(SFC,
5/19/96,City Guide, p.17)(RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.107)(SC, 6/11/02)
1859 Jun 11, Prince Metternich
(b.1773), Austrian diplomat and statesman, died in Vienna.
(WUD, 1994 ed., p.903)(Internet)
1859 Jun 21, Henry Ossawa Tanner,
African-American painter, was born.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1859 Jun 24, At the Battle of
Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French
army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under Franz Joseph
I in northern Italy.
(HN, 6/24/99)(HNQ, 9/16/99)
1859 Jun 30, French acrobat
Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) crossed Niagara Falls on a
tightrope as 5,000 spectators watched.
(AP, 6/30/97)(HN, 6/30/98)
1859 Jul 1, John Wise (d.1879), O.
A. Gager and John La Mountain took off on a maiden balloon flight to
carry mail from St. Louis to NYC. They landed in Jefferson County, New
York state on July 2. Their over 800-mile flight stood as a record
until 1900.
(ON, 11/00, p.8)
1859 Jul 8, With the signing of
the truce at Villafranca Austria ceded Lombardy to France. France also
received Nice and Savoy.
(HN, 7/8/99)
1859 Jul 12, William Goodale
patented a paper bag manufacturing machine in Mass.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1859 Jul 28, Balington Booth,
founder of Volunteers of America, was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1859 Aug 3, U.S. Army captain
George Edward Pickett faced the British in the Pacific Northwest.
Pickett had served with valor in the Mexican War right after his
graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and
he had subsequently seen duty at several frontier posts. On August 3,
1859, the man whose name would be forever linked to the most famous of
all Civil War charges was the American commander on the scene as the
United States and Great Britain again stood on the brink of war in the
San Juan Islands Pig War.
(HNQ, 2/4/01)
1859 Aug 9, The escalator was
patented. The first working escalator appeared in 1900.
Manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company for the Paris Exposition, it
was installed in a Philadelphia office building the following year.
(HN, 8/9/00)
1859 Aug 12, Katherine Lee Bates
(d.1929), educator, author and composer of "America the Beautiful," was
born.
(WUD, 1994 p.126)(HN, 8/12/01)
1859 Aug 17, Harry Colcord crossed
over the Niagara Falls while strapped to the back of French tightrope
walker Blondin.
(www.simpenguin.com/genealogy/blondin/charlesblondinbio.html)
1859 Aug 27-28, The US oil
business was born in Titusville, Pa. Former army officer Colonel Edwin
L. Drake drilled the first oil well in Titusville, Pa., striking oil at
70 feet and setting off a wild scramble for wealth similar to the
California gold rush of 1849. The land belonged to the Pennsylvania
Rock Oil Company. Until that time, the company had simply collected oil
that seeped out of the ground. Drake's plan was to produce it in large
quantities for use in heating and illumination. Overnight oil fields
sprang up in Pennsylvania but competition, disorganization and
oversupply kept oil prices low. It was not until John D. Rockefeller
and the Standard Oil Company came onto the scene in 1870 that the
petroleum industry developed into a vastly profitable, although much
hated, monopoly.
(HFA, '96, p.36)(AP, 8/27/97)(HNPD, 10/4/98)(WSJ,
10/4/96, p.A9) (HNQ, 2//99)
1859 Aug 28, Leigh Hunt (b.1784),
English poet and essayist, died. He is remembered for his immortal
couplet: “The Two divinist things this world has got: / A lovely women
in a rural spot. In 2005 Nicholas Roe authored “Fiery Heart: The first
Life of Leigh Hunt.” Anthony Holden authored “The Wit in the Dungeon:
The Life of Leigh Hunt.”
(RTH, 8/28/99)(Econ, 1/29/05, p.80)(WSJ, 12/6/05,
p.D8)
1859 Sep 1, The 1st Pullman
sleeping car went into service. George M. Pullman began outfitting
railroad cars. His company was incorporated in 1867.
(SFC, 7/1/98, Z1 p.6)(MC, 9/1/02)
1859 Sep 1, R.C. Carrington and R.
Hodgson made the 1st observation of a solar flare.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1859 Sep 5, Harriot E. Wilson’s
"Our Nig," was published, the first U.S. novel by an African American
woman.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1859 Sep 13, David C. Broderick, a
US Senator, faced David S. Terry, Chief Justice of the California
Supreme Court, in a duel at Lake Merced. Broderick was hit in the chest
and died after 60 hours. Terry resigned his position and was charged
with murder, but not convicted. The weapons used were a pair of Belgian
.58-caliber pistols on loan from an associate of Terry. Broderick’s
weapon was set with a hair-trigger, and misfired. The pistols sold at
auction in 1998 for $34,500.
(PI, 5/30/98, p.5A)(SFC, 11/25/98, p.B8)
1859 Sep 15, Isambard Brunel
(b.1806), engineer of England’s Thames Tunnel, died. He was the son of
Marc Brunel, the engineer who initiated the project. In 2002 R. Angus
Buchanan authored “Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom
Brunel.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel)(ON, 8/07, p.7)
1859 Sep 17, Joshua A. Norton
proclaims himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico
with a proclamation delivered to the offices of the San Francisco
Bulletin.
(HFA, ‘96, p.64)
1859 Sep 20, George Simpson
patented the electric range.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1859 Oct 4, Karl Baedeker
(b.1801), German travel writer and tour guide (Die Schweiz), died.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1859 Oct 9, Alfred Dreyfus, French
artillery officer who was falsely accused of giving French military
secrets to foreign powers, was born.
(HN, 10/9/98)
1859 Oct 16, On Sunday evening
radical abolitionist John Brown and a tiny army of five black and 13
white supporters seized the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia
(now West Virginia). Convinced that local slaves would rise up behind
him, Brown planned to establish a new republic of fugitives in the
Appalachian Mountains. Brown's plans immediately went awry when the
expected slave rebellion did not happen and the townspeople trapped
Brown's men inside the engine house at the Federal arsenal. Within 24
hours, Brown and his four surviving men were captured by a force of 90
U.S. Marines under the command of Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee, pictured
here. Brown, quickly convicted of criminal conspiracy and treason and
sentenced to death, was hanged on December 2, 1859. As he went to the
gallows, Brown handed a note to one of his guards: "I, John Brown, am
now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be
purged away but with blood." The incident is the backdrop for George
MacDonald Fraser’s novel "Flashman and the Angel of the Lord." Brown
was convicted and executed at Charlestown for treason against the state
of Virginia.
(WSJ, 4/10/95, p. A-16)(AP, 10/16/97)(HNPD,
10/16/98)(HNQ, 2/3/00)
1859 Oct 17, Childe Hassam
(d.1935), American impressionist painter, etcher and illustrator, was
born. His work included "St. Patrick's Day."
(WUD, 1994, p.649)(HN, 10/17/00)
1859 Oct 18, Henri Bergson
(d.1941), French philosopher (Creative Evolution- Nobel 1927), was
born. He is said to have taught that man acts first and thinks later as
opposed to Descartes who said man thinks before he acts. He won the
1927 Nobel Prize for Literature. His dualistic philosophy held that
man's intellect enables him to appraise the world and his intuition
tells him something of the all-pervading life force, or elan vital. He
was a spokesman for "process philosophy." "Only those ideas that are
least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words."
(AHD, 1971, p.125)(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(SFC,
3/27/99, p.C2)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)(AP, 10/18/99)(MC, 10/18/01)
1859 Oct 19, Pres. James Buchanan
signed a letter that confirmed the return of California mission
properties to the church.
(SFEC, 3/12/00, p.T5)
1859 Oct 19, Georg Knorr, German
engineer (brake system trains), was born.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1859 Oct 20, John Dewey (d.1952),
American political philosopher, educational theorist and writer (Learn
by doing), was born in Michigan. He was called an advanced liberal and
in 1995 Alan Ryan publishes a biography on Dewey titled: John Dewey and
the High Tide of American Liberalism. Ryan points out that Dewey’s
ideas were anti-institutional, that he advocated economic and social
democracy, that he was more of a romantic and concerned with how things
ought to be in an ideal world. "Open-mindedness is not the same as
empty-mindedness. To hang out a sign saying, ‘Come right in; there is
no one at home’ is not the equivalent of hospitality."
(Civil., Jul-Aug., ‘95, p.77)(MT, Fall. ‘97,
p.15)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)(MC, 10/20/01)(AP, 2/25/98)
1859 Oct 22, Louis (Ludwig) Spohr
(75), composer (Faust), died.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1859 Oct 22, Spain declared war on
the Moors in Morocco.
(HN, 10/22/98)
1859 Nov 12, The first
flying-trapeze circus act was performed by Jules Leotard at the Circus
Napoleon in Paris. He designed the garment that bears his name.
(HN, 11/12/00)(MC, 11/12/01)
1859 Nov 19, Mikhail Mikhayl
Ippolitov-Ivanov, Russian musician (Armenian Rhapsody), was born.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1859 Nov 22, Ludwig "Louis" Spohr
(75), German violinist and composer (Faust), died.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1859 Nov 23, Billy the Kid (born
as Henry McCarty), was born as William H. Bonney (d.1881) in New York
City. He later became a US outlaw. A ballet titled "Billy the Kid" by
Aaron Copland was written in 1938.
(HFA, ‘96, p.42)(WUD, 1994, p.148)(MesWP)(HNQ,
7/9/01)
1859 Nov 24, Cass Gilbert
(d.1934), architect, was born. His work included the NYC Woolworth
Building, completed in 1913.
(HN, 11/24/00)(WSJ, 1/10/00, p.A20)
1859 Nov 24, British naturalist
Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," or "The
Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." The first
printing of 1,250 copies sold out in a single day. It explained his
theory of evolution.
(V.D.-H.K.p.280)(WSJ, 2/24/97, p.A20)(AP,
11/24/97)(HN, 11/24/00)
1859 Nov 28, Washington Irving (b.
Apr 3,1783) American essayist, author, historian, biographer,
attorney/lawyer, died. He was buried in the Hudson Valley Old Dutch
Church cemetery in Tarrytown. He was born in New York City and wrote
the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle." In 2007 Andrew
Burstein authored “The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington
Irving.”
(USAT, 11/12/99, p.2D)(WSJ, 2/27/07, p.D5)
1859 Dec 2, George Seurat
(d.1891), French artist, was born in Paris. He entered the Ecole des
Beaux Arts in 1875. His method of painting with bright colors
juxtaposed as tiny dots was called pointillism, often called
Neo-Impressionism.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.E4)(WUD, 1994, p.1306)(DPCP
1984)(HN, 12/2/98)
1859 Dec 2, John Brown, US
abolitionist, was hanged for his raid on Harper’s Ferry the previous
October. Brown was convicted and executed at Charlestown for treason
against the state of Virginia after his unsuccessful October 16-18 raid
at Harpers Ferry. Six of Brown‘s men were later convicted and hanged.
In 1910 Oswald Garrison Villard authored an account of Brown’s life. In
1972 Richard O. Boyer authored "The Legend of John Brown." In 1998
Russell Banks published his novel "Cloudsplitter," narrated by Owen
Brown (1824-1889), the 3rd son of John Brown. In 2005 David S. Reynolds
authored “John Brown: Abolitionist.”
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.8)(ON, 7/02, p.8)(WSJ, 4/19/05,
p.D8)(SSFC, 4/24/05, p.B1)
1859 Dec 5, Dion Boucicault's
"Octaroon," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1859 Dec 8, Thomas De Quincey
(b.1785), English essayist, died. In 2006 his essays on murder were
collected and published under the title “On Murder.” He is best know
for his famous “Confessions of an Opium Eater” (1821).
(WSJ, 6/9/07,
p.P8)(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9029613/Thomas-De-Quincey)
1859 Dec 10, In Venezuela’s war
for independence from Spain Ezequiel Zamora (1817-1860) led the Battle
of Santa Ines. Zamora and 3,400 men defeated the Central Army of 2,300
men, with about 1,200 casualties altogether on both sides. Zamora had
returned to Venezuela to lead the Federal War, which lasted to 1863.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_War)
1859 Dec 18, South Carolina
declared itself an "independent commonwealth."
(MC, 12/18/01)
1859 Dec 28, Thomas Babington
Macaulay (b.1800), English essayist, historian and politician, died. He
was one of the first to advocate Indian independence, albeit on the
grounds of English commercial self interest.
(www.britannica.com)(Econ, 10/30/04, p.48)
1859 Dec 31, Luigi Ricci (54),
composer, died.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1859 Havelock Ellis (d.1939),
English psychologist, was born "What we call progress is the exchange
of one nuisance for another nuisance."
(AP, 2/9/02)
1859 Frederick Church painted his
fantasy landscape "the Heart of the Andes."
(WSJ, 9/14/00, p.A24)
1859 Jean-Francois Millet painted
"The Angelus," and it became the most reproduced painting of the 19th
century.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.3)
1859 John Rogers bronze statues
were used as molds for low cost painted plaster statues until 1892. An
1873 version showed Lincoln and Grant reading a map with Sec. of War
Edward M. Stanton standing behind wiping his glasses.
(SFC, 4/2/97, Z1 p.6)
1859 George Washington Parke
Custis, Martha Washington’s grandson, wrote: "Recollections and Private
Memoirs of Washington."
(HT, 5/97, p.46)
1859 Francis Galton published his
"Hereditary Genius." He advocated arranged marriages between men of
distinction and women of wealth that would, he said, eventually produce
a gifted race.
(V.D.-H.K.p.399)
1859 J.S. Mill authored “On
Liberty in which he formulated the idea that society could restrict
individual liberty only for society’s own protection.
(WSJ, 8/14/98, p.W11)(Econ, 4/24/04, p.86)
1859 The Murray’s "Handbook for
Travelers in India" was first published.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.T5)
1859 Florence Nightingale
(1820-1910) authored "Notes on Hospitals," which combined two papers
presented the year before at the Social Science Congress. She addressed
every aspect of hospital management, from the purchase of iron
bedsteads to replace the wooden ones, to switching to glass cups
instead of tin. The 108-page book went on into three editions and
established Nightingale once more as an international authority.
(HNQ, 4/29/01)
1859 Evangelist Phoebe Palmer
published "Promise of the Father" on women’s right to preach.
(SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.6)
1859 Joseph Prestwich, English
geologist, published his "Verification of Boucher de Perthes’ Claims"
[that early man made stone tools]. The paper is a model of careful
detailing of evidence, and from it we may date the birth of modern
prehistory.
(RFH-MDHP, p.95)
1859 Samuel Smiles (1812-1904),
Scottish doctor and writer, authored “Self-Help.” It became a classic
work on self-improvement.
(Econ, 4/24/04, p.86)
1859 Author Emily Thornwell
provided maidens with a model of the correct manner of accepting a
marriage proposal in her etiquette book, "The Ladies' Guide to Perfect
Gentility:"
"Sir: The attentions which you have so long and so
assiduously shown to me have not escaped my notice; indeed how could
they, since they were directed exclusively to me?...On consulting my
parents, I find that they do not object to your proposal; therefore, I
have only this to add--may we still entertain the same regard which we
have hitherto cherished for each other, until it shall ripen in that
affection which wedlock shall sanction, and which lapse of time will
not allow to fade. Believe me to be, Yours, sincerely attached...."
(HNPD, 6/4/99)
1859 Brahms played his composition
"Pianoforte Concerto in D minor" for the first time in public in
Hanover under J. Joachim.
(BLW, Geiringer, 1963 ed. p. 61)
1859 Berlioz wrote his version of
Gluck’s opera "Orphee et Eurydice."
(SFC, 8/27/96, p.B3)
1859 Dixie, the musical anthem of
the Civil War South, was first performed in New York City.
(SFC, 9/22/96, zone 1 p.2)
1859 The SF Call reported on the
"Hoochie Coochie" dancers on the stages of the Bella Union, The Olympic
and the Midway Plaisance and other dance halls: "dances of licentious
and profane character, obscenity were served in superior style."
(SFEM,11/30/97, p.20)
1859 Pres. Buchanan ordered a
blockade of Cuba to intercept American-owned slave ships.
(SSFC, 2/8/04, p.C12)
1859 The US was party to a
Friendship, Commerce and Navigation Treaty [with Paraguay]. The treaty
was cited in 1998 (along with the 1963 Vienna Convention) as protecting
the right of individuals jailed in a foreign land to contact their
national consulate.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.A3)
1859 In the US the Highlander
Regiment, aka Cameron Highlanders, was formed. It was made up primarily
of emigrant Scots and Scottish-Americans. It adopted the numerical
designation of 79.
(RC handout, 5/27/96)
1959 Northern and Southern leaders
socialized together for the last time at the Napier Ball in the Willard
Hotel before the start of the US Civil War.
(SFC, 1/5/06, p.E4)
1859 Lyman Cutlar, an American
farmer, shot and killed a Berkshire boar uprooting his potato patch and
the British threatened to put him into irons. The Pig War on San Juan
Island forced an arbitration under Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, who
awarded the San Juan islands off Washington state to the US. Six Royal
Marines and 16 US soldiers died during the 13-year occupation from
drownings, disease and suicides.
(SFEC, 6/18/00, p.T8)
1859 The Texas Supreme Court said
that the people cannot be oppressed and enslaved who are not first
disarmed.
(NG, 5/88, mem. forum)
1859 The town of Bodie, east of
the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Calif., was founded. It was 8,400 feet
high and later the site of a gold find. William S. Body found gold in
Mono County and prompted the growth of the town of Bodie. It was later
made a State Historic Park maintained in its original condition. In
2002 it became the state’s official Gold Rush ghost town. Neighboring
Calico was designated the state’s official Silver Rush ghost town in
2003.
(SFC, 6/23/96, p.T3)(SFEC,11/23/97, p.D5)(SFC,
8/21/02, p.A2)
1859 Colonel Frederick W. Lander
led an expedition to the West to survey a railroad route across Nevada
to California. Artist Alfred Bierstadt accompanied the expedition.
(www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/sherman2.html)
1859 Richard Tobin, SF attorney,
co-founded the Hibernia Savings and Loan Society.
(Daly City Fog Cutter, Vol 8 No. 3, 2008)
1859 Claire Brown was the first
black woman to come to Colorado. She helped establish the Adriance
Church, one of the state’s first churches.
(Hem., 5/97, p.20)
1859 Gustave Stomps (1827-1890), a
German immigrant, founded a furniture company in Dayton, Ohio. The
Stomps Burkhardt Co. of Dayton operated from 1890 to 1928.
(SFC, 9/19/07, p.G6)
1859 The Riemann Hypothesis was
first proposed.
(SFC, 5/25/00, p.A2)
1859 One of the first reports
relating tobacco to cancer was published in France.
(HNQ, 11/10/98)
1859 John Augustus, Boston
businessman, died. He had instituted a practice called probation and
helped spare some 2,000 convicted offenders from prison sentences. In
1891 the Mass. state legislature established the 1st official judicial
probation system. In 1925 the US Congress passed the National Probation
Act.
(ON, 5/02, p.5)
1859 Peter Lassen was killed at
Paiute Peak near the Black Rock Desert by a single shot through the
skull.
(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A9)
1859 In Australia the Yalumba
Winery in the Barossa Valley, South Australia, was begun by the Sam
Smith family.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T5)
1859 A treaty between Britain and
Guatemala defined the boundaries of Belize.
(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A12)
1859 There was a rain of tiny fish
over England.
(SFC, 5/30/98, p.E4)
1859 Imam Shamil (1797-1871),
Caucasian (Chechen) warrior, surrendered and became an honorary captive
of Alexander II.
(SFC, 8/13/99, p.A14)
1859 The Muslim North Caucasus
region of Chechnya was incorporated into the Russian empire after
hundreds of years of fighting. Czarist armies conquered Chechnya after
decades of fighting.
(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 10/26/02, p.A10)
1859 One of the first reports
relating tobacco to cancer was published in France.
(HNQ, 11/10/98)
1859 Gaston Plante, French
physicist, invented the first lead-acid rechargeable battery.
(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.23)(Econ, 3/7/09, TQ p.4)
1859 Leon Benouville (b.1821),
French painter, died. His paintings included “The Wrath of Achilles”
(1847).
(www.insecula.com/us/contact/A005594.html)
1859 A series of at least 4
Olympic competitions began in Athens, Greece.
(WSJ, 7/19/96, p.R16)
1859 Roatan Island, 40 miles off
the mainland, was ceded to Honduras. The British had settled the island
with African slaves and the islanders speak English with a Caribbean
accent. It was controlled for a time by the pirate Henry Morgan.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.T10)
1859 The onion-domed Great
Synagogue was erected in the Jewish quarter of Budapest, Hungary.
(Sm, 3/06, p.76)
1859 The present church in
Thingvellir, Iceland, was constructed.
(NH, 6/96, p.53)
1859 The first polo club, The
Retreat in Silchar, India, was founded. It was organized by British
soldiers in northern India.
(Hem., 7/95, p.87)
1859 Dr. David Livingstone,
Scottish missionary, arrived in Malawi. The town of Livingstonia was
later named in his honor.
(SFC, 8/18/99, p.A10)
1859 Melchor Ocampo, a Mexican
lawyer, scientist and liberal politician, penned a 537-word ode to
marriage, which was incorporated as the vows in a new civil marriage
law. They were meant to replace religious vows as Mexican liberals
stripped away the Roman Catholic Church’s control over much of the
country’s political, social and economic life. Conservative foes
summarily executed Ocampo by firing squad for promoting the separation
of church and state, but kept the amended vows in the new civil
marriage law.
(AP, 7/30/06)
1859 In Serbia the Zastava
manufacturing plant in Kragujevac began operations.
(SFC, 5/20/99, p.A12)
1859 After four years in the
United States, Alfred Nobel returned to Sweden and built a factory to
manufacture the explosive nitroglycerin.
(HNPD, 10/21/98)
1859-1909 The Indian-head penny was minted over this
time.
(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.W15)
1859-1927 Jerome K. Jerome, English author and
humorist: "It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has
plenty of work to do."
(AP, 5/30/97)
1859-1947 Carrie Chapman Catt, American feminist:
"No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom
supported by popular opinion."
(HN, 7/19/98)
1859-1954 The colonial period of Vietnam.
(SSFC, 8/5/01, p.T1)
Go to 1860-1861