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Charles Darwin publishes Insectivorous Plants

Englishman William Crookes, the discoverer of cesium and thallium, published “Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena Called Spirituals” in his own periodical, where he claimed to have seen residual traces of genuine supernatural forces. Crooke, a respected scientist, was actually distraught over the loss

Giuseppe Mazzini dies.

Discovery of Nucleic Acids

Spain. Amadeus I of the Savoy dynasty reigns. Amadeus of Savoy abdicates, thus giving birth to the Republic, which will prove very unstable and will soon give way to the Second Bourbon Restoration.

France, in a state of collective exaltation in memory of the successes of Napoleon I, declares war on Bismarck’s Germany

Porthcurno, Cornwall, England. A small submarine cable station is built by the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta Telegraph Company to connect England and India by telegraph line. Over the next 30 years, the station will grow enormously, becoming the landing point for as many as five

In New England, tomato sauce was mixed with tomato juice, thus inventing Ketchup; in fact, it had already been on the market since 1830 as a patent medicine (Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato).

US railroads enforce the use of standard time (before 1870 a traveler from New York to San Francisco had to adjust the time 200 times)

Germany. Nikolaus Otto builds the first gasoline engine. It’s interesting to note that at the time of the invention of the internal combustion engine, horses had been providing propulsion for humanity for 6,000 years; there was no shortage of horses, no cost problem, and no

Split, Austrian Empire. Italian naval vessels bombard the island’s forts.

Prussia’s lightning-fast victory over Austria

In Uruguay, the Colorados party occupied Montevideo, but their rivals (the Blancos) asked for help from the dictator of Paraguay, who intervened militarily; Brazil and Argentina allied themselves and invaded Paraguay.

James Clark Maxwell in Cambridge develops the theory of electromagnetism and publishes the famous four differential relations under the title “Dynamical Theory of the Electro-Magnetic Field”

Assassination of President Lincoln. On April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth shot and killed US President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The American Civil War had ended only five days earlier with the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at

Appomattox, Virginia. The Army of Northern Virginia is being pursued by Union forces and now finds itself preempted by the main Yankee army. They are surrounded. Confederate General Alexander suggests to Lee that the army disband and continue a permanent guerrilla war. But Lee makes

Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Kentucky. Asa Harmon McCoy, a former Union soldier, is murdered by the Hatfields and Confederate irregulars (Logan Wildcats) while trying to hide in a cave. This sparks a family feud that will drag on for decades and bloodily divide Kentucky and West Virginia.

News reaches Washington that General Sherman has captured Atlanta. An unexpected wave of optimism sweeps the Republicans, who had given up the next presidential election. Further good news arrives from the Shenandoah Valley front, and Lincoln is overwhelmingly re-elected in every state except New Jersey,

15,000 Confederates arrive at the gates of Washington and are defeated there.

Battle of Spotsylvania, Virginia. Grant’s and Lee’s armies clash again. The battle lasts 10 days and again results in a narrow Union defeat. And once again, Grant continues to move south. In this way, he manages to trap Lee inside the Confederate capital, depriving him

General Ulysses Grant assumes sole command of the Armies between the Appalachians and the Arkansas, excluding the lower Mississippi.

The Battle of Memphis ends with the almost total destruction of the Confederate river fleet: the five Union gunboats hit, sank, rammed, or captured the General Lovell, General Beauregard, Little Rebel, General Jeff Thompson, General Bragg, and Sumter, while General Can Dorn is the only

South Kensington, UK. International Exhibition. Thallium makes its first public appearance. It had been discovered the previous year by William Crookes, through the observation of the bright green line in its spectrum. But Claude-Auguste Lamy also arrives in South Kensington with a 14-gram ingot of

At the end of this first violent and direct clash between the battleships CSS Virginia and USS Monitor, it appears that Monitor fired 41 shots at Virginia, hitting her 20 times, without seriously damaging her, while the Union battleship was hit 23 times, also without

After a heroic resistance, Fort Sumter in Charleston raises the white flag. Mass mobilization begins in the North.

Confederate bombardment of besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina begins.

The Parliament, meeting in Turin, proclaimed the birth of the Kingdom of Italy, despite the fact that Rome and Venice were still missing. The King’s signature arrived two days later. This was the culmination of a process that had begun several decades earlier but had

Garibaldi occupies Palermo

Charles Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray, writes: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars”

Solferino. The Battle of the Three Sovereigns (actively participated by Napoleon III, Victor Emmanuel II, and Franz Joseph) was also witnessed by an exceptional witness with a particular interest: Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army. From what he witnessed, he drew

Mendel begins his cross-breeding experiments with pea plants; they will last 8 years

After Webster, New Yorker Henry Seward addressed the U.S. Senate on the issue of slavery. He appealed to “a higher law.” This move sparked an uproar among Southerners. The compromise was eventually passed, temporarily postponing the conflict. On March 31, Calhoun died, while Clay and

Rome. The first democratic elections are held in the Papal States.

Milan. That evening, the Piedmontese King Charles Albert decides to ask for an armistice with the Austrian Empire. When he steps out onto the balcony to address the crowd, someone fires a rifle shot at him. It misses him, and the bullet lodges in the

Verona. Radetzky attempts to relieve the siege and sends out a massive force toward Mantua: 43 infantry battalions, 54 cavalry squadrons, and 151 cannons. He targets what he considers the weakest point in the Piedmontese army: Curtatone and Montanara, held by a battalion of university

Sunday. Milan. The soldiery is irritated by the difficulties in restoring order. Captain Kaas’s grenadiers enter the church of San Bartolomeo. The soldiers violate the convent’s seclusion zone. They encounter Don Mariano Lazzarini, who is preparing for Lent: “And with what words, with what sentiments

August Ferdinand Moebius and his tutor Johann Listing (the latter a student of Gauss) publish Vorstudien zur Topologie, in which they inaugurate the concept of Topology in Geometry, and Moebius establishes the fundamental concept of transformation with continuity.

Vasili Evgrafovich Samarsky-Bykhovets, a colonel in the Russian Army’s Mining Engineer Corps, while stationed in the Southern Urals, notices a brittle, burnt-caramel-colored metal. He sends it to Berlin for analysis. The mineral will be named samarskite, and the element it contains, samarium.

Joseph Dixon of Salem, Massachusetts, introduces the first mass-produced wooden and graphite pencils. They are produced at 132 pencils per minute.

Johann Martin Zacharias Dase, an idiot savant employed by European governments to perform complex calculations, can multiply two 100-digit numbers together in his head.

Modena. The Darsena was excavated, north of Porta Albareto or Porta Castello. It was an extension of the Naviglio canal where boats paid tolls. Alongside the canal ran Via Alzaia, while in Modena it was Via Attiraglio, which took its name from the dragging (“tiraglio”)

There are now 5000 clocks for maritime use (or Sea-Clocks for estimating longitude, whose progenitor was the H-1 of 1737); these clocks played an enormous role in building the British Empire based on supremacy at sea.

British troops set fire to the White House and the Capitol

Joseph von Fraunhofer invented the spectroscope, with which he identified 600 dark lines in the light spectrum, characteristic of the absorption of light by various chemical elements.

Ontario, Canada. Battle of Lundy’s Lane between American troops invading British Canada and the British stationed on the Niagara Peninsula. The British, after Napoleon’s abdication, can finally devote themselves more fully to the confrontation with the Americans in North America. With hundreds of deaths on

France. Napoleon arrives near Paris, but the battle for the capital is now over in favor of the Allies. This is also thanks to the initiative taken by his opponents, who exploit his absence from the scene.

France. Napoleon realizes that the road to Paris is open to the Allies, but he is now three days behind.

The effective pursuit of MacDonald’s Napoleonic army by Blucher’s troops continued until the beginning of September.

Napoleon, in one of the worst decisions of his life (by his own admission), accepts Austrian mediation and agrees to an armistice that was to last (later extended) until July 20, 1813. Had he insisted on Poland, he would have divided the Russians and Prussians,

Battle of Bautzen. In the morning, fighting resumes on the slopes of the Bohemian Mountains, with Ney and Lauriston also participating on the Napoleonic side.

Leipzig surroundings. 6:00 am. There is some confusion in the Allied lines, and the Prussians and Russians, together for the first time in a single theater of operations, are hindering each other.

Berlin, Prussia. Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm puts aside his uncertainties and accepts the treaty of alliance already signed with Russia.

Russia. One million peasants from the Russian countryside are forcibly conscripted. None of them volunteer, for two valid reasons. First, it takes a great deal of patriotism to enlist for the minimum 25-year term, with very little chance of ever being promoted to non-commissioned officer,

Studyanka, Russia. Napoleon and part of his army are safe on the western bank of the Berezina. In one sense, the operation is a disaster: he loses over 20,000 men, almost all his artillery and baggage. Even the Old Guard is reduced to fewer than

Russia. Napoleon and his Guard cross the Berezina, 18 km north of where Ermolov and his men are located. To reach the Berezina in time, but at the wrong point, he has had to starve his men, who live on raw potatoes and tree bark.

Russia. Napoleon also built a bridge at Uhold, 12 km south of Borisov, to fool the enemy into thinking he was headed for Minsk, when in fact he was crossing the Berezina 18 km north of Borisov, heading for Vilnius. Chichagov fell for the trick

Russia. Russian Chichagov and his corps manage to capture the Borisov Bridge over the Berezina before Napoleon.

Russia. Battle of Krasnyj or Krasnoi. The Russians win a narrow victory: Eugène’s and Davout’s corps suffer so many losses that they can no longer be considered fighting units. Napoleon is also forced to abandon Michel Ney’s rearguard to its fate. A group of 600

Russia. Communications between Napoleon in Moscow and Smolensk and France are disrupted but never completely interrupted. If Napoleon had decided to spend the entire winter in Moscow, the situation would have been very different. For this reason, too, he decides to leave the city.

Borodino, evening. Kutuzov orders the famous icon of the Mother of God of Smolensk, evacuated from the city, to be brought to the front lines. Orthodox popes and archimandrites are also present. By contrast, Napoleon’s army is entirely secular, born of the values of the

Smolensk, Russia. By now, Barclay’s 30,000 Russians were well-positioned and organized in the city. Napoleon could have advanced further and threatened the lines of communication to Moscow, thus forcing the Russians to retreat, but instead he launched a frontal attack that would cost him heavy

4:00 PM. Ostrovno, Russia. The Russian First Army begins its retreat.

Russia. The Synod of the Orthodox Church issues a virulent proclamation denouncing Napoleon as the Antichrist with the utmost fervor.

The Austrian Emperor, Francis I, gives his sister in marriage to the French “ogre,” as Prince de Ligne put it: “Better that the Archduchess be screwed (fotutue) than the monarchy.”

With the victory of Lodi, Napoleon had the doors open for the conquest of Lombardy

France. Power is concentrated in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety. Paris becomes a veritable madhouse. First, the Girondins (a faction of the Jacobins whose bitter enemies were the Montagnards) are arrested and executed on October 31st. Then it is the followers of

The last execution of a witch took place in Holland in 1610. But for other countries, it was many years later: in England, in 1685, in Scandinavia, in 1699, in France, in 1745, in Germany, in 1775, and in Poland, in 1793.

10:20 a.m., Place de la Révolution, Paris: King Louis XVI is guillotined.

Storming of the Bastille. On July 14, 1789, a mob of militant Parisian workers attacked the royal fortress of the Bastille in Paris. Built in the fourteenth century, the Bastille was first used as a prison in the seventeenth century. Despite holding an average of

Swedish lieutenant Carl Axel Arrhenius discovered an asphalt-black mineral in the feldspar (a flesh-colored silicate) of the Ytterby mine. He immediately sent a sample to his friend, Johan Gadolin, a chemistry professor in Abo (now Turku, Finland), who named the mineral Yttria. It was later

Immanuel Kant publishes “Critique of Practical Reason”.

Laplace, in his weighty Theory of Jupiter and Saturn, explains the peculiarities of the motions of the two planets. Comparing data from Ptolemy to Brahe, he finds that Jupiter has systematically accelerated compared to predictions, and Saturn has systematically slowed down. Laplace realizes that the

Laplace proves that the irregularities of i and e are small and self-destructing: the solar system is stable (…)

David Hume considers the hypothesis that our universe was produced by a long process of trial and error by an incompetent creator.

Caribbean (or West Indies): The conflict between France and England returns to the rich Caribbean islands. These islands, unlike the United States, could not sustain themselves on their own and would therefore be ruled by one colonial power or another. And the market for West

A preliminary peace agreement is signed between the British, French, and Spanish, following the similar one signed with the Americans. It is effectively an armistice. The American Revolutionary War officially ends.

A preliminary peace agreement is signed between the British and the Americans. A similar agreement will follow with the French and Spanish, which will effectively be an armistice.

The British evacuate Savannah, Georgia.

Henry Cavendish measures the composition of air: 79.16% nitrogen, 20.84% oxygen

South Carolina. Cornwallis’s British army decides to abandon the state, holding only Charleston and Savannah. The British head north toward Cesapeake Bay and Yorktown.