The Communist Manifesto and the California Gold Rush began within weeks of each other: gold was found at Sutter's Mill on 24 January 1848, and Marx and Engels's manifesto came out in London that February.

1848

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The events

• The Communist Manifesto1848 · London. In February 1848 a pamphlet by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League, appeared in London. The Manifesto described history as class struggle and predicted the fall of capitalism. It became one of the most influential political texts, inspiring socialist parties and the revolutions of the 20th century.
• California Gold Rush1848 · Sutter's Mill, California, USA. On 24 January 1848 carpenter James Marshall spotted flakes of gold in the channel of Sutter's sawmill. The news spread worldwide, and within a few years some 300,000 fortune-seekers, the 'forty-niners', arrived from every continent. San Francisco grew from a village into a city of tens of thousands, and by 1850 California had become a state.

19th century

More amazing facts

• 1846 In Australia a camel shot its owner.
• 1847 Psychology has a 'Semmelweis reflex': the tendency to reject new evidence that clashes with established beliefs.
• 1848 · 1860 Phineas Gage carried around the iron rod that had gone through his head.
• 1849 · 1850 Chopin's heart lies apart from his body, in Warsaw, in a jar of alcohol, probably cognac.
• 1849 Abraham Lincoln is the only US president to hold a patent.
• 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to be shot and reprieved at the last moment.

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