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Timelines
1801
- 1900
1801 - Fossil bones of a huge
prehistoric animal thought to be a woolly mammoth are found near Newburgh, New York.
1803-The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France.
1803-U.S. President Thomas Jefferson appoints Meriweather
Lewis and William Clark to explore the uncharted West. Among the marvels Lewis and Clark are expected to find are erupting volcanoes, mountains of salt, unicorns, mastodons and seven-foot-tall beavers.
1804 - Napoleonic Code - Under the government of Napoleon, France adopted a comprehensive code of law in 1804 which enshrined many of the victories obtained during the Revolution such as individual liberty, equality before the law and the lay character of the state. The Code also incorporated most parts of Roman law. The Code became a model for civil law systems such as Quebec, California and Louisiana. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Code was the fact that the law was written (as opposed to judge-made) and in a non-technical style and thus more accessible to the public. The Code regulated much of private law matters such as property, wills, contracts, liability and obligations. Many of its parts are traceable to Roman law. The French Code inspired similar civil codes in the Canadian Province of Quebec (1865), Germany (1900) and Switzerland (1907).
1804-Georges Cuvier suggests that fossils found in the area around Paris are "thousands of centuries" old. This casual observation pushes the age of the earth well beyond its commonly accepted limits. Cuvier also publishes a paper explaining that the fossil animals he has studied bear no resemblance to anything still living. In short, Cuvier proposes the theory of extinction.
1806
- the Lewis and Clark expedition returned to St. Louis
from the Pacific Northwest.
1809-Jean-Baptiste de Monet de Lamarck publishes Philosophie Zoologique proposing that animals can acquire new characteristics during their lives and pass those characteristics on to their offspring, an idea for which he is openly ridiculed by Georges
Cuvier
1808
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1810-Mary Anning's brother Joseph discovers the world's first fossil ichthyosaur. Mary Anning will collect the fossil the next year.
1811-Georges Cuvier identifies the "biblical flood" victim, described by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in 1731, as a giant salamander.
1812-Georges Cuvier correctly identifies pterosaurs as flying reptiles. His conclusions will be largely ignored for many years.
1814 - Francis Scott Key writes the 'Star Spangled Banner," which becomes the national anthem more than a hundred years later.
1815 - Relying largely on fossils to identify strata, civil engineer William Smith publishes a map of England and Wales, documenting a larger area than any map so far published.
1819 - The first steamship, the Savannah, crosses the Atlantic Ocean.
1820-1821 - Mary Anning excavates the world's first fossil plesiosaur.
1822 - William Buckland publishes an account of how ancient hyenas lived and fed, based on their fossil remains. This is one of the first descriptions of living habits based on fossil evidence.
1822 - William Buckland finds a skeleton covered in ocher. Called the Red Lady, it will later be identified as Cro-Magnon (and male).
1824 -William Buckland publishes Notice on the Megalosaurus ("giant lizard"). This is the first time a dinosaur fossil is described and named, although the term "dinosaur" doesn't yet exist. He also announces the discovery of the first fossil mammal from the Mesozoic.
1825-Gideon Mantell publishes Notice on the Iguanodon, the second description of a dinosaur and the first description of an herbivorous fossil reptile.
1829 Joseph Dixon opens the first lead pencil factory in the United States in Salem, Massachusetts.
1830-Charles Lyell publishes Principles of Geology, a book that Charles Darwin will later take with him aboard the Beagle.
1830-To generate public interest in purchasing fossils from his collector friend Mary Anning, geologist and amateur artist Henry De la Beche publishes a scene of marine life in "a more ancient Dorset". This depiction shows the same scene half above water and half below -- decades before photography provides such a perspective.
1831-The Geological Society of London awards the Wollaston medal to William Smith for his pioneering use of fossils in identifying rock formations.
1831-1836-Charles Darwin sails on the Beagle, visiting, among other locations, the Galápagos islands.
1832-Gideon Mantell finds the first fossil Hylaeosaurus, an ankylosaur.
1833
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1835-Adam Sedgwick presents a paper naming the Cambrian System, recognizing the first rich assemblage of fossils in the rock record.
1835 - The Liberty Bell cracks as it rings to announce the death of Chief Justice John Marshall.
1836-Edward Hitchcock publishes his first paper on stone footprints in Connecticut. He continues to study and publish papers on these footprints, believing they have been made by giant birds. (They will later prove to be the footprints of bipedal dinosaurs.)
1837-Charles Darwin formulates the theory of natural selection to explain evolution. Fearful of the reaction his theory will cause, he delays publishing.
1837-Louis Agassiz presents the theory of the Ice Age at a meeting of the Swiss Society of Natural Sciences. The shocked audience reacts with hostility.
1838-1842-Celebrity painter John Martin produces dramatic illustrations of combative dinosaurs, for books written largely for the public. These dragon-like depictions are hits with their intended audience but many scientists reject them as inaccurate.
1839-Roderick Murchison publishes The Silurian System, identifying a geologic record that predates the fossils of land plants and consequently any economically valuable coal seams. Later research will prove Murchison wrong in his assertion that the Silurian precedes any land plants, but only partly, since land plants were just beginning to evolve during the Silurian.
1840-1850-Several scientists see chromosomes under the microscope, but don't understand what they are.
1841
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1841-William Smith's nephew John Phillips proposes the geologic eras Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cainozoic (Cenozoic).
1841 - The Supreme Court rules that 53 Africans who have mutinied on a Spanish slave ship and were captured by U. S. sailors would now be free men, not slaves.
1841-1842-English anatomist Sir Richard Owen proposes the term Dinosauria ("terrible lizards").
1842 - Circus promoter P. T. Barnum opens his American Museum in New York City.
1842-Based on Agassiz's Ice Age theory, self-taught science enthusiast Charles Maclaren publishes a newspaper article explaining that substantial ice sheets in the northern hemisphere would have lowered global sea level.
1842-Roderick Murchison and Adam Sedgwick publish their interpretation of the Devonian System, a geologic unit following the Silurian.
1842-P.T. Barnum lures crowds of thousands to see his "Feejee Mermaid".
1843-Louis Agassiz completes Les Poissons Fossiles describing fossil fish of the world. This single monograph increases tenfold the formally described vertebrates known to science.
1844-Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is published, arguing that species evolve over time to superior forms, directed by divine intervention. Although it's an immensely popular book, it is considered heretical, and the author (essayist Robert Chambers) keeps his identity secret until his death 27 years later.
1845
- the U.S. Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Md.
1846, a dentist in Charleston, Mass., extracted a tooth
with the aid of an anesthetic -- ether. It was the first
time an anesthetic had been used.
1846-Joseph Leidy identifies in pork the parasite that causes trichinosis, a potentially fatal human disease.
1846
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1846
- the planet Neptune was discovered by German astronomer
Johann Gottfried Galle.
1847 The Post Office Department issues the first U. S. Postage Stamps.
1848-The American Association for the Advancement of Science establishes Science Magazine, which will become one of the world's foremost science journals.
1849 - The California God Rush draws 80,000 gold seekers.
1851 - Women's rights champion Amelia Bloomer becomes famous for wearing "Turkish Pantaloons", which come to be called bloomers.
1853 - The firs potato chips are made in Saratoga, New York.
1853-1854-Under the supervision of Sir Richard Owen, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins constructs scenes of prehistoric life in Crystal Palace Park.
1856-The first recognized fossil human, a Neanderthal, is discovered in Düsseldorf.
1858-Although he uses different terminology, Alfred Russel Wallace independently reaches the same conclusion as Darwin: natural selection is the driving force behind evolution. Wallace's and Darwin's papers are both read at the same Linnean Society meeting.
1858-The first relatively complete dinosaur skeleton, of Hadrosaurus foulkii, is found in New Jersey.
1858-Microscopic examination of chalk shows that it is composed almost entirely of tiny shells.
1859-Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1860
- The first Pony Express riders carry mail from St.
Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, in just ten
days.
1860-John Phillips diagrams the progressive but fluctuating diversity of life on earth based on the fossil record. His work evidences massive extinctions at the end of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, and increased diversity in each subsequent age.
1861-The Civil War breaks out in the United States.
1861
The first telegram is sent across the country from
Sacramento, California to the President in Washington,
D. C.
1861-First recognized fossil Archaeopteryx Lighographica skeleton is found in the stone quarries of Solnhofen.
1862-Lord Kelvin asserts that the earth and sun are cooling from their initial formation, between 20 and 400 million years ago. He will later adopt the smaller number.
1863 - President Lincoln declared the last Thursday in
November Thanksgiving Day.
1863-Abraham Lincoln forms the National Academy of Sciences.
1864 - The Geneva Convention -This agreement was designed to provide for minimal human rights in time of war such as the protection of military medical personnel and for the humane treatment of the wounded. It was later supplemented by a Prisoner of War Convention. Although frequently ignored in military operations, this documents remains an important legal document which, for the first time ever, sets out rudimentary standards of human decency during war.
1865
- The Thirteenth Amendment - By this change to the American Constitution, slavery was abolished in the USA.
1865-Sir John William Dawson of McGill University identifies what he
believes to be the shells of huge foraminiferal protozoans. Known as Eozoön or "dawn animal", this find is used as an argument against evolution because it shows a relatively "modern" animal early in the fossil record. It will prove, however, to be a geologically young
pseudo-fossil formed by heat and pressure on limestone.
1866-Ernst Haeckel publishes General Morphology of Organisms, the first detailed genealogical tree relating all known organisms, incorporating the principles of Darwinian evolution.
1866-Austrian monk Gregor Mendel proposes his thesis on the basic laws of heredity. His work will be largely ignored until 1900.
1867
- The U. S. purchases the Alaska territory from
Russia.
1868
- Thomas Alva Edison filed papers for his first
invention: an electrical vote recorder to rapidly
tabulate floor votes in Congress. Members of Congress
rejected
1868-German zoologist Ernst Haeckel publishes Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, subdividing humanity into 12 separate species.
1868-Thomas Henry Huxley publishes On the Animals which are Most Nearly Intermediate Between Birds and Reptiles, arguing that birds are descendants of dinosaurs. This suggestion will not be taken very seriously for another century.
1869
- thousands of businessmen were ruined in a Wall Street
panic after financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk
attempted to corner the gold market.
1869 - T.H. Huxley founds Nature Magazine, which becomes one of the two most important journals for scientific papers in the world. (The other journal is Science.)
1869-Biochemistry graduate student Johann Friedrich Miescher begins examining bandages from hospital patients in hopes of finding something interesting. He eventually succeeds, and determines that cell nuclei are composed of nitrogen, phosphorus and chromatin. He names the substance
nuclein.
1870-The rivalry between fossil collectors O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope turns ugly when Marsh publicly points out Cope's error in reconstructing a fossil marine reptile (putting its head on the tip of its tail). Their rivalry is the public's gain as they try to outdo each other in identifying new dinosaur species -- over 130.
1870-O.C. Marsh discovers the first North American pterosaur, from chalk deposits in Kansas. He calculates the wingspan at 20 feet. The following year, he will collect more fossils that confirm this calculation.
1871-Charles Darwin publishes The Descent of Man.
1871 - the Great Chicago Fire erupted while another
deadly blaze broke out in Peshtigo, Wis.
1876 - Custer's Last Stand, takes place at the Battle of Little Big Horn in the Dakota Territory (today, Montana).
1876-Charles Doolittle Walcott becomes the first to successfully find and describe trilobite legs.
1877-Entire skeletons of Iguanodon are discovered, enabling a more accurate reconstruction of this dinosaur than those of Owen and Waterhouse Hawkins in the 1850s.
1879-Charles Lapworth resolves a priority dispute between Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison by assigning older rocks to the Cambrian (named by Sedgwick), younger rocks to the Silurian (named by Murchison), and naming the Ordivician System in between.
1879 - Yellowstone becomes the first national park after Congress sets aside this spectacular piece of land in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
1881 - Civil War nurse Clara Barton begins the American Red Cross.
1882
- The first Christmas tree with electric lights appears
as a holiday decoration in New York City.
1882
- the first major league baseball double-header was
played between the Providence, R.I., and Worchester,
Mass., teams.
1883-Geologist James Hall names Cryptozoon, based on
cabbage like rocks up to meter across. Although Hall's biologic interpretation of these structures will be heavily criticized, it will ultimately prove correct.
1885
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1885
- special delivery mail service began in the United
States.
1886
- Pharmacist Dr. John S. Pemberton invents Coca-Cola and
sells it at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.
1886
- the tuxedo dinner jacket made its American debut at
the autumn ball in Tuxedo Park, N.Y.
1887-Harry Govier Seeley determines that dinosaurs consist of "lizard-hipped" (saurischian) and "bird-hipped" (ornithischian) branches.
1888-German anatomist W. von Waldeyer names chromosomes.
1888
- the public was first admitted to the Washington
Monument.
1889
- The Edison Electric Company installs electric lings in
the White House.
1891 - Eugène Dubois finds a fossil skullcap and femur in the Javan town of Trinil. He insists that these fossils both belong to the same individual, a missing link between humans and apes. Opposition to his claim remains widespread and many doubt that the bones all belong to the same individual.
1892
- book matches are patented by Diamond Match Company
1895
- the first U.S. Open golf tournament was held, at the
Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.
1896
- the U.S. Post Office established Rural Free Delivery.
1897-Marie Curie begins research of "uranium rays" that will lead to the discovery of radioactivity.
1899-Charles Doolittle Walcott identifies Chuaria, millimeter-sized black fossil disks. He believes them to be compressed shells of marine invertebrates. Although he is wrong in this assumption, he is correct in deducing a biologic origin -- the fossils are actually from unusually large planktonic alga.
1899-William
McKinley, president of the United States takes a ride in
a Stanley Steamer, making him the first president to
travel by automobile.
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