1848

Events

January–March

• January 3 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first president of the independent African Republic of Liberia.
• January 12 – Sicilian revolution of 1848: The Palermo rising erupts in Sicily against the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
• January 24 – California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California.
• January 31 – In the United States:
• * Construction of the Washington Monument begins in Washington, D.C.
• * John C. Frémont is court-martialed on grounds of mutiny and disobeying orders. The verdict is set aside by U.S. President James K. Polk, but Frémont retires to California Territory.
• February 2
• * Mexican–American War: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo – Mexico cedes virtually all of what becomes the Southwestern United States to the U.S. The unincorporated California Territory becomes a provisional official possession; it is never organized by the United States Congress as a territory, but directly passes the requirements for statehood in 1850.
• * John Henry Newman founds the first Oratory in the English-speaking world, when he establishes the Birmingham Oratory at 'Maryvale', Old Oscott, England.
• February 17 – John Bird Sumner is nominated as Archbishop of Canterbury.
• February 21 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto in London.
• February 23 – French Revolution of 1848: François Guizot, Prime Minister of France, resigns; 52 people from the Paris mob are killed by soldiers guarding public buildings.
• February 24 – Louis Philippe I, King of the French, abdicates in favour of his grandson, Prince Philippe, Count of Paris, and flees to England after days of revolution in Paris. The French Second Republic is later proclaimed by Alphonse de Lamartine, in the name of the provisional government elected by the Chamber, under the pressure of the mob.
• March 2 – The March Unrest breaks out in Sweden.
• March 4 – Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia.
• March 7 – Comptoir national d'escompte de Paris, predecessor of European bank BNP Paribas, is founded by decree of the French Provisional Government.
• March 11 – Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin become the first Joint Premiers of the Province of Canada to be democratically elected under a system of responsible government.
• March 13 – Prince Klemens von Metternich gives up office as State Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire.
• March 15 – Hungarian Revolution of 1848: The Hungarian young revolutionary intellectuals, led by Sándor Petőfi, Mór Jókai and others, called the Márciusi Ifjak organize peaceful mass demonstrations in Pest, forcing the city's Habsburg authorities to accept the 12 Points: the Hungarian claim for freedom and self-determination within the Habsburg Empire. On the same day, Lajos Kossuth and representatives of the Diet of Hungary go to Vienna, and force the emperor and Hungarian king Ferdinand I of Austria to accept Hungarian claims for self-determination within the empire.
• March 18
• * At a Berlin barricade, fighting between revolutionaries and royalist forces marks the culmination of the German revolutions of 1848–49. As a result, King Frederick William IV of Prussia is forced to appoint a liberal government.
• * The Boston Public Library is founded by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts.
• March 22 – The Republic of San Marco comes into existence in Venice.
• March 23 – The settlement of Dunedin, New Zealand is founded, with the arrival of settlers from Scotland on board the John Wickliffe.
• March 24 – The First Schleswig War ), a military conflict in southern Denmark and northern Germany rooted in the Schleswig-Holstein Question, contesting the issue of who should control the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, begins.
• March 29 – Queen's College, London, founded, the world's first school to award academic qualifications to young women.

  April–June

• April 3 – The Chicago Board of Trade is founded by 82 Chicago merchants and business leaders.
• April 10
• * A Chartist 'Monster Rally' is held in Kennington Park London, headed by Feargus O'Connor. A petition demanding the franchise is presented to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
• * The Illinois and Michigan Canal is completed.
• April 11 – The first Hungarian national government is formed, under the leadership of Lajos Batthyány. The April Laws, the first democratic revolutionary laws in Hungary, are promulgated, putting an end to the feudal privileges of the nobility and serfdom; proclaiming the freedom of religion, freedom of the press and foundation of the Hungarian National Bank; and organising the first democratic election in Hungary based in popular representation, a national guard and reunion of Transylvania with Hungary. The Habsburg emperor, and Hungarian king Ferdinand I of Austria, ratify these laws, which form the basis of modern Hungary.
• April 18 – The Second Anglo-Sikh War breaks out in the Punjab.
• April 25 – Captain Francis Crozier and Commander James Fitzjames of the Royal Navy deposit the final formal record ever recovered from the Franklin Expedition in a cairn on King William Island, after deserting their ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, with their surviving 105 crew members on April 22 to attempt to march to the mainland of North America.
• April 27 – The second abolition of slavery in France and its colonies initiated by Victor Schœlcher.
• April 29 – Pope Pius IX publishes an allocution announcing his refusal to support Piedmont-Sardinia in its war with Austria, and dispelling hopes that he might serve as ruler of a pan-Italian republic. The allocution, by which Pius is seen to withdraw his moral support for the Italian unification movement, is a key first step in the soon-to-be crushing reaction against the revolutions of 1848.
• May 3 – The boar-crested Anglo-Saxon Benty Grange helmet is discovered in a barrow on the Benty Grange farm in Derbyshire.
• May 13 – "Maamme", the national anthem of Finland written by German composer Fredrik Pacius and Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, was performed for the first time.
• May 15
• * Radicals invade the French Chamber of Deputies.
• * 40,000 Romanians meet at Câmpia Libertății in Blaj, to protest Transylvania becoming a part of Hungary.
• May 18 – The 'Frankfurt Parliament', the first German National Assembly, opens in Frankfurt.
• May 19 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, ending the Mexican–American War, is ratified by the Mexican government.
• May 29 – Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state.
• May 30 – The Prudential Mutual Assurance Investment and Loan Association is established at Hatton Garden in London to provide loans to professional and working people, origin of the multinational life insurance and financial services group.
• June – The Serbians from Vojvodina start a rebellion against the Hungarian government.
• June 2–12 – The Prague Slavic Congress brings together members of the Pan-Slavism movement.
• June 17 – The Austrian army bombards Prague, and crushes a working-class revolt.
• June 21 – Wallachian Revolution of 1848: The Proclamation of Islaz is made public, and a Romanian revolutionary government led by Ion Heliade Rădulescu and Christian Tell is created.
• June 22 – The French government dissolves the national workshops in Paris, giving the workers the choice of joining the army or going to workshops in the provinces. The following day, the June Days Uprising begins in response.
• June 24 – Anne Bronte published her final novel and her best-selling work, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

  July–September

• July – The Public Health Act establishes Boards of Health across England and Wales, the nation's first public health law, giving cities broad authority to build modern sanitary systems.
• July 3 – Governor-General Peter von Scholten emancipates all remaining slaves in the Danish West Indies
• July 5 – The Hungarian national revolutionary parliament starts to work.
• July 11 – Waterloo railway station in London opens.
• July 19 – Seneca Falls Convention: The 2-day women's rights convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York; "Bloomers" are introduced.
• July 26
• * The Matale Rebellion breaks out against British rule in Sri Lanka.
• * The University of Wisconsin–Madison is founded.
• July 29 – Young Irelander Rebellion: A nationalist revolt in County Tipperary, against British rule, is put down by the Irish Constabulary.
• August 6 – HMS Daedalus reports a sighting of a sea serpent.
• August 14 – American President James K. Polk annexes the Oregon Country, and renames it the Oregon Territory as part of the United States.
• August 17 – The Independent Republic of Yucatán officially unites with Mexico, in exchange for Mexican help in suppressing a revolt by the indigenous Maya population.
• August 19 – California Gold Rush: The New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States that there is a gold rush in California.
• August 24 – The U.S. barque Ocean Monarch is burnt out off the Great Orme, North Wales, with the loss of 178, chiefly emigrants.
• August 28 – Louisy Mathieu becomes the first black member to join the French Parliament, as a representative of Guadeloupe.
• September 10 – The Austrian commander Karl von Urban makes the first stand against the Revolution in Hungary, assembling in his headquarters in Năsăud hundreds of delegates from all districts of the Principality of Transylvania. As a result, 918 communities in the region distance themselves from the Revolution.
• September 11 – The Croatian army of Josip Jelačić, encouraged in secret by the Habsburg government, crosses the Drava River and attacks Hungary, with the goal of ending the revolution in that country.
• September 12 – One of the successes of the Revolutions of 1848, the Swiss Federal Constitution, patterned on the Constitution of the United States, enters into force, creating a federal republic, and one of the first modern democratic states in Europe.
• September 13 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head.
• September 16 – William Cranch Bond and William Lassell discover Hyperion, Saturn's moon.
• September 25 – The Hungarian king and Habsburg emperor Ferdinand V refuses to recognise the Hungarian government, led by Lajos Batthyány. The Batthyány government resigns and the National Defence Committee is formed, which is a temporary crisis government, totally independent from Vienna, under the leadership of Lajos Kossuth.
• September 26 – The University of Ottawa is founded in Canada as the College of Bytown, a Roman Catholic institution.
• September 29 – Battle of Pákozd: The Hungarian revolutionary army, led by János Móga, defeats the Croatian army of Josip Jelačić, forcing him to retreat towards Vienna.