THE BARBER OF SEVILLE CAST BIOS
Composer: Gioachino Rossini

Time Line of Significant Events during the life of
Giacchino Rossini – Composer of The Barber of Seville

1793    French King Louis XVI was sentenced to death and executed on the guillotine.
1794    Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry.
1796    English physician Edward Jenner administered the first vaccination against smallpox resulting in an immunity to smallpox.
1799    Pierre Bouchard, an officer in Napoleon‘s army, discovered the Rosetta Stone in the city of Rosetta [Rashid], Egypt. The Rosetta Stone is a tablet with hieroglyphic translations into Greek.
1800    Washington DC was established as the capital of US.
1803    Louis & Clark Expedition begins three-year journey of exploration and discovery to the Pacific Coast.
1806    The Holy Roman Empire went out of existence as Emperor Francis I abdicated.
1811    An earthquake in Missouri caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards.
1814    Sep 14, In the dawn light Francis Scott Key saw that the American flag still waved over Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. He looked on from the deck of a boat on the Patasco River nine miles away and wrote “The Star Spangled Banner.”
1816    Medical records from upstate NY showed that a patient paid 25 cents to have a tooth pulled and $1.25 to have a baby.
1817    Work began on the Erie Canal, more properly named the New York State Barge Canal.
1818    People began wearing left and right shoes. Shoes were made identical for either foot prior to this.
1820    Greek Venus de Milo statue of marble was found in on Melos and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was sculpted about c 200BC.
1821-1924    Thirty-three million people arrive into the US in this period.
1824    The Ninth Symphony, t1he "Ode to Joy"   by Beethoven had its premiere.
1825    The first grand opera in US sung in English was in NYC.
1827    The first U.S. railroad chartered to carry passengers and freight, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co., was incorporated.
1830    The yard was standardized at 36 inches. It had started out as the girth of a Saxon.    
1832    The first streetcar—a horse-drawn vehicle called the John Mason—went into operation in New York City. 
1833    In NYC Benjamin Day founded the New York Sun newspaper. He appealed to a general readership and charged a penny a copy. 
1837    Queen Victoria (18) ascended the British throne following the death of her uncle, King William IV
1838    Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J
1839    A steam shovel was patented by William Otis, Philadelphia.
1839    The basic idea for electrocombustion, the combination of oxygen and hydrogen to generate electricity and water, was discovered.
1841    From Nassau, Bahamas, a British magistrate wrote that 193 shipwrecked African
slaves from the ship Trouvadore were found on the shores of the East Caicos Island. The slaves were then quarantined in a jail and given food and clothing. The accident set free the slaves who became ancestors of many later residents of the islands. In 2004 the wreck was found and in 2008 marine archaeologists identified it as the remains of the slave ship.
1842    Dec 7, The New York Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert.
1843    Charles Thurber patented a typewriter.
1843    "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens sells 6,000 copies.
1845    Edgar Allan Poe’s poem "The Raven" was first published
1845-1846    As Ireland’s potato crop was consumed by blight. The nation’s peasants,
who relied on the potato as their primary food source, starved. The famine took as many as one million lives from hunger and disease and caused mass emigration.
1848    Gold is discovered in California’s Sacramento Valley.
1849    First commercial laundry was established, in Oakland, California.
1850    An earthquake in Sichuan, China, killed some 300,000 people.
1850    England established its 1st public libraries.
1851    A "refrigeration machine" was patented.
1852    More than 20,000 Chinese immigrants arrived to the US. They were fleeing floods, droughts, famines and revolutions and some 20,000 went to California.
1853    The first potato chips were prepared by Chef George Crum in NY.
1854    The Republican Party was founded when former members of the Whig political
party met to establish a new political party that would oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories.
1854    Elisha Graves Otis unveiled his invention, the safety elevator at the New York
World's Fair eventually enabling the skylines of cities throughout the world to be transformed with skyscrapers.
1857    Frederick Laggenheim took the 1st photo of a solar eclipse.
1858    Geographer Antonio Snider-Pellegrini showed how the continents had once fit together.
1861-1865   American Civil War
1862    A bill was passed to abolish slavery in Washington, D.C.
1863    Slavery abolished in Suriname & Netherlands Antilles.
1864    Lincoln formally establishes Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
1865    Lincoln is assassinated.  Eight alleged conspirators are found guilty.
1866    First yacht race across Atlantic Ocean.
1867    US takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia ($7.2 million)
1868    Memorial Day first observed when two women in Columbus, Mississippi placed flowers on both Confederate and Union graves