General
Population: 1.21 Billion*
- Entertainment: Writers include WH Ainsworth, Robert Browning, Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens A Christmas Carol, RH Horne, William H Prescott,
Tennyson Morte d'Arthur, Wordsworth named English poet laureate, George Borrow (Bible), Reformer Richard Carlile, Thomas Carlyle, Liddell and Scott write Greek-English lexicon,
JS Mill Logic, Alexander von Humboldt (central Asia), Kierkegaard
First Christmas Card created
Music includes MW Balfe "The Bohemian Girl", Donizetti, Mendelssohn "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Schumann (secular oratorio), Wagner "The Flying Dutchman"
DD Emmett produces first minstrel show
John Ruskin collects "modern painters"
Thomas Hood creates "Song of the Shirt" in "Punch"
- Science: Oliver Wendell Holmes writes about contagiousness of "Puerperal Fever"
Joule determines how much work is required to produce unit of heat
Erbium discovered by CG Mosander
- Deaths: Lexicographer Noah Webster, Jurist Smith Thompson, Poet Friedrich Holderlin, Author Robert Southey, Poet Friedrich de la Motte-Fouque,
Composer Joseph Lanner, Poet Casimir Delavigne, Poet Robert Southey, Artist Washington Allston, Artist John Trumbull, Sequoya, Homeopath Samuel CS Hahnemann,
Africa
- Natal: (South Africa) Britain takes over Natal from Boers and adopts it as British colony
Americas
- Canada: Victoria, Vancouver founded
- Cuba: Slave population estimated at 436000
Asia
- India: India forcibly annexes Sind and the Punjab
- Java: Guntur in Java erupts
Europe
- France: World's first nightclub opens in Paris
- Great Britain: Idea for fax machine conceived by Bain in Scotland
Great Disruption results in Evangelicals forming Free Church of Scotland
British Archaeological Association and Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland founded
London weekly financial paper "The Economist" founded
Thames Tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping London built
Guy's Hospital Football Club founded in London
S.S. Great Britain crosses Atlantic as first propeller-driven ship
- Italian States: Michelangelo's David has toe broken after rough cleaning with hydrochloric acid
Mt Etna erupts
- Norway: Beginning of skiing as sport
- Poland: Countess Rosa Branicka of Poland performs her own breast cancer surgery and lives to be 82
- Serbia: Skupstina summons Prince Alexander Karageorgevich to the throne
- Spain: Military revolt drives General Espartero from power and Isabella II (age 13) declared Queen
Isabella of Spain forced to abdicate
Middle East
Pacific
- New Zealand: Maori revolts against Britain in New Zealand