The Australian gold rushes
In 20 years the colonies' population nearly quadrupled
In February 1851 Edward Hargraves, back from the California diggings, panned gold near Bathurst. Later that year even richer fields were found at Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria. Diggers poured in from around the world: the colonies' population grew from about 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871. Gold made Melbourne one of the richest cities of the empire.
Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 6 years earlier
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 3 years earlier
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — 3 years earlier
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — 8 years later
- 1861 Unification of Italy — 10 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 2 years later
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 10 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 16 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 23 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 12 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 12 years earlier
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — 25 years later
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 16 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 4 years earlier
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 18 years later
Asia
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 20 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 12 years earlier
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 2 years later
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 17 years later
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — 25 years later
Americas
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — 5 years earlier
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — 5 years earlier
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — 10 years later
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — 12 years later
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 25 years later
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 42)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 42)
- Karl Marx (aged 33)
- Queen Victoria (aged 32)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 30)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 23)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 17)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 11)
- Thomas Edison (aged 4)
- Nicholas I (aged 55)