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Honoré de Balzac begins to work on "La Comédie humaine" ("The Human Comedy")
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Gustave Flaubert publishes "Madame Bovary"
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Charles Dickens publishes "Great Expectations"
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The emancipation of the serfs in Russia
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Fyodor Dostoevsky publishes "Notes from Underground"
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Abraham Lincoln is assassinated and Andrew Johnson becomes president.
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Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery in the U.S.
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Passage of the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to all people born in the U.S., including former slaves.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony establish the National Woman Association.
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Leo Tolstoy publishes "War and Peace"
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Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment grants voting rights to all qualified men, regardless of race or previous condition of servitude.
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The British Parliament passes a bill providing public elementary education in England and Wales
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George Eliot publishes "Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life"
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Financial panic leads economic depression in U.S.
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Civil Rights Act guarantees all Americans, regardless of race; equal access to public accommodations.
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Leo Tolstoy publishes "Anna Karenina"
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Founding of Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Union
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Supreme Court declares Civil Rights Act of 1875.
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Literacy continues spreading throughout Europe
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Wyoming is the first state to give women the right to vote.
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William McKinley is assassinated and Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
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Formation of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People