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)

English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede

Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of twenty years' research

A French and Piedmontese army liberates Milan from Austrian rule

The opera Faust, by French composer Charles Gounod, has its premiere in Paris

The principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia merge as a single new entity, to be called Romania

A 13-ton bell is installed above London's Houses of Parliament, soon giving its name (Big Ben) to both the clock and the clock-tower

French and Piedmontese forces defeat the Austrians decisively at Solferino, in a battle involving appalling casualties

French author Stendhal publishes his novel La Chartreuse de Parme ('The Charterhouse of Parma')

In On Liberty John Stuart Mill makes the classic liberal case for the priority of the freedom of the individual

Samuel Smiles provides an inspiring ideal of Victorian enterprise in Self-Help, a manual for ambitious young men

Tennyson publishes the first part of Idylls of the King, a series of linked poems about Britain's mythical king Arthur

Charles Dickens publishes his French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities

Edward FitzGerald publishes The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, romantic translations of the work of the Persian poet

US artist James McNeill Whistler settles in London, which he makes his home for the rest of his life

The treaty of Turin brings much of north Italy under the control of Cavour (for the kingdom of Sardinia), who in return cedes Savoy and Nice to France

German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and technician Peter Desdega perfect the non-luminous gas burner for use in the laboratory

Garibaldi lands at Marsala in Sicily in May with his thousand Redshirts, and wins control of the island for the king in waiting, Victor Emmanuel II

Florence Nightingale opens a training school for nurses in St Thomas's Hospital, establishing nursing as a profession

Garibaldi crosses from Sicily to the mainland and by September is in Naples

Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861)

George Eliot publishes The Mill on the Floss, her novel about the childhood of Maggie and Tom Tulliver

Victor Emmanuel II is proclaimed king of a united Italy, with only Rome and Venetia remaining outside his realm

After four years of consultation, Alexander II issues a decree freeing Russia's millions of serfs