Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas

Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll tells 10-year-old Alice Liddell, on a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland

British architect George Gilbert Scott designs a memorial for Prince Albert in Kensington Gardens

English author Charles Kingsley publishes an improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies

The Metropolitan Railway, the world's first to go underground, opens in London using steam trains between Paddington and Farringdon Street

48-year-old Julia Margaret Cameron is given a camera by her daughter, in the Isle of Wight, and decides to concentrate on portraits

The Marylebone Cricket Club, arbiter of cricket, finally rules that overarm bowling is legitimate

The First International is established in London, with Karl Marx soon emerging as the association's leader

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell presents to the Royal Society his discoveries in the field of electromagnetics, now known collectively as Maxwell's Equations

English surgeon Joseph Lister introduces the era of antiseptic surgery, with the use of carbolic acid in the operating theatre

Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier

A committee to campaign for women's suffrage is formed in Manchester, the first of many in Britain

Algernon Swinburne scandalizes Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads

Britain's new Reform Act extends the franchise to working men in British towns

The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg

The world's first croquet tournament takes place in Evesham and is won by Walter Jones-Whitmore

The Queensberry rules, named after the Marquess of Queensberry, introduce padded gloves in boxing, and rounds of three minutes

Benjamin Disraeli becomes British prime minister for the first time, at the head of a Conservative government, but only for a few months

Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone becomes British prime minister, for the first of four times, and remains in office for six years