This Year in History:
1851
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
An angry mob in San Francisco’s business district ”tries” two Australian suspects in the robbery and assault of C. J. Jansen. When the makeshift jury deadlocked, the suspects were returned…
On May 1, 1851, the Great Exhibition opens to wide acclaim in the Crystal Palace in London. Inside the Crystal Palace, a giant glass‑and‑iron hall designed by Sir Joseph Paxton,…
At the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, on May 29, 1851, the formerly enslaved woman Sojourner Truth rises to speak and assert her right to equality as a woman, as well as…
On August 22, 1851, the U.S.‑built schooner America bests a fleet of Britain’s finest ships in a race around England’s Isle of Wight. The ornate silver trophy won by the…
In Christiana, Pennsylvania, a group of African Americans and white abolitionists skirmish with a Maryland posse intent on capturing four fugitive enslaved people hidden in the town. The violence came…
The sadistic and murderous western gunman William Preston Longley is born on this day in 1815 in Austin County, Texas. Little is reliably known of the youth of William Longley,…
On November 14, 1851, Moby‑Dick is published. Now considered a great classic of American literature—with one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: “Call me Ishmael”—the book about Captain…
Moby‑Dick, by Herman Melville. The book flopped, and it was many years before the book was recognized as an American classic. Melville was born in New York City in 1819.…
On December 24, 1851, a fire sweeps through the Library of Congress and destroys two‑thirds of Thomas Jefferson’s personal literary collection. Jefferson, who died in 1826, had offered to sell…
A devastating fire at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroys about two‑thirds of its 55,000 volumes, including most of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, sold to the institution in…
