1849 - Definition and Overview

Events

• January 23 - Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her MD by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming the United States' first woman doctor
• January 31 - Corn Laws abolished in the United Kingdom
• February 14 - In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first President of the United States to have his photograph taken
• February 28 - Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay. The California left New York Harbor on October 6, 1848, rounded Cape Horn at the tip of South America, and arrived at San Francisco, California after the 4 month 21 day journey
• March 3 - End of Term for President of the United States James Knox Polk.
• March 3 - Minnesota becomes a United States territory
• March 3 - The United States Department of the Interior is established
• March 3 - The U.S. Congress passes the Gold Coinage Act allowing the minting of gold coins
• March 4 - Zachary Taylor refuses to be sworn in office on a Sabbath (Sunday). Concequently the office of President of the United States of America is vacant for a single day. Urban legend instead helds that David Rice Atchison, President pro tempore of the United States Senate was President for a single day.
• March 5 - Zachary Taylor becomes the 12th President of the United States of America.
• March 29 - The United Kingdom annexes the Punjab
• April 2 - The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states end and fail.
• April 13 – Hungary declares independence – Austria crushes the rebellion with Russian aid
• April 25 - The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots.
• May 3 - The May Uprising in Dresden begins - the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
• June 5 - Denmark becomes constitutional monarchy
• November 16 - A Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group, but his execution is canceled at the last minute

Unknown date

• Joseph Fry makes the first chocolate bar
• Fort Street High School was founded in Sydney, Australia. It is the oldest government school in Australia
• French government publishes a decree that Carcassonne should be demolished. Public uproar forces them to begin renovation instead
• The Brown Report, detailing conditions in prisons, is completed.

Births

• January 18 - Edmund Barton, first Prime Minister of Australia († 1920)
• January 22 - August Strindberg, Swedish author, playwright and painter
• February 18 - Alexander Kielland, Norwegian author
• February 22 - Nikolay Yakovlevich Sonin, mathematician
• March 2 - Robert Means Thompson, naval officer († 1930)
• March 7 - Luther Burbank, biologist, botanist
• March 19 - Alfred von Tirpitz, German soldier († 1930)
• July 29 - Max Nordau, author, philosopher and Zionist leader († 1923)
• October 22 - William Miller, American baptist preacher
• November 29 - John Ambrose Fleming, English electrical engineer, inventor of Fleming valve († 1945)
• December 4 - Crazy Horse, Chief of the Oglala Sioux
• December 6 - August von Mackensen, German Field Marshal († 1945)
• December 12 – William Kissam Vanderbilt, railway magnate (+ 1920)
• Emma Abbott, American opera singer
• John William Waterhouse, artist

Deaths

• March 14- Willem II, king of the Netherlands (1840-1849)
• May 28 - Anne Brontë, author
• June 15 - James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States.
• July 12 - Dolley Madison, 4th First Lady of the United States.
• September 25 - Johann Strauss I, Austrian composer
• October 7 - Edgar Allan Poe, writer (b. 1809)
• October 17 - Frédéric Chopin, musician, composer (b. 1810)
• December 2 - Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen - queen consort of King William IV of the United Kingdom