Mid 1800 facts
While investigating facts about Mid 1800, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Chicago is named the Windy City because in the mid 1800’s, journalists thought that the well to do and politicians were “windbags” that only cared about money.
In the mid 1800’s millions of American children learned in school that one taste of alcohol could lead to blindness, madness or death. And there was the possibility too, the children were told, of spontaneous combustion; just one drink of alcohol might cause their bodies to go up in flames.
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 17 of the best facts about Mid 1800 I managed to collect.
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Using the term "Jumbo" to describe something as large/huge etc is coined from an elephant of the same name which was around in the mid 1800's and was a the first ever animal "celebrity" in both the UK and the US
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About Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist who thought up the theory of evolution by natural selection. After recording his expedition findings in the mid 1800’s, Wallace sent his work to his confidant Charles Darwin for a second opinion. Their first paper was a joint effort.
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Up until the mid 1800's the colour purple was only wore by the richest because the only way to make purple dye was through the secretions of a sea snail, making it very costly to produce.
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Squirrels were originally a purposeful introduction into urban American cities in the mid 1800’s. They were meant to remind city inhabitants of nature and feel “rural peace and calm”
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There was a political party in the mid 1800's that tried to stop Irish Catholic immigration to the US. They were called the Know Nothing Party
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About a wave of French communists who flooded into the United States in the mid 1800's and established communes all across the country.
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"Polka Dots" were named after but have absolutely nothing to do with the mid 1800's dance craze called the "Polka"; In fact "There were several items of clothing and even food labeled “polka” at the time"
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Tristan da Cunha, an island in the middle of the Atlantic with a population of 297 people beleived to be direct desecndants of just 15 men and women who settled there in the early-mid 1800's.
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Deseret alphabet is a phonemic English language spelling reform that was developed from mid 1800's and used by Mormon pioneers
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During the mid 1800's there was sightings of a monster in Silver Lake in Perry, New York that gained a lot of attention, it turned out to be a bar owner that wanted to attract attention to his business so he had a wooden monster onto the lake
Mid 1800 data charts
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What is true about mid 1800?
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The religious group known as "shakers" (a break away group from the Quakers) only has two living adherents. At their peak in the mid 1800's they had around 6000 members.
Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne was a neurologist in the mid 1800's who wanted to determine how the muscles in the face produce facial expressions. He experimented on people using electrical probes to stimulate the facial muscles and photographed his subjects. - source
Parts of New York and New Jersey were dutch-speaking until around 1800 (despite New Amsterdam being taken over by the English in 1664), with isolated communities still speaking it until the mid 20th century. - source
Although chocolate has been a treat for 3,000 to 4,000 years, the first chocolate bar wasn't made until the mid 1800's
Ketchup was once used as a medicine in the early-mid 1800's. - source
