1867: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Prussia's Count von Bismarck organizes a North German Confederation under Prussian leadership. The socialist chairman of German workingmen's unions August Babel, 27, wins election to the Confederation's Reichstag.
The Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy that will continue until 1918 has its beginnings February 8 in a compromise (Ausgleich) engineered by Hungarian statesman Ferencz Deak, 63, who has gained restoration of the Hungarian constitution from the Austrian emperor Franz Josef, who will rule as king of Hungary until his death in 1916. Having ruled with absolute power since 1848, the king-emperor has no sympathy for the constitutional government under which he will now be constrained. The Austrian and Hungarian people have had no say in the matter, but the Ausgleich comes into force in March following its passage as constitutional law by the Hungarian parliament, and Austria's Reichsrat is permitted only to confirm it without amendments (German liberals dominate its membership and receive some concessions, including a genuinely impartial jury, security of individual rights, and guarantees of religious and educational freedom). Austria-Hungary's ministers are responsible to the emperor, not to the Reichsrat.
Greek statesman Dimitríos Kallérgis dies at Athens January 24 at age 63; Crimean War general Prince Aleksandr S. Menshikov at St. Petersburg May 1 at age 79; former Greek king Otto at Bamberg, Bavaria, July 26 at age 52.
Willem III of the Netherlands incorporates Limburg into his realm; he tries to sell his sovereignty over Luxembourg to France (see 1839), but winds up acceding to Prussian demands that Luxembourg be established as an independent duchy. The Treaty of London signed May 11 reaffirms Luxembourg's territorial integrity and the political autonomy she has enjoyed since the 1839 treaty, declaring her to be perpetually neutral (see 1890).
Former Spanish prime minister Leopoldo O'Donnell, duque de Tetuán, dies at Biarritz November 6 at age 58, having suppressed two insurrections last year before being dismissed by Isabella II (see 1868). Former governor of Cuba Francisco Serrano y Domínguez, 56, succeeds O'Donnell as head of the Liberal Union Party.
Irish Fenians attempt to seize Chester in February and attack police barracks December 13, kill six people who include a 7-year-old girl while trying to blow up London's Clerkenwell Prison. The revolutionary movement founded among Irish-Americans by James Stephens in 1858 spread to Ireland 2 years ago but will dissolve next year as differences arise between Stephens and more radical leaders.
Japan's figurehead emperor Komei dies February 3 and a movement to restore the power of the emperor gains strength under the leadership of the Mito clan in the north and the Satchō Dohi group (Satsuma, Chōshu, Tosa, and Hizen clans) in the west. Revolutionary Shinsaku Takasugi dies of tuberculosis at Shimonoseki May 17 at age 26, having dramatically altered the balance of power between the shōgunate and the feudal lords; the new shōgun Yoshinobu is virtually imprisoned in his Kyoto palace and resigns November 9, ending the feudal military government that has ruled Japan since 1185 (see 1868).
Former French military governor of Cochinchina Louis-Adolphe Bonard dies at Amiens March 31 at age 62. France annexes that part of what she calls Cochinchina not included under terms of the 1862 Treaty of Saigon (see 1864). Vietnamese diplomat Phan Thanh Gian feels he has betrayed his people and commits suicide at Vinh Long August 4 at age 71 to protest French use of force in a cause which the French cannot morally justify (see 1873).
The Straits Settlements on the Strait of Malacca becomes a separate crown colony April 1, bringing Malacca, Penang, and Singapore under the direct control of Britain's Colonial Office (see 1826; 1942).
A Tenure of Office Act adopted by Congress in February prohibits the president from dismissing any officer confirmed by the Senate unless the Senate approves; the act's intent is primarily to keep President Johnson from dismissing Secretary of War Stanton, who is sympathetic to the cause of the Radical Republicans (see 1866). Congress appoints seven representatives to draw up articles of impeachment against President Johnson, whose opposition to harsh Reconstructionist policies in the South have enraged many. Former abolitionist George W. Julian, now 50, opposed the Compromise of 1850 and lost his bid for reelection that year; he was elected to Congress in 1860 as a Republican and helped to make emancipation a war aim. He now helps lead the fight to oust Johnson.
Nebraska enters the Union March 1 as the 37th state (its 76,644 square miles make it nearly 10 times the size of Massachusetts).
A U.S. naval appropriations bill enacted into law March 2 represents the first federal effort to regulate political campaign finance; it prohibits officers and government employees from soliciting funds in naval yards (see Pendelton Act, 1883).
Radical Republicans place the southern states under military rule again in March, but they fail to win a vote for impeachment in the House. President Johnson temporarily suspends Secretary of War Stanton August 12, replacing him with Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant (see 1868).
The British North America Act signed into law March 29 unites Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia in a new Dominion of Canada with its capital at Ottawa, a town of 18,000 (see Charlottetown Conference, 1864). The law takes effect July 1 (which will be celebrated hereafter as Canada Day); the first Dominion premier is John A. (Alexander) Macdonald, 52, a Scots-Canadian who has been premier of Upper Canada and has led the federation movement; the first governor general of the new Dominion is Irish-born colonial administrator Charles Stanley, now 47, who was named governor general of British North America 6 years ago, is elevated by Queen Victoria to the peerage as 4th Viscount Monck (of Ballytrammon), and will serve until next year.
Alaska comes under U.S. ownership following ratification of a treaty signed March 30. Russia's czar Aleksandr II has accepted a suggestion from Nikolai Muravyov, Graf Amursky, that he sell the vast territory, whose 570,000 square miles of forest, glaciers, icefields, and tundra remain largely unexplored and whose population of about 30,000 is almost entirely aboriginal; U.S. minister to Russia Cassius M. Clay, now 56, has helped Secretary of State Seward arrange the $7.2 million purchase at 1.9¢ per acre, critics ridicule "Seward's icebox," but the Senate consents April 9 and the transfer takes place October 18.
Midway Island in the Pacific becomes U.S. territory August 28: Captain William Reynolds of the U.S.S. Lackawanna seizes the island.
Acting governor of Montana Territory General Thomas F. Meagher drowns accidentally in the Missouri River near Fort Benton July 1 at age 43; Rear Admiral John D. Sloat, U.S. Navy, dies on Staten Island, New York, November 28 at age 86.
Mexican resistance, pressure from the United States, and domestic criticism make France's Napoleon III decide early in the year to withdraw his troops from Mexico (see 1866). The emperor Maximilian surrenders to Mexican forces May 15 as troops under the command of Mariano Escobedo besiege the walled city of Querétaro; the French have killed thousands of Mexican guerrillas, Benito Juárez has vowed vengeance, a court martial condemns Maximilian to death, and he goes before a firing squad June 19, thus ending Napoleon III's dream of establishing an empire in Latin America (Mexican soldier-politician Miguel Miramón is executed near Querétaro the same day at age 34, having been instrumental in persuading Maximilian to continue his struggle). Juárez returns to Mexico City and in August issues a call for national elections; he also asks for a referendum on five proposed amendments to the constitution that was promulgated 10 years ago. The president is reelected, but his proposals to amend the constitution would strengthen executive power and the referendum votes are not even counted (see 1871). Revolutionary leader Juan Alvarez dies at Acapulco August 21 at age 77.
Former Peruvian president Ramón Castilla dies at Arica, Chile, May 25 at age 69.
Colombia ousts her dictatorial president Mosquera and sends him into exile for a period of 2 years (see 1865).
Paraguay's President López conscripts slaves aged 12 to 60 as smallpox and cholera kill far more on both sides than do bullets in the year's single battle (see 1866; 1868).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton addresses the New York State Senate Judiciary Committee at Albany January 23 urging that women be permitted to vote for delegates to a convention that will rewrite the state constitution of 1777.
The Kansas legislature proposes an amendment enfranchising women and presents it to voters for ratification. Suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton persuade feminist Lucy Stone, now 49, and her husband, Henry Blackwell, to campaign for ratification and the couple enjoys some success in May. Anthony visits her brother at Leavenworth, Kansas, hears that a proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution would guarantee voting rights to all male citizens 21 years of age or older, and rushes home to New York to agitate for removal of the word male, which has not heretofore appeared in the Constitution.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton launch their own woman suffrage effort in August, receiving aid from George Francis Train, a handsome, charming, and abstemious millionaire who has made a fortune in foreign ventures, harbors presidential aspirations, and supports women's rights (along with Irish independence, free trade, monetary inflation, and central banking) while opposing extension of the franchise to the illiterate. Attired always in purple gloves and full dress, Train pleads the case of woman suffrage to the New York State constitutional convention. Kansas voters defeat the proposed woman suffrage amendment, but Stanton obtains financing from Train and speaks at major cities en route home to New York (see The Revolution, 1868).
The Scottish Women's Suffrage Society holds its first meeting June 11.
Britain's Second Reform Bill extends suffrage (see 1832). Enacted August 15, it opens borough elections to all householders paying the poor rates and to all lodgers of 1 year's residence or more who pay annual rents of at least £10, opens county elections to owners of land that rents for at least £5 per year and to tenants who pay at least £12 per year. A bill that would extend voting rights to women fails, but by the turn of the century the land-owning aristocracy will have lost its age-old monopoly on political power not only in Britain but throughout the industrialized world (see 1905).
Economist-philosopher John Stuart Mill, now 61, argues in parliamentary debates preceding passage of the Reform Bill that giving even a minority of women the vote would be of benefit to all, but Caroline Norton does not support woman suffrage; although her divorce and custody battle led to passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act 10 years ago, she believes that women need special legal protection precisely because they are inferior. The Reform Bill passes with help from Liberal Henry Fawcett, 44, MP, who was blinded in an 1858 shooting accident but became professor of political economy at Cambridge in 1863 and this year marries physician Elizabeth Garrett's younger sister, Millicent, 20. He will support her woman-suffrage efforts.
The Knights of the White Camelia is organized in Louisiana; similar to the 2-year-old Ku Klux Klan, the new fraternal order will spread among white supremacists throughout the former Confederate states.
Lakota Sioux chief Red Cloud and his nephew Crazy Horse lead an attack of 1,500 to 2,000 tribesmen against a 31-man U.S. Army woodcutting detail sent out from Fort Phil Kearney August 2 in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains (see 1866). In what will be remembered as the Wagon Box Fight (the troops have circled their wagon boxes), the captain in command of the detail has his men fire their newly-converted Springfield breech-loading rifles to fight off the attack, the Lakota have never before encountered rifles that can be reloaded so quickly, reinforcements arrive with a howitzer just in time from the fort five miles away, and the Lakota withdraw, having lost 50 to 60 braves by their own admission (the soldiers estimate that they have killed hundreds). Only three of the 32 men inside the wagon-box circle are dead (see Fort Laramie Treaty, 1868).
Congress appoints a commission to conclude peace treaties with Native American tribes. The legislators have declined to support a war of extermination proposed by Generals Sherman and Grant, and tribes on the southern plains have agreed to meet government representatives in a council arranged by Cherokee scout Jesse Chisholm and Delaware leader Black Beaver. The Medicine Lodge Treaties signed in late October with the Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa set aside specific areas where the tribes remain free to pursue the diminishing herds of bison for as long as they survive, but they also affirm the federal government's claim to all the rest of the grasslands, thereby ending the Indians' nomadic life while permitting white settlers, ranchers, and railroad interests to move in. The government agrees to provide churches, schools, farming implements, food and clothing each year, and protection from white hunters, but many tribesmen will not remain on reservations, going on the warpath instead to fight incursions by whites (see 1868).
The Austrian Red Cross is founded at Vienna.
Explorer John M. Bozeman sets out from Virginia City, reaches the Yellowstone River, and is killed by Blackfeet tribesmen April 20 at age 31 (a companion is wounded but escapes).
Compton, California, is founded as a Methodist colony in Los Angeles County; taking its name from pioneer settler G. D. Compton, the farming village will be incorporated in 1888.
A new Internal Revenue Act approved by Congress March 2 reduces taxes.
The Secret Order of the Knights of St. Crispin founded by shoemakers at Milwaukee March 7 quickly grows to have 50,000 members nationwide, making it the largest labor union in America (Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers). Orders for footwear have fallen off sharply since the end of the Civil War and manufacturers have been reducing wages, the larger ones to increase their competitive advantage, the smaller to avoid bankruptcy; machinery developed since the 1850s has made it possible to employ unskilled labor, which is in oversupply, and factories have been reducing their need for skilled workers by producing soles separately from uppers and letting nearby contracting shops that specialize in lasting sew the parts together and finish them (see Daughters of St. Crispin, 1869; strikebreakers, 1870).
The Bank of California opens June 27 at San Francisco.
The Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. incorporated in August with offices at 18 New Street, New York, promotes the first stock ticker, adapted from a printing telegraph invented by Edward Callahan. The clacking ticker will be installed next year on the New York Stock Exchange, will initially serve only brokers on that exchange, but will soon be used on other exchanges throughout the country, printing stock quotes on strips of paper and eliminating the need to have runners carry quotes from one office to another (see Western Union, 1871).
Standard and Poor's has its beginnings in Poor's Publishing Co., a corporation founded by Maine-born New York historian-economist Henry Varnum Poor, 55, to publish his annual "Manual of the Railroads and Canals of the United States." Poor's History of Railroads and Canals of the United States, which appeared in 1860, pioneered U.S. publication of financial and investment information (see 1941).
Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad let congressmen have shares in their 3-year-old Crédit Mobilier company in an effort to stave off investigation into the high personal profits they are making on the line under construction in the West (see 1863). The company will pay dividends of 200 percent to its shareholders in one year while its workers go unpaid (see 1869; communications [Sun exposé], 1872). Collis P. Huntington of the Central Pacific comes down from his New York office and bribes congressmen with cash to influence their votes.
Das Kapital by Karl Marx appears in its first volume, urging an end to private ownership of public utilities, transportation facilities, and, above all, the means of production, which Marx says should be owned by the workers, not by capitalists. The English system of private enterprise and competition arose in the 16th century from the development of sea routes, foreign trade, and colonialism, he argues; it grew out of an "enormous accumulation of commodities" and was facilitated by the division of labor, the concentration of workshops, the adoption of mechanization, technical progress, and other changes in the forces of production. Marx has adapted the concepts of Adam Smith and David Ricardo to introduce new concepts such as that of surplus value, insisting that all economic value derives from human labor: "Surplus value is produced by the employment of labor power. Capital buys the labor power and pays the wages for it. By means of his work the laborer creates new value which does not belong to him, but to the capitalist. He must work a certain time merely in order to reproduce the equivalent value of his wages. But when this equivalent value has been returned, he does not cease work, but continues to do so for some further hours. The new value which he produces during this extra time, and which exceeds in consequence the amount of his wage, constitutes surplus value." The class struggle will end only when the workers own the means of production, Marx says.
The Zollverein customs union established in 1833 expands to include Baden, Bavaria, Hohenzollern, and Württemberg (see 1853; politics [German unification], 1871).
Thyssen AG (Aktiengesellschaft) has its beginnings in a rolling mill opened at Duisburg, Westphalia, by chicken-wire producer August Thyssen, 25, whose company will grow to become Europe's largest steel producer and a major manufacturer of armaments (see 1871).
United Iron Mills is founded by Philadelphia scale manufacturer Henry Phipps, 28, in partnership with Andrew Carnegie (see 1865; Frick, 1873).
South African schoolboy Erasmus Jacobs discovers a diamond as large as a child's marble on the Orange River near Hope Town (see 1729); the discovery will not be made public for some years, but South Africa will soon supplant Brazil as the world's leading source of diamonds (see 1871).
South Carolina industrial pioneer William Gregg dies September 13 at age 67 following a flood that has seriously damaged his textile mill, whose production was not disrupted by the Civil War.
Chicago's Field, Palmer & Leiter becomes Field, Leiter & Co. as Potter Palmer sells his share in the store and Marshall Field joins with his brothers Henry and Joseph and with Levi Z. Leiter and Leiter's brother Marshall to form the new firm, which is capitalized at $1.2 million (see 1865). The partners will rent an ornate store on State Street from Palmer next year and turn it into their own department store (see 1881).
New York's R. H. Macy Company remains open until midnight on Christmas Eve and has record 1-day receipts of $6,000 (see 1869).
French engineer Georges Leclanche, 28, invents the first practical dry cell battery, an electrolytic cell that can provide an intermittent electric supply as required (see Plante, 1859). Leclanche's battery will find uses in the century to come for powering an endless array of industrial and consumer products (see Eveready, 1890).
Physicist-chemist Michael Faraday dies at Hampton Court, Surrey, August 5 at age 75, having made great contributions to the understanding of electromagnetism.
Babcock & Wilcox is founded at Providence, Rhode Island, by local engineers George (Herman) Babcock, 35, and Stephen Wilcox, 37. Wilcox and former partner D. M. Stillman of Westerly received a patent 10 years ago for a safety water-tube boiler with inclined tubes. He receives a new patent May 28 for a sectional industrial "safety" boiler designed to prevent any dangerous explosions. The new company will be incorporated in 1881 and become the largest U.S. producer of coal-fired boilers.
Cornelius Vanderbilt gains control of the New York Central Railroad (see 1865). Now 72, he issues an order January 14 that all trains on his New York & Hudson River Railroad must terminate at East Albany, two miles from the Albany depot; he shows protesting legislators an old law that specifically forbids the New York & Hudson River to run trains across the Hudson River, stock in the Central drops sharply, and Vanderbilt buys enough to secure control by December (see 1869).
Pullman Palace Car Co. is founded at Chicago by George M. Pullman with backing from Andrew Carnegie, who will be its major stockholder until 1873 (see 1865). The new company will build sleeping cars and operate them under contract for railway companies, taking a percentage of the extra fare charged (see first dining car, 1868).
The Wagner Drawing Room Car designed by New York wagon maker Webster Wagner, 49, goes into service during the summer on the New York Central. Born at Palatine Bridge, N.Y., Wagner became station master for the Central at his hometown when he was 25, held the job for 15 years, received financial help from Commodore Vanderbilt to build four crude wooden sleeping cars that were put into service 9 years ago, and by 2 years ago had developed a more sophisticated version; he will soon contract to use George Pullman's folding upper berth and hinged seats (see 1875).
Steel rail production begins in the United States, whose railroads have been using rails of iron or imported steel. Engineer-editor Alexander L. Holley, now 35, bought U.S. rights to the Bessemer process 4 years ago, effected a pooling of potentially conflicting patents with holders of the Kelly patent, and has built a steel mill at Troy, N.Y.
Construction begins at St. Louis on the Eads Bridge that will span the Mississippi at its widest point. Financiers, politicians, and other engineers scoff at the proposal by Louisville, Ky., engineer James Buchanan Eads, now 46, to sink massive stone piers through 103 feet of turbulent water to bedrock below the dense river bottom, and they ridicule his project of cantilevering three steel spans, each more than 500 feet long (see politics [Eads], 1861). So little is known about the properties of steel that its use in bridges has been prohibited in Britain, and one out of every four U.S. bridges that have been built of steel has collapsed. Eads innovates fabrication techniques that are unique, imaginative, and effective; he will put nearly $7 million into the endeavor in the next 7 years, but 12 men will die in the huge pneumatic caisson of his east pier (see 1874).
A suspension bridge designed by J. A. Roebling opens to span the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, Ky. (see 1855; Brooklyn Bridge, 1883).
The first U.S. elevated railway begins operation December 7 at New York on a single track from Battery Place to 30th Street above Greenwich Street (Ninth Avenue). Cable-pulled steam trains designed by engineer Charles T. Harvey for the Gilbert Elevated Railway Co. provide much quicker transportation than do the horse cars below, and the Gilbert line will hook up within a decade to a Third Avenue Railroad operating between City Hall Park and 42nd Street (see 1878; San Francisco, 1873; subway, 1904).
An alpine rail line with 22 tunnels opens through the 4,500-foot high Brenner Pass between Innsbrück, Austria, and Bolzano in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy (see Vienna-Trieste, 1854).
The Pacific Mail Steamship Company begins regular service between San Francisco and Hong Kong.
Inventor Joseph R. Brown devises a micrometer caliper that will be widely employed in industry (see milling machine, 1862; grinding machine, 1876).
Former Austrian newspaper editor Gustav Mosler, 51, goes into partnership with fellow immigrant Fred Bahmann at Cincinnati to establish the Mosler-Bahmann Safe Co. in competition with the 8-year safe and bank-vault manufacturing firm founded by Charles Diebold. Mosler came to Cincinnati in the 1840s, he will die in 1874, his son Henri will paint scenes on the company's safes, and they will be decorated also in gold leaf. The company will outgrow its Cincinnati facilities and move in 1891 to nearby Hamilton, Ohio.
Inventor Elias Howe dies at Brooklyn, N.Y., October 3 at age 48, having created a revolution in manufacturing by inventing a machine that permits mass production of clothing. He raised a regiment in Connecticut and served in it during the Civil War but his patent on the sewing machine has expired.
Wilhelm von Hoffmann discovers formaldehyde. Occurring naturally in the environment as a gas, it will find wide uses not only as a preservative and germ killer but also as a bonding agent to strengthen paper and other materials.
Physicist-educator Alexander Dallas Bache dies at Newport, R.I., February 17 at age 60; mathematician Karl von Staudt at Erlangen, Bavaria, June 1 at age 69.
French Army physician Jean Antoine Villemin, 40, presents findings that prove that tuberculosis is contagious (see Pasteur, 1861; Lister, 1865), but the French medical establishment believes the disease to be hereditary and ignores his evidence (see 1879; Koch, 1882).
Scottish physician Thomas Lauder Brunton, 23, finds amyl nitrate useful in treating angina pectoris (see nitroglycerin, 1847).
Carl F. W. Ludwig invents the stromuhr, a device that measures the rate of blood flow through arteries and veins (see 1847). He was the first (in 1856) to keep animal organs alive in vitro, perfusing frog hearts with a solution akin to blood plasma; he was the first to locate (in the medulla oblangata at the base of the brain) a mechanism that regulates blood vessels, and the first to measure blood pressure in the capillaries. Ludwig moved in 1865 to the University of Leipzig, where he will remain until his death in 1895. His mercurial blood-gas pump separates gases from the blood and will lead to an understanding of the role played by oxygen and other gases in purifying the blood. (see 1871).
Two German physicians show that atropine blocks the cardial effects of vagal stimulation.
Surgeon Joseph Lister at London uses antiseptics to control infection during blood transfusions (see Lane, 1840). U.S. physicians in the next decade will transfuse cows' and goats' milk into humans but adverse reactions will be so common that beginning in 1884 they will use saline infusions as a "blood substitute" (see Landsteiner, 1901).
The first successful gallstone operation is performed June 15 by Pennsylvania-born Indianapolis physician John S. (Stough) Bobbs, 57, on McCordsville, Indiana, patient Mary E. Wiggins. Bobbs will be called "the father of cholecystotomy," but his procedure will be superseded by cholecystectomy, in which the entire gall bladder is detached from the liver and removed (see laparoscopic cholecystectomy, 1987).
English physicians perform the first "radical" mastectomy for breast cancer, removing not only the breast but also the chest muscles and various lymph nodes. Impossible before the introduction of anesthesia with nitrous oxide and sulfuric ether, the long, complicated operation will remain popular in Europe until the 1930s (see Halsted, 1889).
Religious leader Christian Metz dies at his Amana Community in Indiana July 27 at age 72.
The New York State Legislature at Albany votes to establish a free public school system.
The University of Massachusetts has its beginnings in the Massachusetts State Agricultural College founded at Amherst. Ashfield-born agricultural expert William Smith Clark, 41, heads the new institution, which will be renamed in 1947.
The Thayer School of Engineering is established at Dartmouth College with an endowment from former West Point superintendent Sylvanus Thayer, now 83, who retired from the army 4 years ago with the rank of brigadier general.
Howard University for Negroes is founded by white Congregationalists outside Washington, D.C. The founders include Freedmen's Bureau director Gen. O. O. Howard, now 36; they arouse ridicule with their proposal to admit students of all ages, male or female, married or single, informed or ignorant.
Atlanta University is founded at the Georgia city that is being rebuilt following its destruction in 1864. It will become a leading institution for the higher education of blacks.
Fisk University is incorporated as such August 22 at Nashville, Tennessee, where educator John Ogden, 43, joined 2 years ago with two clergymen to establish the Fisk Free Colored School for blacks (see 1876).
The Clarke School for the Deaf has its beginnings in the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes established at Northampton, Massachusetts, with help from Boston lawyer Gardiner Greene Hubbard, 45, whose daughter Mabel lost her hearing 6 years ago at age 4 as a result of scarlet fever (see Gallaudet, 1817). Northampton, Massachusetts, merchant John Clarke has offered $50,000 to anyone who would establish a local school for the deaf, and the institution opened in October will survive as the first permanent oral school for the deaf in America (see communications [Bell telephone], 1875).
The North of England Council for Promoting Higher Education of Women is founded by reformers who include Josephine (Elizabeth) Butler (née Grey), 39, (Anne) Jemima Clough, now 47, and Manchester schoolmistress Elizabeth Clark Wolstenholm-Elby, 33. They begin to press for women's examinations at the university level but encounter opposition from Emily Davies, who opposes separate examinations and is fighting for the right of women to have the same examinations as men (see 1869).
Anna Leonowens sails from Bangkok July 5 after 5 years as governess and teacher to the king of Siam's royal children (see 1862); she reaches England in September, places her son Lewis in a school in Ireland, and sails for New York with her daughter Avis (see 1868).
Journalist Nathaniel Parker Willis dies at Washington, D.C., January 20 on his 66th birthday.
The George P. Rowell Co. founded April 1 at New York by Vermont-born advertising-space salesman George Presbury Rowell, 28, is a pioneer advertising agency and gains immediate success. Rowell has gained a reputation for prompt payment to publishers, they are happy to give him the responsibility of collecting from advertisers, and although he will later campaign for "truth in advertising" his initial clients are for the most part promoters of lotteries and patent medicines, notably an expensive dry form of rhubarb and soda sold under the name Ripans Tabules (see 1869).
Pennsylvania-born Milwaukee printer Christopher L. (Latham) Sholes, 48, invents the first practical "writing machine" while seeking a way to inscribe braille-like characters for use by the blind (see Braille, 1834). Asked to test the machine's efficiency, court reporter Charles Weller types, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party." Sholes will call his machine a "typewriter" (see 1868).
Philadelphia-born inventor Benjamin Chew Tilghman, 46, devises the sulfite process for producing wood pulp for papermaking (see 1870; Burgess, 1854).
The Minneapolis Tribune begins publication to serve a town of about 7,000 people, half the size of neighboring St. Paul. The town has no municipal water system, no fire department, no sewage system. The Tribune competes with the 9-year-old evening paper the Minneapolis Journal, William J. Murphy will acquire it in 1891, and his family will run it for more than 40 years.
Turin's La Stampa (The Press) has its beginnings in the Gazette Piedmontese (see 1895).
The Prussian government acquires the postal monopoly that has been controlled since 1505 by Thurn und Taxis family, which receives vast tracts of land in exchange.
A paperback edition of Goethe's Faust issued by Reclams Universal Bibliothek in Leipzig pioneers paperback book publishing (see Penguin, 1936).
Nonfiction: Histoire de France (11th and final volume) by historian Jules Michelet, now 69, whose first volume appeared in 1833; The History of the Renaissance in Italy (Die Geschichte der Renaisance in Italien) by Jacob Burckhardt, who deals with architecture but not painting or sculpture; The English Constitution by Economist editor Walter Bagehot, 41, whose book will remain the standard work on the subject for more than a century; Time and Tide by John Ruskin; Seiyoeshokuju (Western Clothes, Food, and Living) by Japanese educator Yukichi Fukuzawa, 33, includes instruction on table manners, table settings, and Western drinks, including liqueurs. Fukuzawa started a school at Edo in 1858, was sent by the Tokugawa shogun on the mission to America in 1860, and studied in Europe in 1861; his advocacy of Western methods and styles will provoke many attempts on his life (see Keio University, 1871).
Humorist Charles F. "Artemus Ward" Browne falls ill on an English lecture tour and dies at Southampton March 6 at age 32; author Thomas Bulfinch dies at Boston May 27 at age 70, having seen his 1855 book on mythology become a standard reference work.
Fiction: Thérèse Raquin by French novelist Emile Zola (Edouard Charles Antoine Zola), 27; Under Two Flags by French novelist Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée), 28, whose romance Held in Bondage appeared 4 years ago; The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope.
Poetry: "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold: "And we are here as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight./ Where ignorant armies clash by night"; The Life and Death of Jason by William Morris; Calendau by Frédéric Mistral.
Poet Charles Baudelaire dies of syphilis at Paris August 31 at age 46.
Juvenile: Ragged Dick, or Street Life in New York is serialized in the periodical Student and Schoolmate published at New York under the name "Oliver Optic" by William Taylor Adams, 45. Author of the novel is former Unitarian minister Horatio Alger, 35, who was born in Massachusetts but has moved to New York after being dismissed from his ministry at Brewster, Massachusetts, on charges of having had homosexual encounters with boys. His more than 100 rags-to-riches novels in the next 30 years will dramatize virtues of pluck, honesty, hard work, and marrying the boss's daughter (see 1871).
Painting: The Execution of Maximilian by Edouard Manet; Rape by French painter Paul Cézanne, 28; Jallais Hill, Pontoise (La Côte du Jallais, Pontoise) and Still Life by Danish West Indies-born French painter Camille Pissarro, 37. The Paris World's Fair introduces Japanese ukiyoe prints to the West. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres dies at Paris January 14 at age 86; Théodore Rousseau at Barbizon December 22 at age 55. Paris art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, 36, has supported the Barbizon school, bought up every Rousseau painting that he could find in 1848, has still not been able to resell any, inherited his father's gallery 2 years ago, and will provide support for many avant-garde painters; Valley of the Shadow of Death by George Innes.
Theater: The Death of Ivan the Terrible (Smert Ioanna Groznogo) by Count Leo Tolstoy 1/12 at St. Petersburg's Alexandrinsky Theater; Caste by Thomas W. Robertson 4/6 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London, with Marie Wilton, Miss Larkin, Squire Bancroft, Lydia Foote; How She Loves Him by Dion Boucicault 12/21 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre with Marie Wilton (Mrs. Squire Bancroft), Lydia Foote, Squire Bancroft, Mrs. Leigh Murray.
Opera: Don Carlos 3/11 at the Paris Opéra, with music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto from the Friedrich von Schiller play of 1787; La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein 4/12 at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris, with Hortense Schneider creating the title role, music by Jacques Offenbach, libretto by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac (the opera draws enormous crowds, including virtually all the crowned heads of Europe, throughout the exhibition year); Roméo et Juliette 4/27 at the Théâtre-Lyrique, Paris, with music by Charles Gounod, libretto from the Shakespeare tragedy of 1595; Cox and Box (or The Long-Lost Brother) 5/11 at London's Adelphi Theatre, with music by London church organist Arthur S. (Seymour) Sullivan, 25, libretto by F. C. Burnard based on the 1847 John Maddison Morton farce Box and Cox; Clara Kellogg makes her London debut 11/2 singing the role of Marguerite in the 1859 Gounod opera Faust.
First performance: "The Blue Danube Waltz" ("An der Schonen Blauen Daonau") by Johann Strauss 2/15 at Vienna, with lyrics from a poem by Karl Beck, 50. Sung by the Viennese Male Singing Society, the new waltz creates a sensation.
The New England Conservatory of Music is founded at Boston.
The Cincinnati Conservatory of Music is founded.
Popular songs: "The Little Brown Jug" by Philadelphia songwriter R. E. Eastburn (Joseph Eastburn Winner), 32, whose older brother Septimus wrote the lyrics to "Listen to the Mocking Bird" in 1855.
Brooklyn, N.Y., pitcher William Arthur "Candy" Cummings invents baseball's curve ball and uses it to baffle the Harvard varsity team.
Washington's National baseball team tours the country, defeating the Cincinnati Red Stockings 53 to 10, the Cincinnati Buckeyes 90 to 10, the Louisville Kentuckians 82 to 21, the Indianapolis Western Club 106 to 21, and the St. Louis Union Club 113 to 26 (the teams are all amateur organizations) (see 1869).
New York's Knickerbocker Base Ball Club establishes the last Tuesday of each month in the season as "Ladies' Day," offering free admission to wives, daughters, and girlfriends with "suitable seats or settees."
Marquess of Queensberry rules for boxing depart from the London Prize Ring rules of 1838 (revised in 1853) by requiring that contestants wear padded gloves, limiting rounds to 3 minutes each followed by a full minute's rest, making it illegal to wrestle, and giving a fighter who goes down only 10 seconds to get up, unaided. If he cannot get up he is declared knocked out and the bout is ended (see first heavyweight championship bout, 1860). Welsh-born English athlete John Graham Chambers, 24, has formulated the rules, having founded an amateur club to encourage boxing under the aegis of Scottish peer Sir John Sholto Douglas, 23, 8th marquess of Queensberry and received help from Queensberry in drafting the regulations. Many professionals sneer at the new rules, calling them "unmanly," and championship bouts will continue for some years to be fought bareknuckle style under the London Prize Ring rules, but boxer Jem Mace adopts the Queensberry rules with enthusiasm (see 1870; Theater [Oscar Wilde], 1895).
Lacrosse is declared the official game of the new Dominion of Canada established under terms of the British North America Act.
The Belmont Stakes has its first running at New York's Jerome Park Racetrack, which opened last year (see Preakness, 1873); a horse named Ruthless wins the 1½-mile test for 3-year-old thoroughbreds, which has been inaugurated by banker August Belmont, now 60, who helped to organize the Jockey Club last year to oversee U.S. horse racing.
Pattern manufacturer Ebenezer Butterick hears from his agent J. W. Wilder that a demand exists for paper patterns that can be used to make women's clothing (see 1864), Wilder and A. W. Pollard go into business with Butterick, and under Wilder's direction they compete aggressively with Mrs. Demorest, whose patterns come only in size 36 and must be enlarged or reduced by a hired seamstress (see 1860). Most women make new dresses by taking apart their old ones and using them as a guide. The new Butterick patterns are the first to be available in different sizes, need not be cut from magazines, come folded in envelopes with instruction sheets, and enable women of modest means to make garments with their sewing machines that are almost indistinguishable from the tailored clothing worn by society women (see 1869).
Milan's Galleria Vittoria Emanuele is completed by architect Giuseppe Mengoni, 40, to connect the busy Piazza del Duomo with the neighboring Piazza della Scala (see Brussels, 1847). The great glass-roofed arcade (320 yards long, 16 wide, 94 feet high) in the form of a Latin cross provides a meeting place for the Milanese and is so popular that when hailstones break every pane in the glass ceiling in 1869 the citizenry will reject proposals for an unbreakable roof and insist that the glass be replaced.
Salt Lake City's Mormon Tabernacle opens after 3 years' construction. It will be enlarged with an assembly hall in 1882 to give it an overall seating capacity of 8,000 and will be famous for its choir (see temple, 1893).
Scottish-born naturalist John Muir, 29, starts out late in the year on a walk that will take him 1,000 miles through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida (see 1868; Sierra Club, 1892).
Rhode Island-born entrepreneur Slade Gorton, 36, opens a plant at Rockport, Massachusetts, that will be the first to pack salt-dried codfish (see Pew, 1849). Gorton has worked since his 20s at a Rhode Island cotton mill and moved to Rockport, where he will soon be overseer of another such mill (see 1883).
Alaska has a Pribilof seal population of 2.5 million, down from 5 million in 1786 when the islands were discovered (see 1911).
Ranchers Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving return to Texas in the spring to start a third drive of longhorns north to Fort Sumner (see 1866). Heavy rains and threats of Indian attacks slow them down, Loving goes ahead to bid on contracts, promising Goodnight that he will travel by night through Indian country; he takes only one man with him, becomes impatient, pushes on during the day, comes under attack, sustains a serious wound, sends his companion back to the herd, eludes capture, reaches Fort Sumner with help from Mexican traders, and dies there of gangrene September 25 at age 54. Goodnight continues the drive, shares its profits with Loving's family at Weatherford, and in the next few years will contract for delivery of herds on the Pecos and drive thousands of head into Colorado and Wyoming for sale to ranchers stocking the northern ranges (see 1871).
Chicago livestock dealer Joseph Geating McCoy, 29, buys 450 acres of land at $5 per acre in Abilene, Kansas; builds pens and loading chutes with lumber he has brought from Hannibal, Missouri; installs a pair of large Fairbanks scales, and promises Texas ranchers $40 per head for cattle the ranchers can sell at home for only $4 per head. Abilene is "a small, dead place of about one dozen log huts . . . four-fifths of which are covered with dirt for roofing," but it is the terminus of the Kansas Pacific Railway which despite its name operates only between Chicago and Abilene. The railroad has promised McCoy one-eighth of the freight charge on each car of cattle he ships East. He sends out the first shipment (20 carloads) September 5, and by year's end some 35,000 head of longhorns have passed through Abilene, a figure that will more than double next year (see 1871; Chisholm Trail, 1866).
Ohio inventor Lucien Smith files a patent June 25 for barbed wire whose barbs protrude from small blocks of wood strung along a wire strand, but no reliable machine exists to manufacture such wire in quantity (see 1873).
More than half of all U.S. working people are employed on farms and ranches.
U.S. wheat sells for $2.50 per bushel in late April, but the price falls to $1.45 by September and will soon drop much farther (see 1868).
The Grange, or the Patrons of Husbandry, is founded in the upper Mississippi Valley by Boston-born former U.S. Department of Agriculture field investigator Oliver Hudson Kelley, 41 (see National Grange, 1868).
Sugar beets are introduced into Utah Territory by Mormon leader Brigham Young, now 66, who has machinery from Liverpool carted across the continent to Salt Lake City by ox-drawn wagon, but the beet sugar factory he builds will be abandoned within 2 years (see 1880).
Prehistoric canals in Arizona Territory are cleared by the John Swirling Company to bring water from the Salt River to the fertile lands of the valley. The town of Phoenix begins growing (see Roosevelt Dam, 1911).
Iowa farmer William Louden, 25, modernizes dairy farming with a rope sling and wooden monorail hay carrier. Suspended beneath the peak of a barn, Louden's carrier enables a farmer to swing a load of hay without using a pitchfork, and the litter carrier hauls out manure, allowing a farmer to clean a stable or dairy barn in one-tenth the time it has taken until now. Louden's contributions will make possible the keeping of large, efficient dairy herds.
The Illinois and Wisconsin Dairymen's Association is founded.
A meeting of France's Central Agricultural Society at Paris hears the report of a grower from the administrative department of the Gard, on the west bank of the Rhône, who tells of a mysterious malady that has been affecting vines in his region for the past 2 or 3 years (see 1863; 1868).
French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouries, 50, begins development of a synthetic butter at the urging of the emperor Napoleon III, who may recall his late uncle's encouragement of food canning and beet sugar production (see 1794; 1811). Mège-Mouries works with suet, chopped cow's udders, and warm milk to begin a revolution in the butter industry (see margarine, 1869).
Liebig's Soluble Food for Babies, the first patent baby food, is introduced in Europe by Justus von Liebig, whose product is intended to be added to diluted milk, will be manufactured and sold in London next year by Liebig's Registered Concentrated Milk Co., introduced in America in 1869, and sold commercially for decades (see 1842; Nestlé, 1866; Gerber, 1927). Physicians say the product is superior to the milk of wet nurses.
Arm & Hammer Baking Soda has its beginnings as Brooklyn, New York, spice dealer James A. Church closes his factory to enter the baking-soda business but retains the symbolic sign of the Roman god Vulcan that identified his Vulcan Spice Mill. Selling his product by the barrel with the help of a seven-foot four-inch giant known as Colonel Powell, Church will soon adopt the name Arm & Hammer Saleratus, under which he will dominate the market.
C. F. Mueller Co. has its beginnings at Jersey City, New Jersey, where German-born baker Christian Frederick Mueller, 27, starts selling homemade egg noodles house to house from a pushcart. The city's large German population gives him a good reception, and by 1870 he will be buying flour by the barrel instead of by the bag; Mueller will replace his pushcart with a horse and wagon, and his firm will grow to become the largest U.S. producer of macaroni, spaghetti, and egg noodles.
Canned deviled ham is introduced by William Underwood & Co. of Boston (see 1822; red devil trademark, 1870).
Portland, Maine, entrepreneurs George Burnham, 36, and Charles S. Morrill, 31, put up some cans of sweet corn and establish a cannery on Casco Bay that will become famous for its canned bouillon, seafood, brown bread, and—most especially—oven-baked beans. They will found a company under the name Burnham & Morrill in 1870 (see 1875).
Delmonico's chef Charles Ranhofer at New York creates Baked Alaska to celebrate the purchase of what many call "Seward's Folly" or "Seward's Icebox." Ranhofer has enclosed a brick of ice cream in a meringue and quickly baked it in the oven.
German-born entrepreneur Charles Feltman employs a wheelwright named Donovan to build a burner in the back of the pie-wagon which he has been driving up and down the beach at Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y. His customers have asked for hot sandwiches, the burner enables him to keep warm sausages on hand, his frankfurters wrapped in a roll or bun (adapted from a Nuremberg custom) gain quick popularity, and by the turn of the century his huge Feltman's restaurant on the Coney Island boardwalk will have seven grills turning out 10¢ frankfurters and will employ 1,200 waiters (see "hot dog," 1906; Nathan Handwerker, 1916).
Overpopulation is a red herring invented by the capitalists to justify poverty among the working class, says Karl Marx in Das Kapital. Marx rejects the idea of contraception and favors enhanced production and more equitable distribution of wealth as better ways to improve the lot of the working class.
Parliament makes clear for the first time that a woman can be tried for precipitating her own miscarriage (see 1803; 1937).
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