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Date |
Event(s) |
| 1 | 1851 | - 1851: UK - The Great Exhibition is staged in Hyde Park. Thanks to Prince Albert, it is a great success
- 1851: UK - Window tax abolished
- 1851: USA - Patent for sewing machine issued to Isaac Singer
- 1851: 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
- 1851: Europe - First submarine cable, Dover to Calais
- 1851: London, UK - Reuters opens news agency
- 1851: Africa - Livingstone's explorations begin
- 1851: Australia - Population of Australia rises from 405,000 in 1851 to 1,168,000 in 1861
- Sep 1851: Melbourne, Australia - Gold fever - 19,000 immigrants land in one month, for the whole year 94,664, seven times as many as 1851
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| 2 | 1852 | |
| 3 | 1853 | |
| 4 | 1854 | |
| 5 | 1855 | - 1855: UK - John Snow, investigating London's piped water supply, showed graphically that cholera could be transmitted by water from a particular pump.
- 1855: UK - Palmerston's first government comes to power
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| 6 | 1856 | |
| 7 | 1857 | |
| 8 | 1858 | |
| 9 | 1859 | |
| 10 | 1860 | |
| 11 | 1861 | |
| 12 | 1862 | |
| 13 | 1863 | |
| 14 | 1864 | |
| 15 | 1865 | |
| 16 | 1866 | |
| 17 | 1867 | |
| 18 | 1868 | |
| 19 | 1869 | |
| 20 | 1870 | |
| 21 | 1871 | |
| 22 | 1872 | - 1872: UK - Secret voting is introduced for elections
- 1872: UK - Parliament passes the Scottish Education Act
- 1872: USA - A.M. Ward issues the first mail-order catalog.
- 1872: UK - J.S. Risdon patents the metal windmill.
- 1872: 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
- 1872: 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
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| 23 | 1873 | |
| 24 | 1874 | |
| 25 | 1875 | - 1875: UK - Benjamin Disraeli purchases a controlling interest for Britain in the Suez Canal.
- 1875: UK - Parliament passes R.A. Cross's Conservative social reforms
- 1875: UK - Collapse of British agriculture due to cheap grain from US, wheat acreage falls by nearly a million acres
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| 26 | 1876 | |
| 27 | 1877 | |
| 28 | 1878 | |
| 29 | 1879 | |
| 30 | 1880 | - 1880: UK - William Gladstone establishes his second Liberal government
- 1880: South Africa - The first Anglo-Boer War begins
- 1880: UK - British forests now decimated except for bits of the New Forest and the Forest of Dean.
- 1880: UK - Number of agricultural labourers reduced by about 100,000 in last 10 years
- 1880: UK - Englishman John Milne invents the modern seismograph.
- 1880: UK - The British Perforated Paper Company invents a form of toilet paper.
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| 31 | 1881 | |
| 32 | 1882 | |
| 33 | 1884 | - 1884: Vienna, Austria - Sigmund Freud published a paper in which he found cocaine, an alkaloid in coca, effective against fatigue and neurasthenia.
- 1884: UK - Hilaire de Chardonnet invented the first artificial textile, which was made from cellulose. It was later named rayon
- 1884: UK - Parliament passes the third Reform Act which further extends the franchise
- 1884: UK - Fabian Society forms, rejects Marxian theory, embraces Ricardian theory (socialist)
- 1884: One-third of world's shipping is British, including 4/5 of world's steamships
- 1884: Burma - Britain annexes Upper Burma
- 1884: Africa - Britain and Germany partition East Africa
- 1884: UK - Excess of births over deaths in England is 13.3, in Germany 10.8, and France 1.4.
- 1884: USA - James Ritty invents the first working, mechanical cash register.
- 1884: UK - Charles Parson patents the steam turbine.
- 1884: USA - Lewis Edson Waterman invents the first practical fountain pen.
- 1884: USA - George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film.
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| 34 | 1885 | |
| 35 | 1886 | - 1886: UK - Gladstone's third Liberal government fails to pass its first Irish Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons. Gladstone resigns as Prime Minister. Split in the Liberal Party. Salisbury establishes his second Conservative-Liberal-Unionist government.
- 1886: UK - The Royal Niger Company is chartered
- 1886: South Africa - Gold is discovered in the Transvaal
- 1886: New York, NY, USA - Statue of Liberty erected in New York Harbour
- 1886: UK - Local Government Act establishes County Councils as administrative organs of country life, replace Justices of Peace who are preserved as magistrates, creates London County Council (does not cover City); women are included with men in electorate of newly- established County Councils
- 1886: UK - British South Africa Company, formed by Yorkshireman Cecil Rhodes, colonization of Rhodesia begins
- 1886: UK - Great Dock Strike of London dockers, led by John Burns and Tom Mann
- 1886: USA - John Pemberton invents Coca Cola.
- 1886: USA - Josephine Cochrane invents the dishwasher.
- 1886: UK - 3,992,880 migrants leave UK for US, 2,235,671 leave UK for British North America during period to 1927
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| 36 | 1887 | |
| 37 | 1888 | |
| 38 | 1889 | |
| 39 | 1890 | - 1890: UK - Starting this decade, women's clothing becomes less voluminous, lawn tennis takes place of croquet as means of meeting opposite sex, bicycle becomes fashionable
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| 40 | 1891 | |
| 41 | 1892 | |
| 42 | 1893 | - 1893: USA - Whitcomb L. Judson invented the zip to help a friend with a stiff back who could not bend over to do up his shoes
- 1893: UK - Second Irish Home Rule Bill fails to pass the House of Lords
- 1893: New Zealand - First nation to grant women the right to vote
- 1893: France - Car number plates introduced
- 1893: USA - Grover Cleveland president of the USA 1893-1897.
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| 43 | 1894 | - 1894: UK - Rosebery takes power with his minority Liberal government
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| 44 | 1895 | |
| 45 | 1896 | - 1896: Vienna, Austria - Sigmund Freud suggested analyzing childhood conflicts in the study of neuroses. He also devised a psychoanalytic technique called free association which allows emotionally-charged, repressed material to be consciously recognized
- 1896: Sudan - British conquest of the Sudan begins
- 1896: USA - Lightner Witmer establishes at the University of Pennsylvania a clinic of psychology, the first psychological clinic in America and perhaps in the world
- 1896: UK - Items considered luxuries in 1837 are now common comforts; food, clothing, bedding, furniture, are all far more abundant; gas and oil lighting being replaced by electricity; seaside holidays no longer rare
- 1896: UK - Howard publishes Garden Cities of Tomorrow, forerunner of modern city planning
- 1896: York, UK - Seebohm Rowntree (of chocolate fame) studies poor, determines poverty due to inadequate wages, not shiftlessness
- 1896: USA - American, H. O'Sullivan invents the rubber heel.
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| 46 | 1897 | |
| 47 | 1898 | |
| 48 | 1899 | |
| 49 | 1900 | |
| 50 | 1901 | |
| 51 | 1902 | |
| 52 | 1903 | - 1903: USA - Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright achieved flight in a manned, gasoline power-driven, heavier-than-air flying machine at Kitty Hawk.
- 1903: UK - First Silent Movie, The Great Train Robbery
- 1903: India - Plague strikes
- 1903: Ireland - Irish land purchase bill, Wyndham's Act, permits Irish to buy land from landlords with £150 million of loans included
- 1903: UK - Liverpool University, Sheffield University and Leeds University founded
- 1903: UK - Balfour's Licensing Act reduces number of houses selling alcohol
- 1903: UK - Trade depression - unemployment results; Act sets up local committees to find employment, voluntary contributions give small stipend to unemployed
- 1903: UK - Act of Parliament secures highly privileged immunity for trades unions; Labour Party formed
- 1903: UK - Free school meals for poor children, Children's Act deals with cruelty to children, prohibits imprisonment of children under 14
- 1903: UK - 72 British ships have Marconi's radio, 1912 - 450, 1914 - 879
- 1903: UK - Beginning of Old Age Pension scheme
- 1903: UK - Trade depression - unemployment results; William Beveridge publishes Unemployment, a Problem of Industry, which prompts creation of Labour Exchanges
- 1903: Europe - Louis Bleriot flies across the English Channel
- 1903: UK - Edward Binney and Harold Smith co-invent crayons.
- 1903: UK - Bottle-making machinery invented by Michael J. Owens.
- 1903: UK - Mary Anderson invents windshield wipers.
- 1903: USA - William Coolidge invents ductile tungsten used in lightbulbs.
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| 53 | 1904 | |
| 54 | 1905 | |
1851 - 1905 (54 years)