HISTORICAL DATA-1859:

•  JANUARY

•  FEBRUARY

•  MARCH

•  APRIL:    

•  MAY

•  JUNE:    At some time during this month, during the Italian war for independence, New York Times publisher Henry Jarvis Raymond sends his eyewitness account of the Battle of Solferino to New York some ten days ahead of reports to other papers. He is able to score this "beat" because his wife, staying in Paris at this time, gets his report onto the last mail ship bound for New York.  (SOURCE: Timeline in 150th Anniversary Special Section, NEW YORK TIMES, Wednesday, November 14, 2001, Section H1, pg. YNE  F1.)

•  JULY

•  AUGUST:    On August 29 of this year in Titusville, Pennsylvania "Colonel" Edwin L. Drake arrives at the well that he is drilling there with "Uncle Billy" Smith, and he finds "Uncle Billy" and his boys standing guard over tubs, washbasins, and barrels, all of which are filled with oil. Drake attaches a common hand pump and begins to do exactly what the scoffers have ridiculed-pump up the liquid.  (SOURCE:  The Prize-Daniel Yergin ((paperback)), pg. 27).

•  SEPTEMBER:     

•  OCTOBER:    By about October 18 of this year the New-York Daily Times is publishing articles from the scene at Harper's Ferry, Virginia about the radical Abolitionist John Brown's failed raid on the federal arsenal there.  (SOURCE: Timeline in 150th Anniversary Special Section, NEW YORK TIMES, Wednesday, November 14, 2001, Section H1, pg. YNE  F1.)

•    NOVEMBER

•  DECEMBER

• FULL YEAR:      For this whole year the value of manufactured products in the United States of America comes to US$1.8 billion.  (Source:  The American Nation...Since 1865-Second Edition, John A. Garraty, pg. 85).      

•  NO SPECIFIC DATE:    At some time during this year a rush of white prospectors into Colorado Territory in the United States in search of gold drives the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians from land on the plains that had been guaranteed to them in 1851.  (SOURCE:  The American Nation...Since 1865-Second Edition, John A. Garraty, pg. 62).   

•     Also at some time during this year in Cleveland, Ohio John D. Rockefeller forms his own business partnership with Maurice Clark to trade produce.  (SOURCE:  The Prize-Daniel Yergin ((paperback)), pg. 36).

•     At some time during this year, too, the prism spectroscope is invented. It advances the science of spectroscopy by employing a narrow slit set in front of a prism to limit the patches of light to similarly narrow lines; these can be directed onto a ruled scale (and later onto strips of photographic film) to measure their spacing and calculate their wavelengths.  (SOURCE:  The Making of the Atomic Bomb-Richard Rhodes  ((paperback)), pg. 72).

•     By this time in 1859 Galicia (which includes parts of Poland, Austria and Russia) has a thriving kerosene oil business, with over 1560 villages involved in mining for oil.  (Source:   The Prize-Daniel Yergin ((paperback)), pp. 24-25).

•     In Egypt at some time during this year a French company begins an attempt to dig a canal through the Suez peninsula here.  (SOURCE:  A History of the Modern World [since 1815] ((Fourth Edition-Paperback)), R. R. Palmer & Joel Colton, pg. 545).