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Christopher Sholes, a Milwaukee publisher, invents the typewriter; a few years later, Thomas Edison invents the electric version, which, however, is not a success.

President Abraham Lincoln had supported the Republicans when Juárez was in power, but was unable to help them due to the Civil War that was raging in the United States at that time. As soon as that conflict ended, U.S. Army General Philip Sheridan, under

Richmond, Virginia. Confederate Capital. Union President Abraham Lincoln and his 12-year-old son Tad disembark in Richmond and walk the streets of the Confederate capital. A man collapses to his knees before Lincoln, who, embarrassed, says, “Don’t kneel before me. It’s not right. Kneel for God

8:45 a.m. Richmond is in flames, the capital of the Confederacy falls into Federal hands. But Grant realizes that Lee and his army would not be easily captured and senses that he would escape into the night, so he prepares his troops for pursuit. Which

President Abraham Lincoln writes: “I plainly confess not to have controlled events, but that events have controlled me.”

General Sherman’s armies storm and capture Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River in Savannah. It had resisted four years of Federal bombardment from the sea. The march to the Atlantic, one of the most extraordinary military feats in history, brilliantly conceived and skillfully executed, was

Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. This was the last great assault of the magnificent Confederate infantry. There were 13 successive waves. By sunset, five Confederate generals and 1,222 Southerners remained on the field.

The Confederate battleship Albermarle is sunk by a Union submarine built in imitation of the Confederate ones and commanded by the courageous Lieutenant Cushing.

Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia. In the Shenandoah Valley, beneath the rocky spur of Massanutton: the Southerners initially prevail; General Sheridan is absent, but upon his return, he manages to turn the tide of the battle. The cavalry charge of Union General Custer completes the

Gettysburg Address: Abraham Lincoln delivers the famous Gettysburg Address. A few months after the famous Union victory, and with the Civil War still in full swing, Lincoln visits the battle site for the first time. Everyone expects a long speech. Lincoln speaks for only two

Siege of Charleston, South Carolina. The second bombardment of Fort Sumter begins. It will last 41 days. A total of 2,000 tons of shells are hurled at the fort. But above the smoking ruins, the Confederate flag still flies.

German chemist J. Wilbrand produces TNT

Siege of Charleston, South Carolina. The most terrifying bombardment the world had ever seen fell on Fort Sumter. It would last uninterrupted for 17 days.

The great Union offensive begins in Tennessee, towards Chattanooga.

Washington issues a proclamation announcing that, as of January 1, 1863, all slaves belonging to rebels against the United States government would be declared free without compensation to their owners. This had little effect on white Southerners, but it reaffirmed, among the population of the

After the Marsala Proclamation, Garibaldi crossed Sicily with a steadily growing army of volunteers. Attempts to stop him failed. Much of the parliamentary left dissociated itself from the enterprise. Parliament was in a panic: Cavour, who usually resolved these problems, had died the year before.

At Logan’s Crossroads, Kentucky, the Confederates were severely defeated by General Thomas. Confederate General Zollicofer was killed on the field.

Delaware, a border state, breaks its previously maintained neutrality and sides with the Federals (Northerners).

Garibaldi’s first landings in Calabria.

Garibaldi attempts to land a small commando in Calabria, led by Benedetto Musolino, at the Altafiumara fort on the coast. It fails.

The Austrian army clashes with the Piedmontese and French armies. Two of the three columns halt, while the third, at Montebello, clashes with the villagers. An entire family, the Cignoli, are shot for being found in possession of gunpowder. Then the Piedmontese cavalrymen attack the

Leinefelde, Germany. Two years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, naturalist Johann Carl Fuhlrott suggested that the Neanderthal bones found a few years earlier belonged to a prehistoric form of human.

Charles Darwin, in a letter to his friend Hooker, writes: “what a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature”

A Mormon community founds Las Vegas, Nevada.

Speaking in the U.S. Senate, it is now the turn of Daniel Webster, a defender of Northern interests, who substantially supports Clay’s proposals of January 29. This disappoints the North.

John Calhoun, the elderly leader of Southern interests in the United States, supported only by his age, proposed to the Senate a sort of union within the union to protect the South through special status. This proposal, too, was met with coldness by both parties.

Piedmont. Prime Minister Massimo D’Azeglio, on Cavour’s advice, appoints Giuseppe Sicardi, a distinguished jurist, as Minister of Justice. Sicardi will soon abolish the ecclesiastical court, the right of asylum, and other Church privileges. The Siccardi laws will spark widespread anticlericalism in Piedmont.

Messina, half destroyed and largely burned, surrendered to the Bourbons after five days of fierce battle. Around two or three thousand men died, both among the attackers and defenders. Many Messina residents fled into the island’s interior, while the last surviving residents chose to throw

Messina. The Bourbons attempt to land again, this time further south, at Contessa (now Contesse). Off the beaches are the ships Stromboli and Nettuno towing eight gunboats and twelve artillery vessels. The cannons sweep the beaches, and then soldiers disembark from another 20 boats. For

Messina. The Bourbon assault on the city begins. Hunters and Swiss troops land south of the city, where the defenses are weaker. Commoners and peasants resist with a fierce house-to-house battle. There is talk of cruelty: between 60 and 200 Swiss prisoners are hacked to

Naples. A crowd gathers to protest King Frederick II’s desire to repeal the democratic concessions. The king calls in the army, supported by the common people, the so-called lazzaroni, who have always been hostile to the bourgeoisie and intellectuals and loyal to the king. It

Alfred Wallace and Henry Bates land in Belén, Brazil

Milan. Porta Nuova. The Austrians are making a mess: an officer emerges with a white banner shouting “Peace, peace!” Behind him is a line of Hungarian grenadiers with lowered rifles. Reaching the barricade, the soldiers open fire. Many die, the wounded are finished off by

Milan. Monday. Torelli climbs the central spire of the Duomo and raises the Italian flag, which has never flown higher. From the square, the crowd, which had gathered in just a few minutes, shouts victory. The Duomo bells ring out.

Milan. Thousands of Milanese celebrate in Piazza Duomo. Tensions rise, but they limit themselves to chanting the Te Deum, a propitiatory prayer for the Palermo rioters. This isn’t enough to appease the Austrians, who carry out numerous arrests, especially among the most prominent members of

John Curtis invents Chewing Gum

Thomas Edison

Gustave-Gaspard de Coriolis discovers the Coriolis effect

Tocqueville wrote: “The most fearsome of all the evils that threaten the future of the United States arises from the presence of blacks in their land (…) Christianity had destroyed slavery, the Christians of the sixteenth century re-established it, but as an exception and limited

Francis IV, Duke of Modena, founded a Noble Military Academy, later the Estense Military Academy (1821-1848), successor to the Ducal Academy established by Francis III d’Este in 1757. The Institute of Pioneer Mathematical Cadets, founded in Modena in 1824 by Francis IV, was also located

Germany. Dobereiner invents the portable lighter, which works thanks to platinum’s ability to store large amounts of hydrogen. Its inventor will become as famous as Goethe for his invention of the Dobereiner Lamp.

The British government is impressed by Charles Babbage’s progress with his automatic steam-powered calculating machine and grants him 1,700 pounds, which, over the next decade, will grow to 17,000 pounds—more than the cost of a couple of warships. But Babbage lacks the practical and technical

Cauchy inaugurates modern mathematical analysis

Silvio Pellico was a member of the secret sect known as the “Federati” (Federated). This was discovered by the Austrian police, and Pellico, Piero Maroncelli, Melchiorre Gioia, and others were arrested. From Milan, they were taken to the Piombi prison in Venice. Here, on February

Charles Babbage builds his Difference Engine, a mechanical computer that produces mathematical tables. Babbage never built a complete version of the mechanical computer, but the largest part he built is now on display at the London Science Museum. A complete version of Difference Engine No.

Austrian Milan. Confalonieri and Lambertenghi publish the biweekly periodical “Il Conciliatore,” for which Silvio Pellico also contributes. This is an attempt by a group of intellectuals to challenge the authorities on a cultural level. It will soon be suppressed by the Austrians.

Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel moved to Berlin to teach, where he remained until his death in 1831.

7:40 PM: Wellington snaps his telescope shut and shakes his hat: the rest of his army charges down the hill in pursuit of the remnants of Napoleon’s army. The dead number 40,000, and the horses number 10,000. Wellington comments: “A victory is the greatest tragedy

7.30pm: The French Imperial Guard (infantry) attacked the British lines; the First Foot Guards and the Belgians counter-attacked frontally while the 52nd Life Guards attacked from the flank.

Prussian Blucher’s army faces Napoleon’s army at Ligny, but is forced to retreat.

Napoleon Bonaparte flees exile on the island of Elba

Paris. Under the leadership of Talleyrand, Napoleon’s French rival, the remnants of the French Senate elect him as minister.

Sunday. The Allied armies enter Paris. The sun is shining and the day is crisp. Tsar Alexander rides out of his headquarters at 8:00 a.m. astride his gray horse, Mars. On the Champs-Elysees, the monarchs and Schwarzenberg stop and review the Prussian, Russian, and Austrian

France. Suburbs of Paris. 2:00 PM. Russian heavy cavalry arrives. A violent storm breaks out, with rain and hail.

France. Suburbs of Paris. 8:00 a.m. The army corps of Peter Pahlen and Prince Adam of Wuttemberg surprise Marshal Marmont’s corps, deployed on the road to Fère-Champenoise.

France. Napoleon and his 20,000 men face Schwarzenberg’s entire army, and, realizing their overwhelming odds, retreats. At this point, he can either take refuge in the capital or cut off the enemy’s lines of communication. He chooses the latter. He is likely ready to sacrifice

Modena under Austrian rule and under Francis IV and V (dukes of Massa and Carrara)

Allied troops attacked the fortifications of Dresden where Napoleon’s forces were entrenched. The battle ended with a victory for the French army, but this result did not bring any substantial advantages to Napoleon. Three days later, in fact, the First Corps of the French Army,

Oneglia. The Savoy family has just taken it from the French. For a time, it becomes a tiny, independent Jacobin republic. The driving force behind this initiative is Filippo Buonarroti, a Frenchified Italian revolutionary, a Jacobin with extreme ideas and communist convictions, who later participated

Napoleon Bonaparte made real what Clausewitz had only presupposed in theory: the notion of absolute war.

Brazil: Inconfidencia Mineira (the Mining Conspiracy). The victorious American Revolutionary War inspired many Brazilians to follow the same path. The occasion was the further increase in the Portuguese tax on gold mining due to the decline in gold production and thus in revenue. But the

Jacob Grimm, brother of Wilhelm Grimm

The French arrived in time to block the British at Yorktown, allowing American and French artillery to successfully pound the British defenses; British commander Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1783.

Battle of Guilford, North Carolina. Cornwallis’s British pursued Greene’s Americans toward Virginia, but, weakened and in hostile territory, they were forced to give up. As soon as they attempted to break away, Greene seized the opportunity to attack them. 4,400 Americans against 1,900 British. The

Industrial Revolution: Samuel Crompton’s intermittent spinning mill.

James Watt creates the steam engine, and patents it, with patent claims so broad that any subsequent attempt to improve it will practically be considered an infringement.

Jean Etienne Guettard prepares the first real geological maps

Scotland. Charles Edward, grandson of Maria Beatrice d’Este and James III, former King of England, entered Edinburgh after a swift campaign of conquests as soon as he landed in Scotland with 1,600 men. But soon afterward, the numerical superiority of the English army radically changed

Young Leonhard Euler reaches the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He made the journey from Switzerland to the Russian capital in seven weeks, by ship, on foot, and by mail coach.

Tibet becomes a Chinese protectorate.

Scotland: Battle of Sheriffmuir; Scots win

The British Parliament (reign of Queen Anne) passes the Longitude Act: a prize of 20,000 pounds (about 2 million Euros today) for anyone who could find a practical and useful way to find longitude at sea with an accuracy of half a degree (30 nautical

France. Maria Luisa dies of smallpox. She is the daughter of Maria Beatrice d’Este (of the Duchy of Modena), former Queen of England. Maria Luisa’s brother, James III (declared King of England by Louis XIV, but without a kingdom), also falls ill with smallpox but

The Adriatic is often invaded by non-Venetian warships: by English ones operating against the French, and by Russian ones searching for the declining Ottoman fleet.

The last Mayan city falls to the Spanish conquistadors (the war began in 1527)

Annus Terribilis by Isaac Newton

Edmond Halley demonstrates that low latitudes receive more sunlight and intuits that this may be one of the main mechanisms for the circulation of air masses around the globe.

Vienna. 12:00 PM. On the Allied left flank, the village of Nussdorf falls first after house-to-house fighting. The Lorraine cuirassiers and the Saxon cavalry engage the superior Ottoman cavalry. Immediately afterward, the other nearby villages fall, almost as far as Turkenschanz, which today bears this

Vienna. Yet another Turkish mine completely destroys the ravelin between the Burg and Lobl bastions. Captain Heisterman is tasked with keeping the Turks out of what remains of the walls for as long as possible. He will hold out until September 3rd.

Vienna. The Ottoman siege begins.