London, UK - Savoy Theatre introduces electric lighting

London, UK - Parliament passes the Irish Land Act and the Coercion Act

USA - Death of Billy the Kid

USA - James Garfield president of the USA 1881. Garfield was wounded by an assassin's bullet on 3 Jul 1881 and dies 19 Sep 1881.

UK - David Houston patents the roll film for cameras.

USA - Alexander Graham Bell invents the first crude metal detector.

UK - Edward Leveaux patents the automatic player piano.

UK - William Gladstone establishes his second Liberal government

South Africa - The first Anglo-Boer War begins

UK - British forests now decimated except for bits of the New Forest and the Forest of Dean.

UK - Number of agricultural labourers reduced by about 100,000 in last 10 years

UK - Englishman John Milne invents the modern seismograph.

UK - The British Perforated Paper Company invents a form of toilet paper.

South Africa - The Zulu War is fought. The British are defeated at Isandhlwana, but are victorious at Ulundi

Midlothian, Scotland - Gladstone's Midlothian campaign denounces imperialism in South Africa and Afghanistan

Afghanistan - Second Afghan War gives Britain control

Berlin, Germany - The Congress of Berlin is held. Benjamin Disraeli announces peace with honour

South Africa - Confederation of British and Boer states established

USA - Rutherford Hayes president of the USA 1877-1881.

USA - Thomas Edison invents the cylinder phonograph or tin foil phonograph.

UK - Eadweard Muybridge invents the first moving pictures.

USA - Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

Germany - Nikolas August Otto designed the first four-stroke piston engine

UK - Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India.

Bulgaria - The massacre of Christians in Turkish Bulgaria leads to anti-Turkish campaigns in Britain, led by William Gladstone

UK - Melville Bissell patents the carpet sweeper.

UK - Benjamin Disraeli purchases a controlling interest for Britain in the Suez Canal.

UK - Parliament passes R.A. Cross's Conservative social reforms

UK - Collapse of British agriculture due to cheap grain from US, wheat acreage falls by nearly a million acres

UK - Benjamin Disraeli becomes Conservative Prime Minister for the second time

USA - American, C. Goodyear, Jr. invents the shoe welt stitcher.

UK - William Gladstone's government resigns after the defeat of their Irish Universities Bill. Benjamin Disraeli declines to take up office instead

UK - Parmalee invents automatic fire sprinklers

UK - Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire.

UK - The Great Depression lasts until 1896

UK - Secret voting is introduced for elections

UK - Parliament passes the Scottish Education Act

USA - A.M. Ward issues the first mail-order catalog.

UK - J.S. Risdon patents the metal windmill.

UK - Period to 1896 sees three economic slumps and two recoveries, said to be due to imported foodstuffs from US depressing Britain's agricultural business

USA - Levi Strauss discovered rugged trousers for miners made out of sturdy brown canvas. Once this resource was exhausted, he turned to denim, which he dyed blue to become what is known now as blue jeans

UK - Trade Unions are legalized

UK - Primary education becomes compulsory in Britain through the Forster-Ripon English Elementary Education Act (but poor children still roam streets after school). The Act means labourers, spouses and children of succeeding generations can read and write; women permitted to sit on school boards

UK - Parliament passes the Women's Property Act, extending the rights of married women, and the Irish Land Act

UK - First British postcard devised by Anthony Trollope

USA - Wheeler introduces toilet paper roll

Inauguration of London to Calcutta telegraph line, first electronic link between Europe and India

UK - Volume of Britain's external trade equals France, Germany and Italy combined, 3-4 times greater than US; agricultural wages reach height not surpassed for many years

UK - Religious tests abolished for academic posts, patronage abolished for all public offices, competitive exams introduced for Civil Service

Europe - Prussia defeats France in the Franco Prussian War.

UK - George M. Beard distinguished neurasthenia, a nervous disease of men, from hysteria, a women's disease, as, in an earlier time, men's hypochondriasis had been distinguished from women's vapeurs. Subforms of neurasthenia came to be called phobias.

Ireland - The Irish Church is disestablished.

Egypt - The Suez Canal is opened

UK - Women obtain municipal franchise

USA - Ulysses Grant president of the USA 1869-1877.

UK - Benjamin Disraeli succeeds Derby as Prime Minister. William Gladstone becomes Prime Minister for the first time

UK - J P Knight invents traffic lights.

USA - George Westinghouse invents air brakes.

UK - Robert Mushet invents tungsten steel.

UK - Derby and Benjamin Disraeli's Second Reform Bill doubles the franchise to two million.

UK - Christopher Scholes invents the first practical and modern typewriter.

UK - Gregor Mendel, in Versuche über Pflantenhybriden, interpreted heredity in terms of a pairing of dominant and/or recessive unit characters; that is, ones that could in practice be treated as indivisible and independent particles

UK - Alfred Nobel patented dynamite

UK - Russell and Gladstone fail to have their moderate Reform Bill passed in parliament. Derby takes power in his third minority Conservative government

UK - Englishman Robert Whitehead invents a torpedo.

UK - J. Osterhoudt patents the tin can with a key opener.

USA - Abraham Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth and dies the next day.

Finland - Nokia corporation established as a forest industry enterprise by mining engineer Fredrik Idestam

UK - Lister, using carbolic acid as antiseptic and sterilizing his instrument, proved the efficacy of antiseptic surgery

UK - Death of Palmerston. Russell establishes his second Liberal government

UK - Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

UK - Andrew Johnson president of the USA 1865-1869. Vice president under Abraham Lincoln, he was sworn in as president upon Lincoln's death.

UK - Chimney-sweeper's Act, due in part to Charles Kinglsey's Water Babies

UK - Great Battle of Berkhamstead Common saves common land, Epping Forest also saved

UK - Reform Bill, working men given franchise

Canada - First independent dominion in the British Empire under the Dominion of Canada Act

UK - Judge declares trades unions illegal

UK - Edward, Prince of Wales, marries Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

UK - The Salvation Army is founded

UK - First underground railway opens in London

France - Louis Pasteur published the germ theory: infection is caused by self-replicating microorganisms, and that attenuated viral cultures granted immunity. These beneficent antigens he named vaccines in honor of Edward Jenner and his vaccinia virus

UK - Parliament passes the Limited Liability Act in order to provide vital stimulus to accumulation of capital in shares

UK - Alexander Parkes invents the first man-made plastic, Parkesine.

UK - Dr. Richard Gatling patents the machine gun.

UK - Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis published his deduction that childbirth fever was transmitted on the hands of doctors during their examinations

UK - Death of Prince Albert, Prince Consort

Australia - Women first given vote

USA - Abraham Lincoln president of the USA 1861-1865.

USA - Elisha Otis patents elevator safety brakes, creating a safer elevator.

USA - Linus Yale invents the Yale lock or cylinder lock.

USA - American Civil War (to 1865)

UK - Joseph Wilson Swan invented the light bulb, an incandescent lamp using a carbon filament.

UK - Gladstone's budget and the Anglo-French Cobden Treaty codifies and extends the principles of free trade

UK - Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life asserts that all life had a common ancestor and that the origin of species was natural selection

UK - Palmerston brings his second Liberal government to power.

UK - Samuel Smiles' Self-Help published

UK - Derby establishes his second minority government

UK - Parliament passes the India Act

UK - Eraser fitted to end of pencil

UK - Jean Lenoir invents an internal combustion engine.

UK - Hamilton Smith patents the rotary washing machine.

Atlantic - Cyrus Field made his first attempt at laying a trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. In 1866, his fourth attempt was successful.

China - The Second Opium War opens China to European trade.

India - The Indian Mutiny erupts against British Rule on the sub-continent

USA - James Buchanan president of the USA 1857-1861.

USA - George Pullman invents the Pullman Sleeping Car for train travel.

Crimea - Crimean War comes to an end.

UK - The Victoria Cross is instituted for military bravery

UK - Every county and borough required to employ police force

UK - Marriage and Divorce Act permits any man to divorce his wife on grounds of adultery, permits woman same but has to also show cruelty or desertion; beforehand, a special Act of Parliament was required for divorce

UK - Britons panicked by false rumours of Napoleon III's designs on Britain

UK - John Stuart Mill publishes Liberty

Great novels: Dickens, Dumas, Flaubert, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy

France - Louis Pasteur invents pasteurisation.

New Zealand - Population of New Zealand rises from less than 60,000 to 350,000 in the period to 1878

UK - John Snow, investigating London's piped water supply, showed graphically that cholera could be transmitted by water from a particular pump.

UK - Palmerston's first government comes to power

UK - The Northcote-Trevelyan civil service report is published

UK - John Tyndall demonstrates the principles of fiber optics.

UK - Crimean War begins, as Britain and France attempt to defend European interests in the Middle East against Russia

UK - Potato crisps invented by a cook named George Crum.

Crimea - Florence Nightingale first recommended the regimen of cleanliness which dramatically reduced the death rate in hospitals

UK - Vaccination against smallpox is made compulsory

UK - Queen Victoria uses chloroform during birth of Prince Leopold

UK - William Gladstone presents his first budget

UK - Franklin Pierce president of the USA 1853-1857.

UK - Death of the Duke of Wellington

UK - Derby's first minority Conservative government

UK - Aberdeen's coalition government is established

Melbourne, Australia - Gold fever - 19,000 immigrants land in one month, for the whole year 94,664, seven times as many as 1851

UK - The Great Exhibition is staged in Hyde Park. Thanks to Prince Albert, it is a great success

UK - Window tax abolished

USA - Patent for sewing machine issued to Isaac Singer

UK - British Census shows 10,736,000 females, 8,155,000 of whom were aged 10 and older, largest occupational group domestic service workers, 905,000, 145,000 washerwomen, 55,000 charwomen (cleaners), 272,000 in cotton industry, 113,000 in woolen industry, 140,000 in lace, hosiery and linen

Europe - First submarine cable, Dover to Calais

London, UK - Reuters opens news agency

Africa - Livingstone's explorations begin

Australia - Population of Australia rises from 405,000 in 1851 to 1,168,000 in 1861

USA - American Joel Houghton invented the first dishwasher. He made it out of wood, and gave it a hand-turned wheel that splashed water on the dishes inside. It didn't really work, but it did get the first 'dishwasher' patent

UK - First machine-made paper bag

UK - Mines Inspectorate created, helps protect adult male mine workers

USA - Millard Fillmore president of the USA 1850-1853. Vice president under Zachary Taylor, he was sworn in as president after Taylor's death.

USA - Zachary Taylor president of the USA 1849-1850. Zachary Taylor died while in office.

UK - Walter Hunt invents the safety pin.

UK - Major Chartist demonstration in London.

UK - Parliament passes the Public Health Act

UK - Karl Marx publishes The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital

UK - 5000 miles of railway tracks now laid, 2000 of which were equipped with telegraph wires; Britain now produces about half of world's pig iron, trebles output within 30 years

UK - Queen's College for Women founded

UK - Flourens discovered the anesthetic properties of chloroform

USA - Levi Strauss invents denim jeans

UK - Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis invents antisceptics.

UK - Repeal of the Corn Laws, Britain moves towards complete free trade

UK - Electric Telegraph Company formed, 17 offices by 1854

USA - Mexican-American War 1846-1848.

USA - Dr. William Morton, a Massachusetts dentist, is the first to use anesthesia for tooth extraction.

Ireland - Irish Potato Famine kills more than a million people in two years

UK - Frederick Engels publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England

UK - There are reckoned to be 210 accountants in London

UK - General Enclosure Act, further enclosure prohibited

USA - James Polk president of the USA to 1849.

USA - American Elias Howe invents a sewing machine.

UK - Robert William Thomson patents the first vulcanised rubber pneumatic tyre.

India - Conquest of Punjab and Kashmir (to 1849)