istoryworld
All Events
Ramakrishna, a mystic with a popular style of teaching, becomes the chief priest in the Kali temple in Dakshineswar and begins to build up a very wide community of followers
In the cramped sitting room that she shares as a study with Lewes, Marian Evans begins writing her first novel, Adam Bede
David Livingstone urges upon a Cambridge audience the high ideal of taking 'commerce and Christianity' into Africa
The Haughwout Store, a five-storey building in New York, instals the first Otis safety elevator
Russian exile Alexander Herzen, publishes in London a radical newspaper called Kolokol (The Bell)
Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke set off from Bagamoyo in their search for the source of the Nile
An ultra-reactionary Supreme Court judgement in the Dred Scott case heightens US tensions over slavery
French chemist Louis Pasteur proves the existence of micro-organisms by showing that a liquid will only ferment if exposed to contamination from the air
Animal fat on a new issue of cartridges sparks off the Indian Mutiny, also know as the First War of Indian Independence
The Boers of the southern Transvaal declare independence as the South African Republic
Charles Baudelaire publishes his first and extremely influential collection of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal
The old Cromwell House is demolished and a new one, designed by Robert Philip Pope, is completed by June 1858
In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school
After being besieged for five months in Lucknow, the remnants of the British garrison finally escape
Acts of exceptional valour in the Crimean War are rewarded with a new medal, the Victoria Cross, made from the metal of captured Russian guns
Kneller Hall is bought by the War Department and reopened as the Military School of Music, later the Royal Military School of music.
Palmerston's government collapses and Lord Derby heads another Conservative minority administration
Conservatives seize Mexico City at the start of a civil war against the Liberal government
John O'Mahony, an Irish emigrant to the USA, founds the Fenian Brotherhood as a secret organization supporting the Irish republican cause
Nathanel Pringsheim observes, in the freshwater alga Oedogonium, the penetration of an egg cell by a sperm cell to form a new diploid cell
Burton and Speke reach Lake Tanganyika at Ujiji, a place later famous for the meeting between Livingstone and Stanley
Lucknow is retaken by the British, nearly a year after it fell to the rebels
Brunel dies just before the maiden voyage of his gigantic final project, the luxury liner The Great Eastern
Napoleon III and Cavour hatch a secret plan at Plombièes to tempt Austria into war in north Italy, and agree how to divide up the spoils
The end of the Indian Mutiny is followed by brutal British retaliation
