*Timeline 1850-1854*

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1850        Jan 6, Franz Xaver Scharwenka, German pianist and composer
(Mataswintha), was born.
    (MC, 1/6/02)

1850        Jan 27, Samuel Gompers (d.1924) was born in London. Gompers,
labor leader and first president of the American Federation of Labor
(AFL), apprenticed as a cigar maker in, London. At the age of 13,
Gompers arrived in America, joined the Cigarmakers' Union in 1864 and
became the union's president in 1877. In 1881 Gompers was among the
founders of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the
U.S. and Canada, which was reorganized as the American Federation of
Labor in 1886. He served as president of the AFL every year from its
inception (except 1895) until his death. As the acknowledged leader of
America?s labor movement, Gompers stressed practical demands of hours
and wages and opposed theorists and radicals.
    (HN, 1/27/99)(HNQ, 2/24/00)

1850        Jan 29, Lawrence Hargrave, inventor of the box kite, was born.
    (MC, 1/29/02)
1850        Jan 29, Ebenezer Howard, pioneer of garden cities, was born
in London.
    (MC, 1/29/02)
1850        Jan 29, Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise
bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union
as a free state.
    (AP, 1/29/98)
1850        Jan 29, Luigi Sabatelli (b.1772), Italian artist, died in Milan.
    (www.artnet.com/library/07/0748/T074823.asp)

c1850        Jan 30, Charles Steingraff (50), a bachelor farmhand, was
hanged in Ohio for the murder of a deaf and blind, 12-year-old girl. An
estimated 25,000 spectators watched the execution.
    (ON, 10/02, p.3)

1850        Feb 12, Washington's original Farewell Address manuscript
sold for $2,300.
    (MC, 2/12/02)

1850        Feb 18, The California state legislature created the
original 18 counties including the city of San Francisco.
    (SFEC, 1/11/98, DB p.41)(www.sfgov.org/site/visitor_index.asp?id=8091)

1850        Feb 27, Henry Edwards Huntington, US railroad exec, was born.
    (MC, 2/27/02)

1850        Mar 7, Tomas Masaryk, Pres. of Czech (1918-35), was born to
a Slovak father and Czech-German mother in the small town of Hodonin in
South Moravia, very close to what is now the border with Slovakia.
    (http://archiv.radio.cz/english/czechs/5-1-00.html)
1850        Mar 7, In a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel
Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.
    (AP, 3/7/98)

1850        Mar 9, Alexandre Luigini, composer, was born.
    (MC, 3/9/02)

1850        Mar 11, Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania opened as
the 1st female medical school. [see 1848, Oct 12, 1850]
    (MC, 3/12/02)

1850        Mar 16, Nathaniel Hawthorne?s "The Scarlet Letter" was first
published.
    (AP, 3/16/97)

1850        Mar 18, Henry Wells & William Fargo formed American Express
in Buffalo. [see Mar 18, 1852]
    (HN, 3/18/98)(MC, 3/18/02)

1850        Mar 26, Edward Bellamy (d.1898), writer, was born. His work
included the utopian novel "Looking Backward, 2000-1887," which forecast
what America might look like if people worked together for the common good.
    (WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W17)(HN, 3/26/01)

1850        Mar 27, The party of Dr. Thadeus Hildreth found a 22-pound
gold nugget in Tuolemne County, Ca. The place was initially named
Hildreth?s Diggings, then changed to New Camp, then American Camp and
finally Columbia. The population soon swelled to 15,000.
    (SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 3/19/00, p.T6)(CVG, Vol 16, p.1)

1850        Mar 29, Ireland's SS Royal Adelaide sank in storm and 200
people died.
    (MC, 3/29/02)

1850        Mar 30, Charles Dickens published the first issue of his
magazine ?Household Words.?
    (Econ, 9/10/11, p.95)(www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/hw.html)

1850        Mar 31, The US population hit 23,191,876, with the Black
population at 3,638,808 (15.7%).
    (MC, 3/31/02)
1850        Mar 31, John Calhoun (b.1782), US vice-president
(1825-1832), died while a senator from South Carolina. He was elected
vice president under two presidents, John Quincy Adams in 1824 and
Andrew Jackson in 1828.
    (WUD, 1994 p.210)(HNQ, 8/19/99)(MC, 3/31/02)

1850        Apr 1, The San Francisco County government was established.
    (www.sfgov.org/site/visitor_index.asp?id=8091)

1850        Apr 4, The city of Los Angeles was incorporated.
    (AP, 4/4/97)

1850        Apr 8, William Henry Welch, US pathologist (founded John
Hopkins), was born.
    (MC, 4/8/02)

1850        Apr 15, The city of San Francisco was incorporated.
    (AP, 4/15/97)(www.sfgov.org/site/visitor_index.asp?id=8091)

1850        Apr 16, Thomas Sidney Gilchrist, British metallurgist and
inventor, was born.
    (HN, 4/16/01)
1850        Apr 16, Marie [Gresholtz] Tussaud (89), Swiss-born maker of
wax figures, died.
    (MC, 4/16/02)

1850        Apr 20, Daniel Chester French (d.1931), sculptor of the
Concord Minuteman, was born at Exeter, New Hampshire. He had his estate
in Stockbridge, Mass. His work also included the Lincoln Memorial. His
Chesterwood estate became a museum with an annual 6-month summer season.
[Ph. 413-298-3579]
    (HN, 4/20/98)(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)

1850        Apr 23, William Wordsworth (b.1770), English poet, died.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth)

1850        Apr 24, Louis Alexandre Piccinni (70), composer, died.
    (MC, 4/24/02)

1850        Apr, During the debate on the Compromise of 1850, Senator
Henry Foote, a unionist and supporter of the compromise, drew a pistol
on Senator Thomas Hart Benton, an opponent of the deal. Other senators
intervened before Foote could fire.
    (SFC, 7/25/98, p.A6)
1850        Apr, The side-wheel steamship General Anthony Wayne sank  in
50 feet of water in lake Erie about eight miles north of Vermilion,
Ohio. 38 of the 93 passengers and crew on board died. The wreckage was
discovered in 2007.
    (AP, 6/21/07)

1850        May 10, Thomas Johnstone Lipton, yachtsman, tea magnate
(Lipton Tea), was born in Glasgow.
    (MC, 5/10/02)

1850        May 16, Johannes von Mikulica-Radecki, Polish surgical
pioneer, was born.
    (HN, 5/16/01)

1850        May 18, Oliver Heaviside, physicist who predicted existence
of ionosphere, was born.
    (SC, 5/18/02)

1850        Jun 4, A self deodorizing fertilizer was patented in England.
    (MC, 6/4/02)

1850        Jun 11, Cardinal Franzoni told Rev. Joseph Sadoc Alemany, a
Dominican missionary who had worked in the Midwest frontier, that he was
appointed the new bishop of Monterey, Ca.
    (SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A22)

1850        Jun 16, Pope Pius IX persuaded Rev. Joseph Sadoc Alemany to
return to the US and to go to California.
    (SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A22)

1850        Summer, James Strang announced that he was divinely directed
to become a king arranged for his coronation at St. James on Big Beaver
Island in Lake Michigan.
    (Smith., Aug. 1995, p.86)

1850        Jun 27, Lafcadio Hearn, US journalist, author (Chita), was born.
    (SC, 6/27/02)
1850        Jun 27, Ivan Vazov, poet, novelist, playwright (Under the
Yoke), was born in Bulgaria.
    (SC, 6/27/02)

1850        Jul 2, Prussia agreed to pull out of Schleswig and Holstein,
Germany.
    (HN, 7/2/98)
1850        Jul 2, Sir Robert Peel (b.1788), former British prime
minister (1834-35 and 1841-46), died. He founded the Conservative Party
and the London Police Force whose officers were called "bobbies." In
2007 Douglas Hurd authored ?Robert Peel: A Biography.?
    (HN, 2/5/99)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.93)

1850        Jul 4, President Zachary Taylor stood hatless in the sun for
hours listening to long-winded speeches. He returned to the White House
and attempted to cool off by eating cherries, cucumbers and drinking
iced milk. Severe stomach cramps followed and it is likely that Taylor's
own physicians inadvertently killed him with a whole series of
debilitating treatments. [see Jul 9]
    (HN, 7/11/99)

1850        Jul 9, Zachary Taylor (b.1784), the 12th president of the
United States, died of cholera at the age of 65 after serving only 16
months. He was succeeded by Millard Fillmore. Taylor was a Southerner, a
slaveholder and the hero of the Mexican War in 1848 when he was
nominated by the Whig Party as a candidate for president of the United
States. He was an inoffensive candidate in the anxious years leading up
to the Civil War because he had never taken a position on a political
issue or even cast a vote in his life. During his 16 months as
president, Congress addressed the explosive issue of slavery's expansion
to the west with the Compromise of 1850, but Taylor himself never had
the opportunity to act on this issue.
    (WUD,1994,p.1679)(SFC, 9/26/96, p.E10)(AP, 7/9/97)(HN, 7/9/98)(HN,
7/11/99)
1850        Jul 9, Bb, Bahi prophet, was executed in Tabriz, Iran.
    (MC, 7/9/02)

1850        Jul 10, Millard Fillmore (Whig) was sworn in as the 13th
president following the death of Zachary Taylor.
    (SFC, 2/21/97, p.A25)    (AP, 7/10/97)(HN, 7/10/98)

1850        Jul 14, The 1st public demonstration of ice made by
refrigeration took place. James Harrison of Australia designed an
ice-making machine. It was an improvement on one invented by Jacob
Perkins in 1834.
    (MC, 7/14/02)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)

1850        Jul 15, Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini, the first American
canonized saint, was born.
    (HN, 7/15/98)

1850        Jul 17, Statesman Daniel Webster said: "I was born an
American; I will live an American; I shall die an American."
    (HNQ, 2/15/02)
1850        Jul 17, Astronomer William Cranch Bond and photographer John
Adams Whipple focused on Vega and produced the 1st photograph of a star.
    (NH, 7/00, p.16)

1850        Jul 20, John Graves Shedd, president of Marshall Field and
Company, was born. He was the first Chicago merchant to give his
employees a half-day off on Saturdays.
    (HN, 7/20/98)

1850        Jul 25, Gold was discovered in the Rogue River in Oregon,
extending the quest for gold up the Pacific coast.
    (HN, 7/25/98)
1850        Jul 25, The clipper ship Frolic, enroute from Hong Kong to
SF, wrecked on a reef at the north edge of what is now California?s
Preserve off Point Cabrillo Light Station. It had run opium from India
to China to trade for silver and merchandise. The crew escaped in small
boats and though all trade goods were lost the area became recognized as
ideal for a redwood sawmill.
    (SSFC, 2/11/07,
p.G10)(www.pointcabrillo.org/frolic-history.htm)(WSJ, 12/15/07, p.W10)

1850        Jul 26, The final design for London?s Great Council
Exhibition, the first-ever World?s Fair, was officially approved. The
structure of the glass and iron building,  designed by Joseph Paxton,
was essentially completed by Jan 1, 1851. The Exhibition opened May 1.
    (WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A16)(ON, 7/04, p.12)

1850        Aug 5, Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and author of
"The Necklace," was born.
    (HN, 8/5/98)

1850        Aug 17, Jose Francisco de San Martin (b.1778),
Argentine-born South American revolutionary hero, died in France.
    (SC, 8/17/02)(Internet)

1850        Aug 18, Honore de Balzac (b.1799), French novelist, died at
age 51.
    (WUD, 1994, p.115)(MC, 8/18/02)

1850        Aug 22, Nikolaus Lenau (48) (pseudonym of Nikolaus Franz
Niembsch), Hungarian-born poet and writer, died in Austria.
    (MC, 8/22/02)(Internet)

1850        Aug 23, The 1st national women's rights convention convened
in Worcester, Mass.
    (MC, 8/23/02)

1850        Aug 26, Charles Richet, French physiologist
(anaphylaxis-Nobel 1913), was born.
    (MC, 8/26/02)

1850        Aug 28, Richard Wagner's opera "Lohengrin'' was premiered at
Weimar, Germany, under the direction of Franz Liszt.
    (WSJ, 3/16/98, p.A20)(RTH, 8/28/99)

1850        Sep 2, Eugene Field, author, poet and journalist, was born.
His work included "Little Boy Blue."
    (HN, 9/2/00)(MC, 9/2/01)

1850        Sep 9, California was admitted as the 31st state of the US.
    (INV, 7/95, p.12)(SFC, 6/13/96, p.A17)(SFC, 1/25/97, p.A17)(AP, 9/9/97)
1850        Sep 9, Territories of New Mexico and Utah were created.
    (MC, 9/9/01)

1850        Sep 11, Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," gave her
first  concert in the United States, at Castle Garden in New York.
    (AP, 9/11/00)

1850        Sep 18, Congress passed the second Fugitive Slave Bill into
law (the first was enacted in 1793) as part of Compromise of 1850. It
allowed slave owners to reclaim slaves who had escaped to other states.
Dedicated Massachusetts abolitionist Silas Soule ironically gave his
life for the red man, not the black. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 set
fines up to $1,000 for facilitating a slave?s flight.
    (AP, 9/18/97)(HN, 9/18/98)(MC, 9/18/01)(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)

1850        Sep 20, The slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished
as a provision of Henry Clay?s Compromise of 1850. Because each state
had its own slavery code when the District of Columbia was founded in
1800, Washington had adopted Maryland?s laws. Although the 1850
legislation made the slave trade illegal, slavery itself was still
legal. Nevertheless, Washington became a haven for free blacks. By 1860,
free blacks outnumbered slaves almost four-to-one. President Abraham
Lincoln put an end to Washington?s slavery altogether in 1862, freeing
about 2,989 African Americans who were then slaves according to the
slavery code.
    (HNPD, 9/20/98)(HN, 9/20/98)

1850        Sep 22, An earthquake in Sichuan, China, killed some 300,000
people.
    (www.geohaz.org/member/news/signif.htm)

1850        Sep 28, Flogging was abolished as a form of punishment in
the U.S. Navy.
    (AP, 9/28/97)

1850        Sep 29, Pres. Millard Fillmore named Mormon leader Brigham
Young as the first governor of the Utah Territory.
    (HN, 9/29/98)(SFC, 10/23/02, p.H4)

1850        Oct 3, The Univ. of Mich. Medical School received its first
students.
    (MT, Fall/99, p.3)

1850        Oct 12, The 1st women's medical school, the Women's Medical
College of Pennsylvania, opened. [see 1848, Mar 11, 1850]
    (MC, 10/12/01)

1850        Oct 19, Annie Smith Peck (d.1935), one of the world?s
renowned mountain climbers, was born in Providence, Rhode Island.
    (www.ric.edu/rpotter/smithpeck.html)

1850        Nov 6, The San Francisco Bay Yerba Buena and Angel islands
were reserved for military use.
    (MC, 11/6/01)

1850        Nov 9, Lewis Lewin, German toxicologist and father of
psycho-pharmacology, was born.
    (MC, 11/9/01)

1850        Nov 13, Robert Lewis Stevenson (d.1894), novelist, was born
in Scotland. His books included: "Treasure Island" and "The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." In 1996 R.C. Terry edited and published
?Robert Louis Stevenson: Interviews and Recollections."
    (Smith., 8/95, p.54)(SFC, 9/1/96, Par. p.12)(HN, 11/13/98)

1850        Nov 19, Lord Tennyson became the British poet laureate.
    (MC, 11/19/01)

1850        Dec 24, Frederic Bastiat (b.1801), French free-market
economist, died in Rome of tuberculosis.
    (WSJ, 7/5/01, p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Bastiat)

1850        Dec 28, Rangoon, Burma, was destroyed by fire.
    (MC, 12/28/01)

1850        Dec, The Taiping rebellion began against the ruling
Manchu-led Qing Dynasty and continued to 1864. It was led by heterodox
Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, who having received visions, maintained
that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. About 20 million people
died, mainly civilians, in one of the deadliest military conflicts in
history.
    (Econ, 8/6/11, p.74)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion)

1850        Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), French artist, painted "Burial
at Ornans."
    (WSJ, 11/28/06, p.D8)

1850        Benson J. Lossing, journalist and engraver, published his
2-volume "Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution."
    (AH, 10/01, HT p.23)

1850        Donald Grant Mitchell wrote his best-selling novel "Reveries
of a Bachelor," under the pen name Ik Marvel.
    (SFEM, 6/28/98, p.30)

1850        Bayard Taylor authored "El Dorado," a reporter?s account of
the California gold rush. In 2001 it was reprinted as "Eldorado:
Adventures in the Path of Empire."
    (SSFC, 2/4/01, BR p.5)

1850        Books prior to this year were printed on alkaline paper and
tended to survive. Books printed after this date were on acidic paper
and began to crumble with age.
    (SFEC, 1/18/98, Z1 p.8)

1850         Ivan Turgenev, Russian writer, produced his greatest play:
"A Month in the Country."
    (WSJ, 4/26/95, p.A-14)

1850        A building census in Norfolk, Virginia indicated that there
were 10,000 18th and early 19th century structures. Of these only a
handful survive.
    (Hem. 1/95, p. 69)

1850        Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884) partnered with Chicago attorney
Edward Rucker in forming the North-Western Police Agency, later known as
the Pinkerton Agency. "We never sleep" was their motto. The company?s
emblem?a wide open eye?inspired the term "private eye. In 1999 the
agency was sold to a Swedish company, Securitas AB.
    (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/aug25.html)(HNQ, 8/7/98)(SFC,
2/23/99, p.C4)

1850        US President Millard Fillmore issued an executive order that
designated the southern point of the Marin Headlands a military
reservation later called Lime Point Military Reservation. Fillmore also
reserved Alcatraz Island for military use.
    (The Park, Summer 1995)(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.B4)(OAH, 2/05, p.A1)

1850        Pres. Fillmore signed and enforced the Fugitive Slave Act
that authorized the return of slaves seeking sanctuary back to their
masters.
    (SFC, 2/10/97, p.A1)

1850        Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky introduced the 8 provisions
of the Great Compromise Bill. The provisions of the Great Compromise
bill were reduced to 5 and passed one by one. They were in sum: 1) the
admission of California as a free state; 2) slavery in the territories
of Utah and New Mexico would be resolved by popular sovereignty; 3)
slavery would be ended in the District of Columbia; 4) the federal
government would assume a $10 million debt by Texas; 5) the federal
government would be responsible for the return of runaway slaves. New
York Sen. W.F. Seward stated: "The unity of our empire hangs on the
decision of this day."
    (SFC, 2/21/97, p.A25)

1850        The US Supreme Court opined that  an invention had to be
something more than the work of a skilled mechanic to qualify for a patent.
    (Econ, 5/5/07, p.78)

1850        Laws in California were passed that allowed the enslavement
of Indians.
    (SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1850        California passed anti-sodomy legislation in its ?crime
against nature? law.
    (SSFC, 5/11/08, Books p.4)
1850        Ygnacio, the grandson of Dona Juana Sanchez de Pacheco,
built the first homestead in the Walnut Creek area of northern California.
    (SFC, 7/17/06, p.B5)
1850        Col. John Geary, the first mayor of San Francisco, donated
land for a square to be held in perpetuity for park use. It later became
Union Square. He owned the surrounding property and looked to increase
its value.
    (SFEC, 3/15/98, p.W27)(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.F2)
1850        Nevada City, Ca., was named.
    (SFC, 4/14/96, T-3)
1850        Ferry commuting began on the SF Bay.
    (SFC, 4/21/97, p.A11)
1850        Suisun City, Calif. was founded. Suisun means "West Wind" in
the language of the Patwan Indians who lived in this area.
    (Hem., Nov.?95, p.91,95)
1850        Residents of the northern California town of Rough and Ready
rebelled against taxes and began a secession movement from the US. It
last just 3 months in part  because nearby saloonkeepers refused to sell
liquor to the ?foreigners.?
    (SSFC, 8/10/08, p.E8)

1850        The Arapaho Indians issued a $5 bill.
    (SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.8)

1850        The Mormons applied unsuccessfully for Utah statehood.
Debates with the federal government ensued over political issues and
polygamy.
    (NW, 9/10/01, p.48)

1850        Erasmus Corning founded the New York Central Railroad. He
later built a banking network along its route that nurtured the growth
of new communities.
    (WSJ, 5/8/95, p.A-14)

1850        Marshall Field (16) started working a dry goods clerk in
Pittsfield, Mass. In 1855 he moved to Chicago. In 1947 John Tebbel
authored "The Marshall Fields: A Study in Wealth." In 2002 Axel Madsen
authored "The Marshall Fields: The Evolution of an American Business
Dynasty."
    (WSJ, 10/9/02, p.D8)

1850        The Willard family acquired a 4-story hotel in Washington DC
and turned it into the 100-room Willard Hotel at 1401 Pennsylvania Ave.
In 1901 it was replaced by an opulent 389-room Beaux-Arts building. In
1968 it was closed and scheduled for demolition. In 1986 it re-opened
following a $73 million restoration.
    (SFC, 1/5/06, p.E4)

1850        Directors of the Brooklyn released 8 pair of sparrows
imported from England. They did not thrive and director Nicolas Pike
acquired 50 more pair and released them in Brooklyn?s Greenwood Cemetery
1853.
    (AH, 6/02, p.39)

1850        Woodsmen marched west from New York clearing forests of
white pine, yellow birch, hemlock, maple, and oak.
    (NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.51)

1850        Heinrich Schliemann, German businessman, moved to California
and made a fortune in banking.
    (Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.45)
1850        In California Gregorio Briones, a soldier of the Spanish and
then Mexican army, claimed title to 13,320 acres of west Marin land.
    (SFC, 5/26/97, p.A10)

1850        Cincinnati, the largest meat-packing center in the United
States at that time, earned the name Porkopolis.
    (HNQ, 10/15/00)

1850        Brigham Young was appointed governor of the Utah territory.
    (SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)

1850        The Ansonia Clock Co. was founded in Derby, Conn., by Anson
G. Phelps. After 2 fires and reorganizations the company moved to NY in
1880.
    (SFC, 12/15/98, Z1 p.6)

1850        James Folger (18), a native of Massachusetts, began roasting
beans in SF. Folger?s Coffee established itself on the Barbary Coast and
was the first major coffee company in SF. Jim Folger eventually traveled
to the gold country to sell coffee to miners.
    (SFC, 6/28/97, p.D2)(SSFC, 8/5/01, p.A1)(SFC, 6/5/08, p.C2)

1850        George Jones of London built a hexagonal ended instrument
using a diatonic German concertina fingering system to which he added
another row of accidental notes making the instrument chromatic. It
became known as the Anglo-chromatic or Anglo system concertina.
    (BAAC, 8/96, p.6)

1850        Baking Powder was invented.   
(SFC, 1/11/97, p.B7)

1850        The US census showed a black population of 3,639,000 people
of whom 90% were born in America. The mulatto count was 406,000.
    (SFC, 5/3/96, p.A-25)
1850        An estimated 50,000 Irish prostitutes worked in New York City.
    (WSJ, 3/17/97, p.A18)
1850        The population of Chicago approached 30,000.
    (Econ, 3/18/06, Survey p.12)
1850        Only 2% of the American population lived past 65.
    (SFEM, 6/28/98, p.40)

1850        Sally Thomas (b.1787), quasi-slave, died. She had grown up
as a Virginia slave and was relocated to Tennessee. She had 3 mixed-race
sons by 2 white men, one a Virginian plantation owner, the other John
Catron, became a member of the US Supreme Court. In 2005 John Hope
Franklin and Loren Schweninger authored ?In Search of the Promised Land:
A Slave Family in the Old South.?
    (SSFC, 8/28/05, p.C2)

1850        Expeditions to the Arctic found evidence of the Franklin
Expedition. Three graves dug into the permafrost were discovered in
1850, their headstones dated 1846. A written record was found in 1859,
indicating that Franklin died on June 11, 1847, and that Erebus and
Terror were abandoned in April 1848. The crews? deaths have been
attributed to either scurvy or lead poisoning originating from the
solder on food tins. Both ships and the remains of most of the 129
crewmen have never been found.
    (HNQ, 6/11/98)

1850        Rabbits were introduced to Australia about this time and
soon became pests.
    (Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.16)
1850        The Granny Smith apple originated about this time in
Australia. According to Morgan and Richards The Book of Apples: A Mrs.
Smith, born in England in 1800, emigrated to Australia in 1838. In 1860s
she found some seedlings growing in a creek where she had tipped out
some apples brought back from Sydney. Tree was propagated and later
family increased their orchards and marketed fruit in Sydney.
    (www.newint.org/issue212/simply.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/32lr8c)

1850        The Wenlock Olympian Games were set up by Dr. William Penny
Brookes in Much Wenlock, England. A typical program of events featured
running and leaping competitions and throwing a cricket ball, as well as
non-athletic pursuits such as choir singing and awards for reading,
arithmetic, knitting and sewing.
    (AP, 7/1/11)
1850        England established its 1st public libraries.
    (Econ, 5/1/04, p.59)

1850        French priest Jean-Baptiste Lamy was dispatched by Rome to
bring order and discipline to the New Mexican territory.
    (WSJ, 9/13/06, p.D10)

1850        A mob in Athens burned down the home of a British citizen.
In response Viscount Palmerston, Britain?s foreign secretary, called for
a blockade of Greece.
    (Econ, 7/15/06, p.56)

c1850        A Mongolian national consciousness emerged in the mid-19th
century.
    (www.gobiexpeditions.com)

1850        On the Orkney mainland Skara Brae was rediscovered by
William Watt, the laird of Skaill, after a fierce storm stripped the
grass from a high sand dune.
    (SFEC, 3/23/97, p.T3)

1850        Panama?s city of Colon was founded as the isthmus of Panama
became a route for the California gold rush.
    (Econ, 5/17/08, p.47)

1850        In Vienna F. Walther re-arranged the reeds of a 3-row
diatonic accordion to play a 46 note chromatic scale and created the
chromatic button accordion.
    (BAAC, 8/96, p.6)

1850-1853    Millard Fillmore is the 13th President of the US.
    (A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)

1850-1854    Of the 1200 murders in San Francisco in this period, only
one results in a legal execution.
    (SFC, 11/15/95, p.B-1)

1850-1859    The Lehigh Valley town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, became
an iron-making center in the 1850s thanks to discoveries of coal and
iron ore nearby.
    (WSJ, 10/8/08, p.A15)

1850s        In Cincinnati abolitionist Nicholas Longworth hired Robert
Scott Duncanson to paint 8 large murals in his home. The murals were
covered by wallpaper by 1869 and not uncovered until 1931. The house and
a large art collection were given to the city by Charles and Anna Taft
around 1928.
    (WSJ, 8/8/00, p.A20)
1850s        In New York City the African-American community of Seneca
Village was razed to make way for Central Park. The village had 264
frame houses, 3 churches, 2 cemeteries and a school.
    (AM, May/Jun 97 p.62)
1850s        The US Navy established its repair facility on Mare Island.
    (SFEC, 2/9/97, p.W4)
1850s        In California John C. Fremont occupied Fremont?s Ranch in
Bear Valley, north of Mariposa, a Mexican land-grant of 44,000 acres. He
later became the state?s first US Senator and the first Republican
candidate for president. He also became a Civil War general and a
governor of the Arizona territory. In 2000 David Roberts authored "A
Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Fremont, and the Claiming of the
American West.
    (SFEC, 4/12/98, p.T6)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A20)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A20)(WSJ,
1/10/00, p.A24)

c1850s        Mormon settlers began moving to Lana?i, Hawaii, with the
idea of establishing a "City of Joseph" under their leader William
Gibson. Gibson placed title to all the community land under his own name
and even under threat of excommunication refused to give up the deed.
Gibson registered the land under his own name and refused to hand the
deeds over to the Mormon Church. He went on to become a friend, advisor
and cabinet minister to King Kalakaua.
    (SFEM, 10/13/96, p.24)(SSFC, 8/26/01, p.T10)

1850s        The political organization called the American Party, which
flourished in the 1850s, is better known as the Know-Nothing Party.
Originally a clandestine organization, members were instructed to say
that they "know nothing" when asked about the party, hence the name.
Primarily, the party was anti-immigrant and stood in opposition to
whatever political power immigrant groups happened to have in Northern
cities. In 1854 the American Party won significant elections in seven
state governments. The party?s national platform in 1856 included
anti-Catholic and anti-alien planks.
    (HNQ, 8/27/98)

1850s        John Augustus of Boston persuaded the courts to release
young offenders into his custody instead of sending them to prison. This
was the start of the practice of probation.
    (SFEC, 11/21/99, Z1p.2)

1850s        Elizabeth Ware Packard led successful struggles in 13
states to obtain due process of law for women, who previously could be
committed to mental institutions simply on the word of their husbands.
    (SFC, 3/25/98, p.A22)

1850s        Publishers switched to cheaper paper based on wood pulp
instead of rags and linen. The new material contained an acid residue to
ate the wood fibers and destroyed books in as little as 30 years.
    (WSJ, 7/10/97, p.A6)

1850s        English inventor Alexander Parkes is credited with being
the first to make plastic in the 1850s. Parkes? plastic was a cellulosic
made by treating a mixture of cotton and nitric acid with camphor. In
the United States, John and Isaiah Hyatt developed a similar plastic in
1869 as a substitute for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls,
which they called celluloid. The first completely synthetic plastic,
Bakelite, was invented in 1907 and produced in 1909 by Dr. Leo H.
Baekeland. Parkes mixed chloroform and castor oil to make the first
plastic which he called Parkesine.
    (HNQ, 5/8/98)(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)

c1850s        Staffordshire potters in England made many different
Shakespeare figurines.
    (SFC, 9/4/96, z1 p.5)

1850-1854    About this time English adopted the form filibuster, from
Spanish filibustero. It was applied to certain adventurers who committed
unsanctioned activities in the West Indies and Central America. [See
William Walker Sep 12, 1860]
    (www.wordsources.info/words-mod-filibuster.html)

1850-1870    A major wave of Italians immigrated to California. The
majority came from Liguria and Tuscany. A 2nd wave began in 1880.
    (SSFC, 7/10/05, p.D5)

1850-1891    Sophia Kovalevsky, mathematician. In 1983 her biography by
Don H. Kennedy was published: "Little Sparrow: A Portrait of Sophia
Kovalevsky."
    (NH, 6/96, p.20)

1850-1900    The Hawaii of this period is described in the 1997 novel "A
Map of Paradise" by Linda Ching Sledge.
    (SFEC, 8/17/97, BR p.3)

1850-1910    This period is covered in the book Railroad Crossing:
Californians and the Railroad 1850-1910 by William Deverall.
    (SFC, 7/8/96, p.D2)
1850-1910    Margaret Collier Graham, American writer: "People need joy
quite as much as clothing. Some of them need it far more."
    (AP, 6/16/99)

1850-1919     Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American poet: "The only folks who
give us pain are those we love the best."
    (AP, 6/5/98)

1850-1925     Emma Carleton, American journalist: "Reputation is a
bubble which a man bursts when he tries to blow it for himself."
    (AP, 6/4/97)

1850-1930    In 2005 Richard J. Orsi authored ?Sunset Limited: The
Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West.?
    (SSFC, 5/8/05, p.B1)

1850-1933     Augustine Birrell, English author and statesman: "History
is a pageant and not a philosopher."
    (AP, 9/10/97)

1850-1956     The Empire Mine in Grass Valley, Ca., produced over 5.8
million ounces of gold. It had 365 miles of tunnels and was later turned
into a 784-acre state park.
    (SFEC, 4/12/98, p.T7)

1850-1990    The world human population tripled in this period.
    (NOHY, 3/1990, p.52)

1851        Jan 6, Leon Foucault (d.1868), French scientist, watched a
pendulum swing and shift its plane of motion. This he realized was due
to the rotation of the Earth. In 2003 Amir D. Aczel authored "Pendulum:
Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science."
    (WSJ, 8/28/03, p.D18)

1851        Jan 25, Sojourner Truth addressed the 1st Black Women's
Rights Convention in Akron. [see May 28, 1851]
    (MC, 1/25/02)

1851        Jan 27, John James Audubon (b.1785), wildlife painter and
conservationist (Audubon Society), died. He was buried in NYC. In 2004
Duff Hart-Davis authored "Audubon's Elephant," an account of his 12 year
sojourn to Europe to oversee the production of "Birds of America." In
2004 William Souder authored ?Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and
the Making of the Birds of America.? In 2004 Richard Rhodes authored
?John James Audubon: The Making of an American.?
    (WSJ, 3/26/04, p.W6)(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.M6)(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.M6)(AH,
10/04, p.75)

1851        Jan 28, Northwestern University, near Chicago, was chartered.
    (MC, 1/28/02)

1851        Jan 31, Gail Borden announced the invention of evaporated milk.
    (MC, 1/31/02)

1851        Feb 1, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (53), novelist
(Frankenstein), died.
    (MC, 2/1/02)

1851        Feb 6, Robert Schumann's 3rd Symphony "Rhenish," premiered
in Dusseldorf.
    (MC, 2/6/02)

1851        Feb 8, Kate (Katherine O'Flaherty ) Chopin (d.1904),
American novelist, short story writer, was born. Her work included "The
Awakening." She wrote tales of love and passion that presented women
testing the boundaries of social convention. "There are some people who
leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water."
    (AP, 3/11/99)(SFEC, 11/14/99, BR p.5)(HN, 2/8/01)   

1851        Feb 15, Black abolitionists invaded a Boston courtroom to
rescue a fugitive slave.
    (440 Int?l., 2/15/99)

1851        Mar 3, Congress authorized the smallest US silver coin, a 3¢
piece. The trine obverse side depicted a shield over a six-pointed star.
    (SC, 3/3/02)(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.W15)

1851        Mar 21, Yosemite Valley was discovered (by non-natives) in
California. The 58 men of the Mariposa Battalion under Major James D.
Savage were the first whites to enter Yosemite Valley. Their first view
of the valley was from the plateau later named Mount Beatitude. They
expelled Chief Tenaya and his band of Ahwahneechee Indians. Dr. Bunnell,
a physician in the battalion, named the valley Yosemite to honor the
local Indians. He did not realize that the word "yohemeti" meant "some
of them are killers" and was an insult against the valley people.
    (SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.4)(SFEC,12/28/97, Z1 p.1)(MC, 3/21/02)
1851        Mar 21, Emperor Tu Duc ordered that Christian priests be put
to death.
    (HN, 3/21/99)

1851        Mar 27, Paul-Marie-Theodore-Vincent d'Indy, composer
(Symphonie Cevenole), was born in Paris.
    (MC, 3/27/02)

1851        Apr 12, Emil Liebling, composer, was born.
    (MC, 4/12/02)

1851        Apr 14, Morgan Earp was born in Marian County, IA.
    (MesWP)

1851        Apr. 23, The first Canadian postage stamp was issued.
    (CFA, ?96, p.44)

1851        May 1, The Great Council Exhibition, the first-ever World?s
Fair, opened in London?s Hyde Park. Some 6 million people came to see
the new glass and iron Crystal Palace, designed by Joseph Paxton
(1823-1865). Paxton used roof ventilators and underground air-cooling
chambers to regulate indoor temperature.
    (WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A16)(ON, 7/04, p.12)(Econ, 12/4/04, TQ p.17)

1851        May 4, The Sydney Ducks set fire to a store on San
Francisco?s Portsmouth Square. Most of the dwellings on Telegraph Hill
were destroyed. The heart SF was destroyed and some 2000 buildings
burned down. This led to the formation of the secret Committee of
Vigilance, which hung several criminals and drove others out of the
city. Remnants from Hoff's store, built on a wharf over the bay, were
found in 1986 during excavations for the Embarcadero West 33-story
high-rise.
    (SFC, 12/24/99, p.A24)(SFC, 11/27/00, p.A18)
1851        May 4, The 1840-ship General Harrison burned to the water
line. It was salvaged for parts, buried and not seen again until 2001
when construction at Battery and Clay revealed its remains. The whaling
ship Niantic, already converted to a waterfront hotel, burned and sank
into the bay. In 1977 new construction uncovered the Niantic?s burned
remains.
    (SFC, 9/8/01, p.A11)(SFC, 2/4/05, p.E16)

1851        May 6, Dr. John Gorrie patented a "refrigeration machine."
    (MC, 5/6/02)
1851        May 6, Linus Yale patented his Yale lock.
    (MC, 5/6/02)

1851        May 12, A treaty was signed on the south bank of the Kaweah
River, the site of John Wood's grave. Woods was killed by Yokut Indians.
The California Tule River War ended.
    (HN, 4/28/00)(WW, 6/99)(HN, 5/12/01)

1851        May 18, The Amsterdam-Nieuwediep telegraph connection linked.
    (SC, 5/18/02)

1851        May 20, Emile Berliner, inventor of the flat phonograph
record, was born in Germany.
    (MC, 5/20/02)
1851        May 20, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, US nun, daughter of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, was born.
    (MC, 5/20/02)

1851        May 25, Jose Justo de Urquiza of Argentina led a rebellion
against his former ally, the absolute ruler Juan Manuel de Rosas.
    (HN, 5/25/99)

1851        May 28, Freed slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth
attended a national women's convention in Akron, Ohio, where the female
delegates were heckled by men in the audience who claimed that men were
superior to women. Frances Gage, president of the convention, recorded
Sojourner Truth's words that day. "Dat man ober dar say dat women needs
to be helped into carriages and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best
place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober
mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place! And ain't I a woman! Look at me!
Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted and gathered into barns,
and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and
eat as much as a man--when I could get it--and bear de lash as well! And
ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all
sold into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but
Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?" Sojourner Truth's words, according
to Gage, "turned the sneers and jeers of an excited crowd into notes of
respect and admiration."
    (SFC, 3/30/97, Z1 p.6)(HN, 7/13/99)(MC, 5/28/02)

1851        May 29, Leon Bourgeois, French premier (1895-96, Nobel
1920), was born.
    (SC, 5/29/02)

1851        Jun 2, Maine became the first state to enact a law
prohibiting alcohol. By the Civil War 13 Northern states had bans on
alcohol sales. In 1998 Thomas R. Pegram authored "Battling Demon Rum," a
history of anti-alcohol movements in the US.
    (AP, 6/2/97)(WSJ, 10/5/98, p.A28)

1851        Jun 5, Harriet Beecher Stow published the first installment
of Uncle Tom?s Cabin in The National Era.
    (HN, 6/5/99)

1851        Jun 15, Jacob Fussell, Baltimore dairyman, set up the 1st
ice-cream factory.
    (MC, 6/15/02)

1851        Jun 21, Daniel Carter Beard, organized the first [US] boy
scout troop, was born.
    (HN, 6/21/98)

1851        Jul 8, Sir Arthur John Evans, English archaeologist who
excavated Knossos, Crete, was born.
    (MC, 7/8/02)

1851        Jul 10, Louis-Jacques-Mand Daguerre, French painter
(daguerreotype), died.
    (MC, 7/10/02)

1851        Jul 23, Sioux Indians and US signed the Treaty of Traverse
des Sioux.
    (MC, 7/23/02)

1851        Jul 28, A total solar eclipse was captured on a
daguerreotype photograph.
    (SC, 7/28/02)

1851        Aug 3, Lady Isabella Caroline Somerset, temperance leader,
was born.
    (SC, 8/3/02)

1851        Aug 12, Isaac Singer was granted a patent on his sewing
machine.
    (AP, 8/12/97)

1851        Aug 13, John Lincoln Clem (d.1937), Drummer (last survivor
of Union Volunteers), was born.
    (MC, 8/13/02)

1851        Aug 14, Doc Holliday was born in Griffin, GA.
    (MesWP)

1851        Aug 22, The Schooner America outraced the Aurora in the
Solent, a stretch of sea separating the Isle of Wight from England
proper, to win a trophy that became known as the America?s Cup. For 132
years the New York Yacht Club defeated all challengers to retain the
prestigious America?s Cup, the record for the longest winning streak in
sports history. The Liberty lost it to the Australia II in 1983.
    (AP, 8/22/97)(SFEC, 10/1/00, p.T4)(SSFC, 4/15/07, p.G4)

1851        Sep 11, African Americans skirmished with a band of slave
bounty hunters intent on capturing any fugitive slaves hidden in the
abolitionist town, Christiana, Pennsylvania. This was one year after the
second fugitive slave law (first law was on February 12, 1793) was
passed by Congress, requiring the return of all escaped slaves to their
owners in the South. One bounty hunter was killed and 1 wounded during
the skirmish.
    (MC, 9/11/01)

1851        Sep 13, Walter Reed (d.1902), U.S. Army doctor, was born in
Gloucester County, Va. In 1900 he went to Cuba and verified that yellow
fever was caused by a mosquito.
    (HN, 9/13/98)(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.B1)(AP, 9/13/02)

1851        Sep 14, James Fenimore Cooper (b.1789), writer, died at
Cooperstown, NY.
    (www.online-literature.com)

1851        Sep 18, The first edition of The New York Times was
published as the New-York Daily Times. It was founded by Henry J.
Raymond, Republican Speaker of the NY State Assembly, and banker George
Jones as a conservative counterpoint to Horace Greeley's Tribune.
    (AP, 9/18/97)(SFEM, 1/16/00,
p.17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times)

1851        Oct 2, Ferdinand Foch, French Allied commander in WW I, was
born.
    (MC, 10/2/01)

1851        Oct 19, Marie-Therese-Charlotte (72), daughter of Louis XVI
and Marie-Antoinette died.
    (MC, 10/19/01)

1851          Nov 2, Louis Napoleon staged a coup and took power in
France as Napoleon III of the Second Empire.
    (WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)(DoW, 1999, p182)

1851        Nov 6, Charles Henry Dow, American financial journalist, was
born. He (with Edward D. Jones) inaugurated the 'Dow-Jones' averages.
    (HN, 11/6/99)

1851            Nov 11, Alvan Clark of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
patented a telescope. Clark, a portrait painter interested in astronomy,
had made several small lenses and mirrors as a hobby. The fact that he
could detect the small residual errors in one of the best lenses Europe
could offer convinced him that he could make them as well. After he
gained a reputation in Europe the American orders started to come in.
The Alvin Clark Company became one of the foremost producers of some of
the largest lenses for telescopes in the 1800's.
    (www.todayinsci.com/)

1851        Nov 13, The London-to-Paris telegraph opened.
    (HN, 11/13/98)

1851        Nov 14, Herman Melville?s novel "Moby Dick" was published in
the US. The 1st publication was in London on October 18.
    (AP, 11/14/97)(www.mobylives.com/Happy_Birthday_Moby.html)

1851        Dec 4, Pres. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte forces crushed a coup
d'etat in France.
    (MC, 12/4/01)

1851        Dec 10, Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal System,
was born.
    (HN, 12/10/98)

1851        Dec 19, Joseph Mallord William Turner, English painter and
printmaker, died.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner)

1851        Dec 24, Fire devastated the Library of Congress in
Washington, D.C., destroying about 35,000 volumes.
    (AP, 12/24/97)

1851        Dec 29, The first American Young Men?s Christian Assn. was
organized, in Boston.
    (AP, 12/29/97)

1851        Dec 30, Asa Griggs Candler, developer of Coca-Cola, was born.
    (MC, 12/30/01)

1851        Thomas Wilmer Dewing (d.1938), American artist, was born.
    (SFC, 4/11/01, p.E1)

1851        Cabanel created his painting "The Death of Moses."
    (WSJ, 9/9/03, p.D6)

1851        Matthew Coates Wyatt created his dog sculpture of the Earl
of Dudley?s Newfoundland Bashaw. It was a star exhibit at the British
Great Exhibition.
    (WSJ, 12/6/01, p.A19)

1851        Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (b.1816) painted "Washington
Crossing the Delaware." It was later acquired by the NY Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
    (SFC, 9/30/97, p.A7)(WSJ, 4/9/99, p.W16)

1851        John Everett Millais began to paint his work "Ophelia,"
completed in 1852.
    (WSJ, 2/19/97, p.A15)

1851        Eugene Scribe, French playwright, wrote "When Ladies Battle"
(Bataille de Dames) with Ernest Legouve. Scribe is known for writing the
"well made play." The setting is Lyon, France in Oct. 1817.
    (WSJ, 1/2/96, p. A-7)

1851        A lighthouse was built at Point Loma near San Diego, Ca.
    (AAM, 3/96, p.46)

1851        Mormon pioneers founded San Bernadino in southern California.
    (SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)

1851        Books Inc. first opened as an independent bookseller in San
Francisco.
    (Hem., Nov.?95, p.134)

1851        The New-York Times was founded by Henry J. Raymond,
Republican Speaker of the NY State Assembly, and banker George Jones as
a conservative counterpoint to Horace Greeley's Tribune.
    (SFEM, 1/16/00, p.17)

1851        La Vielle Russie was opened in Manhattan by the family of
Peter Schaffer and featured Russian antiquities.
    (SFEM, 6/9/96, p.20)

1851        John Kiehl opened an apothecary at Third Ave. and 13th
Street in Manhattan to sell potions, lotions and remedies such as to
cure baldness and enhance virility. He also sold a get-rich essence
called Money Drawing Oil. In 1999 the firm did some $40 million in
business with just freebies and word of mouth advertising.
    (F, 10/7/96, p.76)(WSJ, 12/29/99, p.B1)

1851        President Fillmore sent the USS Michigan, the Navy?s first
iron-hulled warship, to Beaver Island to arrest James Strang. Strang was
put on trial in Detroit and was declared innocent of all charges. Strang
then effectively detached his kingdom from the US but maintained voting
rights.
    (Smith., Aug. 1995, p.88)

1851        The Fort Laramie Treaty was signed between the US government
and the Sioux Indians. The Sioux pledged not to harass the wagon trains
traveling the Oregon Trail in exchange for a $50,000 annuity. The treaty
did not last long. Some 12,000 American Indians gathered at Fort Laramie
for a peace council with the US. The government agreed that 12 million
acres of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Indians would remain free of
settlement (eastern Montana, northeastern Wyoming and western North
Dakota). In 1949 Congress authorized a forced relocation to build the
Garrison Dam in North Dakota. In 1986 Martin Cross won a settlement of
$149.2 million for the unjust taking of reservation land. In 2004 Paul
VanDevelder authored ?Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the
Trial that Forged a Nation.?
    (HT, 3/97, p.43)(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.M5)

1851        California Governor Peter Burnett said that unless the
Indians were sent east of the Sierras, "a war of extermination would
continue to be waged until the Indian race should become extinct."
    (HN, 4/29/00)(WW, 6/99)

1851        In Minnesota Chief Shakopee and the Dakota Indians were
pressured into selling 24 million acres for pennies an acre. Food and
money from the federal government was to be distributed to the Indians
as part of the treaty.
    (WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A1,6)

1851        Amory Houghton, a Boston entrepreneur, bought an interest in
a predecessor of Union Glass in Somerville. The operation became Corning
Inc. and by 2000 transformed itself into a major player in the fiber
optic business.
    (SFC, 6/19/00, p.G7)

1851        Andrew Jackson Pope and Frederic Talbot of Maine built their
1st sawmill on Puget Sound, Wa. Pope & Talbot were soon shipping lumber
around the world.
    (Ind, 6/7/03, p.5A)

1851        Western Union was founded as the New York and Mississippi
Valley Printing Telegraph Co.
    (SFC, 2/2/06, p.A13)

1851        Simon Lazarus, a rabbinical scholar from Germany, opened a
dry-goods store in Columbus, Ohio. The operation grew to become F&R
Lazarus, after the names of his sons, who in 1929 created the Federated
Dept. Store chain. The downtown Columbus store closed in 2004.
    (WSJ, 5/19/07, p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Lazarus)

1851        Dr. John Gorrie (1803-1855) patented an ice-making machine
to cool hospital rooms.
    (www.bookrags.com/sciences/sciencehistory/refrigeration-woi.html)

1851        Photography had a major breakthrough with the development of
a new emulsion called collodion, which caused photosensitive salts to
adhere to a sheet of glass.
    (Smith., 5/95, p.75)

1851        Fewer than 100,000 Indians remained in California.
    (SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)

1851        The Beckwourth Trail, discovered by James P. Beckwourth
(1798-1866), an African American explorer, opened to pioneers. It is the
lowest pass (5,221 ft) over the Sierras. Beckwourth was a freed slave
and mountain man.
    (SSFC, 4/29/01, p.T9)

1851        Rawlinson unlocked the Persian cuneiform script. The key to
unlocking these scripts was found in the names of great rulers.
    (RFH-MDHP, p.193)

1851        Australia?s first gold rush began.
    (SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T9)

1851        Francisco Guerrero, Mexican official in Alta California, was
struck in the back of the head by a slingshot and died. His murder was
believed to have kept him from testifying in a murder trial.
    (SFEC, 9/21/97, p.C7)

1851        By this year more than half the population of Great Britain
was living in towns, and country-house owners found it increasingly hard
to dominate politics or protect their own positions.
    (NG, Nov. 1985, p.689)
1851        Big Ben, the tower clock of the House of Parliament in
London, was designed by Edmund Beckett Denison. He was assisted by
clockmaker Edward John Dent and Sir George Airy, the royal astronomer.
Originally the name "Big Ben" referred only to the clock?s huge bell.
    (SFC, 9/30/98, Z1 p.3)
1851        Victor Hugo sought refuge on the Channel island of Guernsey
where he wrote "Les Miserables" and other works.
    (WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1851        Paul Julius Reuter (1816-1899), a German-born immigrant,
began transmitting stock-market quotes between London and Paris over the
new Dover-Calais submarine telegraph cable.
   
(http://about.reuters.com/home/aboutus/history/informationandinnovation.aspx)

1851        The Chateau Pichon-Longueville was built in the Bordeaux
region of France.
    (USAT, 5/9/03, p.2D)

1851        Mt. Pelee volcano on the French Island of Martinique
erupted. It left the city of St. Pierre unscathed.
    (NH, 10/02, p.76)

1851        Rama IV (d.1868) began his rule over Siam and played off
European powers against each other.
    (Econ, 1/10/04, p.76)

1851-1920    Mrs. Humphrey Ward, an erudite anti-suffragist, wrote
novels on major issues of her day.
    (WSJ, 11/15/96, p.A14)

1851-1962    In California the Benicia Arsenal was active. It was the
1st ordnance supply depot in the West.
    (SFEC, 8/29/99, p.A14)

1851-1873    The US minted a 3-cent piece called a trine.
    (SFC, 4/8/00, p.B4)

1852        Jan 3, The 1st Chinese arrive in Hawaii.
    (MC, 1/3/02)

1852        Jan 6, Louis Braille (43) died of tuberculosis in France. He
had been blinded by an accident during childhood and spent years
developing a system to read by touch. In 1997 Russell Freedman wrote
"Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille."
    (SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.10)(ON, 10/04, p.9)(
http://www.brailler.com/braillehx.htm)

1852        Jan 17, At the Sand River Convention, the British recognized
the independence of the Transvaal Board.
    (HN, 1/17/99)

1852        Feb 2, Alexandre Dumas Jr.?s "Le Dame aux Camelias,"
premiered in Paris.
    (MC, 2/2/02)

1852        Feb 11, The 1st British public female toilet opened at
Bedford Street in London.
    (MC, 2/11/02)

1852        Feb 16, Charles Taze Russell (d.1916) was born. He founded
the International Bible Students Association. In the 1870?s Russell
abandoned the Adventist movement and formed his own, which was later
named Jehovah?s Witnesses.
    (HN, 2/16/02)

1852        Feb 17, The Imperial Museum, the 5th and last building of
what became known as the New Hermitage, opened to the public (Feb 2 OS)
in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was commissioned by Nicholas I and
designed by Leo van Klenze of Germany.
    (www.photofora.com/eugene/centralsquares/newhermitage.htm)(MT,
Winter/03, p.13)

1852        Feb 21, Nikolai Gogol, Russian playwright (Dead Souls),
died. [see Mar 4]
    (MC, 2/21/02)

1852        Feb 26, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (d.1943) was born. He was 24
years old when he became staff physician at the Battle Creek
Sanitarium--a position he held for 62 years. Dr. Kellogg, a respected
abdominal surgeon, ran "the San" as a health institute where the wealthy
could rejuvenate themselves with Kellogg's offbeat cures. Illness was
caused, Kellogg believed, by poor eating habits that left poisons in the
intestinal tract. Among Kellogg's solutions to the dietary dilemma were
"fletcherizing," or chewing food hundreds of times before swallowing,
and a vegetarian diet high in bran. It was the bowels, however, that
received Kellogg's undivided attention. Patients at the San were
subjected to regimens of "cleansing enemas" that cured "ulcers,
diabetes, schizophrenia, acne...and premature old age." In 1895,
Kellogg's search for the perfect food led to the development of
breakfast food flakes made of wheat called Granose. Will Keith Kellogg,
John's brother, improved on the Granose idea and founded the W.K.
Kellogg Company. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9840/kellogg.html
    (HNPD, 2/26/99)
1852        Feb 26, The British frigate Birkenhead sank off South Africa
and 458 died.
    (SC, 2/26/02)

1852        Mar 4, Lady (Isabella Augusta) Gregory, Irish playwright,
was born. She helped found the Abbey Theatre.
    (HN, 3/4/01)
1852        Mar 4, Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (43), died. [see Feb 21]
    (SC, 3/4/02)

1852        Mar 13, A familiar symbol of the United States, Uncle Sam,
made his debut as a cartoon character in the New York Lantern.
    (AP, 3/13/97)

1852        Mar 18, Henry C. Wells founded Wells, Fargo & Co. with
William C. Fargo in San Francisco as a Western equivalent to their east
coast American Express. It evolved into Wells Fargo Bank, headquartered
in San Francisco and now one of the largest financial institutions in
the U.S. In 2002 Philip L. Fradkin authored "Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and
the American West" for the company?s 150th anniversary. [see Mar 18, 1850]
    (SFEC, 1/4/98, Z1p.4)(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A10)(HNQ, 11/20/98)(SFC,
2/6/02, p.D1)
    (SFC, 3/19/02, p.B1,4)

1852        Mar 20, Harriet Beecher Stowe's (1811-1896) "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" was first published in book form after being serialized. It was
based on the theme that slavery is incompatible with Christianity. In
2011 David S. Reynolds authored ?Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom?s
Cabin and the Battle for America.?
    (SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.6)(AP, 3/20/08)(SSFC, 7/3/11, p.G4)

1852        Mar 29, Ohio made it illegal for children under 18 and women
to work more than 10 hours a day.
    (MC, 3/29/02)

1852        Apr 1, Edward Austin Abbey, US, painter (Quest of the Holy
Grail), was born.
    (MC, 4/1/02)

1852        Apr 12, [Carl L] Ferdinand von Lindemann, German
mathematician, was born.
    (MC, 4/12/02)

1852        Apr 13, Frank W. Woolworth (d.1919), founder of the retail
chain of 5&10 cent stores, was born on a farm near Watertown New York.
    (SFC,10/20/97, p.B2)(HN, 4/13/98)

1852        Apr 23, Edwin Markham, US poet and 1st winner of Amer Acad
of Poets Award in 1937, ("Man with a Hoe"), was born.
    (MC, 4/23/02)

1852        Apr 29, The first edition of Peter Mark Roget?s Thesaurus
was published. Roget (1779-1869) was a London physician of French-Swiss
ancestry who began to collect and organize English words to improve his
public speaking.
    (HN, 4/29/98)(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.B1)

1852        Apr 30, Anton Rubinstein?s opera "Dmitri Donskoi," premiered
in St Petersburg.
    (MC, 4/30/02)

1852        May 1, Calamity [Martha] Jane [Burke], frontier adventurer,
Indian fighter, was born.
    (MC, 5/1/02)

1852        May 18, Massachusetts ruled that all school-age children
must attend school.
    (SC, 5/18/02)

1852        May 25, Louis Franchet d'Espèrey [Desperate Frankey], French
marshal (WWI), was born.
    (SC, 5/25/02)

1852        May 29, Jindrich z Albestu Kaan, composer, was born.
    (SC, 5/29/02)

1852        May 30, George Chinnery (b.1774), painter of Asian scenes,
died in Macau. The English painter spent most of his life in Asia,
especially India and southern China.
    (Econ, 6/18/11, p.91)

1852        Jun 21, Friedrich Frobel (b.1782), founder of the Play and
Activity Institute (1837) in Germany, died. In 1840 he created the word
kindergarten to describe the institute.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Wilhelm_August_Froebel)

1852        Jun 25, Antoni Gaudi (d.1926), Spanish modernist architect
(Sagrada Familia, Barcelona), was born.
    (MC, 6/25/02)(SFEM, 10/8/00, p.61)

1852        Jun 26, Tzu Hsi (17), aka Orchid or Lady Yehonala, married
Ch'ing Emperor Hsien Feng. She had competed to become one of his 7
official wives or 3,000 concubines.
    (SSFC, 2/1/04, p.M6)

1852        Jun 29, Statesman Henry Clay (75) of Kentucky died. He was a
master politician in the era preceding the Civil War. Born in 1777, Clay
was a lawyer by trade. He began his lengthy political career in the
Kentucky legislature and made three unsuccessful bids as the Whig
Party's presidential candidate. By the time of his death, Clay had
served his country as secretary of state under John Quincy Adams, U.S.
Senator and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Clay was the chief
architect of the Compromise of 1850, a contribution that earned him the
nickname "The Great Compromiser."
    (HNPD, 6/29/99)(MC, 6/29/02)

1852        Jul 4, Frederick Douglass delivered the keynote speech for
the Independence Day celebration in Rochester, NY. In 2006 James A.
Colaiaco authored Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July.?
    (WSJ, 7/1/06, p.P6)

1852        Jul 5, Johann Baptist Weigl (69), composer, died.
    (MC, 7/5/02)

1852        Jul 12, Dr. John Hudson Wayman camped at the City of Rocks
in Idaho and called it ?one of the finest places of its kind in the
world.? US Congress named the area a national reserve in 1988.
    (SFC, 7/6/06, p.E2)

1852        Jul 27, George Foster Peabody, philanthropist and namesake
of the Peabody awards for excellence in broadcasting, was born.
    (HN, 7/27/98)

1852        Aug 3, In the 1st intercollegiate rowing race, Harvard beats
Yale by 4 lengths.
    (SC, 8/3/02)

1852        Sep 14, Augustus Pugin (b.1812), English Gothic architect
and designer, died. In 2007 Rosemary Hill authored ?God?s Architect:
Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain.
    (Econ, 8/11/07, p.74)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Pugin)

1852        Aug 20, The steamer "Atlantic" collided on Lake Erie with
the fishing boat Ogdensburg, and sank. An estimated 150-250 people were
drowned.
    (MC, 8/20/02)(Internet)

1852        Sep 3, Anti Jewish riots broke out in Stockholm.
    (MC, 9/3/01)

1852        Sep 14, Arthur Wellesley (b.1769), General and Duke of
Wellington, died at 83.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org)
1852        Sep 14, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (b.1812), English
artist and architect, died.
    (www.visitcumbria.com/awnpugin.htm)   

1852        Sep 23, William Stewart Halsted, was born. He established
the 1st US surgical school.
    (MC, 9/23/01)

1852        Sep 24, Henri Giffard, a French engineer, flew over Paris in
the 1st dirigible flight.
    (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/AVgifford.htm)

1852        Sep 27, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," premiered in Troy, NY.
    (MC, 9/27/01)

1852        Sep 30, Charles Villiers Stanford, Irish organist and
composer, was born.
    (MC, 9/30/01)

1852        Oct 24, Daniel Webster (70), lawyer, speaker and senator
from Massachusetts, died. In 1997 Robert V. Remini wrote his biography:
"Daniel Webster."
    (WSJ, 9/30/97, p.A20)(MC, 10/24/01)

1852        Nov 2, Franklin Pierce was elected US president over Gen?l.
Winfield Scott, who ran as a Whig. In 1852, the U.S. Congress passed a
resolution giving Scott the pay and rank of a lieutenant general. Scott,
not Ulysses S. Grant, was the first to hold this rank since George
Washington. William R. King was elected vice-president.
    (SFC, 10/22/96, p.E8)(http://tinyurl.com/8ku7j)

1852        Nov 10, Dr. Gideon Mantell (b.1790), obstetrician and
English fossil hunter, died from an overdose of opium.
    (ON, 7/06, p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Mantell)

1852        Nov 21, Duke Univ., founded in 1838 as Union Institute in
NC, was chartered as Normal College.
    (MC, 11/21/01)

1852        Nov 27, Ada Lovelace (b.1815), Lord Byron?s daughter and the
inventor of computer language, was bled to death by physicians at age
36. She had helped Charles Babbage develop his "Analytical Engine," that
performed mathematical calculations through the use of punched cards.
Her last years were spent in a netherworld of addiction, gambling and
adultery and she died of cancer. In 2001 Benjamin Wooley authored her
biography: "The Bride of Science."
    (SFC, 1/22/98, p.D7)(SFC, 4/30/98, p.E1)(WSJ, 1/19/00, p.W9)

1852        Dec 2, Louis Napoleon, the little nephew of Napoleon
Bonaparte, established the Second Empire in France (1852-1870) and
called himself Napoleon III. He married the Spanish beauty Eugenie and
ran a semi-liberal autocracy for 18 years.
    (WUD, 1994, p.950)(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A16)(MC, 12/2/01)

1852        Dec 24, The race between the B&O railroad and the C&O Canal
to reach the Ohio River, that began in 1828, ended with the railroad
victorious.
    (SFEC, 4/25/99, p.T6)

1852        Dec 29, Emma Snodgrass was arrested in Boston for wearing pants.
    (MC, 12/29/01)

1852        Dec 30, Future U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes married
Lucy Ware Webb in Cincinnati.
    (AP, 12/30/02)

1852        Dec 31, The richest year of the gold rush ended, with $81.3
million in gold produced.
    (HN, 12/31/98)

1852        Eugene Delacroix painted "Desdemona Cursed by Her Father."
    (WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)

1852        A lighthouse was built on Alcatraz island in the San
Francisco Bay.
    (SFC, 2/22/07, p.A13)

1852        The first piano accordion appeared in Paris.
    (BAAC, 8/96, p.6)

1852        Seattle, USA, began as a sawmill.
    (WSJ, 9/19/95, p.A-1)

1852        The Mission of the Holy Rosary in the town of Truchas was
built. It is the youngest and simplest of the 6 adobe missions scattered
along the western shoulder of the Sangre de Cristo mountains between
Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
    (SFC, 5/12/96, p.T-5)

1852        John Neumann, Catholic missionary, became the bishop of
Philadelphia. he was later made a saint.
    (SFEC, 9/14/97, p.A18)

1852        The Mormons conceded for the first time that they practiced
polygamy, or "plural marriage."
    (SFC, 4/9/96, A-7)

1852        Maria Vernet Worth, a Parisian shop clerk, became the 1st
professional model when her husband found that he sold more dresses when
she helped.
    (SFEC, 2/6/00, Z1 p.2)

1852        The US Senate rejected treaties with 18 California tribes
that included some of the Yosemite band.
    (SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.4)

1852        The Hopi people of northern Arizona arranged for a
diplomatic packet to reach Pres. Fillmore via a delegation of 5
prominent men from the Tewas of Tesuque Pueblo in New Mexico, who sought
legal protection from Anglo and Hispanic settlers.
    (NH, 11/1/04, p.26)

1852        John Kennedy invented dog tags and tried without success to
sell them to the Union Army, but numerous soldiers bought them individually.
    (SFC, 3/8/96, p.E3)

1852        James Strang, king of Big Beaver Island, announced and won
election as a state representative in Michigan.
    (Smith., Aug. 1995, p.88)

1852        Meriden Britannia Co. of Meriden, Connecticut, began
operating as a silver plate maker. In 1898 it joined other silver
companies to form the Int?l. Silver Co.
    (SFC, 10/22/08, p.G3)

1852        Smith & Wesson founded its business in Springfield, Mass.
Horace Smith, a toolmaker, and Daniel Wesson, a former apprenticed
gunsmith, combined their skills to produce a revolutionary handgun.
    (WSJ, 9/12/97, p.A20)(SSFC, 1/28/07, p.F3)

1852        Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co. was formed as Sewanee
Mining Co.
    (WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)

1852        The first Holstein cow was shipped to North America on a
Dutch ship whose sailors requested milk.
    (SFC, 3/24/00, p.B3)

1852        The California legislature convened in Vallejo.
    (SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W26)
1852        The state passed a fugitive slave law that allowed slave
masters to reside indefinitely despite the state?s prohibition on slavery.
    (SFC, 7/18/98, p.A15,18)
1852        Heinrich Schliemann, German businessman, moved from
California to Russia and made another fortune selling indigo and
potassium nitrate to the Russian army.
    (Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.46)
1852        White Sulphur Springs in St. Helena opened as the 1st spa in
California.
    (SSFC, 7/20/03, p.C5)
1852        The Vallecito Stage Station was built on the San Diego-San
Antonio line called the "jackass route."
    (SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C1)
1852        The San Francisco Gas Co. was founded by 3 brothers. In 1905
it merged with California electric Light to form PG&E.
    (SFC, 4/7/01, p.A5)
1852        In San Francisco half-brothers George and Samuel Shreve
opened Shreve & Co., their 1st jewelry near what later became Union
Square. It remained a retail store until 1881 when George (d.1893)
opened a jewelry-making factory.
    (SSFC, 7/21/02, p.F3)(SFC, 9/19/07, p.G6)
1852        Sam Brannan, San Francisco newspaperman, arrived in
Calistoga, Ca. and began plans for a health spa to rival the famed
Saratoga Hot Springs in New York State. [see 1848]
    (Article on Calistoga by Sybil McCabe, 7/95)
1852        Moses Dinkelspiel opened his Dinkelspiel Store in Vallecito,
Calaveras County.
    (SFC, 11/17/98, p.B2)
1852        Almaden Vineyards was begun by Etienne Thee, an émigré from
France, who settled near Los Gatos, Ca.
    (SFC, 1/24/08, p.C3)
1852        Miners found caves in Amador County, Ca., near Volcano. They
were named the Black Chasm caves.
    (SSFC, 4/8/01, p.T5)

1852        Capt. Charles Melville Scammon, a whaler, discovered the
spawning area of the Pacific grey whales in the lagoons of Magdalena Bay
off the Baha coast.
    (SFEM, 5/7/00, p.9)

1852        There was heavy flooding on the Red River in North Dakota
and Manitoba.
    (SFC, 5/3/97, p.A11)

1852        Mr. Formwalt, the first mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, was
stabbed to death by a ruffian.
    (WSJ, 4/9/96, p.A-1)

1852        More than 20,000 Chinese immigrants arrived to the US. They
were fleeing floods, droughts, famines and revolutions and some 20,000
went to California. A foreign miner's tax was enacted in California and
enforced largely against the Chinese. Other states passed similar taxes.
The number of Chinese in California reached 25,000, about one-tenth of
the non-Indian population.
    (SFC, 7/8/96, p.D2)(SFEC, 2/6/00, Rp.10)(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)

1852        In England the Victoria and Albert Museum was founded by
Henry Cole as the South Kensington Museum and later named after Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert. It was the first museum to collect and
exhibit photography. Charles Thurston Thompson was the first
"superintendent of photography."
    (WSJ, 11/4/97, p.A20)(WSJ, 3/24/98, p.A20)

1852        Lady Charlotte Guest took over the helm of Dowlais Iron Co.
in Wales after her husband died. [see 1759]
    (SFC, 3/16/04, p.A1)

1852        In Dublin John Henry Newman delivered a series of lectures
that were meant to establish the principles of the new Catholic
University of which he was the first rector. The collected work was
published in 1996 by Yale Univ. Press as "The Idea of a University. "
    (WSJ, 9/16/96, p.A14)

1852        France established its penal colony at Devil?s Island. It
was one of 3 islands called the Iles du Salut (Islands of Salvation).
Some 70,000 convicts were sent there until 1946.
    (SSFC, 12/15/02, p.L5)

1852        A new lighthouse was built at the tip of Grand Turk island,
at the bottom of the Bahamas chain, as the area thrived from the salt trade.
    (SSFC, 1/7/07, p.G6)

1852        In Iran Mirza Hoseyn 'Ali Nuri (Baha' Ullah, b.1817),
founder of the Baha?i Faith, became aware of his mission as a messenger
of God while in the notorious Teheran prison known as the Black Pit for
involvement in the unsuccessful attempt in 1852 on the life the shah of
Persia, Naser od-Din. Released and exiled to Baghdad in 1853, Baha?
Allah revived the Babi faith that had sprung from Shi?ah Islam in the
1840s. He went on to found the Baha?i movement that subsequently spread
throughout the world.
    (HNQ, 4/6/99)(HN, 11/12/00)

1852        In Poland Ignacy Lukasiewicz, a druggist, found oil seeping
from the ground and in an attempt to make vodka distilled it to produce
the first kerosene.
    (SFEC, 8/3/97, Z1 p.2)

1852        James Young (1811-1883), Scottish chemist, took out a US
patent for the production of paraffin oil by distillation of coal. Both
the US and UK patents were subsequently upheld in both countries in a
series of lawsuits and other producers were obliged to pay him royalties.
    (WSJ, 12/6/08, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Young)

1852-1853    Leo Tolstoy served as a young artillery officer in
Chechnya. He wrote his short story "The Raid" in 1853 based on his
experiences there.
    (WSJ, 5/10/00, p.A1)

1852-1870    In France Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the
nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte I, served as emperor.
    (WUD, 1994, p.950)

1852-1892    The Salt Lake Temple on Temple Square in Salt lake City was
constructed over this period.
    (THM, 4/27/97, p.N2)

1852-1911    Edwin Austin Abbey, American illustrator and muralist.
    (AHD, 1971, p.2)

1852-1929     James Brander Matthews, American author and educator: "A
highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence."
    (AP, 4/8/97)

1852-1932     Grace King, American author: "Patience! Patience! Patience
is the invention of dullards and sluggards. In a well-regulated world
there should be no need of such a thing as patience."
    (AP, 6/1/97)

1852-1933     Henry van Dyke, American clergyman: "Self is the only
prison that can ever bind the soul."
    (AP, 11/26/97)

1852-1935    Paul Bourget, French author: "We had better live as we
think, otherwise we shall end up by thinking as we have lived."
    (AP, 2/11/00)

1853        Jan 8, 1st US bronze equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson was
unveiled in Wash. DC. [see Mar 8]
    (MC, 1/8/02)

1853        Jan 16, Andre Michelin, French industrialist and tire
manufacturer (Michelin), was born.
    (MC, 1/16/02)

1853        Jan 19, Giuseppi Verdi's opera "Il Trovatore" premiered in Rome.
    (AP, 1/19/98)
1853        Jan 19, Napoleon III married Eugenie de Montijo.
    (MC, 1/19/02)

1853        Jan 28, Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti was born in Havana.
    (AP, 1/28/98)

1853        Mar 2, The Territory of Washington was organized after
separating from Oregon Territory.
    (HN, 3/2/99)(SC, 3/2/02)

1853        Mar 3, A transcontinental railroad survey was authorized by
Congress.
    (SC, 3/3/02)
1853        Mar 3, US Assay Office in NYC was authorized.
    (SC, 3/3/02)

1853        Mar 4, Pope Pius IX recovered Catholic hierarchy in Netherlands.
    (SC, 3/4/02)
1853        Mar 4, William Rufus de Vane King (D) was sworn in as 13th
US Vice President.
    (SC, 3/4/02)

1853        Mar 5, Arthur W. Foote, organist, composer (Suite for
Strings in E), was born in Salem, Mass.
    (MC, 3/5/02)
1853        Mar 5, Howard Pyle, writer and illustrator (The Merry
Adventures of Robin Hood), was born.
    (HN, 3/5/01)

1853        Mar 6, Giuseppe Verdi's Opera, "La Traviata," premiered in
Venice.
    (AP, 3/6/98)(MC, 3/6/02)

1853        Mar 8, The first bronze statue of Andrew Jackson was
unveiled in Washington, D.C. [see Jan 8]
    (HN, 3/8/98)

1853        Mar 30, Vincent Van Gogh (d.1890), Dutch artist, was born in
Zundert, Neth. His work included "The Drawbridge and Sunflowers in a
Vase," and "Harvest in Prevance," which was done both in oil and as a
watercolor. The watercolor sold in 1997 for $14.7 mil. He produced an
estimated 900 paintings and 1200 drawings but sold virtually none of
them. In 1997 it was reported that more than 100 of his paintings and
drawings might be fakes. 300 of his canvasses were painted in the last
15 months of his life.
    (AAP,1964)(WUD,1994, p.606)(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A21)(SFC, 7/5/97,
p.A8)(SFEC, 1/4/98, Z1p.8)(HN, 3/30/98)(MC, 3/30/02)

1853        Apr 1, Cincinnati, Ohio, established a fire department made
up of paid city employees.
    (AP, 4/1/07)

1853        Apr 7, Dr. John Snow administered chloroform to Queen
Victoria at the birth of her 8th child, Prince Leopold.
    (ON, 5/05, p.9)

1853        Apr 14, Harriet Tubman began her Underground Railroad,
helping slaves to escape.
    (MC, 4/14/02)

1853        Apr 15, Johann Leopold Fuchs (67), composer, died.
    (MC, 4/15/02)

1853        Apr 16, India's 1st steam locomotive pulled 14 cars and 400
people 34 km. from Bombay to Thane.
    (NG, 5/95, p.140)(Econ, 12/6/03, p.61)

1853        Apr 18, The first train in Asia began running (Bombay to
Tanna, 36 km).
    (HN, 4/18/98)(MC, 4/18/02)

1853        May 6, The 1st major US rail disaster killed 46 at Norwalk,
Connecticut.
    (MC, 5/6/02)

1853        May 11, Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild of England purchased
Chateau Mouton in Bordeaux, France, for 1,125,000 gold francs.
    (www.pageaday.com)   

1853        May 14, Gail Borden applied for a patent for condensed milk.
    (HN, 5/14/98)

1853        May 26, John Wesley Hardin was born in Bonham, Texas. The
19th-century Western outlaw John Wesley Hardin was named after John
Wesley, who began the Methodist movement in 1738.   
    (HNQ, 4/1/00)

1853        Jun 6, The ship Carrier Pigeon, a merchant sailing vessel,
struck a reef off of Whale Point (later Pigeon Point) on its way from
Boston to SF. The wreck helped prompt the erection of the Pigeon Point
lighthouse in San Mateo Ct.
    (SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T3)(SFEC,11/16/97, p.B8)(Ind, 8/10/02, 5A)

1853        Jun 29, Napoleon III met with Georges-Eugene Haussmann to
outline plans for the ?strategic beautification? of Paris and assigned
him to modernize the city. For the next 17 years Haussman, as prefect of
the Seine, transformed Paris. He is responsible for the tree lined grand
boulevards, the Bois de Boulogne, several railroad stations, the
aqueducts, and a tourist friendly sewer system. Haussmann employed one
Parisian in five and financed his projects using private capital raised
with bonds. The project forced some 200,000 residents from their homes.
He used surpluses in his operational budget to cover deficits in his
capital budgets. The debts paralyzed the city until the Gaullist era.
    (WSJ, 1/17/1995, p.A-16)(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)(WSJ, 12/9/98,
p.A20)(ON, 9/06, p.9)

1853        Jul 4, Moses A. Gunst, millionaire cigar retailer and SF
police commissioner, was born in NY and raised in Atlanta.
    (Ind, 3/2/02, 5A)

1853        Jul 5, Cecil John Rhodes (d.1902), politician, diamond
merchant, was born in South Africa. He discovered a vast lode of
diamonds at Kimberley and founded the De Beers Mining Co. He ran for
Cape parliament in 1881 and was prime minister of the Cape Colony from
1890-1896. He founded Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) for mineral speculation
and endowed the Rhodes scholarships upon his death with £3 million.
    (WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)(MC, 7/5/02)

1853        Jul 8, An expedition led by Commodore Matthew Perry arrived
in Edo Bay, Uraga, Japan, on a mission to seek diplomatic and trade
relations with the Japanese. Perry sailed his flagship USS Susquehanna
into Edo Bay. He soon forced Japan to open its ports with his big
gunboats, the steam-powered ?Black Ships.?
    (AP, 7/8/97)(SFEC, 1/25/98, Z1 p.2)(ON, 11/04, p.9)

1853        Jul 14, Pres. Franklin Pierce opened the 1st industrial
exposition in NY. Some 4,000 exhibitors gathered for a trade show at the
New York Crystal Palace (later Bryant Park).
    (WSJ, 9/14/00, p.A24)(MC, 7/14/02)
1853        Jul 14, Commodore Matthew Perry met with Prince Toda and
Prince Ido at ceremony at Kurihama, Japan, and presented a letter from
former Pres. Fillmore to Emperor Osahito requesting trade relations.
Fillmore's term of office had already expired by the time the letter was
delivered.
    (ON, 11/04, p.12)(AP, 7/14/07)

1853        Jul 25, David Belasco, actor, playwright and producer, was born.
    (HN, 7/25/02)

1853        Jul 29, Pope Pius IX established the archdiocese of San
Francisco, Ca.
    (SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A22)

1853        Aug 21, Henry Wellcome (d.1936) was born in Wisconsin. In
1880 Henry went to London to join Silas Burroughs and set up a
successful pharmaceutical firm called Burroughs, Wellcome & Co.
    (www.swan.ac.uk/egypt/infosheet/Wellcome.htm)

1853        Aug 24, The 1st potato chips were prepared by Chef George
Crum at Saratoga Springs, NY.
    (MC, 8/24/02)

1853        Sep 14, The Allies landed at Eupatoria on the west coast of
Crimea.
    (HN, 9/14/98)

1853        Sep 20, The Allies defeated the Russians at the battle of
Alma on the Crimean Peninsula.
    (HN, 9/20/98)

1853        Sep 30, Johannes Brahms met Robert and Clara Schumann. In
this year Brahms composed his Sonata in C major and his famous
Liebestreu. In this year Brahms also meets Joseph Joachim,
Konzertmeister of the King of Hanover, while traveling with the
Hungarian violinist, Eduard Remenyi.
    (BLW, Geiringer, 1963 ed., p.36 )

1853        Oct 2, Austrian law forbade Jews from owning land.
    (MC, 10/2/01)

1853        Oct 13, Lillie Langtry (d.1929), British actress, was born.
"The sentimentalist ages far more quickly than the person who loves his
work and enjoys new challenges." She started the California Guenoc and
Langtry Estate wineries.
    (AP, 7/27/98)(HN, 10/13/00)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C8)

1853        Oct 26, R.H. Kern, American artist, was killed by Indians in
Utah.
    (SSFC, 4/10/05, p.F9)   

1853        Oct 29, Pierre Joseph Guillaume Zimmermann (68), composer, died.
    (MC, 10/29/01)

1853        Oct 30, Pietro Raimondi (66), Italian composer (Potifar,
Giacobbe), died.
    (MC, 10/30/01)

1853        Oct, Henry Bessemer (1813-1898), English mechanical
engineer, invented a new type of artillery shell. He presented it to the
War Department for use in the Crimean War, but they were not interested.
He then offered it to France?s Napoleon III, who agreed to test the
shells. The larger shells demanded a new type of cannon made of stronger
metal, which led to his experiments in making iron.
    (ON, 9/06, p.4)

1853        Nov 9, Stanford White, architect, was born. His designs
include Madison Square Garden and Washington Arch.
    (HN, 11/9/00)

1853        Nov 24, William Masterson (Bat Masterson), journalist,
gambler, frontier lawman, was born in Henryville, Quebec. He died at his
desk as a NYC sports reporter. [see Nov 24, 1856]
    (SFC, 8/2/97, p.E3)(MC, 11/24/01)

1853        Nov 28, Olympia was established as capital of the Washington
Territory.
    (DTnet, 11/28/97)

1853        Dec 23, Maria Teresa Carreno, composer, was born.
    (MC, 12/23/01)

1853        Dec 30, The United States bought some 45,000 square miles of
land from Mexico in a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase. It included
parts of Arizona and New Mexico (29,640 sq. miles) south of the Gila
River. The purchase was ratified by Congress on April 25, 1854.
    (AWAM, Dec. 94, p.31)(HFA, ?96, p.28)(AHD, p.537)(AP, 12/30/97)

1853        Jean Ingres painted his portrait: "Princesse Albert de Broglie."
    (WSJ, 5/28/99, p.W12)

1853        Rembrandt Peale painted a portrait of Martha Washington
based on a 1795 portrait done by his father, Charles Vincent Peale.
    (SFEC, 7/27/97, DB p.35)

1853        Charles Dickens (1812-1870) authored his novel ?Bleak
House,? which castigated the insufferable delays of the legal process in
Britain.
    (WSJ, 2/24/07, p.P10)

1853        Solomon Northrup and Henry W. Derbu authored "Twelve Years a
Slave, Narrative of Solomon Northrup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped
in Washington in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 from a Cotton Plantation Near
the Red River in Louisiana."
    (ON, 11/99, p.7)

1853        Elizabeth Schermerhorn James, the aunt of Edith Wharton,
built the Wyndclyffe mansion in Rhinebeck, NY.
    (WSJ, 9/29/03, p.A1)

1853        The California state prison at San Quentin was completed. It
was built to house 50 inmates. An associated housing development on the
prison grounds was included.
    (SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W26)(SSFCM, 8/19/01, p.11)(SFCM, 4/4/04, p.8)

1853        In California a Morse telegraph was station was erected on
the SF hill now known as Telegraph Hill.
    (HT, 5/97, p.12)

1853        Charles Loring Brace founded the Children?s Aid Society. Its
goal was to build character.
    (WSJ, 2/120/00, p.A24)

1853        Silas Coombs, lumberman from Maine, moved to the Mendocino
coast of California and lived at what is now the Little River Inn.
    (SFEC, 4/13/97, p.T9)

1853        In Boston Sarah Parker Remond was thrown out of a theater
for refusing to be seated in an area reserved for blacks. She fell and
filed suit and was awarded monetary compensation. The theater was later
desegregated.
    (SFEC, 4/5/98, BR p.5)

1853        Heinrich Steinweg founded his piano dynasty three years
after arriving to the US from Germany. His story is told in "The
Steinway Saga: An American Dynasty" by D.W. Fostle. He later designed a
piano with a heavier internal mechanism that needed to be balanced by
fatter keys and thus set the standard 48-inch wide keyboard.
    (WSJ, 6/2/95, p.A-9)(WSJ, 11/4/97, p.A1)

c1853        Senator William Gwin, a leader of pro-slavery interests in
California, proposed to divide California to create a pro-slavery
southern half. He was opposed by David C. Broderick.
    (SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W26)

1853        The US government fortified the 22-acre island of Alcatraz
to protect SF from attack.
    (SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W38)

1853        Elias Howe settled law suits with 7 rivals of Singer Sewing
Company. Singer settled with Howe in 1854.
    (ON, 11/00, p.9)

1853        James Strang, king of Big Beaver Island, declared that his
female subjects should dress in loose, knee-length smocks worn over
modest pantaloons similar to those popularized by Amelia Bloomer, an
earlier new York feminist.
    (Smith., Aug. 1995, p.90)

1853        Levi Strauss and Co. got its start peddling tough pants to
California gold miners. The first pair sold for $13.50 a dozen. Strauss
acquired the idea and patent from Jacob Davis, who first produced canvas
pants with rivets for miners.
    (SFC, 1/23/96, p.C4)(SFC, 1/9/99, p.D3)(CHA, 1/2001)

1853        The New Haven Clock Co. was founded. It made inexpensive
brass movements until it bought a clock manufacturing company in 1856.
In 1946 it changed its name to the New haven Clock and Watch Co., and
went out of business in 1959.
    (SFC, 3/19/97, z1 p.3)

1853        The hypodermic needle was invented for morphine injection.
It was believed that addiction would be prevented if the digestive
system was bypassed.
    (SFEC, 11/10/96, zone 1 p.2)

1853        Charles Frederic Gerhardt first synthesized acetylsalicylic
acid, but he failed to understand its molecular structure and its
potential importance to humanity.
    (www.chemheritage.org)

1853        The low pressure steam engine was developed and reduced the
low frequency noise of the single-cylinder steam engines on riverboats,
which could be heard for miles.
    (SFEC, 1/23/00, Z1 p.2)

1852        Elisha Graves Otis invented a safety elevator in Yonkers,
NY. Otis invented the safety elevator to brake the car to a halt if the
supporting cable broke. Otis Steam Elevator Works made its 1st sale in
1854 to P.T. Barnum for display at the New York?s World Fair. In 1889
(the same year Eiffel built his Tower) the elevator met electricity.
United Technologies acquired Otis in 1976. In 2001 Jason Goodwin
authored "Otis, Giving Rise to the Modern City."
    (HT, 5/97, p.23)(HNQ, 4/21/01)(WSJ, 10/9/01, p.A20)(ON, 5/05, p.12)

1853        John C. Fremont began his 5th expedition west, his 2nd into
the Colorado Mountains, and traveled across Kansas, southern Colorado
and Utah in search of a railroad route over the Central Rockies. The
group reached Mormon settlements in Utah. Fremont brought along
photographer Solomon Nunes Carvalho, who took hundreds of
daguerreotypes. Many of the images were lost in an 1881 NYC warehouse
fire. In 1994 Robert Shlaer set out to recreate the images and in 2000
published "Sights Once Seen: Daguerreotyping Fremont?s Last Expedition
Through the Rockies."
    (SFEC, 7/9/00, BR p.12)(ON, 12/06, p.7)

1853        Hormuzd Rassam (1826-1910), Mosul-born Assyrian, and Sir
Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), British archeologist, uncovered ancient
Assyrian tablets at Nineveh (Iraq). Layard published his paper on
Assyrian-Egyptian Cross-Dating. By using seal-impressions of rulers
occurring on the same piece of clay, Layard was able to assign a date to
the Assyrian dynasty because the Egyptian ruler?s reign was firmly dated.
    (RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.59)(ON, 11/07,
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormuzd_Rassam)

1853        In California the steam freighter Tennessee was wrecked off
the Marin headlands in heavy fog. Everyone escaped safely. Tennessee
Point and Tennessee Cove were named after the freighter. The event
spurred Congress to fund a lighthouse at Point Bonita.
    (WSJ, 9/17/96, p.A12)(G, Winter 96/97, p.3)(SSFC, 11/4/01, p.T5)
1853        In SF the Laurel Hill Cemetery was established. Residents
were moved to Colma in 1939-1940 and the site was used for housing.
    (SFC, 5/7/08, p.G6)

1853        A smallpox epidemic hit Hawaii and 5-6000 people died.
    (SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)

1853        William Beaumont (67), a US Army assistant surgeon and
author of "Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the
Physiology of Digestion" (1833), died. [see 1822]
    (ON, 1/02, p.6)

1853        Chief Tenaya of the Yosemite Ahwahneechee was killed by a
Paiute chief near Mono Lake.
    (SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.4)

1853        The Croatian lighthouse Sveti Ivan Na Pucini was built on
the northern Adriatic Sea.
    (SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D9)

1853        French wines were first ranked at the order of Napoleon. The
top grades were selected on the basis of price, not taste.
    (SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T4)

1853        German physicist Heinrich Magnus (1802-1870) first described
the phenomenon, which came to be called the Magnus effect, whereby a
spinning object flying in a fluid creates a whirlpool of fluid around
itself, and experiences a force perpendicular to the line of motion and
away from the direction of spin. According to author James Gleick
(b.1954) Isaac Newton described it and correctly theorized the cause 180
years earlier, after observing tennis players in his Cambridge college.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect)

1853        Vilmos Zsolnay founded a pottery in Pecs, Hungary, that
became renowned for its colored tile. The Zsolnay factory used a 5-tower
mark from about 1878, which symbolized the 5 medieval churches in Pecs.
    (SFC, 8/31/05, p.G3)

1853        In Mexico Benito Juarez, patriot and reformer, was locked up
for 11 days in the dungeon of the fortress of San Juan de Ulua in Veracruz.
    (SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)

1853        The island of New Caledonia was made a French possession. It
served as a penal colony for four decades after 1864. Agitation for
independence during the 1980s and early 1990s has dissipated.
    (www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/nc.html)

1853        In the Ottoman Empire the Sultan moved from Topkapi to
Dolmabahce Palace in Constantinople.
    (Sky, 4/97, p.58)

1853-1857    Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the US, acquired land
from Mexico and supported the nation?s 1st trade agreement with Japan.
Jefferson Davis served as his secretary of war.
    (A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)(WSJ, 2/11/03, p.A10)
1853-1857    The 1st perforated postage stamps were made under the
administration of Pres. Franklin Pierce.
    (WSJ, 2/11/03, p.A10)

1853-1864     The Taiping army Of Hong Xiuquan took the city of Nanjing
as its heavenly capital in the Taiping Rebellion. He claimed to be
Jesus' brother and ruled there until 1864. Imperial troops crushed his
movement and tens of millions died.   
    (WSJ, 1/5/96, p.A-8)(WSJ, 4/26/99, p.A6)

1853-1890    Theo Van Gogh, the younger brother of Vincent Van Gogh.
Theo's widow, Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, inherited the paintings of
Vincent that had been in Theo's hands.
    (SFC, 1/18/99, p.B2)

1853-1902    John Twachtman, American impressionist painter. He was born
in Cincinnati, lived and painted in Munich and Paris, and founded an
informal art school in Cos Cob, Conn.
    (WSJ, 4/10/00, p.A44)

1853-1927    Hudson Maxim, brother of Hiram, invented high quality
smokeless powders used in cannon projectiles and torpedoes.
    (V.D.-H.K.p.268)
1853-1927    Joao Capistrano de Abreu, Brazilian historian. He later
wrote "Chapters of Brazil Colonial History, 1500-1800," first published
in 1907. The Oxford Library of Latin America published a new edition in
1998.
    (WSJ, 2/3/98, p.A20)

1854        Jan 5, The steamship San Francisco wrecked and 300 died.
    (MC, 1/5/02)

1854        Jan 13, Anthony Foss patented an accordion. [see 1850, 1852]
    (MC, 1/13/02)

1854        Jan 18, Thomas A. Watson, inventor and assistant Alexander
Bell (Telephone), was born.
    (MC, 1/18/02)

1854        Feb 6, Composer Robert Schumann was saved from a
depression-induced suicide attempt of walking into the Rhine.
    (MC, 2/6/02)

1854        Feb 11, Major streets were lit by coal gas for 1st time.
    (MC, 2/11/02)
1854        Feb 11, Commodore Matthew Perry pulled into Edo Bay, Japan,
12 months early with 9 warships to begin talks for a treaty.
    (ON, 11/04, p.12)

1854        Feb 16, Franz Liszt's symphony "Orpheus," premiered.
    (MC, 2/16/02)

1854        Feb 17, Friedrich A. Krupp, German arms manufacturer, was born.
    (MC, 2/17/02)

1854        Feb 23, Great Britain officially recognized the independence
of the Orange Free State.
    (HN, 2/23/99)

1854        Feb 27, Composer Robert Schumann was saved from a suicide
attempt in Rhine.
    (MC, 2/27/02)

1854        Feb 28, Some 50 slavery opponents met in Ripon, Wis., to
call for creation of a new political group, which became the Republican
Party. [see Mar 20, Jul 6]
    (AP, 2/28/00)

1854        Mar 1, The SS City of Glasgow, a steamship of the Inman
Line, left Liverpool harbor with 480 passengers and was never seen again.
    (SC, 3/1/02)(WSJ, 7/1/03, p.D8)

1854        Mar 7, Charles Miller patented the 1st US sewing machine to
stitch buttonholes.
    (MC, 3/7/02)

1854        Mar 8, US Commodore Matthew C. Perry landed at Yokohama on
his 2nd trip to Japan. Within a month, he concluded a treaty with the
Japanese. In 2003 Christopher Benfey authored "The Great Wave: Gilded
Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics and the Opening of Old Japan."
    (AP, 3/8/98)(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.M6)

1854        Mar 14, Thomas Riley Marshall, 28th U.S. Vice President
(Woodrow Wilson), was born.
    (HN, 3/14/98)

1854        Mar 15, Emil von Behring, first recipient of the Nobel Prize
for medicine in 1901, was born.
    (HN, 3/15/99)

1854        Mar 20, The Republican Party was founded when former members
of the Whig political party met to establish a new political party that
would oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories. [see
Feb 28, Jul 6]
    (MC, 3/20/02)

1854        Mar 28, During the Crimean War, Britain and France declared
war on Russia.
    (AP, 3/28/97)

1854        Mar 31, Sir Dugald Clerk, inventor of the two-stroke
motorcycle engine, was born.
    (HN, 3/31/98)
1854        Mar 31, Chief Shogun Iyesada, following negotiations with
Commodore Perry, approved the Treaty of Kanagawa on behalf of Emperor
Osahito. This forced Japan to open its ports to foreign trade.
    (Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 215)(ON, 11/04, p.12)

1854        Mar, A stone, donated by Pope Pius IX, was stolen from the
Washington Monument. Members of the Know-Nothing Party were suspected.
     (ON, 3/00, p.9)

1854        Apr 3, The SF Mint opened at 608 Commercial St. It issued $4
million in gold coins this year. An Indian princess appeared on gold
dollars.
    (SFC, 8/21/01, p.A12)(SSFC, 1/28/03, p.E1)(WSJ, 12/12/03,
p.W15)(SFC, 4/2/04, p.F3)

1854        Apr 15, The immigrant steamer ship "Powchattan" (Powhattan)
struck Brigantine Shoals and sank off Long Beach, NY. Over 300 people died.
    (www.maritimeheritage.org/PassLists/js051854.html)

1854        Apr 16, Franz Liszt's "Mazeppa," premiered.
    (MC, 4/16/02)
1854        Apr 16, San Salvador was destroyed by an earthquake.
    (HN, 4/16/98)

1854        Apr 25, Congress ratifies the Gadsden Purchase. [see 1853,
Gadsden]
    (HFA, ?96, p.28)

1854        Apr 29, Henri Poincare (1912), French mathematician,
astronomer, philosopher, was born. He investigated the idea of space and
led to the notion that space is too complex for mathematics. Rather
space is an assumption, and it can be described and controlled only so
far as we assume it. In other words there is no such thing as space.
Instead, there are as many spaces as there are people... for every
person can assume an indefinite number of different spaces.
    (V.D.-H.K.p.272)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9)

1854        May 3, William Beale (70), composer, died.
    (MC, 5/3/02)

1854        May 5, English pirate Plumridge robbed along pro-English
Finnish coast.
    (MC, 5/5/02)

1854        May 24, Louis Mountbatten, admiral (WW I), was born.
    (MC, 5/24/02)

1854        May 30, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, designed by Sen. Stephen A.
Douglas of Illinois, was passed by the US Congress. It allowed people in
the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether
or not to allow slavery within their borders. The governor of the Kansas
Territory was James William Denver. Pres. Pierce kept appointing
proslavery governors. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri
Compromise and opened the north to slavery. This period of Kansas
history was incorporated into the 1998 novel "The All-True Travels and
Adventures of Lidie Newton," by Jane Smiley.
    (AP, 5/30/97)(WSJ, 2/11/03,
p.A10)(www.historyplace.com/lincoln/kansas.htm)(ON, 4/08, p.1)
1854          May 30, Vermont native Elisha Graves Otis (1811-1861)
unveiled his invention, the safety elevator at the New York World's
Fair. Audiences gasped as Otis, riding on the hoist's platform,
dramatically ordered the lifting rope cut. Instead of falling, the car
locked safely into the elevator shaft. Prior to the 1850s there was no
existing market for passenger elevators because there was no safety
mechanism in the event of a cable break. In 1852 Otis was a master
mechanic working at a bedstead factory in Yonkers, N.Y., when he built a
hoisting machine with two sets of metal teeth at the car's sides. If the
lifting rope broke, the teeth would lock into place, preventing the car
from falling. Otis never realized the potential of his invention. His
sons built the Otis Elevator Company, enabling the skylines of cities
throughout the world to be transformed with skyscrapers.
    (HNPD, 5/30/99)(ON, 5/05, p.12)

1854        Jun 10, The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, held
its first graduation.
    (HN, 6/10/98)

1854        Jun 17, The Red Turban revolt broke out in Guangdong,     .
    (HN, 6/17/98)

1854        Jun 18, E.W. Scripps (d.1926) was born in Rushville, Ill. He
founded the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain and the UP wire service.
    (www.eh.net/bookreviews/library/0184.shtml)

1854        Jun 21, The first Victoria Cross was awarded to Charles
Lucas, an Irishman and mate aboard the HMS Hecla for conspicuous
gallantry at Bomarsrund in the Baltic. The medal was made from metal
from a cannon captured at Sebastopol.
    (Camelot, 6/21/99)

1854        Jul 1, The Singer Sewing Company settled a sewing machine
patent suit with Elias Howe and paid him $15,000.
    (ON, 11/00, p.9)

1854        Jul 6, The Republican Party was officially organized in
Jackson, Michigan. The Republican Party was formed in Ripon, Wisconsin,
by a group of anti-slavery politicians at the Little White Schoolhouse.
[see Feb 28, Mar 20]
    (Hem., 7/96, p.28)(HN, 7/6/98)

1854        Jul 12, George Eastman (d.1932), inventor of the Kodak
camera, was born in Waterville, N.Y.
    (AP, 7/12/99)

1854        Jul 13, US forces shelled and burned San Juan del Norte,
Nicaragua.
    (MC, 7/13/02)

1854        Aug 8, Smith and Wesson patented metal bullet cartridges.
    (MC, 8/8/02)

1854        Aug 9, Henry David Thoreau published "Walden," in which he
described his experiences while living near Walden Pond on Cape Cod in
Massachusetts.
    (Hem, Dec. 94, p.44)(AP, 8/9/97)

1854        Aug 16, Duncan Phyfe (86), NYC furniture maker, died.
    (MC, 8/16/02)

1854        Aug 29,  Daniel Halladay patented a self-governing windmill.
    (MC, 8/29/01)

1854        Sep 27, The first great disaster involving an ocean liner in
the Atlantic occurred when the steamship Arctic sank off the coast of
Newfoundland with 300 people aboard.
    (AP, 9/27/97)(Arch, 7/02, p.7)

1854        Aug 30, John Fremont issued a proclamation freeing the
slaves of Missouri rebels.
    (MC, 8/30/01)

1854        Sep 1, Engelbert Humperdinck, German opera composer (Hansel
& Gretel), was born.
    (MC, 9/1/02)

1854        Sep 14, Allied armies, including those of Britain & France,
landed in Crimea.
    (MC, 9/14/01)

1854        Sep 19, Henry Meyer patented a sleeping rail car.
    (MC, 9/19/01)

1854        Oct 3, William Crawford Gorgas (d.1920), US Surgeon-Gen, was
born. He helped cure yellow fever. He served as the chief sanitary
officer of the Panama Canal (1904-1913).
    (WUD, 1994 p.610)(MC, 10/3/01)

1854        Oct 4, Abraham Lincoln made his 1st political speech at
Illinois State Fair.
    (MC, 10/4/01)

1854        Oct 16, Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech in Peoria, Ill.,
part of a series against legislation proposed by Sen. Stephen Douglas
that would allow settlers to decide the status of slavery in Kansas and
Nebraska. In 2008 Lewis E. Lehrman authored ?Lincoln at Peoria: The
Turning Point.?
    (WSJ, 7/26/08, p.W9)
1854        Oct 16, Oscar Wilde (born as Fingal O'Flahertie Wills,
d.1900), dramatist, poet, novelist and critic, was born in Dublin. His
work included "The Picture of Dorian Gray."  "Anybody can make history.
Only a great man can write it." [see 1856-1900]
    (HN, 10/16/98)(AP, 2/16/99)
   
1854        Oct 17, James Simpson, a Baltimore inventor, received a
patent for a multi-walled ice pitcher.
    (SFC, 12/30/98, Z1 p.2)

1854        Oct 20, Arthur Rimbaud (d.1891), French poet
(Illuminations), was born in Charlesville.
    (HN, 10/20/00)(MC, 10/20/01)(SFC, 2/12/02, p.D3)

1854        Oct 25, During the Crimean War, a brigade of British light
infantry was destroyed by Russian artillery as they charged down a
narrow corridor in full view of the Russians. The Crimean War is largely
remembered for the Charge of the Light Brigade, a hopeless but gallant
British cavalry charge against a heavily defended Russian force. The
battle began when the Russians attacked the British-French supply depot
at Balaclava, some eight miles from Sevastopol, on the Black Sea Crimean
Peninsula. Taken by surprise, the British counterattacked but failed to
follow up. Through a staff error, Gen. Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade of
673 horsemen was ordered to charge the Russian position through a
mile-long valley and prevent them from carrying away some captured
cannon. The Light Brigade advanced up the valley, taking casualties all
the way, and reached the guns. But once there, they could not hold their
position and were forced to retreat. Of the 673 men who took part in the
senseless charge, only 195 were present at roll call that night. The
Charge of the Light Brigade ended the battle, but Balaclava remained in
the hands of the British-French Allies. The event was described in a
poem by Tennyson. French General Bosquet remarked "It is magnificent,
but it is not war."
    (AP, 10/25/97)(HNPD, 10/25/98)(HN, 10/25/98)(MC, 10/25/01)

1854        Oct 26, Charles William Post, food manufacturer, was born.
He created "Grape Nuts" and "Post Toasties." [see Oct 26, 1855]
    (HN, 10/26/00)

1854        Nov 4, The first lighthouse on the West Coast was built at
Alcatraz Island.
    (SFC, 5/19/96,City Guide, p.7)(MC, 11/4/01)
1854        Nov 4, Florence Nightingale (d.1910) and 38 nurses arrived
at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari following the outbreak of the Crimean
War. She was appointed to oversee female nurses to be dispatched to
military hospitals in Turkey to help with increasing casualties. She had
been trained as a nurse--against the belief that nursing was not a
suitable profession for women--before serving as Superintendent of the
Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness in London in 1853. At
Scutari, soldiers appreciated her kindness and devotion as a nurse.
Among other things, she later became known for her ideas about hospital
reform and for creating reading rooms in hospitals. In 1907, she was the
first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. She died at the age of 90,
at home in London. In 1951 Cecil Woodham-Smith authored "Florence
Nightingale."
    (HNPD, 11/4/98)(HN, 11/4/98)(ON, SC, p.12)

1854        Nov 5, The British and French defeated the Russians at
Inkerman, Crimea.
    (HN, 11/5/98)

1854        Nov 6, John Philip Sousa, "The March Master," American
bandmaster, composer and the king of American march music, was born in
Washington, D.C. He later wrote 5 novels. Among his 140 marches are
"Stars and Stripes Forever" and "Semper Fidelis."
    (AP, 11/6/97)(SFEC, 2/8/98, Z1 p.8)(HN, 11/6/00)

1854        Nov 9, Franz Liszt's "Fest-Long," premiered.
    (MC, 11/9/01)

1854        Nov 13, George Whitfield Chadwick, composer, was born in
Lowell Mass.
    (MC, 11/13/01)
1854        Nov 13, "New Era" sank off New Jersey coast with loss of 300.
    (MC, 11/13/01)

1854        Nov, A wooden boat called Mystery set sail from Cornwall,
bound for Australia with seven Cornishmen hoping to escape their lives
of poverty and dig for gold Down Under, a trip that eventually took 116
days.
    (AFP, 10/21/08)

1854        Dec 8, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception. In an encyclical he stated that: "The Blessed Virgin Mary
was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and
privilege of almighty God? Preserved immune from all stain of original
sin. Ineffabilis Deus."
    (AP, 12/8/97)(PTA, 1980, p.510)(WSJ, 6/3/99, p.A27)

1854         Dec 9, Alfred, Lord Tennyson?s poem, "The Charge of the
Light Brigade," was published in England.
    (AP, 12/9/97)

1854        Dec 26, Wood pulp paper was 1st exhibited in Buffalo.
    (MC, 12/26/01)

1854        Gustave Courbet painted "The Meeting [Bonjour, Monsieur
Courbet!]." It depicted a meeting with his patron, art collector Alfred
Bruyas (1821-1877).
    (SFC, 1/22/05, p.E1)

1854        Eugene Delacroix painted "Arabs Stalking a Lion."
    (WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)

1854        Franz Xaver Winterhalter painted a portrait of Empress
Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III.
    (WSJ, 4/3/03, p.D8)

1854        A lighthouse, the first on the West Coast, was completed on
Alcatraz.
    (SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W38)

1854        The National Hotel was built in Nevada City, Ca. In 2006 it
was California?s oldest continuously operating hotel.
    (SSFC, 2/5/06, p.F9)

1854        The Detroit Observatory, the second oldest building of the
Univ. of Michigan was initiated by Henry P. Tappan, first pres. of the U
of M.
    (LSA, Spring 1995, p.39)

1854        Dr. George W. L. Bickley, a Virginian who had moved to Ohio,
organized the first "castle," or local branch, of the Knights of the
Golden Circle in Cincinnati and soon took the order to the South, where
it was enthusiastically received. Its principal object was to provide a
force to colonize the northern part of Mexico and thus extend proslavery
interests, and the Knights became especially active in Texas. The
Knights of the Golden Circle was a secret society organized in the 1850s
in the American Midwest that promoted the extension of slavery. During
the American Civil War the society sympathized with the Confederacy,
encouraged desertion in the Union Army, resisted enlistment and
interfered with the draft. At its peak there were some 200,000 members.
It changed its name to the Order of American Knights in 1863 and in 1864
to the Sons of Liberty. Northern authorities arrested many members in
1864 and sentenced to death three of its leaders. The death sentences
were later suspended, the leaders ordered released in 1866 by the
Supreme Court.
    http://www.dev.infoplease.com/ce5/CE028675.html
    (HNQ, 8/2/99)

1854        Lola Montez, international performer famed for her ?Spider
Dance,? retired to Grass Valley, Ca., and taught her neighbor, Lotta
Crabtree, how to sing and dance.
    (CVG, Vol 16, p.11)

1854        The Royal and Ancient Club of the Old Course at St. Andrews
was established. It oversaw the rules of the game of golf which was
played as early as ~1473.
    (SFC, 6/25/95, p.T-9)

1854        US Congress passed a resolution that declared: The great and
conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the
pure doctrines and divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
    (WSJ, 6/26/01, p.A23)

1854        The New England Emigrant Aid Society was created to colonize
Kansas with Northern abolitionists. The Massachusetts Emigrant Aid
Society, founded by Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, promoted the
settlement of anti-slavery groups in Kansas, with the ultimate objective
of making it a free state. Adhering to the cause of "popular
sovereignty," the organization-which was reincorporated in February,
1855 as the New England Emigrant Aid Company-founded the town of
Lawrence and other Free State communities. Active into 1857, it helped
settle some 2,000 people in Kansas.
    (WSJ, 3/27/98, p.W10)(HNQ, 10/5/99)

1854        The California Legislature defined a public grave-yard as a
place where the bodies of six or more persons are buried.
    (WSJ, 12/16/98, p.CA1)
1854        Yosemite Valley was granted to California as a public trust.
    (SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.4)
1854        Ulysses S. Grant was stationed at Fort Humboldt in northern
California.
    (SFEC, 4/13/97, p.T5)
1854        The US Navy bought Mare Island near Vallejo for $83,491.
Commander David Glasgow Farragut arrived to transform the island into a
productive shipyard. He later became the Navy?s first admiral.
    (SFC, 5/7/97, p.A15)(SSFC, 8/11/02, p.C5)
1854        The Mariposa County courthouse was built. The county
initially covered a third of the state. The Mariposa Gazette began
operations. In 2003 Mariposa County ranked 53rd among the state's 58
counties in terms of population and income.
    (SFC, 5/29/03, p.A14)(SSFC, 7/1/07, p.W8)
1854        The Union Democrat newspaper of Sonora, Ca., began publishing.
    (SFC, 1/3/98, p.A19)
1854        A newspaper began publishing in Eureka, Ca. By 2006
Times-Standard operated with a paid circulation of 20,000 and was
managed by Dean Singleton of the Denver-based MediaNews Group.
    (SFCM, 8/13/06, p.10)
1854        Seth Shaw built his family home in Ferndale, Ca. The town
later became a California historic landmark and the Shaw House an Inn
listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
    (SSFC, 6/10/07, p.G8)
1854        In SF the city?s original International Hotel was built on
Jackson Street.
    (SSFC, 8/19/07, p.B1)

1854        St. Paul, Minn., was founded.
    (USAT, 3/5/04, p.9A)

1854        Washington State became a US territory.
    (HT, 3/97, p.8)

1854        In Keshena Falls, Wisconsin, the Menomonee (people of the
wild rice) Chiefs Oshkosh and Keshena met with federal Indian agents and
agreed to retain only 275,000 acres from their original 9 ½ million
acres. As part of the settlement the chiefs and their followers were
promised eternal government protection. In 1954 Congress voted to
withdraw that support.
    (NG, Aug., 1974, p.235)

1854        The Bradley & Hubbard Manufacturing Co. was founded in
Meriden, Conn. The company made clocks, tables, frames, irons,
chandeliers and other metal objects. Their lamps are prized by collectors.
    (SFC, 8/6/97, Z1 p.6)

1854        Stephen Hedges of NYC patented his convertible chair, a half
round table hinged to a half round chair.
    (SFC, 7/8/98, Z1 p.3)

1854        Bernard Riemann conjectured that the universe as a whole
might be non-Euclidean in nature, curving into a "hypersphere".
    (WSJ, 2/17/95, p.A-10)

1854        Archeologist G.B. de Rossi, while excavating the Christian
catacombs in Rome discovered a marble-pillared chamber filled with
rubble and fragments of inscriptions suggesting the burial of several
early Popes.
    (ITV, 1/96, p.60)

1854        White settlers in Del Norte County, Ca., ambushed and killed
30 Tolowa Indians at the Etculet village on Lake Earl.
    (SFEC, 7/16/00, p.B1)

1854        In Australia Chartist ideas influenced the miners of Eureka
Stockade in 1854 in Victoria where they adopted all of Chartism's six
points including the secret ballot. Chartism was a movement for
political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th
century, between 1838 and 1850. It takes its name from the People's
Charter of 1838.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot)

1854        Elisabeth of Bavaria (16) married the Habsburg Emp. Franz
Josef II (23).
    (WSJ, 12/8/97, p.A13)

1854        Daniel Florence O?Leary (53), Irish-born personal secretary
to Simon Bolivar, died in Bogota. After Bolivar?s death (1830) O?Leary
served in a diplomatic capacity for the Venezuelan and British
governments in Bogota. In 1879 his memoirs were published by his son.
    (ON, 3/05, p.2)

1854        In England the Crystal Palace, a glass and steel structure
built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 was moved to the park at
Sydenham, south London. The grounds at the suggestion of Prince Albert
were landscaped with statues of extinct animals by the sculptor
Water-house Hawkins.
    (T.E.-J.B. p.20)
1854        Charles Wheatstone, British cryptologist, invented cipher to
be used by diplomats, but a government official worried that it was too
complicated. In 2006 Stephen Pincock authored ?Codebreaker? a tale of
codes and ciphers as well as their creators and crackers.
    (WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
1854        Phillip Morris began making cigarettes in London.
    (SFC, 9/27/97, p.E3)
1854        Cholera broke out in London again. Dr. John Snow traced it
to cesspool near a public water pump on Broad Street.
    (ON, 5/05, p.9)

1854        Italian anatomist Fillipo Pacini discovered the cholera
bacillus, but did not prove that it caused cholera. His work remained
obscure and was not translated to English.
    (ON, 5/05, p.10)

1854        Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) nursed wounded soldiers at
Scutari Hospital in Turkey during the Crimean War.
    (HNQ, 4/29/01)

1854        Alfred Russel Wallace began his historic study of Malay
flora and fauna in and around Bukit Timah hill in Singapore.
    (NH, 4/1/04, p.56)

1854        In northern Russia Solovki monks fought off a British naval
siege.
    (Econ, 12/18/04, p.83)

1854        Richard Owen, founder of London?s Natural History Museum
discovered fossils in South Africa of a plant-eating prosauropod named
Massospondylus (bulky vertebrae). Owen is the man who coined the term
dinosaur.
    (SFC, 7/29/05, p.A2)

c1854-1856    George Robinson Fardon (1807-1886), British photographer,
took pictures of SF for his "San Francisco Album 1854-1856," believed to
be the first camera survey of an American city.
    (SFC, 6/19/99, p.B3)

1854-1857    David Kerr charted more than 100 sq. miles of the San
Francisco Bay Area marshland for the US Coast Survey, the first federal
mapping agency.
    (SFC, 10/25/96, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/2uwjs3)

1854-1860    The six golden years of French photographer Felix Nadar,
representing the best of his portrait photography.
    (Smith., 5/95, p.72)

1854-1923     Bourke Cockran, American politician and orator: "You
simply cannot hang a millionaire in America."
    (AP, 11/18/97)

1854-1928    Leos Janacek, Czech composer. His work included the opera
"Makropulos" (1926), The Dostoevsky based "From the House of the Dead"
and "Katya Kabanova."
    (WSJ, 1/3/96, p.A-7)(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A8)(WUD, 1994, p.763)(SFC,
1/27/97, p.A20)(WSJ, 6/03/97, p.A20)

1854-1932    George Eastman, American inventor, industrialist, and
philanthropist.
    (AHD, 1971, p.411)

1854-1937    Frances Brundage, artist and illustrator. She did paintings
of Victorian children and illustrated over 240 books along with
calendars, postcards, cloth dolls and prints.
    (SFC, 8/4/99, Z1 p.5)

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