1850

Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century

Decades: 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s - 1850s - 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s

Years: 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 - 1850 - 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855

Events

• End of the Irish potato famine
• Millard Fillmore succeeds Zachary Taylor as President of the United States of America
• The United States Republican Party is founded
• January 4 - The first American ice-skating[?] club is formed (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
• January 29 - Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the United States Congress
• February 28 - University of Utah opens in Salt Lake City, Utah
• March 7 - United States Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech in which he endorses the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.
• March 18 - American Express[?] is founded by Henry Wells[?] & William Fargo[?].
• April 4 - Los Angeles, California is incorporated as a city.
• August 28 - Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin premieres
• September 9 - California is admitted as the 31st U.S. state.
• December 16 - The first four ships arrived at Lyttleton to settle Christchurch, New Zealand.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1850 in literature:
  • March 16 - Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter[?] is published for the first time.

Births

• January 15 - Mihai Eminescu, outstanding Romanian poet
• January 21 - Paul Vinzenz Busch[?], ringmaster (+ 1927)
• January 27 - Samuel Gompers[?], labor union leader (+ 1924)
• February 8 - Kate Chopin, author
• May 1 - Prince Arthur of the United Kingdom, third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, later Duke of Connaught and Strathearn
• May 12 - Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. statesman (+ 1924)
• May 18 - Oliver Heaviside, physicist
• August 5 - Guy de Maupassant, French writer
• August 25 - Charles Richet[?], Nobel Prize recipient for his work on anaphylaxis
• September 2 - Albert Spalding, baseball player and sporting goods manufacturer
• November 13 - Robert Louis Stevenson (+ 1894)

Deaths

• January 20 - Adam Oehlenschlager, Danish poet
• April 23 - William Wordsworth, English poet
• July 19 - Sarah Margaret Fuller, writer
• August 18 - Honore de Balzac
• December 24 - Frederic Bastiat, French philosopher, author