50 Fun Facts About 19th Century

Which bridal fashion is Queen Victoria credited with popularising after she married Prince Albert in 1840?

A white dress was not her invention, but Victoria's satin and Honiton lace gown was so widely reported that she is credited with making it the bridal standard.

Which landmark, built as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair, was meant to be dismantled after 20 years?

The Eiffel Tower was due to come down in 1909 but was allowed to stay, having proved its worth as a mast for radio signals.

Which nickname was given to the fortune-seekers who rushed to California after gold was found at Sutter's Mill?

Forty-niners took their name from 1849, the peak year of the rush; about half of the 300,000 arrivals came by sea.

In which war did Florence Nightingale nurse British soldiers, later charting their deaths in her 'rose diagram'?

The Crimean War made her 'The Lady with the Lamp', a name earned on night rounds of the wards at Scutari.

Which author conceived the novel Frankenstein during an 1816 summer near Geneva with Lord Byron and John Polidori?

Mary Shelley was 18 when Byron proposed that each guest write a ghost story; her tale was published anonymously in 1818.

At which 1815 battle in present-day Belgium was Napoleon finally defeated by Wellington's and Blücher's armies?

Waterloo was Napoleon's last battle: he abdicated four days later, ending the comeback known as the Hundred Days.

Which invention did Alexander Graham Bell patent in 1876 after filing on the same day as rival Elisha Gray?

Telephone history turned on one morning: Bell's lawyer and Gray both went to the US Patent Office on 14 February 1876, and who arrived first is still argued over.

Which New York landmark, dedicated in 1886, was built in France and shipped across the Atlantic in crates?

The Statue of Liberty reached New York aboard the steamer Isère in June 1885 and was assembled on what was then Bedloe's Island.

Which woman escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and then led about 70 people to freedom on the Underground Railroad?

Harriet Tubman made some 13 rescue missions, travelling by night, and was nicknamed 'Moses' for leading her people out of bondage.

Which Indonesian volcano erupted in 1883 with an explosion heard about 3,000 miles away near Mauritius?

Krakatoa lies in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, and its blast carried as far as Rodrigues island and Perth in Australia.

Which 1803 deal nearly doubled the size of the United States at a cost of under three cents an acre?

The Louisiana Purchase cost $15 million for 828,000 square miles and extended US sovereignty across the Mississippi River.

During which conflict did British troops capture Washington and burn the White House and the Capitol?

The War of 1812 reached Washington in August 1814, when First Lady Dolley Madison had staff save valuables before the British arrived.

Which Native American woman joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 with her newborn son Jean Baptiste?

Sacagawea was still in her teens, and her son was born at Fort Mandan in February 1805, weeks before the party headed up the Missouri.

Which Venezuelan general, known as 'The Liberator', led six present-day Latin American countries to independence?

Simón Bolívar gave his name to Bolivia, and Venezuela's official title, the Bolivarian Republic, honours him too.

Which medical instrument did French physician René Laennec invent in 1816, starting with a rolled-up sheaf of paper?

Stethoscope design began when Laennec held a paper cylinder to a patient's chest and heard the heart more clearly than with his bare ear.

Which Frenchman, blinded in a childhood accident, published his raised-dot reading system in 1829?

Louis Braille cut the twelve dots of an earlier system to six, so each letter could be recognised with a single touch of a finger.

What name is given to the forced removal of the Cherokee and other nations west of the Mississippi in the 1830s?

The Trail of Tears followed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and displaced about 60,000 people from the south-eastern United States.

What was the name of the world's first adhesive postage stamp, issued in Britain in 1840 with Queen Victoria's profile?

The Penny Black let a letter of up to half an ounce travel at a flat rate of one penny, whatever the distance.

Which New York waterway, opened in 1825 and mocked as 'Clinton's Big Ditch', linked the Hudson River to the Great Lakes?

The Erie Canal was championed by New York governor DeWitt Clinton, whose opponents also called the project 'Clinton's Folly'.

Aboard which Royal Navy ship did Charles Darwin sail around the world as a young naturalist in the 1830s?

HMS Beagle spent nearly five years on the survey, and Darwin had been on his way to becoming a rural clergyman when he joined.

Which New York town hosted the first women's rights convention in July 1848, organised with Elizabeth Cady Stanton?

Seneca Falls hosted a meeting planned during a visit to the area by Lucretia Mott, and those attending debated a Declaration of Sentiments before signing it.

Which German thinker co-wrote an 1848 manifesto with Friedrich Engels and spent his later decades exiled in London?

Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in London, though only its first volume was published in his lifetime, and he was buried in the city's Highgate Cemetery in 1883.

Which San Antonio mission fell to Santa Anna's Mexican army in March 1836 after a 13-day siege?

The Alamo's fall became a rallying cry, and Texian forces defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto on 21 April 1836.

Which territory did the United States buy from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, about two cents an acre?

Alaska was labelled 'Seward's Folly' or 'Seward's Icebox' by some opponents, who contended the country had acquired useless land.

Which daughter of Lord Byron is often called the first computer programmer for her notes on Babbage's engine?

Ada Lovelace described how Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine could calculate Bernoulli numbers, a machine that was never completed.

Which American inventor, a portrait painter by trade, built the 1844 telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore?

Samuel Morse won $30,000 from Congress for the 38-mile experimental line and gave his name to the dot-and-dash code sent along it.

Which staple crop was ruined by blight in 1840s Ireland, causing a famine known as the Great Hunger?

Potato blight struck across Europe, but Ireland suffered worst: roughly one million people died and over a million more emigrated.

Where in Charleston Harbor did the American Civil War begin with a 34-hour bombardment in April 1861?

Fort Sumter was evacuated by Major Robert Anderson's outgunned Union garrison, yet no one on either side was killed during the shelling.

At which Washington playhouse was Abraham Lincoln shot in 1865 while watching the comedy Our American Cousin?

Ford's Theatre was a natural stage for John Wilkes Booth, by then a famous actor from a family of prominent stage performers.

Which ceremonial object did Leland Stanford drive at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869 to join two railroads?

A golden spike joined the Central Pacific line from Sacramento to the Union Pacific from Omaha, and it is now displayed at Stanford University.

Which waterway, built by Ferdinand de Lesseps's company and opened in 1869, links the Mediterranean and Red Seas?

The Suez Canal runs about 120 miles through Egypt and cut the sea journey from the Arabian Sea to London by roughly 5,500 miles.

Which Prussian statesman, nicknamed the 'Iron Chancellor', oversaw the unification of Germany in 1871?

Otto von Bismarck served as the new empire's first chancellor until 1890, when Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed him and he retired to write his memoirs.

Which Italian general led the volunteer Expedition of the Thousand that landed in Sicily in 1860?

Giuseppe Garibaldi had earlier raised an Italian force known as Redshirts in Uruguay, where he is still celebrated for his part in its civil war.

Which US commodore led the 'Black Ships' to Japan in 1853 to press the Tokugawa shogunate to open its ports?

Matthew Perry came back in 1854 and signed the Convention of Kanagawa, which opened Shimoda and Hakodate after some 220 years of isolation.

Which island did China cede to Britain under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, which ended the First Opium War?

Hong Kong Island became a British colony, and the same treaty forced open five Chinese 'treaty ports' to foreign trade.

Which British trading firm ruled from Calcutta with its own armies until the Crown took direct control in 1858?

The East India Company lost its powers after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and direct government from London became known as the British Raj.

Which European capital hosted the 1884–85 conference where colonial powers set rules for carving up Africa?

Berlin's conference ended in February 1885 with a General Act regulating European colonisation and trade across the continent.

Which Scottish missionary was tracked down by reporter Henry Morton Stanley at Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, in 1871?

David Livingstone had set out in 1866 to seek the source of the Nile and then lost all contact with the outside world.

Which country was formed on 1 July 1867 when three British North American provinces united as a dominion?

Canada began with four provinces, because the old Province of Canada was split into Ontario and Quebec alongside Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Which Caribbean nation declared independence in 1804 after enslaved people overthrew French rule in Saint-Domingue?

Haiti grew out of a revolt that began in August 1791, one of the only slave rebellions in history to end in the founding of a state.

Which element did Marie Curie name in 1898 after her homeland, then partitioned between three foreign powers?

Polonium was extracted from the uranium ore pitchblende and was the first element identified solely by its strong radioactivity.

Which woman made the first long-distance car journey in 1888, driving to Pforzheim without telling her husband?

Bertha Benz took her teenage sons Richard and Eugen on the trip of about 66 miles, and the attention won the Patent-Motorwagen its first sales.

Which country became the first to give all women the parliamentary vote, after an 1893 petition led by Kate Sheppard?

New Zealand's final petition carried nearly 32,000 signatures, almost a quarter of the adult European female population of the colony.

Which suffragist was arrested in Rochester, New York, for casting a ballot in the 1872 US presidential election?

Susan B. Anthony was convicted in a widely publicised trial and fined $100, which she refused to pay; the authorities took no further action.

Which American journalist circled the globe in 72 days in 1889–90, emulating Jules Verne's fictional Phileas Fogg?

Nellie Bly was a pen name; she had already made her reputation by feigning insanity to expose brutality inside a New York asylum.

Which was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, under the 'Golden Law' of May 1888?

Brazil's Lei Áurea was signed by Princess Isabel, an opponent of slavery acting as regent while Emperor Pedro II was in Europe.

Which empress dowager, once a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor, dominated China's Qing court from 1861 until 1908?

Cixi backed the Boxers in 1900 and declared war on the foreign powers, a decision that led to the occupation of Beijing.

Which steam locomotive, built by Robert Stephenson's company, won the 1829 Rainhill Trials near Liverpool?

Rocket was designed around the rules of the contest, which was held to show that locomotives would beat stationary steam engines.

Which English-born physician became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, in January 1849?

Elizabeth Blackwell was rejected everywhere except Geneva Medical College in New York, where the male students voted her in as a joke.

Which Pacific kingdom's last monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani, was deposed in an 1893 coup led by the Committee of Safety?

Hawaii's deposed queen was also a composer: she wrote the song Aloha ʻOe around 1878, while she was still a princess.