The first chocolate bar
Chocolate becomes something to eat, not just drink
For nearly three centuries after Columbus, Europeans only drank chocolate. In 1847 the Bristol firm of Fry & Sons mixed cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa butter into a mould, creating the first bar meant for eating.
Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
For three centuries Europeans only drank chocolate. The first bar for eating was moulded in Bristol in 1847, and the Swiss Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate only in 1875. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 6 years later
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 14 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 20 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 22 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 19 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 8 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 8 years earlier
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 12 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — same year
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 22 years later
Asia
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 16 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 8 years earlier
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — 3 years later
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 6 years later
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 21 years later
Americas
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — 12 years earlier
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — 9 years earlier
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — 1 year earlier
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — 1 year earlier
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — 14 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 4 years later
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 38)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 38)
- Karl Marx (aged 29)
- Queen Victoria (aged 28)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 26)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 19)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 13)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 7)
- Thomas Edison (aged 0)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 87)