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William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". -
Potato famine begins in Ireland
the Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852. It is also known, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine.During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight -
Alfred, Lord Tennyson becomes a poet laureate
Alfred Tennyson, was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. A number of phrases from Tennyson's work have become commonplaces of the English language, -
Japan opens trade to the West
The opening of Japan to the West by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, U.S.N., profoundly affected the American imagination. In the summer of 1853, Perry presented Japanese ministers with a letter from President Fillmore seeking friendly relations; in 1854 the Treaty of Kanagawa confirmed the gesture. -
The U.S. Civil War begins
The American Civil War, also known as the War between the States or simply the Civil War, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 between the United States and several Southern slave states that had declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America. The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, and, after four years of bloody combat, the Confederacy was defeated. -
Victor Hugo publishes Les Miserables
Victor Hugo publishes Les Miserables in Fance. Les Misérables is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. In the English-speaking world -
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures 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. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. -
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. -
L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of both the popular 1902 Broadway musical and the well-known 1939 film adaptation. -
Queen Victoria Dies
Queen Victoria died in 1901 from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 81. She became queen at the age of 18 and has the record for the longest monarchy in British history. She was also noted for always wearing black for 40 years to mourn her husband.
