The events 1840 to 1859

The Great Exhibition in London. The United Kingdom was the first country in the world to industrialise.

The Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War

[edit]1840s

• 1840: New Zealand is founded, as the Treaty of Waitangi is signed by the Māori and British.
• 1840: Upper and Lower Canada are merged into the Province of Canada.
• 1841: The word "dinosaur" is coined by Richard Owen
• 1842: Treaty of Nanking cedes Hong Kong to the British.
• 1842: Anaesthesia used for the first time.
• 1843: The first wagon train sets out from Missouri.
• 1843: Short stories A Christmas Carol and The Tell-Tale Heart published.
• 1844: Persian Prophet the Báb announces his revelation on May 23, founding Bábísm. He announced to the world of the coming of "He whom God shall make manifest". He is considered the forerunner of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith.
• 1844: First publicly funded telegraph line in the world—between Baltimore and Washington—sends demonstration message on May 24, ushering in the age of the telegraph. This message read "What hath God wrought?" (Bible, Numbers 23:23)
• 1844: Millerite movement awaits the Second Advent of Jesus Christ on October 22. Christ's non-appearance becomes known as the Great Disappointment.
• 1844: The Great Auk is rendered extinct.
• 1844: Dominican War of Independence from Haiti.
• 1845: Unification of the Kingdom of Tonga under Tāufaʻāhau (King George Tupou I).
• 1845–1846: First Anglo-Sikh War.
• 1845–1872: The New Zealand Land Wars.
• 1845–1849: The Irish Potato Famine leads to the Irish diaspora.
• 1846–1848: The Mexican-American War leads to Mexico's cession of much of the modern-day Southwestern United States.
• 1846–1847: Mormon migration to Utah.
• 1847: The Brontë sisters publish Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.
• 1847–1901: The Caste War of Yucatán.
• 1848–1849: Second Anglo-Sikh War
• 1848: The Communist Manifesto published.
• 1848: Revolutions of 1848 in Europe.
• 1848: Seneca Falls Convention is the first women's rights convention in the United States and leads to the battle for suffrage and women's legal rights.
• 1848–1858: California Gold Rush.
• 1849: The first boatloads of gold prospectors arrive in California, giving them the nickname 49ers.
• 1849: The safety pin and the gas mask are invented.
• 1849: Earliest recorded air raid, as Austria employs 200 balloons to deliver ordnance against Venice.

[edit]1850s

Dead Confederate soldiers. 30% of all Southern white males 18–40 years of age died in the American Civil War.^[9]

• 1850: The Little Ice Age ends around this time.
• 1850–1864: Taiping Rebellion is the bloodiest conflict of the century, leading to the deaths of 20 million people.
• 1851: The Great Exhibition in London was the world's first international Expo or World's Fair.
• 1851: Louis Napoleon assumes power in France in a coup.
• 1851–1852: The Platine War ends and the Empire of Brazil has the hegemony over South America.
• 1851–1860s: Victorian gold rush in Australia
• 1852: Frederick Douglass delivers his speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" in Rochester, New York.
• 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry threatens the Japanese capital Edo with gunships, demanding that they agree to open trade.
• 1853–1856: Crimean War between France, the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire and Russia
• 1854: Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
• 1854: The Convention of Kanagawa formally ends Japan's policy of isolation.
• 1854–1855: Siege of Sevastapol; city falls to British forces.
• 1855: Bessemer process enables steel to be mass produced.
• 1856: World's first oil refinery in Romania
• 1856: Neanderthal man first identified. Age still unknown.
• 1857–1858: Indian Rebellion of 1857. The British Empire assumes control of India from the East India Company.
• 1858: Invention of the phonautograph, the first true device for recording sound.
• 1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
• 1859–1869: Suez Canal is constructed.