Milan. In little more than 36 hours, Milan has cornered the Habsburg eagle. Deprived of everything except civic pride and the dream of a united nation, its inhabitants have transformed into reckless warriors. Now more than ever, a strategy is needed, but where are the
Milan. The Italian flag flies over the City Hall. Three hundred patriots (or rebels, depending on your side) are barricaded inside. Only about fifty of them have any kind of weapon. The Austrians are preparing to storm the City Hall. A heroic yet reckless charge
In Germany, the uprisings of 1848 failed, with effects that would ultimately have proved catastrophic. Conservative politicians like Otto von Bismarck consolidated their power in Prussia and created an openly militaristic state that, as early as 1850, began preparing for war against France. The French
United States. Secretary of State Buchanan delivers to President Polk the peace treaty with Mexico negotiated by clerk Nicholas Trist. Trist had skillfully negotiated the treaty, taking advantage of a favorable economic climate and obtaining California, Arizona, and New Mexico for the United States. Polk,
The reactionary King of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand II, granted the Constitution and the election of a parliament. Other European sovereigns would follow suit, granting constitutions modeled on the French one. Only Lombardy-Venetia, Parma, and Modena remained without a constitution in Italy.
Milan, Austro-Hungarian Empire. The tobacco issue erupts: the imperial administration raises the tax on smoking (one of the most lucrative), and the Milanese abstain in protest. In response, imperial soldiers receive double rations of cigarettes and cigars and are sent to show off in the
Galleria, Milan. Appellate Councilor Manganini, often criticized for his pro-Austrian stance, attempts to restrain three drunken soldiers who are beating a victim. He is killed with two saber blows to the head. The owner of the nearby bookstore and his wife are stabbed, and a
Milan. Cardinal Romilli, newly appointed by Pope Pius IX, at a time when the pope’s moves favored Italian patriotism, was greeted with great celebrations, and graffiti insulting Austria appeared on the walls. The Habsburg police chief, Torresani, dispatched Hungarian dragoons from the archbishop’s palace. Shouts
Turin chemist Ascanio Sobrero, by dripping glycerin (or glycerin—easily obtained from animal fat) into a cooled mixture of sulfuric and nitric acid, and pouring the resulting solution into water, discovered (or invented) nitroglycerin. Then (perhaps unthinkable today) he tasted the resulting compound and noted that
Boston dentist, William Morton, demonstrated that ether could induce narcosis, a temporary state of unconsciousness, very useful in surgical procedures. Another substance used for the same purpose was chloroform, an experiment demonstrated by James Young Simpson in November 1847. It has been estimated that during
The first satellite of the planet Neptune (itself discovered only a few days earlier) is discovered. For over a century, the satellite will be called “Neptune’s satellite” (a distinction surpassed only by our only moon, simply called “Moon”), until the discovery of Nereid, Neptune’s second
The Berlin Observatory consciously and unmistakably sighted the planet Neptune for the first time, where Adams and Le Verrier had indicated it, applying the analysis of Uranus’s orbital perturbations as per Laplace’s vision. In reality, the planet had already been sighted, unconsciously, previously, by Galileo
Battle of Monterrey, Mexico. After three days of battle, American General Taylor defeats the Mexicans and captures the city. Taylor’s forces include the Mississippi Rifles Battalion, commanded by Colonel Jefferson Davis (future president of the secessionist Confederate States of America), who was married to Taylor’s
The United States, under the control of the Democratic Party, resolves the issue of Oregon’s northern border, set at the 49th parallel, with a treaty with Great Britain. In the northern United States, there was strong expectation that it would be set much further north:
United States. President Polk reveals his intentions regarding the war with Mexico to the secretaries of the State Department: to secure for the United States the territories of California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Turin. Luigi Menabrea, a young military engineer who would later become Italian Prime Minister, published, with the help of Charles Babbage, a description of a general-purpose logic machine. It was the fruit of a scientific conference held in Turin. Ada Lovelace asked Babbage to translate
England. Jeremy Bentham, along with the “radical philosophers,” advocates for educational reform, giving ample space to the teaching of science and technology in secondary education, to the detriment of Greek and Latin. He and his colleagues then found University College London. It is the first
South America. Bolivar’s forces have now driven the last pro-Spanish monarchist forces out of Gran Colombia, which includes New Grenada, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and a small portion of Amazonian Brazil.
Jean Baptist Joseph Fourier publishes “Theorie analytique de la chaleur,” Fourier’s theory of frequency analysis. It had been severely opposed by his mathematical colleagues for several years. And for good reason, since series with infinite terms were treacherous beasts that had only just begun to
Claude Louis Navier developed a system of partial differential equations capable of describing the flow of a viscous (non-turbulent) fluid. Twenty years later, Stokes also published articles on the same topic. This was the birth of the Navier-Stokes equation, which also forms the basis of
Saint Helena Island. Date of Napoleon’s death. An analysis conducted in 1961 by Sten Forshufvud, a Swedish toxicologist, on Napoleon’s hair samples discovered elevated levels of arsenic. This supported the hypothesis that the emperor had been poisoned. A sample of the gold and green wallpaper
Napoleon dies in exile. Alessandro Manzoni dedicated this ode, entitled “The 5th of May,” to Napoleon Bonaparte: a great general, a great emperor, a great man. After the defeat at Waterloo, Sir Hudson Lowe ordered Napoleon to be exiled. On October 16, 1815, he was
The Neapolitan sovereign Ferdinand I announces the granting of the Constitution after the popular insurrection of Minichini, Pepe, Morelli and Silvati.
Abbot Luigi Minichini (priest, poisoner, and Carbonaro), tired of hesitation, sparks an insurrection in Nola, Avellino. Waving the sect’s tricolor flag (red, black, and blue), he and his twenty followers join deserting military units led by Morelli and Silvati. At this point, Guglielmo Pepe takes
Spain. A group of liberal military men mutinies and demands that the government restore the Napoleonic Constitution, which had been repealed in 1812. The Spanish uprising sparks a series of revolts across Europe, known as the Revolutions of 1820-21.
The Carbonari, an Italian Masonic society founded in Southern Italy during the Napoleonic era and quickly spread to Central and Northern Italy, has approximately half a million registered members. It was officially suppressed in 1815 but continued to exist and operate among former Napoleonic officials,
Reggio Emilia. Angelo Secchi is born. Father Pietro Angelo Secchi (Reggio nell’Emilia, June 28, 1818 – Rome, February 26, 1878) was an Italian Jesuit, astronomer, and geodesist, the founder of astronomical spectroscopy. He was the director of the Collegio Romano Observatory and the first to
11:30 a.m.: The French storm the main gate of Hougoumont Farm to outflank the Allied positions; the fate of the battle, as Wellington said, depended on the closing of the gate.
Battle of Waterloo: English and allied troops of the Duke of Wellington defeat Napoleon’s troops
War of 1812. The great losers of the Anglo-American conflict were the American Indian tribes. With the peace treaty, British support for the Native Americans ended, and future disputes between the Indians and the Washington government became an internal issue. Thus, the possibility of forming
War of 1812. The War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain officially ends on all fronts, with the involvement of the Indian nations, Canada, and the Caribbean. There are no border changes, and the situation returns to pre-war, but the Americans and
Approximately 52 million Europeans emigrated from the continent in search of opportunities and better living conditions. Of these, approximately 10 million were Italians, with peaks of up to 603,000 per year at the beginning of the 20th century. They were second only to the 18
The Battle of New Orleans, in which the Americans took control of the city’s port, laid the foundation for the future security of the American economy. The port of New Orleans would prove crucial to trade.
France. Bourbon dynasty (second regency) with two sovereigns: Louis XVIII, Charles X