Prehistory
Archaeopteryx (1861): The Fossil Linking Birds and Dinosaurs
The first Archaeopteryx fossils revealed a Late Jurassic animal with both reptile and bird features, later recognised as key evidence that birds descend from dinosaurs.
Region
Europe
Modern Era
January Uprising (1863-1864): Poland's Last Great Revolt
The insurrection was defeated; its leaders were executed or exiled, and Russia abolished most remaining Polish autonomy.
Modern Era
Founding of the Red Cross (1863) and First Geneva Convention
A Geneva committee founded in 1863 became the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the 1864 Geneva Convention made care for wounded soldiers a legal duty.
Modern Era
Metropolitan Railway (1863): London Opens the First Underground
The world's first underground passenger railway opened in London and carried millions in its first year, beginning the London Underground.
Modern Era
Second Schleswig War (1864): Prussia and Austria vs Denmark
Danish defeat; by the Treaty of Vienna Denmark ceded Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg to Prussia and Austria.
Modern Era
Clifton Suspension Bridge (1864): Brunel's Bridge Over the Avon
The bridge, begun in 1831 and abandoned in 1843, was completed by engineers of the Institution of Civil Engineers as a memorial to Brunel and opened in 1864.
Modern Era
Maxwell's Equations (1865): Light as an Electromagnetic Wave
Maxwell's theory unified electricity, magnetism and light and predicted electromagnetic waves, confirmed by Heinrich Hertz in 1887–1888.
Modern Era
Lister's Antiseptic Surgery (1865): Carbolic Acid Saves Lives
Lister's carbolic acid method sharply reduced deaths from wound infection and established the principle that germs must be kept out of surgical wounds.
Modern Era
Mendel's Pea Experiments (1865): Founding the Science of Genetics
Mendel described regular patterns of inheritance carried by discrete factors; his work was largely ignored until its rediscovery in 1900 founded modern genetics.
Modern Era
Battle of Königgrätz (1866): How Prussia Defeated Austria
Decisive Prussian victory that ended the Austro-Prussian War in Prussia's favour and excluded Austria from German affairs.
Modern Era
Fenian Rising (1867): The Irish Republican Brotherhood Revolts
The rising was quickly suppressed, but the Manchester executions and the Clerkenwell explosion kept the Irish question at the centre of British politics.
Modern Era
Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867): End of Mexico's Empire
Maximilian and generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía were shot by a Republican firing squad, ending the Second Mexican Empire and restoring Benito Juárez's republic.