istoryworld
All Events
Pope Pius IX returns to Rome under the protection of French troops, with his enthusiasm for any form of change much reduced.
The Habsburgs recover power in both Austria and Hungary
Expelled from Germany after the year of revolutions, Marx makes his home in tolerant London
Vancouver Island is given the status of a British crown colony, to be followed by British Columbia in 1858
Dante Gabriel Rossetti depicts his sister Christina in The Girlhood of Mary Virgin
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky undergoes a mock execution, after being sentenced to death for revolutionary activities against tsar Nicholas I
Fyodor Dostoevsky begins four years of hard labour in Siberia for revolutionary activities
Queen Victoria knights her favourite painter of animals, Edwin Landseer
The Scottish missionary David Livingstone is profoundly shocked by what he sees of the slave trade at the heart of Africa
The British government buys the Danish fortresses on the Gold Coast, including Christiansborg castle in Accra
British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston sends a naval squadron to seize Greek ships in the Don Pacifico case
The brothers James and John Harper launch in New York Harper's Monthly Magazine, still published today
As many as 50,000 US pioneers travel west this year on the Oregon Trail
Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility
British engineer Robert Stephenson completes a box-girder railway bridge over the Menai Strait, between Anglesey and mainland Wales
California is admitted to the union just two years after being acquired from Mexico
The slave trade, but not slavery itself, is banned in Washington and the district of Columbia
Brazil, historically the world's second largest importer of slaves from Africa, finally bans the slave trade
US president Zachary Taylor dies after a short illness and is succeeded by his vice-president, Millard Fillmore
The US Congress passes the Compromise of 1850, designed to defuse the growing crisis over slavery
The Fugitive Slave Act, concerned with the arrest of runaway slaves, is the most contentious part of the Compromise of 1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes his novel The Scarlet Letter, in which Hester Prynne is forced to wear the letter A for Adultress
US Secretary of State John Clayton and British ambassador Henry Bulwer come to an agreement about the building of a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific
Escaped slave Harriet Tubman makes the first of many dangerous journeys back into Maryland to bring other slaves into freedom
Jenny Lind, the 'Swedish Nightingale', has a great success touring the USA in a show presented by P.T. Barnum
