LIFE IN THE FIRST TWO MILLENNIA: 1000-2000 C.E.

Part IV, 1700-1800

In July, 1700, a French soldier—Pierre-Francois Bouchard--discovered a large stone slab with three types of writing scrips in the town of Rosetta. After 24 years of arduous scholarship, Champollion was able to read for the first time in over a 1000 years the history of ancient Egypt, using the Rosetta Stone as a deciphering tool.

In 1809, Nicolas Appert was awarded a prize by Napoleon Bonaparte for preserving food in jars. He placed the food in jars and heated them for as long as he thought necessary, thereby killing bacteria. It took Louis Pasteur 100 more years to discover why the Appert method worked.

In 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo by British Admiral Lord Nelson.

On January 24, 1838, Samuel F.B. Morse demonstrated the first telegraph machine.

Between 1845-1848, the Potato Famine [The Great Hunger]—caused by potato blight—resulted in a nearly complete Irish potato crop failure, and the deaths of 1.5 million people from starvation. Help from England—which was regularly receiving wheat from Ireland—came too little and too late. A mass exodus of Irish brought them to America.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor--became alarmed at the high incidence of childhood fevers [puerperal sepsis] and its high maternal and infant mortality—determined that the doctors were at fault. They did not wash their hands of “laudable pus” after doing autopsies and transmitted some sort of disease to unfortunate women in labor. He made the audacious recommendation that physicians should wash their hands between patients. He was ridiculed by the other doctors, eventually fired, and ended his days in an insane asylum, dying at the age of 47. It would be more than 70 years before physicians finally began to wash their hands with regularity.

On February 26, 1848, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels published The Communist Manifesto, a small pamphlet.

On July 8, 1854, Admiral Matthew C. Perry visited Japan with his fleet of Black Ships and blockaded Tokyo Harbor. That forced Japan to trade with the US after 200 years of Japanese isolation. The Japanese learned that they had no defense against Perry’s guns and rapidly industrialized to create a world class navy which defeated the Russians in 1904.

In 1856, Louis Pasteur demonstrated that disease was spread from tiny organisms and not from “bad humors”, giving birth to the Germ Theory of Disease.

In 1861, Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell proposed a method for making permanent color photographs. Thomas Sutton used his method to make the first color photograph (of a Tartan ribbon).

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in states then in rebellion. As a result, British intervention on behalf of the Confederacy was prevented because of strong anti-slavery sentiment in England.

In 1866, North America and Europe were connected by a 2,500 mile-long telegraph cable.

On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words on his new invention, the telephone. He submitted his patent application mere hours before his rival Elisha Gray, thereby ensuring the most valuable patent ever filed.

On June, 25-26, 1876 at the battle of the Little Big Horn, three tribes of Indians defeated General George Custer’s troops. 25% of the indigenous Americans were armed with superior weapons than the US Cavalry—Spencer, Winchester, and Henry repeating rifles.

In 1877 and 1879, Thomas A. Edison invented the phonograph, and the incandescent light bulb.

On August, 26, 1883, the island volcano of Krakatoa in Indonesia exploded killing 36,000 people, influencing tides in England, and settling fine volcanic dust in New York City. The sound of the explosion was heard 3,000 miles away and caused a nuclear winter with loss of crops and domestic animals all over the world.

August 13, 1898: The US launched the Spanish-American War after incidents in Cuba inflamed American passions. Later students suggested that many of the incidents were contrived, but Theodore Roosevelt was able to make a successful political career out of his part in the battles.