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1850

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1 Royal Commission appointed to organize the Great Exhibition; Prince Albert is chairman

- Death of Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge (b-1774)

5/1 Prince Arthur born

7/2 Sir Robert Peel dies after a riding accident. (b-1788)

- Prussia and Denmark sign Peace of Berlin on Schleswig-Holstein

7/10 President Zachary Taylor (b-1784) dies; Millard Fillmore takes over as 13^th U. S. President

9/9 California becomes 31^st state of the U.S.

- Louis-Philippe, King of France (b-1773), dies at Claremont

- Taiping rebellion in China

- Honoré de Balzac (b-1799) dies

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Sonnets from the Portuguese

- Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter

- William Wordsworth (b-1770) dies; is succeeded as Poet Laureate by Alfred Lord Tennyson

- John Everett Millais exhibits "Christ in the House of His Parents"

- Edwin Landseer, famous painter of animals, knighted

- Jenny Lind tours America under the management of P.T. Barnum

- Joseph Paxton builds the Crystal Palace

- Don Pacifico Incident: A Portuguese moneylender whose house in Athens was pillaged seeks compensation from the Greek government, and when refused, seeks aid from Palmerston on grounds that his birth in Gibralter gives him British citizenship. Palmerston sends ships to blockade the Greek coast without consulting France or Russia, joint guarantors of Greek independence. Palmerston's "Civis Romanus Sum" speech defending himself in Parliament

- Wagner premiers "Lohengrin"