The World in 1858 the year the Thames stank

London stank that summer. The river carried the waste of two million people, the weather turned hot, and the smell of the Great Stink got into Parliament itself. Clerks hung curtains soaked in chloride of lime over the windows, and members talked about moving the government to Oxford. Instead they voted the money for Joseph Bazalgette to build brick sewers that carried the waste far downriver. Bazalgette made every pipe wider than his sums called for, guessing London would keep growing.

The year in 8 events

Queen Victoria's greeting down the new Atlantic cable ran to about 99 words, and tapping it out took roughly sixteen hours. That is six words an hour.

• 🙏Feb 11 Bernadette Soubirous, a miller's daughter, says she sees a lady in a cave at Lourdes in France.
• 🌍Feb 13 Richard Burton and John Speke become the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika.
• ⭐May 11 Minnesota joins the United States as the 32nd state.
• 🐒Jul 1 Papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection are read to a quiet London meeting.
• ⚡Aug 16 The first message crosses the new Atlantic telegraph cable. The cable fails a few weeks later.
• 🎤Aug 21 Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas hold the first of seven debates in Illinois.
• 🐴Sep 16 The first Butterfield mail coach sets off for California, promising letters in about 25 days.
• 👑Nov 1 A proclamation from Queen Victoria ends East India Company rule. The Crown now governs India.

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