At a congress in London Engels persuades a group of radical Germans to adopt the name Communist League

Charlotte becomes the first of the Brontë sisters to have a novel published — Jane Eyre

Don Pacifico's house in Athens is burnt by an anti-Semitic crowd, provoking an international incident

English mathematician George Boole describes Boolean algebra in his pamphlet Mathematical Analysis of Logic

Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights follows just two months after her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre

An uprising in Sicily in January starts off Europe's 'year of revolutions'

The Communist Manifesto, by Marx and Engels, is published in Paris with the ringing slogan: 'Workers of the world, unite!'

A revolution in Paris in February removes Louis-Philippe and introduces France's second republic

An uprising in Vienna leads to the resignation, on the following day, of the long-serving chancellor Klemens von Metternich

Another uprising in Vienna causes the emperor Ferdinand I to flee for safety to Innsbruck

Martial law is imposed in Prague after a demonstration by radical Czech students following a Pan-Slav congress

Suppression of unrest in Hungary provokes a third violent uprising in Vienna and another flight by Ferdinand I, this time to Olomouc

An uprising in Rome causes Pope Pius IX to flee for safety to a coastal fortress at Gaeta

The Prussian army is the first to adopt a breech-loading rifle, the 'needle-gun' developed by gunsmith Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse

Scottish physicist William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, proposes the 'absolute' scale of temperature

Honoré de Balzac completes publication of La Comédie Humaine, a 17-volume collected edition of his numerous novels and stories

Louis Napoleon is elected the first president of France's new Second Republic

English art students Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The prime minister of the papal states, Pellegrino Rossi, is assassinated in Rome

18-year-old Francis Joseph becomes emperor of Austria when his uncle, Ferdinand I, abdicates at the end of a year of unrest

Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë die within a period of eight months

A new Roman republic is proclaimed, with veteran agitator Giuseppe Mazzini in the leading role

Nationalist leader Lajos Kossuth announces the independence of Hungary and the deposition of the Habsburg dynasty

Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels

Giuseppe Garibaldi arrives from exile in South America to defend the new Roman republic against a French army