Known as the ‘First Gentleman of Europe’. He had a love of art and architecture but his private life was a mess, to put it mildly! He married twice, once in 1785 to Mrs. Fitzherbert, secretly as she was a Catholic, and then in 1795 to Caroline of Brunswick. Mrs. Fitzherbert remained the love of his life. Caroline and George had one daughter, Charlotte in 1796 but she died in 1817. George was considered a great wit, but was also a buffoon and his death was hailed with relief!
The first lighters were converted flintlock pistols that used gunpowder. One of the first lighters was invented by a German chemist named Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner in 1823 and was often called Döbereiner’s lamp.
The first dinosaur to be described and named was presented in 1824 as the ‘Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield’. The author of the scientific paper was William Buckland, professor of Geology at Oxford.
Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world.
Beginning in 1920 and accelerating in the 1980s and 1990s, Chemical was a leading consolidator of the U.S. banking industry, acquiring Chase Manhattan Bank, Manufacturers Hanover, Texas Commerce Bank and Corn Exchange Bank among others. After 1968, the bank operated as the primary subsidiary of a bank holding company that was eventually renamed Chemical Banking Corporation.
In 1996, Chemical acquired Chase Manhattan Corporation in a merger valued at $10 billion to create the largest financial institution in the United States. Although Chemical was the acquiring company and the nominal survivor, the merged bank adopted the Chase name, which was considered to be better known, particularly internationally
The Erie Canal opened on October 26, 1825. A fleet of boats, led by Governor Dewitt Clinton aboard the Seneca Chief sailed from Buffalo to New York City in record time—just ten days.
This photo, simply titled, “View from the Window at Le Gras,” is said to be the world’s earliest surviving photograph. And it was almost lost forever. It was taken by Nicéphore Niépce in a commune in France called Saint-Loup-de-Varennes somewhere between 1826 and 1827.
On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. railway chartered for commercial transport of passengers and freight. There were skeptics who doubted that a steam engine could work along steep, winding grades, but the Tom Thumb, designed by Peter Cooper, put an end to their doubts.
It was not until March 31, 1817 that the New York legislature ended two centuries of slavery within its borders, setting July 4, 1827 as the date of final emancipation and making New York the first state to pass a law for the total abolition of legal slavery