Yet more of this continuing series…
1861 to 1865 The American Civil War ends in the defeat of the South; as a byproduct, slavery is abolished.
1861 Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia is enthroned as king of a unified Italy.
1862 to 1869 The Union Pacific Railway, the first transcontinental railway in North America, is constructed.
1862 Otto von Bismark becomes Prime Minister of Prussia.
R.J. Gattling invents the Gattling gun.
The first battle between ironclad ships, the Monitor and the Virginia, takes place.
1864 Karl Marx founds the First International Workingmens Association in London and New York.
Pope Pius IX condemns liberalism, rationalism, and socialism in the Syllabus Errorum.
The first Geneva Convention establishes the neutrality of medical facilities in war.
1865 The laying of a transatlantic telegraph is completed by the steamship Great Eastern.
James Clerk Maxwell publishes his electromagnetic equations.
Joseph Lister develops antiseptic surgery.
Gregor Mendel publishes his work on genetics, which is ignored.
1866 The Austro-Prussian War ends in a rapid Prussian victory and establishes Prussian dominance over the North German Federation.
Alfred Nobel invents dynamite.
1867 Canada is organized as a dominion.
Russia sells Alaska to the United States.
Diamonds are discovered in South Africa.
1868 The shougunate is abolished in Japan; the Meiji Dynasty is established and begins to modernize and Westernise Japan.
1869 Thomas Edison creates his first successful invention, the stock ticker.
Dmitri Mendeleyev publishes the Periodic Table.
Francis Galton publishes Hereditary Genius, the first major work on eugenics.
1870 to 1871 The Franco-Prussian war leads quickly to a French defeat. The Paraisians revolt and found the Paris commune but are then defeated by the Prussians. The King of Prussia becomes the Emperor of Germany. Italy takes advantage of French distractions to seize Rome from the Pope.
