1851

1851:
Nathaniel Hawthorne: "The House of Seven Gables"
See: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/77
An excerpt: "HALFWAY down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities,--the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice."
The house still stands and is a great tourist sight of Salem Massachusetts: http://www.7gables.org/

Herman Melville: "Moby Dick" See: http://www.online-literature.com/melville/mobydick/
I've been to Melville's homestead in Pittsfield Massachusetts. They say that the snow covered hills of the Berkshires were the inspiration for the White Whale, Moby. See: http://www.mobydick.org/
An Excerpt: "Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "The Golden Legend" See: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10490/10490-8.txt
I've also seen Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, beautiful. See: http://www.hwlongfellow.org/
An excerpt: _Night and storm._ LUCIFER, _with the Powers of the
Air, trying to tear down the Cross._

_Lucifer._ HASTEN! Hasten!
O ye spirits!
From its station drag the ponderous
Cross of iron, that to mock us
Is uplifted high in air!

_Voices._ O, we cannot!
For around it
All the Saints and Guardian Angels
Throng in legions to protect it;
They defeat us everywhere!

_The Bells._ Laudo Deum verum
Plebem voco!
Congrego clerum! (This poem is long and quite dramatic)

John Ruskin: "The stones of Venice," Vol. 1 For Photographs See: http://www.victorianweb.org/photos/venice/veniceov.html
For the story see: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/8stvn10.txt
An excerpt: "An old woman with a veil over her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvelous for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring and intense, yet without the slightest caricature."

James Fenimore Cooper died -- For his complete works see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fenimore_Cooper

Mary Shelley also died -- For a list of her works see: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a61

Victor Hugo used the phrase "United States of Europe" in a speech to the French national assembly.
Victor Hugo life and works, see: http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/

The New York Times is founded -- The New York Times was founded in 1851 by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones as the New-York Daily Times. The paper changed its name to The New York Times in 1857 and was published every day but Sunday. During the Civil War the Times started publishing Sunday issues.

On Christmas Eve, 1851, a disastrous fire in the Library of Congress destroyed approximately 35,000 of 55,000 volumes.

The beginning of the New Zealand Wars. See: http://www.newzealandwars.co.nz/

Macy's department store is founded. See: http://departmentstorehistory.net/