The year 1852, a century before my birth, has become a tiny gateway into history for me ... a benign fixation, because of that personal (if distant) connection. Many interesting things happened in 1852:
- Gold production in California peaked, sending silver prices up and driving silver coins out of circulation in the US.
- In an apt coincidence, Wells Fargo (bank) and Smith & Wesson (guns) were founded, as was Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City.
- Roget's Thesaurus was first published. So was the best-selling novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (a dramatic critique of slavery) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The sale of slaves was outlawed in the District of Columbia.
- Safety matches were invented in Sweden by Johan Lundstrom, and the safety elevator was invented in the USA by Elisha Graves Otis.
- "Uncle Sam", the cartoon personification of the USA, appeared for the first time in The New York Lantern.
- The Duke of Wellington and Lady Ada Lovelace died, as did the Prime Minister of Austria-Hungary, Felix, Fürst zu Schwarzenberg. (see InverseAphorisms, the ^zhurnal entry of 26 October 1999 for a noteworthy Schwarzenberg quote)
- The London Convention was signed, putting an end to the war between Prussia and Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein.
- Napoleon III began his reign as Emperor of France; Camillo Benso di Cavour became the Piedmontese Prime Minister; Millard Fillmore finished his term as President of the United States.
- Commodore Perry visited Japan, beginning the end of that nation's isolation from the rest of the world.
- A propellor was used on a balloon, creating the first airship.
- The state of Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school attendance law in the USA.
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". (Thanks to Rudy Vonk for kind contributions of historical facts concerning my favorite year.)
Sunday, June 04, 2000 at 21:51:05 (EDT) = 2000-06-04
TopicSociety - TopicPersonalHistory - TopicProfiles
(correlates: InverseAphorisms, More from 1852, ExcrementalTypo, ...)
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