istoryworld
Events relating to europe
Gustave Flaubert publishes Madame Bovary, a novel of frustrated romanticism in a provincial French context
English chemist William Henry Perkin accidentally creates the first synthetic die, aniline purple (now known as mauve)
David Livingstone urges upon a Cambridge audience the high ideal of taking 'commerce and Christianity' into Africa
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
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
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
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
'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
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
Lionel Nathan Rothschild becomes the first Jew to sit in Britain's House of Commons, taking his oath on the Old Testament
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
