Mar 11 Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Rigoletto", premieres in Venice
Mar 21 Yosemite Valley discovered in California
Mar 07 Poll tax levied on Russo-Polish Jews entering Austrian Galicia ends
Mar 03 Congress authorizes smallest US silver coin (3¢ piece)
Aug 12 Isaac Singer granted patent for his sewing machine
Aug 22 Yacht "America" wins first Royal Yacht Squadron Cup (America's Cup)
Aug 22 Gold fields discovered in Australia
Sep 18 NY Times starts publishing
Sep 18 New York Times publishes for the first time
Feb 22 The Kirkwood runs aground in New Jersey, mistaking the Smith Hotel for a vessel that refused to return its signal.
Feb 01 Death of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, British author of Frankenstein.
Feb 01 Anti-transportation groups meet in Melbourne to lobby for permanent end to shipping of convicts to eastern Australian colonies.
Feb 01 Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, dies at age 53.
Feb 06 Robert Schumann's 3rd Symphony "Rhenisch," premieres in Düsseldorf
Feb 11 First cricket 1st-class game in Australia, Tasmania vs Victoria, Launceston
Feb 15 Black abolitionists invade Boston courtroom rescuing a fugitive slave
Apr 23 Civil engineer Sandford Fleming 1827-1915 designs the red Three-Pence Beaver stamp issued this day; the Province of Canada's first regular postage stamp
Apr 06 Canadian postal service transferred from British control; sets uniform postal rate of 3 pence a letter.
Nov 06 U.S. Navy expedition under command of LT William Lewis Herndon, on a mission to explore the valley of the Amazon and its tributaries, reaches Iquitos in the jungle region of the upper Amazon after their departure from Lima, Peru.
Nov 14 "Moby Dick," by Herman Melville, published
Nov 22 The opera "La Perle Du Br‚sil" is produced (Paris)
Dec 09 First Young Men's Christian Association in North America (Montreal)
Dec 29 The first YMCA in the USA is organized in Boston.
Dec 10 The birth of Melvil Dewey, Devised the library classification system
Dec 24 Fire devastates Library of Congress in Washington destroys 35,000 volumes
