1852 is "my year": it's a century ahead of when I was born, and I continue to collect coins bearing that date. In addition to the tidbits gathered in NumisTriviaOf1852 (4 Jun 2000) other historical events of that era offer evidence of scientific and societal progress in several dimensions. During 1852:

• In Boston, Tufts University is founded and Emma Snodgrass is arrested for wearing pants ...
• Friedrich Heinrich Alexander (aka Baron von Humboldt), the German explorer and naturalist, receives the Copley Medal (the first and highest award granted by the Royal Society of London) ...
• The American Pharmaceutical Association is founded ...
• The first British public toilet for women opens in Bedford Street, London ...
• Alice Pleasance Liddell (inspiration for "Alice in Wonderland") is born, as is Julius Richard Petri (inventor of the Petri dish) and Henri Becquerel (French physicist) ...
• The first Lone Star State Fair is held in Corpus Christi, Texas ...
• Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton establish the Women's State Temperance Society of New York ...
• Louis Braille (inventor of the Braille writing system for the blind) dies, as does Daniel Webster (American lawyer, orator, statesman, and Secretary of State) ...

And perhaps of greatest significance, Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, is named Vice Presidential candidate of the Liberal Party. In Corinthian Hall (Rochester, New York) he gives the speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" which includes the passage:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing, empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the Earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

(for images of some coins in my 1852 collection see http://www.his.com/~z/1852.html = "1852!" and http://www.his.com/~z/gallery1852.html = "Gallery of 1852 Coins". )

TopicPersonalHistory - TopicScience - TopicSociety - 2004-03-10

(correlates: NuimisTrivia of 1852, ProudSignage, GoodNotation, ...)