1850

Events in 1850 25

• 1761 – 1850 Marie Tussaud (1761-1850) Died 16 April 1850, aged 88 Tussaud learned wax modelling in Paris, making death masks of guillotined figures during the French Revolution. She later toured her wax exhibition around Britain before settling it permanently on Baker Street in London in 1835, the foundation of the Madame Tussauds museum chain. She continued working on new figures until shortly before her death.
• 1770 – 1850 William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Died 23 April 1850, aged 80 Wordsworth was a founder of English Romanticism and served as Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death. His autobiographical poem The Prelude was published posthumously the same year. He had been the dominant figure in British poetry for over three decades.
• 1770 – 1850 Jane Austen English novelist Austen wrote novels like Pride and Prejudice that examine class, love, and society with sharp irony and realism.
• 1773 – 1850 Louis Philippe I (1773-1850) Died 26 August 1850, aged 76 Louis Philippe ruled as King of the French from 1830 until he was overthrown in the Revolution of 1848. He fled to England under a false identity and spent his final years in exile at Claremont House in Surrey. His fall ended constitutional monarchy in France and opened the way for the Second Republic.
• 1778 – 1850 Jose de San Martin (1778-1850) Died 17 August 1850, aged 72 San Martin led the armies that won independence for Argentina, Chile, and Peru from Spanish rule. After helping liberate Peru he voluntarily relinquished power rather than contest leadership with Simon Bolivar, and spent his final decades in exile in France. He is honored across South America as one of the continent' foremost liberators.
• 1782 – 1850 John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) Died 31 March 1850, aged 68 Calhoun served as US Vice President, Secretary of State, and a senator from South Carolina, becoming the leading political theorist and defender of slavery and states' rights in the antebellum South. His final Senate speech, read aloud as he was too ill to deliver it, warned against the compromise measures then before Congress. He died in Washington weeks before the Compromise of 1850 was passed.
• 1784 – 1850 Zachary Taylor 12th President — Old Rough and Ready Zachary Taylor (Nov 24, 1784 – Jul 9, 1850) was the 12th President, serving only 16 months before dying in office, possibly of acute gastroenteritis contracted at a Fourth of July event. He was a hero of the Mexican-American War.
• 1799 – 1850 Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) Died 18 August 1850, aged 51 Balzac was a French novelist whose vast cycle of interlinked novels and stories, La Comedie Humaine, chronicled French society after the fall of Napoleon. He is regarded as one of the founders of literary realism. Exhausted by decades of prolific writing, he died just months after marrying Ewelina Hanska.
• 1810 – 1850 Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) Died 19 July 1850, aged 40 Fuller was an American journalist, critic, and women' rights advocate whose book Woman in the Nineteenth Century became a founding text of American feminism. She worked as a foreign correspondent in Europe and reported on the 1849 siege of Rome. She drowned with her husband and young son when their ship wrecked off Fire Island while returning to the United States.
• 1850 – 1935 Charles Richet (1850-1935) Died 4 December 1935, aged 85 Richet was a French physiologist who won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on anaphylaxis.
• 1850 – 1898 Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) Died 22 May 1898, aged 48 Edward Bellamy was an American author best known for the utopian novel Looking Backward, which imagined a socialist United States in the year 2000. The book sold millions of copies and inspired political movements advocating economic reform. He died of tuberculosis in Chicopee, Massachusetts, on 22 May 1898.
• 1850 – 1916 Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850-1916) Died 5 June 1916, aged 65 Lord Kitchener was a British Field Marshal and Secretary of State for War, whose face became famous on the "Your Country Needs You" recruitment poster. He drowned when HMS Hampshire struck a German mine off Orkney while he was en route to Russia.
• 1850 – 1904 Kate Chopin (1850-1904) Died 22 August 1904, aged 54 Kate Chopin, the American author, died in St. Louis, Missouri. Her 1899 novel The Awakening, initially condemned for its frank treatment of female desire and independence, was later recognized as an early feminist classic of American literature. She also wrote numerous short stories set in Louisiana Creole and Cajun communities.
• 1850 – 1894 Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Died 3 December 1894, aged 43 Stevenson was a Scottish novelist whose works, including Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, became enduring classics of world literature. He spent his final years in Samoa for his health, where he was greatly admired by the local population. He died suddenly of a suspected cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Vailima.
• 1850 – 1924 Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) Died 13 December 1924, aged 74 Samuel Gompers was a British-born American labor leader who founded and led the American Federation of Labor for nearly four decades. He shaped the direction of the American labor movement toward pragmatic collective bargaining.
• 1850 – 1864 Taiping Rebellion The deadliest civil war in history — 20–30 million dead The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, led by Hong Xiuquan who believed himself Jesus's brother, controlled much of southern China from 1850 to 1864. The conflict killed an estimated 20–30 million people — more than World War I — making it the deadliest civil war in history. The Qing dynasty suppressed the rebellion with foreign help but emerged fatally weakened.
• 1850 – 1916 Victoriano Huerta (1850-1916) Died 13 January 1916, aged 65 Victoriano Huerta was a Mexican general who served as president from 1913 to 1914 after the overthrow of Francisco Madero. He died in United States custody in El Paso, Texas, after being arrested while allegedly plotting a return to power in Mexico.
• 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty signed United States and Britain agree to share control of a future Central American canal The treaty committed both powers to neither fortify nor exclusively control any canal built across the Central American isthmus. It eased Anglo-American rivalry in the region. It remained in force until the 1901 Hay-Pauncefote Treaty paved the way for sole US control of the Panama Canal.
• 1850 Don Pacifico Affair Palmerston defends British gunboat diplomacy against Greece British warships blockaded Greek ports to force compensation for Don Pacifico, a Gibraltar-born merchant whose Athens house had been looted. In the House of Commons on 25 June, Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston defended the action with his famous Civis Romanus sum speech, asserting Britain's right to protect its subjects anywhere in the world.
• 1850 Treaty of Berlin ends Prussia-Denmark war Prussia and Denmark sign peace in the First Schleswig War Prussia withdrew from the war over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, recognizing Danish sovereignty. The Schleswig-Holstein insurgent army fought on alone until its defeat the following year. The conflict was an early flashpoint in the German-Danish dispute that resurfaced in 1864.
• 1850 Millard Fillmore becomes US President Vice President succeeds Zachary Taylor after his sudden death Millard Fillmore was sworn in as the 13th President of the United States following the death of Zachary Taylor. Fillmore went on to sign the Compromise of 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Act, into law. He served out the remainder of Taylor's term.
• 1850 – 1893 Guy de Maupassant French writer Maupassant mastered the short story form with realistic depictions of human nature and society.
• 1850 Compromise of 1850 enacted Series of acts defuses North-South crisis over slavery in new territories The US Congress passed five bills resolving disputes over slavery following the Mexican-American War. California was admitted as a free state, the slave trade was banned in Washington D.C., and a stringent Fugitive Slave Act was enacted. The deal postponed, but did not resolve, the sectional conflict that led to the Civil War a decade later.
• 1850 Alfred Tennyson becomes British Poet Laureate Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth after publishing In Memoriam Alfred Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, a post he held until his death in 1892. The appointment followed the publication of his elegy In Memoriam A.H.H., written for his friend Arthur Hallam, which cemented his reputation as the leading poet of the Victorian age.
• 1850 Punctation of Olmutz Prussia backs down to Austria over leadership of Germany Under Austrian and Russian pressure, Prussia abandoned its plan for a Prussian-led Erfurt Union of German states. The agreement, signed at Olmutz, restored the old Austrian-dominated German Confederation. The humiliation fueled Prussian resentment that later shaped Bismarck's push for unification under Prussia.