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The Modern Historian
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A blog focusing on the work of an academic historian and his research into the modern world. A collection of articles and links of interest to anyone who has a taste for modern history.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'c19th'
On this day in history: Rochdale Pioneers opened their first store, 1844
In 1844 a group of twenty-eight artisans in Rochdale, near Manchester, established the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. While not the first co-operative in England, the Rochdale Pioneers set out a set of principles by which they hoped to avoid...
On this day in history: Emily Brontë died, 1848
Born on 30th July 1818 at the Parsonage in Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire, Emily Jane Brontë was the fifth of six children of Revd. Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria. Nearly two years after her birth, Emily's family moved to the small industri...
On this day in history: First trans-oceanic yacht race, 1866
At 1pm on 11th December 1866, three schooners sailed from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, their destination was the Needles, near Cowes in the Isle of Wight. The three yachts taking part in 'The Great Atlantic Yacht Race' were the Henrietta, owned by New Yo...
On this day in history: Publication of The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson, 1854
On 9th December 1854, the weekly magazine The Examiner included a poem written by the poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson called "The Charge of the Light Brigade". The narrative poem tells of a disastrous cavalry charge during the Battle of Balaclav...
On this day in history: Première of Strauss\' Also sprach Zarathustra, 1896
Richard Strauss was born in June 1864 in Munich, where his father, Franz, was the principal horn player at the Court Opera. Richard received a musical education from his father and started writing music at the age of six; yet, when he entered the cit...
On this day in history: American Woman Suffrage Association formed, 1869
In January 1866, at a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone proposed the creation of a new organisation with the goal of universal suffrage. On 10th May, Anthony and Stone founded the American Equal R...
On this day in history: First appearance of Sweeney Todd, 1846
The 21st November 1846 issue of Edward Lloyd's 'penny dreadful' The People's Periodical and Family Library contained the first part serialised story entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance. The story, which was published in eighteen weekly editions,...
On this day in history: Suez Canal opened, 1869
In the late eighteenth-century, Napoleon Bonaparte charged a survey team with the task of discovering the remnants of an ancient waterway that once joined the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Their findings appeared in the series of publications kn...
On this day in history: Philosopher G.W.F. Hegel died, 1831
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on 27th August 1770 in Stuttgart, which was then part of the Duchy of Württemberg where his father served as a revenue officer. Hegel learnt Latin from his mother at a young age and later attended the Stuttgart...
On this day in history: Stanley found Livingstone, 1871
On 8th December 1840 Dr. David Livingston sailed from Britain to embark on missionary work in southern Africa. The month before he left he had received a medical licence from the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and been ordained as a m...
On this day in history: Coronation of George I, King of the Hellenes, 1863
In October 1862, following a power struggle that had lasted nearly two decades, King Otto of Greece lost his throne following a constitutionalist coup while he visited the Peloponnese. Ambassadors from the most powerful European countries persuaded O...
On this day in history: Mino-Owari earthquake, 1891
At just after half-past-six on the morning of 28th October 1891 an earthquake shook the provinces of Mino and Owari, on the Nōbi Plain, Japan, the effects of which were felt felt as far away as Tokyo and Osaka. Modern geologists believe that the epi...
On this day in history: First English school in South-East Asia founded, 1816
On 21st October 1816 Rev. Robert Sparke Hutchings established the Penang Free School in George Town on the island of Penang in the Malay archipelago. The island had been leased to the British East India company by the Sultan of Kedah since 1786. At t...
On this day in history: London Beer Flood, 1814
At about 6pm on Monday 17th October, 1814, an explosion rocked the West-End of London.A giant vat full of fermenting porter (a dark coloured malt based beer), on top of the Meux's Brewery Co Ltd, violently burst releasing over half-a-million litres o...
On this day in history: Prince Murat executed, 1815
Born in La Bastide, Gascony in 1767, Joachim Murat was the son of an innkeeper who enlisted into the cavalry at the age of twenty. During the French Revolution he was a devoted republican, which may have played a role in his promotion to officer in 1...
On this day in history: First university inaugurated in Australia, 1852
In an 1848 of the New South Wales Legislative Council, the Australian politician William Charles Wentworth mooted a plan to expand Sydney College into a university. He suggested that a state university was a necessary step along the road to self gove...
On this day in history: Miramichi Fire, 1825
On 7th October 1825, after over two month drought, a multitude of forest fires broke out across New Brunswick, Canada. South-westerly winds connected these small fires together into a massive conflagration, and soon these fires approached areas of hu...
On this day in history: First higher-education institute in Texas opened, 1871
In July 1862 the U.S. Congress signed the Morrill Act into law. First proposed by Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont in 1857, the Act provided the legislative framework for the providing Federal land to be auctioned in order to create fun...
On this day in history: Blackpool tramway opened, 1885
From the early nineteenth century, various towns and cities around the world introduced trams (streetcars) as a means of public transport. First horses and then steam engines provided the power for the trams until Werner von Siemens demonstrated his ...
On this day in history: The world`s first public railway opened, 1825
In the early nineteenth-century various groups group of businessmen decided to resurrect plans to improve transport links between the collieries of South Durham and the port of Stockton-on-Tees. The committees initially planned to cut a canal to re-r...
On this day in history: Neptune discovered, 1846
In 1821, the French astronomer Alexis Bouvard published astronomical tables of the orbit of Uranus, calculated using Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. Subsequent observations of the planet revealed a deviation from the expected position. To ex...
On this day in history: First performance of Das Rheingold, 1869
On 22nd September 1869, the National Theatre in Munich hosted the première performance of Das Rheingold ('The Rhine Gold'), the first part of Richard Wagner's four-part opera Der Ring des Nibelungen ('The Ring of the Nibelung'). Wagner had wanted ...
On this day in history: Foundation of first Irish football club, 1879
While on honeymoon in Scotland in 1878, a young businessman from Belfast called John McCredy McAlery watched soccer being played for the first time. McAlery, an accomplished sportsman, became enthralled by the sport and decided to introduce it to his...
On this day in history: New Zealand women gained the right to vote, 1893
During the nineteenth century women's suffrage movements emerged in democratic nations around the globe drawing upon the liberal philosophies of the Enlightenment. In New Zealand campaigners such as Kate Sheppard and Mary Ann argued that an extension...
On this day in history: Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States, 1859
Joshua Abraham Norton was born somewhere in Britain on 4th February 1819. Little is known of his early life, although he lived for some time in South Africa where he served in the military. In 1849 he arrived in San Francisco, California, with a size...
On this day in history: Foundation of the Bombay Natural History Society, 1883
On 15th September, 1883, eight gentlemen with an interest in the natural world at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Bombay (now called Mumbai) to found the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). The eight included the Anglo-Indians Edward Hamilton Ai...
On this day in history: First World`s Parliament of Religions, 1893
In 1893 Chicago hosted a World's Fair called the World's Columbian Exposition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. With so many people visiting the city during that year, organisers for many other parli...
On this day in history: Coronation of William IV, 1831
On 8th September 1831, the Duke of Clarence was crowned King William IV of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and also King of Hanover. The sixty-nine year old William was the third son of George III, and ascended to the throne followin...
On this day in history: Tom Thumb beat a horse, 1830
In 1826, two Baltimore bankers, Philip E. Thomas and George Brown, visited England to investigate rail transportation systems. In the year since the Erie Canal opened, providing a new transportation route from mid-western cities to New York, Baltimor...
On this day in history: The shortest war in history, 1896
On the 27th August 1896 the shortest war in history was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar. Three days earlier the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwain died, resulting in a power-struggle in which Hamad bin Thuwain's nephew Khalid bin Bar...
