On This Day

What Happened in March 1857

Historical Events

  • Mar 3 Second Opium War: France and the United Kingdom declare war on China
  • Mar 4 19th Grand National: Charlie Boyce wins aboard Emigrant at 10/1

Event of interestEvent of Interest

Mar 6 Dred Scott Decision: US Supreme Court rules Africans cannot be US citizens

US Slave Dred Scott
US Slave
Dred Scott
  • Mar 7 Baseball decides 9 innings constitutes an official game, not 9 runs
  • Mar 8 British seismologist John Milne is hired by the Japanese government as a foreign adviser (oyatoi gaikokujin)

Music releaseMusic Premiere

Mar 12 Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Simon Boccanegra" premieres in Venice

Composer Giuseppe Verdi
Composer
Giuseppe Verdi

Event of interestEvent of Interest

Mar 23 Elisha Otis installs his 1st elevator at 488 Broadway in New York City

Inventor and Elevator Industrialist Elisha Otis
Inventor and Elevator Industrialist
Elisha Otis
  • Mar 25 Frederick Laggenheim takes 1st photo of a solar eclipse
  • Mar 25 Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville receives a patent for his phonautograph, a device which created visual images of sound

Famous Birthdays

  • Mar 3 Alfred Bruneau, composer
  • Mar 7 Julius Wagner von Jauregg, Austrian psychiatrist (Nobel 1927)
  • Mar 8 Ruggero Leoncavallo, Italian composer (I pagliacci/Zaza), born in Naples, Italy (d. 1919)
  • Mar 16 Charles Harding Firth, British historian (d. 1936)
  • Mar 22 Arnold Sauwen, Flemish poet (Along the Meuse)
  • Mar 22 Paul Doumer, gov-genl of Indo-China/13th President of France (1931-32)
  • Mar 23 Fannie Farmer, American culinary pioneer who revolutionised modern cooking through the introduction of precise measurements (Boston Cooking-School Cook Book), born in Boston, Massachusetts (d. 1915)
  • Mar 27 Karl Pearson, British statistician (leading founder of the modern field of statistics), born in London (d. 1936)
  • Mar 30 Leon Charles Thevenin, French telegraph engineer (d. 1926)

Famous Deaths

  • Mar 11 Manuel Jose Quintana, Spanish author and poet (A la paz), dies at 84
  • Mar 17 Adolph Trube, composer, dies at 42
  • Mar 21 Abraham Jacob van der Aa, Dutch lexicographer (Biographic dictionary), dies at 64
  • Mar 26 Wei Yuan, Chinese scholar and geographer of Qing Dynasty, dies at 62

What Happened in 1857

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