istoryworld
London timeline
The India Act places India under the direct control of the British government, ending the rule of the East India Company
The first block of a new building for the Public Record Office is completed in Chancery Lane, City of London, with further extensions added 1868-1899
Charles Darwin is alarmed to receive in his morning post a paper by Alfred Russell Wallace, outlining very much his own theory of evolution
Lionel Nathan Rothschild becomes the first Jew to sit in Britain's House of Commons, taking his oath on the Old Testament
The stench in central London, rising from the polluted Thames in a hot summer, creates what becomes known as the Great Stink
US entrepreneur Cyrus W. Field succeeds in laying a telegraph cable across the Atlantic, but it fails after only a month
An Irish branch of the US Fenians is established as the Irish Republican Brotherhood
Speke reaches Lake Victoria and guesses that it is probably the source of the Nile
Chelsea Bridge opens, designed by Thomas Page
Marian Evans and G.H. Lewes move from Parkshot in Richmond to Holly Lodge in Wandsworth
English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede
Joseph Bazalgette is given the task of providing London with a desperately needed new system of sewers
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of twenty years' research
A 13-ton bell is installed above London's Houses of Parliament, soon giving its name (Big Ben) to both the clock and the clock-tower
After a six-year campaign by Sir William Hooker, the government allocates £10,000 for a new conservatory - the Temperate House - to be built to designs by Decimus Burton.
In On Liberty John Stuart Mill makes the classic liberal case for the priority of the freedom of the individual
Samuel Smiles provides an inspiring ideal of Victorian enterprise in Self-Help, a manual for ambitious young men
Tennyson publishes the first part of Idylls of the King, a series of linked poems about Britain's mythical king Arthur
Charles Dickens publishes his French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities
Edward FitzGerald publishes The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, romantic translations of the work of the Persian poet
US artist James McNeill Whistler settles in London, which he makes his home for the rest of his life
Florence Nightingale opens a training school for nurses in St Thomas's Hospital, establishing nursing as a profession
Work starts on the Temperate House (after the contractor William Cubitt has altered Burton's designs) and the main block and the octagons are completed by 1863. The government then halts the project because of severe cost overruns.
Mortlake’s brewery becomes prosperous through contracts supplying beer (India Pale Ale) to the British army in India
Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861)
