istoryworld
All Events
Edwin Pearce Christy launches the Virginia Minstrels, later to become America's most popular minstrel show under the name Christy's Minstrels
English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Austrian physicist Christian Doppler explains the acoustic effect now known by his name
The publication of the first part of the satirical novel Dead Souls, by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, proves a sensation in Russia
US showman P.T. Barnum draws huge crowds to the New York premises where his attractions include 'General Tom Thumb', a 4-year-old midget
Honoré de Balzac begins publication of a collected edition of his fiction under the title La Comédie Humaine
English author Thomas Babington Macaulay publishes a collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome
US secretary of state Daniel Webster and British negotiator Lord Ashburton resolve US-Canadian boundary disputes
The First Opium War ends with the island of Hong Kong, and extensive new trading rights, ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Nanking
Thomas Young, a tea merchant, builds a new house on the site of the original Pope's Villa.
The Brunel engineers, father and son, finish an 18-year project tunnelling under the Thames between Wapping and Rotherhithe
The Flying Dutchman is the first of Richard Wagner's major operas to be staged, with its premiere in Dresden
The British take control of the existing Boer republic and proclaim Natal a British protectorate
Edgar Allan Poe publishes The Pit and the Pendulum, a cliff-hanging tale of terror at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition
Henry Cole commissions 1000 copies of the world's first Christmas card, designed for him by John Calcott Horsley
The Great Migration across the north American continent to the Pacific establishes the Oregon Trail
The statue of Nelson, by E.H. Baily, is placed on top of its column in Trafalgar Square
Isambard Kingdom Brunel launches the Great Britain, the first iron steamship designed for the transatlantic passenger trade
The frontispiece to Pugin's Revival of Christian Architecture displays three cathedrals and twenty-two other religious buildings designed by him
Pugin begins building a house for his family, now known as The Grange, at Ramsgate
Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, amplified now with incidental music, is greeted as a masterpiece at a performance of the play in Potsdam
William Hickling Prescott brings the Conquistadors dramatically to life in his 3-volume History of the Conquest of Mexico
Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz completes his pioneering Poissons Fossiles ('Fossil Fish'), classifying more than 1500 categories
Daniel O'Connell is convicted of seditious conspiracy and is sentenced to prison
