The World in 1854 the year a pump handle stopped an outbreak

Water came from a pump in the street or a well in the yard, and nobody could see what was in it. Most people blamed bad air for cholera, so cesspits and open drains sat next to the wells that fed them. A big city smelled of horses, coal smoke and sewage. Families boiled water for tea without knowing that was what saved them, and a healthy child could be dead by evening.

The year in 8 events

More than 500 people died of cholera in ten days around a single water pump in London. The pump served a few streets in Soho.

• 🚢Mar 31 Japan signs the Convention of Kanagawa and opens two ports to American ships.
• ⚖️May 30 The Kansas-Nebraska Act lets settlers there vote on slavery, and fighting soon breaks out in Kansas.
• 🗳️Jul 6 Opponents of that law meet at Jackson in Michigan and organise as the Republican Party.
• 📖Aug 9 Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden, about two years spent living beside a pond.
• 💧Sep 8 John Snow has the handle taken off a Broad Street pump in London and the cholera around it fades.
• ⚔️Oct 25 The Light Brigade charges Russian guns at Balaclava. Britain and France had joined the Crimean War in March.
• 🩺Nov 4 Florence Nightingale reaches the army hospital at Scutari, near Constantinople, with 38 nurses.
• ⛏️Dec 3 Gold diggers build a stockade at Eureka in Australia and fight soldiers over their licence fees.

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