VG

Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, after discovering gallium (named after France, but Lecoq means “rooster” in French), presents the world with a block of pure gallium. It melts at 30°C, and if shaped like a teaspoon, it would dissolve in a cup of tea…

Umberto I King of Italy

The English mathematician William Kingdon Clifford (1845 – 1879) generalized the notion of quaternions to spaces of any dimension: Clifford Algebra was born.

Thomas Alva Edison applied for a patent for the talking phonograph and stunned the examiners, who, having nothing to compare it to, granted it without question. A few months later, on April 10, 1878, the Daily Telegraph dubbed Edison “the Wizard of Menlo Park,” a

German Karl Von Linde builds the first refrigerator

Levi Strauss patents jeans

Charles Darwin publishes The Descent of Man in which he hypothesizes the descent of man from hominids

Prussia demands from defeated France territories (Alsace and Lorraine) and indemnities amounting to 6 billion gold francs. After further negotiations, the sum is set at 5 billion francs (623 billion euros today) and will be paid in full. The cession of the territories will poison

First prototype of a DC commutator motor developed by the Belgian Gramme in a tramway in the USA

Sir William Semple patented a type of chewing gum, actually a different form already invented in 1848. It contained rubber, sugar, and flavorings. Semple, a dentist, prescribed it to patients with chewing problems, and also prescribed powders and crushed bones to clean teeth.

United States. Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce publishes two articles in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, entitled “Questions Concerning Certain Claims of the Human Faculties,” which lay out his theory of consciousness: we are not endowed with introspection, nor can we operate in the absence of

Alfred Nobel invented dynamite (nitroglycerin absorbed in diatomaceous earth). In 1847, the Turin chemist Ascanio Sobrero, by dripping glycerol (or glycerin—easily obtained from animal fat) into a cooled mixture of sulfuric and nitric acid, and pouring the resulting mixture into water, discovered (or invented) nitroglycerin.

Frenchman Joseph Monier invents reinforced concrete

The first reliably functioning transatlantic cable between Europe and the United States, laid by Brunel’s steamship, the Great Eastern. This time, at Thomson’s suggestion, each individual cable segment was tested for purity and conductivity, and the amount of copper was three times greater: 365 tons

Italy, despite the defeat at Custoza, obtained the Veneto thanks to French good offices. The military party in Parliament, despite its defeats in the war, continued to make no concessions to the Republicans, the so-called “Reds” (note that even in the United States, the newly

Prussia heavily defeated Austria in 1866 and created the North German Confederation, annexing several states previously under Austrian influence.

Garibaldi achieves one success after another and his men conquer the mountain fort of Ampola by carrying the siege guns on their shoulders

Split, Austrian Empire. The Austrian fleet arrives, and due to a series of misunderstandings, Italy, who had begun with a clear numerical superiority, is defeated.

Rudolf Clausius enunciates a second form of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: entropy increases when heat passes from a hot body to a cold body (and vice versa).

Abolition of slavery in the American Constitution (13th and, later, 14th Amendment)

Otto von Bismark, head of the Prussian government, is finalizing preparations for a war against Austria, a direct competitor for hegemony in the German-speaking world. To do so, he secures the neutrality of Russia and France.

The American Civil War taught Americans (unfortunately not the British and French, who would learn it in World War I) that the era of the “wise” bayonet was over. The tactical revolution ushered in by the adoption of the rifled musket with its cylindrical-ogival ball

German chemist Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer began investigating the chemical structure of indigo. In 1880, he succeeded in producing it in a laboratory from readily available raw materials. But it wasn’t until 1897 that synthetic indigo was produced on an industrial scale by

Battle of the Crater. Petersburg, Virginia. Two bluecoats, former miners, suggest digging a tunnel beneath the Confederate lines and blowing them up with a massive dynamite charge. The excavation work, a complex engineering feat for the time and under enemy fire, begins on June 25th

New York. The random draft (a first in the Civil War and in the history of the United States, which normally maintained voluntary conscription even during wartime) sparks a revolt among Irish immigrants. By the end of the revolt, more than a thousand people remain

Port Hudson on the Mississippi also surrenders to the Northerners (Sherman in this case), giving the Union full control of the river and cutting the Confederacy in two.

Vicksburg on the Mississippi, defended by Confederate General Pemberton, surrenders to Confederate General Grant. The siege lasted 46 days. Grant allows Confederate soldiers to return to their homes and recycles their rifles for his own troops.

Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, 15 km west of Fredricksburg. While returning from a patrol, several members of the Confederate general staff were mistakenly killed by their comrades, and General Stonewall Jackson was also hit by friendly fire. His left arm was shattered and would later

Fourth Battle of Vicksburg. From May 19th to 22nd, General Grant unsuccessfully attempted to take the fort, then decided to strangle it with a siege reinforced by 220 cannons that thundered day and night. On July 4th, the Southerners surrendered: 30,000 prisoners, including 15 generals,

Champion Hill. With an impeccable strategy, Grant completely deceived the Confederate generals by operating in an area not directly under the jurisdiction of either Johnston or Pemberton, reaching behind Vicksburg.

Chancellorsville, Virginia. General Stonewall Jackson dies. His last words are: “Let’s cross the river!… and rest in the shade of the trees.”

The French Foreign Legion acquired part of its legendary fame at the Battle of Camarón, when the small infantry reconnaissance patrol commanded by Captain Jean Danjou (62 soldiers, three officers) was attacked and besieged by Mexican cavalry and infantry forces equivalent to three battalions, and

Union General Joseph Hooker’s bluecoats are defeated by General Robert Lee’s graycoats at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia.

Faced with the Union’s enormous human potential, the Confederate Congress made a momentous, unavoidable decision: for the first time in American history, it voted for compulsory conscription. All free men between the ages of 18 and 45 were drafted into the Confederate army. On February

Thomas Alva Edison, at age 15, arrived in Detroit by train like every morning. He found a crowd gathered around the newsstand: a few days earlier, the Battle of Shiloh in the American Civil War had taken place on the Tennessee River. It was, up

The Union gunboat Carondolet manages to pass unscathed past Island 10 on the Mississippi and arrives at New Madrid, already occupied by the Federals. Two days later, the island falls to General Pope, who takes 6,976 Confederate prisoners, including three generals, and 123 cannons. Meanwhile,

Battle of Pittsburg Landing, on Tennessee’s southern border with Mississippi. The Confederate Army of Mississippi and the Union Army of Tennessee, numbering 45,000 men, led by Johnston, confronted each other, while the Union Army of Tennessee, numbering the same number, led by Grant, took the

Glorieta Pass, New Mexico. In the narrow Apache Canyon, the advance of General Sibley’s Confederate troops, after occupying Albunquerque and Santa Fe, is stopped by Union troops. (This is the historical background to “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”)

Lord Paget, Secretary of the British Admiralty, in his report to Parliament in London after the battleship clash off Norfolk, argues that suddenly the Royal Navy no longer has 149 battleships ready for battle, but only two: HMS Warrior and HMS Ironside, which in reality

The frigate Minnesota is the sole survivor of the Union fleet off Norfolk, beached far from the battlefield. The CSS Virginia prepares to finish her off, but out of nowhere appears the USS Monitor, a Union Navy experiment, the brainchild of CS Bushnell and the

The Union Navy takes control of Roanoke Island in eastern Virginia.

The Confederate flag was changed to the famous red flag with the blue St. Andrew’s Cross and the 13 stars of the founding states of the Confederacy (including Missouri and Kentucky despite their immediate loss).

First Battle of Bull Run in Virginia (known in the South as the Battle of Manassas and the first battle of the American Civil War): 30,000 Confederates defeat 32,000 Union troops

5:30 AM. The dull rumble of a large 30-pound Parrot cannon announces the beginning of the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), Virginia. The Southern forces are also involved in the “Louisiana Tigers” battalion, under the command of Garibaldi’s Major Wheat. After hours of fighting,

The Seven Days’ Battle ends with another massacre: General Lee repeatedly sends his men into assaults against well-defended Union positions. The carnage is lethal: over 6,000 casualties. Once again, the destructive force of rifled weapons prevails over the courage of the infantry. Throughout the battle,

Seven Days’ Battle, Virginia. With strategic skill, Lee manages to marshal several forces, including Stonewall Jackson’s troops, on Mechanicsville, near Richmond, via armored trains. Two successive Confederate charges are repelled with immense losses. General Hill observes: “It’s magnificent, but it’s not war.” Further attacks follow,

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, dies. His full name is Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Cellarengo, and Isolabella, known simply as Count of Cavour or Cavour. He was an Italian statesman and patriot.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis appoints General Robert Lee commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He will establish it as one of the most extraordinary and glorious units in military history.

General Stonewall Jackson breaks through the Union lines at Front Royal, in the Shenandoah Valley. This allows him to move north of Washington, D.C. This prompts a call for volunteers from the Union to defend the federal capital, while, on the other side, the Confederate

North Carolina declares secession from the Union

Missouri, a non-partisan border state, actually torn between Unionists and Confederates, passes to the Federals through a coup that establishes a provisional Union government in St. Louis.

West Virginia declares secession within the secession. The mountainous regions of the Old Dominion, avowedly pro-Union, vote to secede from Virginia and rejoin the Union. The split will be sealed by the battles of Philippi (June 3), Rich Mountain (July 11), and Carrick’s Ford (July

Union General Butler, taking advantage of a hurricane, occupies the city of Baltimore. Confederate sympathizers cross the river into Virginia and form Maryland units within the Confederate Army.

The U.S. Navy begins a naval blockade of the main Confederate ports to strangle the South economically and militarily. The blockade will last, with varying degrees of success (it was leaking…), throughout the conflict. By the end of the war, thanks to the war effort,

Tennessee declares secession from the Union

President Lincoln besieges major Confederate ports, effectively blocking cotton exports to Europe.

The 6th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment departs Boston by train for Washington, D.C., to protect the capital. At the Baltimore, Maryland stop, officially unaligned but with Confederate sympathies, the train is met with jeers and insults as it walks from one station to the next. The

Union General Scott offers Robert Lee command of the Army of the Potomac, but he replies that he cannot draw his sword against his homeland, Virginia, and that, if it were invaded, he would defend it. And so it shall be.

The Italian Parliament in Turin holds three heated sessions in which the military party wins overwhelmingly, allying itself for once with Cavour. A conservative line then passes, seeing threats in anything that seems new.

Virginia declares its secession from the Union. It is the most important state in the United States. At least until now.

The Confederate capital is moved to Richmond, Virginia.

Secretary of War Seward proposed to President Lincoln that he intervene in Mexico, where Britain and France had already intervened, so that, faced with a common enemy and war effort, the country would also be reconciled. The proposal was rejected by Lincoln, who understood that

Victor Emmanuel II, with a solemn speech revised by Cavour, inaugurates in Turin the new Parliament, composed of representatives of all the Italian states and territories annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, to examine the government’s plan for national unity. The sovereign supervises the debate

Messina. The first Savoy soldiers appear beneath the castle, still held by the Bourbons.

Gaeta. After the explosion of another gunpowder warehouse, Cialdini secures the surrender. Columns of skeletal Bourbon soldiers, often suffering from typhus, emerge from the castle. A few hours later, many citizens flock to visit the spartan casemate where their two former rulers spent their last

Gaeta. Francis II asks Cialdini to negotiate the surrender. He agrees, but knowing he has the situation under control, he does not suspend the bombardment.

The Confederate States of America Convention elects former Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as provisional president.

Seven Southern states adopt a provisional constitution, proclaiming themselves the Confederate States of America, with their provisional capital in Montgomery, Alabama. President Buchanan protests but takes no formal action, except attempting to break the siege of Fort Sumter using the Star of the West, which

In two days, the provisional Constitution of the Confederate States of America (CSA) is prepared with the provisional capital in Montgomery.

Gaeta. Savoy cannons hit two gunpowder magazines. The explosions sent large cannons flying into the sea, tearing holes in the walls.

Texas declares secession from the Union

Italy. Elections are held for the first unified parliament. Of nearly 26 million inhabitants, the new government grants the right to vote to only 419,938 people (about 1.8%), although only 239,583 actually vote; in the end, valid votes are reduced to 170,567, of which over

Louisiana declares secession from the Union

Georgia declares secession from the Union

Alabama declares secession from the Union

Florida declares secession from the Union

The US Navy steamship Star of the West arrives off the coast of Charleston, the secessionist republic of South Carolina, and approaches Fort Sumter, which is besieged by Southerners, who do not hesitate to open fire on the ship. This marks the beginning of the

Mississippi declares its secession from the Union and also gives itself a flag: the Bonnie Blue Flag, blue with a single white star.

Gaeta. The allied French navy leaves Gaeta and is promptly replaced by the hostile Savoyard fleet. The besieged Bourbon royals are doomed.

Louis Pasteur demonstrated that bacteria could be killed by heat without losing the flavor of food; the process was named after him: pasteurization.