PEACH

History

1856

Population: 1.26 Billion*

Entertainment: Writers include Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Baudelaire, Edmond Abour, Victor Hugo (poetry), Ibsen, Gottfried Keller, Morike, Charles Reade, JA Froude (English history), Theodor Goldstucker (Sanskrit dictionary), Rudolf Lotze, JR Motley (Dutch history), Hippolyte Taine (philosophy), Alexis de Toqueville
Art includes Jean AD Ingres "La Source"
Music includes Alexander Dargomijsky, Maillart, Karl Bechstein founds piano factory, Liszt "Hungarian Rhapsodies"
Food: Gail Borden patents condensed milk
Medicine: Pasteur discovers bacteria as cause of disease
Politics: Privateering declared illegal at Treaty of Paris
Science: Pure cocaine extract from coca
Hermann von Helmholtz writes about optics
Pringsheim observes sperm in plants
Neanderthal skull found in Feldhofer Cave near Düsseldorf
Technology: Cheap steel possible with Bessemer process
William H Perkin prepares first aniline dye
Siemens makes ductile steel for boiler plating
Deaths: Imam Sayyid Said of Oman, Editor Josn S. Miles, Mathametician N.I. Lobachevsky, Historian Augustin Thierry, Poet Heinrich Heine, Composer Adolphe Adam, Composer Robert Schumann, Lucy Mack Smith,

General: Dr. Livingstone crosses Africa exploring Zambezi
Transvaal: South African Republic (Transvaal) organized under Marthinius Pretorius

China: Second Anglo-Chinese war (Second Opium War) begins to 1860 – British fleet bombards Canton
India: Britain annexes Oudh and establishes Natal as Crown Colony
Bricks used to make railway embankment in Indus valley later shown to be 3500 years old from Harappa
Indonesia: Mt. Abo erupts killing 3000

General: End of Crimean War with Treaty of Paris
French-Spanish frontier defined
Austria: Austrian amnesty for Hungarian rebels of 1848-9
Heinrich von Ferstel begins the Votivkirche in Vienna
German States: Black forest railroad with 40 tunnels opened
Great Britain: Queen Victoria awards first Victoria Cross
Big Ben the 13.5 ton bell cast
Greece: Major lightning storm off Rhodes ignites powder vault in Churck killing 4000
Italian States: (HRE) Emperor Francis Joseph visits Lombardy and Venice and appoints brother Archduke Maximilian governor of the provinces

Afghanistan: Persia occupies Heart – Persia at war with Britain after invading Afghanistan – outbreak of British-Persian war to 1857
Oman: Death of Imam Sayyid Said
Ottoman Empire: End of Crimean War
Reform edict in Turkish Empire – peace conference in Paris recognizes integrity of Turkey

Australia: Full self-government
First Australian interstate cricket match – Victoria versus New South Wales
Longest bare-knuckle boxing fight in history – James Kelly v. Jack Smith
Tasmania: Britain grants self-government to Tasmania