General
Population: 1.20 Billion*
- Entertainment: Music includes Glinka, Lortzing, Wagner, Verdi
Czech dance – the polka – comes into fashion
Writers include Balzac's works published, Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris, Bulwer-Lytton, Fanny Burney (diary - posthumously),
Dickens American Notes, Gogol's Dead Souls, George Washington Harris (forerunner of Twain), Samuel Lover, Poe Masque of the Red Death,
Eugene Scribe, Macaulay (Rome), Martin Tupper (philosophy)
Viennese farce performed later made into Thornton Wilder play
- Medicine: Long uses ether to produce anesthesia - first use
- Science: Doppler explains Doppler effect regarding binary stars
Henry discovers oscillating electric discharge
Julius Robert von Mayer publishes paper starting thermodynamics
Maury begins research in oceanography
Owen proposes term "dinosaurian"
Maclaren publishes ice age theory based on Agassiz theory
- Technology: Fax machine conceived by Bain
- Deaths: Statesman Robert Smith, Composer Luigi Cherubini, Statesman James Barbour, Poet Clemens Brentano, Novelist Stendhal, Naval officer Samuel L Southard,
Educator Thomas Arnold, Composer Joseph Hopkinson, Anatomist Sir Charles Bell, Chemist Pierre Joseph Pelletier, Shipwreck heroine Grace Darling,
Diplomat Count CA Pozzo di Borgo, Count EAD de Las Cases, Statesman Marquis Wellesley, Liberator Bernando O'Higgins, Writer John Banim, Author Lady Callcott,
Poet Allan Cunningham, Poet Jose de Espronceda, Man of letters William Maginn, Writer Samuel Woodworth, Educator Thomas Arnold, Historian Jean Simonde de Sismondi,
Painter John S Cotman, Artist Marie Anne Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
Africa
- Orange Free State: Orange Free State set up by the Boers
British defeat Boers
Americas
- Canada: Webster-Ashburton Treaty defines Canadian border around Quebec and New Brunswick
- Haiti: Large quake
- Mexico: Takes San Antonio twice
Mexicans dig up Santa Anna's severed leg and desecrated it in effigy
Asia
- China: End of first Opium War - Treaty of Nanking reopens ports and cedes Hong Kong to Britain for 155 years
- Sarawak: (Malaysia) Kingdom independent until 1888
Europe
- German States: Meyerbeer named general director of Royal Opera House in Berlin
- Great Britain: Queen Victoria makes her first rail journey
WOmen and girls banned from mine work
England at brink of war due to demands of the people against aristocracy - settled peacefully
Middle East
- Afghanistan: End of First Afghan War – a British army trounced and they withdraw from Kabul
Pacific
- General: France annexes Marquesas Islands and makes Tahiti a protectorate
Tahiti: French rule