Events, Verisoph

c. 1858 The Indian Civil Service and Colonial Administration 0 cit. A small corps of British officials selected by examination governed hundreds of millions of Indians. The service became the model for colonial administration across the empire. politics / society ●●●●

16 August 1858 The first transatlantic telegraph cable carries messages 0 cit. A submarine cable briefly linked Britain and North America by telegraph before it failed. A durable cable laid in 1866 gave lasting instant communication across the ocean. exploration / technology ●●●●

1858 Lionel de Rothschild takes his seat in the House of Commons 0 cit. After repeated elections and a change in the law on oaths, Lionel de Rothschild became the first practising Jew to sit in the British House of Commons in 1858. His case was central to Jewish political emancipation in Britain. politics / society ●●●

2 August 1858 Crown rule replaces the East India Company 0 cit. After the 1857 rebellion, the Government of India Act transferred power from the East India Company to the British Crown. India became the centrepiece of the empire, governed by a viceroy and a professional bureaucracy. politics ●●●

1858 Britain lifts joint-stock banking restrictions ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Britain lifted restrictions on joint-stock banking, allowing the emergence of large commercial banks with deposits. ●●

1858 Clark and Rockefeller commission house founded ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On April 1, 1858, John D. Rockefeller, age 18, becomes a partner with Maurice B. Clark in a new produce commission house at 32 River Street in Cleveland with $4,000 capital. Rockefeller borrows $1,000 from his father at 10% interest. ●●

1858 Henry Knight helps found Connecticut School for Imbeciles ai_extracted 1 cit. no story ch as Dr. Henry M. Knight, his son Dr. George Knight, and other Knight family members in the medical profession, laid the foundation for the twentieth- century eugenics movement that would emerge. In 1858, the elder Henry Knight had helped found the Connecticut School for Imbeciles, arguing against ●●

1858 Rowland Macy opens dry goods store in New York ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Rowland Macy began as a retailer of fancy dry goods in New York in 1858 and expanded during the 1860s by taking over adjacent stores and adding new li ●●

2 August 1858 Crown rule established in India 0 cit. The Government of India Act transferred rule of India from the East India Company directly to the British Crown following the 1857 rebellion. The change created the British Raj, a system of direct colonial administration over the Indian subcontinent that lasted until 1947. Queen Victoria was later proclaimed Empress of India in 1876. politics ●●●

2 August 1858 British Crown assumes direct rule of India 0 cit. The Government of India Act transferred rule of India from the East India Company to the British Crown, ending the Company's century of quasi-sovereign rule following the 1857 rebellion. India became the centerpiece of the British Empire, later styled the British Raj under a viceroy. British administration reorganized taxation, law, and infrastructure while maintaining racial hierarchy and extraction of resources for the metropole. politics ●●●

c. 1858 Freemasons' Hall, Edinburgh, Built 0 cit. The Grand Lodge of Scotland opened a Freemasons' Hall on George Street in Edinburgh, designed by the architect and Freemason David Bryce. It served as the headquarters of Scottish Freemasonry until a larger hall replaced it on the same site in 1911-12. The building reflected the same 19th-century pattern seen in London, Dublin, and New York, in which national Grand Lodges built substantial civic-style headquarters. Its openly displayed square and compasses were ordinary Masonic branding, not hidden symbolism. culture / society ●

2 August 1858 The Crown takes over India from the Company 0 cit. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857 exposed the dangers of company rule, the Government of India Act transferred the East India Company's territories, army, and administration to the British Crown. The company had governed much of the subcontinent for a century, complete with its own soldiers and courts. Its dissolution marked the end of the greatest experiment in a private company acting as a sovereign state. politics / war ●●●

2 August 1858 Crown takes over rule of India from the East India Company 0 cit. After the 1857 rebellion, the Government of India Act abolished Company rule and transferred its Indian territories, armies, and revenues directly to the British Crown. The episode marked the outer limit of governing a subcontinent as a private company. It is often read as the moment a state formally reclaimed what a corporation had been running. politics / war ●●●

1858 Fingerprinting is born as a tool of colonial control 0 cit. Fingerprinting entered official use not as forensics but as a technology of colonial control. William Herschel, a British administrator in Bengal, began taking handprints and fingerprints from 1858 to bind Indians to contracts and pensions and to tell colonial subjects apart. Edward Henry later systematized the method in India before carrying the Henry Classification to Scotland Yard. The same logic reached Kenya in the Native Registration Ordinance, whose kipande fingerprinted every African man for labour control. politics / society / technology ●●

1858 British Crown assumes sovereignty over India ai_extracted 1 cit. After crushing the 1857 uprising, the British ended East India Company rule and vested sovereignty of India in the monarch through the Government of India Act of 2 August 1858. Queen Victoria's proclamation promised to respect Indian princes' rights and customs, setting the stage for a new ritual order of empire. ●●

23 October 1859 Battle of Cepeda wikidata 0 cit. no story battle 1859 ●●

24 November 1859 Publication of On the Origin of Species 0 cit. Charles Darwin publishes his theory of evolution by natural selection. The book transforms biology and permanently changes how humanity understands its own place in nature. science ●●●●

1859 Publication of On Liberty 0 cit. John Stuart Mill publishes On Liberty, arguing that society may restrain the individual only to prevent harm to others. The essay becomes a core statement of liberal political philosophy. culture / politics ●●●

c. 1859 Phineas Quimby and mental healing 0 cit. Clockmaker turned healer Phineas Quimby taught that illness comes from mistaken beliefs and can be cured by correcting the mind. His mental-healing ideas are the direct root of the New Thought movement and influenced Mary Baker Eddy, who was once his patient. religion / science ●●●

1859 Mill's On Liberty and the marketplace of ideas 0 cit. John Stuart Mill publishes On Liberty, arguing that even false or hated opinions must be free because truth is tested against them, and that the only ground for restraint is direct harm to others. The classic modern case for free speech. culture / politics ●●●●

1859 Darwin's Origin of Species published (1859) ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859, proposing evolution of life over long time spans. Wood traces Darwinism into eugenics and later transhumanist thought. ●●

1859 Horace Mann's Antioch College commencement address ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto uses Horace Mann as his model of a schooling 'true believer.' At the 1859 Antioch College commencement Mann urged graduates to be ashamed to die until they had won some victory for humanity. ●●

1859 First important American oil exploitation at Seneca Lake ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto notes that the first important American exploitation of oil occurred at Seneca Lake, New York, in 1859, near the ancestral home of the Rockefeller family. ●●

1859 Darwin's books reshape thinking about children and society ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto argues that Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871) undercut the blank-slate view of children and, in his reading, licensed the upper classes to justify forced schooling as a breeding experiment. ●●

1859 Lincoln's 1859 Wisconsin speech on mudsill theory ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto cites Abraham Lincoln's September 1859 speech to the Wisconsin Agricultural Society, in which Lincoln argued the goal of government should be independent livelihoods and rejected 'mudsill theory.' Gatto uses it as an anti-mudsill vision for schooling. ●●

1859 Company's Indian possessions pass to the British Crown ai_extracted 1 cit. no story At Allahabad Fort, where Clive had signed the Diwani, Lord Canning announced that the Company's Indian possessions would be nationalised. Queen Victoria would henceforth rule India in place of the directors. ●●

1859 George W. Gardner joins Clark and Rockefeller ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On April 1, 1859, George W. Gardner, an elite Cleveland businessman, joins Clark and Rockefeller as partner. The firm is renamed Clark, Gardner and Company, and Rockefeller's name is dropped from the title. ●●

1859 Peace of Villafranca ends Austro-Sardinian War ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On July 12 Napoleon and Franz Joseph reach compromise peace. ●●

24 November 1859 Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species 0 cit. Darwin argued that species change over time through natural selection, offering a natural mechanism for the diversity of life. He rushed the book into print after Alfred Russel Wallace independently reached the same idea, a shared credit often forgotten. It reshaped biology and set off a long argument with religion that continues in places today. religion / science ●●●

27 August 1859 Drake drills the first commercial oil well 0 cit. Edwin Drake strikes oil at 69 feet using a steam engine and driven pipe, proving that petroleum could be pumped from the ground on purpose. The well set off a drilling rush in western Pennsylvania and marked the birth of the modern oil industry. economy / technology ●●●

24 June 1859 Henri Dunant witnesses the Battle of Solferino 1 cit. The Geneva businessman Henri Dunant came upon the aftermath of a battle that left tens of thousands of soldiers dead and wounded with almost no medical care. He organised local villagers to treat men from both sides, then wrote an account, A Memory of Solferino, calling for trained volunteer relief societies and rules to protect the wounded. The book set in motion the founding of the Red Cross. society / war ●●●

23 January 1860 Cobden-Chevalier Treaty 0 cit. Free trade treaty between Britain and France cutting tariffs and pioneering the most-favored-nation clause. It triggered a wave of trade liberalization across Europe. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●●

24 October 1860 Convention of Peking 0 cit. Settlement imposed on China after the Second Opium War, ceding Kowloon to Britain, opening Tianjin, and confirming large Russian gains in the Amur region. It deepened the unequal treaty system. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

c. 1860 English Law and Language Across the Empire 0 cit. British rule spread the English language, common law, and administrative institutions across every inhabited continent. These systems long outlasted the empire itself. culture / society ●●●

July 1860 The Clotilda, the last US slave ship 0 cit. In 1860, decades after the import ban, the schooner Clotilda smuggled about 110 captives from West Africa to Alabama. The survivors later founded Africatown, and the ship's wreck was identified in 2019. society ●●●

c. 1860 King Cotton and the American South 0 cit. By 1860 raw cotton grown by enslaved workers was the largest US export and fed textile mills in Britain and the North. The wealth of the South and much of the wider economy rested on this crop. economy / society ●●●●

1860 Bessemer steel process introduced in the United States ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In such integrated rail mills the Bessemer steel process—the first to produce that metal on a massive scale—was introduced into the United States in t ●●

29 December 1860 HMS Warrior launched 0 cit. The Royal Navy launched HMS Warrior, Britain's response to France's Gloire, the world's first ocean-going ironclad. Warrior combined an iron hull and armor with steam propulsion and sail, instantly making existing wooden battle fleets obsolete. Its launch opened an arms race in armored warship design among the naval powers. technology / war ●●

c. 1860 Leopold's long search for a colony 0 cit. As crown prince and then king, Leopold spent years scouting possible colonies, weighing schemes in places from the Philippines and Formosa to Argentina, Fiji, and parts of Africa. He famously called the sea-borne empires of others a source of wealth and standing that Belgium was missing. Historians treat this restless, decades-long hunt as the documented root of the Congo project, driven by ambition for personal and national stature rather than by any settled plan. economy / politics ●●

c. 1860 Mwami Rwabugiri centralizes the kingdom 0 cit. King Kigeli IV Rwabugiri ran a long campaign of conquest and administrative reform that greatly strengthened the central court. His reign tightened the reach of the monarchy and sharpened distinctions between rulers and ruled. These pre-colonial hierarchies gave later European administrators a structure they would harden into racial rule. politics / war ●

c. 1860 The nineteenth century makes calculus rigorous 0 cit. Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Bernhard Riemann, and Karl Weierstrass replaced the loose talk of infinitely small quantities with careful definitions of limits and continuity. This drive for rigor put the calculus, two centuries old, on a solid logical footing at last. It reflected a wider demand that mathematics prove its claims from precise foundations rather than intuition. science ●●●

1860 The Alliance Israelite Universelle modernizes and Frenchifies 0 cit. The Alliance Israelite Universelle, founded in Paris, built a network of French-language schools across the Ottoman and North African Sephardic world. The schools lifted a poor and traditional population into the modern age and European languages. They also pulled young Sephardim toward French and away from Ladino, beginning the slow decline of the old tongue. culture / politics / society ●●

1860 Max Havelaar exposes colonial abuse 0 cit. The former colonial official Eduard Douwes Dekker, writing as Multatuli, publishes Max Havelaar, a novel attacking the exploitation of Javanese peasants under Dutch rule. It shocks readers at home and becomes a landmark in the debate over the morality of the colonial system. culture / politics / society ●●●

c. 1860 Kerosene lamps replace whale oil 0 cit. Refiners learned to distill cheap kerosene from crude oil for lamp fuel, undercutting expensive whale oil almost overnight. Lighting, not fuel for engines, was the first mass market that made oil valuable and drove the early industry. economy / society / technology ●●

c. 1860 The orkoiyot and Kimnyole 4 cit. In the nineteenth century the Nandi adopted the office of orkoiyot, a supreme ritual prophet drawn from the Talai clan, an institution borrowed and reshaped from the Maasai laibon. The orkoiyot blessed raids, foretold events, and gave the scattered Nandi clans a rare central figure. The prophet Kimnyole arap Turukat held this power until, tradition says, the Nandi turned on and killed him after prophecies they blamed for disaster. politics / religion ●●

c. 1860 Takaungu and the Mazrui slaveholders 0 cit. The Mazrui, an Omani family that had once governed Mombasa before the Busaidi pushed them out, held on as landholders north of the port. Their strongholds at Takaungu and Gazi ran grain and coconut plantations worked by enslaved people. The Mazrui and the Busaidi elite were rivals in politics but partners in the same slaveholding economy. economy / politics ●●

c. 1860 Women's collective oaths and sanctions 0 cit. Women held collective power to discipline through oaths and shaming. On the coast, Giriama and Mijikenda women used the kifudu, a funeral rite that could be turned into a binding women's oath. Among the Kikuyu and Gusii, women could act together to punish a man who abused a woman, including guturama, a public stripping curse that was the ultimate sanction. These were recognised customary powers, not mere protest. religion / society ●●●

17 March 1861 Unification of Italy 0 cit. The Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed under Victor Emmanuel II, uniting most of the peninsula after the Risorgimento. politics / war ●●●●

December 1861 to June 1867 French Intervention in Mexico 0 cit. no story Napoleon III installs Maximilian of Austria as emperor of Mexico, but republican forces under Benito Juarez fight on. The French withdraw and Maximilian is executed in 1867. politics / war ●●●

12 April 1861 to 9 April 1865 American Civil War 0 cit. no story Eleven slaveholding states secede and fight the Union in America's deadliest war, killing over 600,000 soldiers. Union victory preserves the nation and ends slavery. politics / society / war ●●●●●

1861 Germ theory of disease 0 cit. Louis Pasteur showed that microbes cause disease and spoilage rather than arising on their own. Germ theory led to sterilization, safe food and modern public health. science ●●●●

3 March 1861 Emancipation of the Serfs 0 cit. Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom, freeing tens of millions of peasants from bondage to their landlords. The reform was limited by redemption payments and land arrangements that left many peasants poor and discontented. economy / politics / society ●●●●

1861 Self-Strengthening Movement 0 cit. Reformist officials tried to modernize the military and industry by adopting Western technology while keeping Confucian institutions. The effort produced arsenals and shipyards but did not save the dynasty. economy / technology ●●●

3 March 1861 Russia abolishes serfdom 0 cit. Tsar Alexander II emancipated more than 20 million serfs bound to the land and their lords. Serfdom was not chattel slavery, but the comparison shows how widespread bonded labour remained in the 1800s. politics / society ●●●

1861 Henry Maine publishes Ancient Law, 1861 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto notes that Sir Henry Maine's 1861 book Ancient Law made his reputation and helped justify separating children from their cultures through adoption and schooling. ●●

1861 Mill publishes Thoughts on Parliamentary Government ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In Thoughts on Parliamentary Government, published in 1861 before the Second Reform Act, Mill made several arguments against a universal and equal franchise. ●●

1861 Transcontinental telegraph reaches the Pacific ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Because the telegraph was easier and cheaper to build than the railroad, it reached the Pacific first, in 1861 ●●

1861 Mark Twain is initiated a Freemason 0 cit. Samuel Clemens, known as Mark Twain, was initiated into Polar Star Lodge No. 79 in St. Louis in 1861 and was raised to Master Mason within a few months. This is documented in the lodge's own records. culture / society ●

c. 1861 Construction of the New York County Courthouse becomes a vehicle for fraud 0 cit. Construction of a new county courthouse, later known as the Tweed Courthouse, began with an authorized budget of a few hundred thousand dollars. Under the Tweed Ring's control of city contracts, costs were inflated through padded bills and kickbacks to contractors and officials, and the building was still unfinished years later at many times its original budget. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1861 Pasteur and the germ theory of disease 0 cit. Louis Pasteur's experiments argued that microbes, not spontaneous generation or bad air, cause fermentation and disease. His public swan-neck flask demonstration was carefully staged to win the argument. The germ theory transformed medicine, surgery, and public health. science ●●●

1861 The Canning Award Splits Zanzibar from Oman 0 cit. When Seyyid Said died in 1856 his sons disputed the succession. In 1861 a British arbitration, the Canning Award, formally separated Zanzibar and its coast from Muscat and Oman, with Britain already the arbiter of the sultanate's affairs. diplomacy / politics ●●

1861 Malindi refounded as a plantation town 0 cit. Malindi had stood in ruins for generations when Sultan Majid of Zanzibar had it resettled from 1861. Settlers laid out large grain estates on the fertile land behind the town and stocked them with enslaved labour. Within two decades Malindi had become one of the most productive plantation districts on the whole coast. economy / society ●●●

1862 to 1877 Dungan Revolt 0 cit. no story Hui Muslim communities in northwest China rise against Qing rule in a war entangled with famine and massacre. Millions die and whole regions are depopulated before the Qing reconquest. religion / war ●●●

1862 Founding of Standard Bank 0 cit. The Standard Bank of British South Africa is chartered in London in 1862 and opens its first branch in Port Elizabeth in 1863, financing the Eastern Cape wool trade. It grows into Africa's largest banking group by assets. economy ●●●

1862 Founding of UBS 0 cit. The Bank in Winterthur is founded to serve Swiss trade and industry, the earliest root of the Union Bank of Switzerland. The 1998 merger of Union Bank of Switzerland with Swiss Bank Corporation creates UBS, the world's largest wealth manager. economy ●●●

15 May 1862 Founding of the Department of Agriculture 0 cit. Abraham Lincoln signs the act creating an agriculture department, which he later calls the people's department in a nation of farmers. It gains cabinet rank in 1889 and grows into a vast science, food, and rural-policy agency. economy / society ●●●

20 May 1862 Homestead Act 0 cit. Lincoln signs a law offering 160 acres of public land to any adult who lives on and improves it for five years. Some 270 million acres eventually pass to about 1.6 million homesteaders, reshaping settlement of the West. exploration / society ●●●

1 July 1862 Founding of the IRS and the First Income Tax 0 cit. To finance the Civil War, Lincoln signs the Revenue Act of 1862, creating the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and a national income tax. The wartime tax lapses but the bureau survives as the Internal Revenue Service. economy / war ●●●

2 July 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Act 0 cit. Congress grants federal land to the states to endow colleges teaching agriculture and the mechanic arts. The act seeds dozens of public universities, from Cornell to MIT to the great state schools of the Midwest and West. science / society ●●●

1862 Publication of Rome and Jerusalem 0 cit. Moses Hess published Rome and Jerusalem in 1862, an early call for a Jewish national home. It anticipated later political Zionism. culture / politics ●

1862 The United States greenback 0 cit. To finance the Civil War, the Union issued paper notes called greenbacks that were legal tender but not redeemable in gold. They marked a major move toward government-issued paper money in the United States. economy / politics / war ●●●

1862 The Morrill Act creates land-grant colleges 0 cit. The Morrill Act of 1862 gave states federal land to fund colleges teaching agriculture and engineering. It opened higher education to far more Americans and built many state universities. economy / politics ●●●

8 March 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads 0 cit. The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia and the Union ironclad USS Monitor fought the first battle between armored steam warships, ending in a tactical draw after hours of cannon fire that neither ship's armor could penetrate. The battle demonstrated that wooden warships were now obsolete against ironclads. Navies worldwide accelerated conversion to armored, steam-powered fleets afterward. technology / war ●●

1862 Aurora Lodge founded in the Transvaal 0 cit. Aurora Lodge, working under the Dutch constitution, became the first Masonic lodge in the South African Republic (Transvaal). Its founding and later growth are documented as a marker of Pretoria's development from Voortrekker settlement into a cosmopolitan colonial town of Boers, British settlers, and Jewish traders. society ●●

1863 to 1875 Fourth cholera pandemic wikidata 0 cit. no story One of several 19th century epidemics ●●●

17 February 1863 Founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross 0 cit. Henry Dunant and four Geneva citizens create a relief committee for wounded soldiers, the seed of the worldwide Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and of the Geneva Conventions. diplomacy / society / war ●●●●

1 August 1863 Founding of Bayer 0 cit. Friedrich Bayer and Johann Weskott found a dye factory in Barmen. The company moves into pharmaceuticals and in 1899 trademarks aspirin, one of the most widely used drugs in history. economy / science ●●●

21 May 1863 Seventh-day Adventist Church organized 0 cit. Sabbatarian Adventists who emerged from the Millerite movement formally organize as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Ellen G. White's writings become central to the denomination's identity. religion ●●●

21 April 1863 Baha'u'llah's declaration in the Garden of Ridvan 0 cit. Baha'u'llah declares to his companions that he is the messenger foretold by the Bab, founding the Baha'i Faith. The twelve days in the Garden of Ridvan are the holiest festival of the Baha'i calendar. religion ●●●●

1 January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation frees the enslaved in rebel states 0 cit. President Lincoln declared enslaved people in the Confederate states to be free, turning the Civil War into a fight against slavery. It did not free everyone at once but marked a decisive step toward abolition. politics / war ●●●

1863 Naples branch of the Rothschild bank closes 0 cit. The Naples house wound down in 1863 as Italian unification ended the states it had served. It was the first of the five branches to close. economy / politics ●●

1 January 1863 The Emancipation Proclamation 0 cit. President Lincoln declared enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate states to be free. It reframed the Civil War as a struggle over slavery, though it freed no one immediately in areas beyond Union control. politics / war ●●●●

1863 Liberation of the Russian serfs, 1863 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As late as the emancipation of the serfs in 1863, Russia remained almost untouched by industrialization and more backward than pre-steam-engine Britain and France. ●●

1863 Sir Robert Hart heads Chinese customs (1863-1906) ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley notes that treaties kept China's tariffs low and under foreign control, with Sir Robert Hart heading the Chinese customs service from 1863 to 1906. ●●

1863 Western bombardments force Japan open (1863-1866) ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A series of naval bombardments of Japanese ports in 1863-1866 forced Japan open and imposed a tariff agreement limiting import duties to 5 percent until 1899. ●●

1863 Ontario teacher William Young assaulted amid schooling resistance ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto cites documented resistance to compulsory schooling in North America. At Brantford, Ontario, in 1863 teacher William Young was reportedly beaten severely by students while parents looked on. ●●

1863 Rockefeller and Clark form Andrews, Clark and Co. ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In 1863, John D. Rockefeller and Maurice Clark each invest $2,000 for half the working capital in Andrews, Clark and Co., Rockefeller's first major step into the oil business as a refiner. ●●

1863 Atlantic and Great Western Railroad reaches Cleveland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On November 3, 1863, a gleaming locomotive of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad pulls into Cleveland with ceremonial fanfare, giving the city access to New York via the Erie Railroad and Pennsylvania oil fields. ●●

1863 Allegheny River oil fire burns Franklin bridge ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In 1863, the Allegheny River becomes so befouled with spilled petroleum that it actually catches fire and burns a bridge in Franklin, Pennsylvania, demonstrating the environmental damage of early oil production. ●●

1863 National Banking Act of 1863 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The National Banking Act of 1863 required banks to keep a percentage of their notes and deposits in the form of lawful money (gold coins) as a reserve ●●

1863 Congress passes the National Banking Act ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Griffin documents that on February 25, 1863, Congress passed the National Banking Act, establishing nationally-chartered banks and transforming government bonds into circulating money. ●●

c. 1863 William Tweed becomes head of Tammany Hall's General Committee 0 cit. William M. Tweed, a former alderman and fire company leader, was elected chairman of Tammany Hall's general committee, giving him control over the organization's patronage and nominations. Over the following years he built a personal network known as the Tweed Ring, which extended into the state legislature and city government. politics ●●●

c. 1863 On the up and up: sometimes claimed, never shown 0 cit. On the up and up means honest and above-board, and it occasionally gets linked to Masonic ideas of uprightness and the plumb rule. The expression is recorded in North American English from the mid-nineteenth century, and dictionaries treat its exact origin as uncertain. There is no documentary evidence tying it to Freemasonry, so the Masonic connection is speculation rather than established fact. culture / society ●●

1863 Speke and the Hamitic myth 1 cit. The explorer John Hanning Speke popularized the so-called Hamitic hypothesis, the idea that any sign of organized statecraft in central Africa must have come from a lighter-skinned, part-Caucasian people who migrated from the north. European colonizers later applied this theory to Rwanda, casting Tutsi as a superior foreign race born to rule and Hutu as native subjects. Historians today treat the Hamitic myth as a false, racist construction, but it became the official worldview of colonial administration and a seed of later violence. science / society ●●●

17 February 1863 Founding of the Red Cross in Geneva 0 cit. A committee of five Geneva citizens, including Dunant, formed the body that became the International Committee of the Red Cross. Neutral Switzerland gave the organisation a home from which it could aid victims on all sides without being seen as taking part in a war. The white flag with a red cross reversed the Swiss national colours, tying the movement to its country of origin. society / war ●●●

1 February 1864 to 31 October 1864 Second Schleswig War wikidata 0 cit. no story second military conflict as a result of the Schleswig-Holstein Question ●●●●

22 August 1864 First Geneva Convention 0 cit. Convention for the amelioration of the condition of wounded soldiers in the field, inspired by Henry Dunant and the new Red Cross. It founded modern international humanitarian law. diplomacy / society / war ●●●●

28 September 1864 Founding of the First International 0 cit. Workers and radicals meeting at St Martin's Hall in London found the International Workingmen's Association, with Karl Marx drafting its founding documents. It was the first attempt to unite the world's labor movements. diplomacy / politics / society ●●●

November 1864 to 1 March 1870 Paraguayan War 0 cit. no story Paraguay fights Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay in South America's deadliest war. Paraguay loses much of its territory and a majority of its male population. war ●●●●

August 1864 to February 1865 Uruguayan War 0 cit. no story Brazil intervenes in Uruguay's civil strife to install the Colorado party in power. The war's entanglements help trigger the far larger Paraguayan War. politics / war ●●