istoryworld
All Events
Abraham Linclon comes to national prominence through his debates on slavery with Stephen Douglas, his rival for an Illinois seat in the Senate
'Amos Barton' and two other stories are published together, as Scenes of Clerical Life, under the pseudonym George Eliot
The India Act places India under the direct control of the British government, ending the rule of the East India Company
The first block of a new building for the Public Record Office is completed in Chancery Lane, City of London, with further extensions added 1868-1899
Charles Darwin is alarmed to receive in his morning post a paper by Alfred Russell Wallace, outlining very much his own theory of evolution
The Treaty of Tientsin, ending the Second Opium War, gives European powers new rights to intervene in Chinese affairs
Under the Treaty of Aigun, Russia wins from China the valuable Pacific coastline down to Vladivostok
The clock tower at Westminster, designed by Pugin and now commonly known now as Big Ben, is completed
Lionel Nathan Rothschild becomes the first Jew to sit in Britain's House of Commons, taking his oath on the Old Testament
Oliver Wendell Holmes' book The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is the first in a breakfast-table series
Longfellow uses a romantic story of early New England for his narrative poem The Courtship of Miles Standish
The stench in central London, rising from the polluted Thames in a hot summer, creates what becomes known as the Great Stink
US entrepreneur Cyrus W. Field succeeds in laying a telegraph cable across the Atlantic, but it fails after only a month
An Irish branch of the US Fenians is established as the Irish Republican Brotherhood
Napoleon III sends forces to capture the port of Da Nang, beginning the French colonization of Vietnam
The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, is deposed by the British and exiled to Rangoon, in Burma
Speke reaches Lake Victoria and guesses that it is probably the source of the Nile
Hector Berlioz completes his 4-hour opera The Trojans (not performed as a complete work until 1890)
Chelsea Bridge opens, designed by Thomas Page
Marian Evans and G.H. Lewes move from Parkshot in Richmond to Holly Lodge in Wandsworth
English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede
Marian Evans reluctantly allows her publisher to admit the truth of rumours that George Eliot is Marian Evans, also known as Mrs Lewes
Joseph Bazalgette is given the task of providing London with a desperately needed new system of sewers
Louis Pasteur's experiments with sterilyzed broth are subsequently seen as the final and conclusive disproof of spontaneous generation
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of twenty years' research
