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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
After Wordsworth's death in 1850, and Samuel Rogers' refusal, Tennyson was appointed to the position of Poet Laureate, which he held until his own death in 1892, by far the longest tenure of any laureate before or since. He fulfilled the requirements of this position by turning out appropriate but often uninspired verse, such as a poem of greeting to Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she arrived in Britain to marry the future King Edward VII. -
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. -
U.S Civil War begins
The American Civil War (ACW), also known as the War between the States or simply the Civil War (see naming), was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 between the United States (the "Union" or the "North") and several Southern slave states that had declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America -
Les Miserables
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. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, focusing on the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption. -
Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
President Lincoln read the first draft of this document to his Cabinet members on July 22, 1862. After some changes, he issued the preliminary version on September 22, which specified that the final document would take effect January 1, 1863. Slaves in Confederate states which were not back in the Union by then would be free, but slaves in the Border States were not affected. The president knew the proclamation was a temporary measure and only Congress could abolish slavery, but had the satisfac -
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. Alice was popular almost from the moment it was published, in 1865, and it has remained in print ever since, -
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.) -
Adventures of Huckleberry in Wonderland
Samuel Clemens, whose pen name is Mark Twain, publishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885 in America. He has been at work for eight years on the story of an outcast white boy, Huck, and his adult friend Jim, a runaway slave, who together flee Missouri on a raft down the Mississippi River in the 1840s. The book's free-spirited and not always truthful hero as well as its lack of respect for religion or adult authority draw immediate fire from newspaper critics. -
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 on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz.The novel is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its -
Queen Victoria Dies
The death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901, ends an era in which most of her British subjects know no other monarch. Her 63-year reign, the longest in British history, saw the growth of an empire on which the sun never set. Victoria restored dignity to the English monarchy and ensured its survival as a ceremonial political institution
