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Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist in periodical form
Oliver Twist is one of the most famous novels Charles Dickens ever wrote, which is impressive, given that he wrote fifteen very popular novels during his life. It’s a classic rags-to-riches story about an orphan who has to find his way through a city full of criminals, and avoid being corrupted.Oliver Twist is the second novel Dickens ever wrote. -
Victoria becomes queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. -
William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, the second of five children. His father, John, a lawyer, was very educated and liberal for the time, and encouraged all his children to be the same. William was definitely the wild one of the family, and his sister Dorothy, a year younger than him, was usually his only ally in the family. The Wordsworth children had a pretty happy childhood on the whole, at least until their mother, Ann, died in 1778. -
Alfred, Lord Tennyson becomes a poet laureate
Alfred Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth of the twelve children of George Tennyson, clergyman, and his wife, Elizabeth. His father’s father had gone against all tradition in making his younger son, Charles, his principal heir, and arranging for George to enter the ministry. -
Japan opens trade to the West.
Matthew Calbraith Perry was a Commodore of the U.S. Navy and commanded a number of ships. He served in several wars, most notably in the Mexican-American War and the War of 1812. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Perry was very concerned with the education of naval officers and helped develop an apprentice system that helped establish the curriculum at the United States Naval Academy. -
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world (Wonderland) populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. -
Mohandas K. Gandhi is born in India
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar in Gujarat. After university, he went to London to train as a barrister. He returned to India in 1891 and in 1893 accepted a job at an Indian law firm in Durban, South Africa. Gandhi was appalled by the treatment of Indian immigrants there, and joined the struggle to obtain basic rights for them. During his 20 years in South Africa he was sent to prison many times. -
Thomas Edison invents the incandescent lamp
Thomas Alva Edison invented a carbon filament that burned for forty hours. Edison placed his filament in an oxygenless bulb. (Edison evolved his designs for the lightbulb based on the 1875 patent he purchased from inventors, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans. In 1880,Edison continued to improved his lightbulb until it could last for over 1200 hours using a bamboo-derived filament. -
L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Despite a lifelong heart condition, Baum, who was born in 1856, lived to the age of 63. He was born in Chittenango, New York, lived and worked in New York City, Dakota Territory, and in Chicago. His work varied from managing, then owning, the family's string of opera houses in New York and Pennsylvania, acting and writing plays in New York City, operating a general store and a newspaper in Dakota Territory, working as a reporter, then a traveling salesman in Chicago, and writing. -
Queen Victoria dies
On January 17, 1901, Queen Victoria's health took a severe turn for the worse. When the queen woke up, her personal physician, Dr. James Reid, noticed that the left side of her face had started to sag. Also, her speech had become slightly slurred. She had suffered one of several small strokes. By the following day, the queen's health was worse. She laid in bed all day, unaware of who was by her bedside.
