Emperor Norton I
A bankrupt merchant declares himself Emperor of the US
In 1859 the bankrupt merchant Joshua Norton proclaimed himself 'Emperor of the United States'. San Francisco played along: restaurants accepted his own banknotes, and one of his 'decrees' called for a bridge to Oakland, which opened in 1936.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 14 years earlier
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 11 years earlier
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — 11 years earlier
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — same year
- 1861 Unification of Italy — 2 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 6 years earlier
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 2 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 8 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 10 years later
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 20 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 20 years earlier
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — 17 years later
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 24 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 12 years earlier
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 10 years later
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — 20 years later
Asia
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — 9 years earlier
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 6 years earlier
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 9 years later
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — 17 years later
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — 24 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 8 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 50)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 50)
- Karl Marx (aged 41)
- Queen Victoria (aged 40)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 38)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 31)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 25)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 19)
- Thomas Edison (aged 12)
- Vincent van Gogh (aged 6)