1850

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	18th century – 19th century – 20th century
Decades:	1820s  1830s  1840s  – 1850s –  1860s  1870s  1880s
Years:	1847 1848 1849 – 1850 – 1851 1852 1853

Events

• The speed of light in water was observed to be slower than that in air.

Books

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Births

• January 21 – Paul Vinzenz Busch, ringmaster (d. 1927)
• January 27 – Samuel Gompers, English-born labor leader (d. 1924)
• January 27 – Edward J. Smith, Captain of the Titanic (d. 1912)
• May 1 – Prince Arthur of the United Kingdom (d. 1942)
• May 8 – Ross Barnes, baseball player (d. 1915)
• May 12 – Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. statesman (d. 1924)
• May 21 – Giuseppe Mercalli, Italian volcanologist (d. 1914)
• July 12 – Otto Schoetensack, German anthropologist (d. 1912)
• September 2 – Albert Spalding, baseball player and sporting goods manufacturer (d. 1915)
• November 13 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer (d. 1894)
• December 9 – Emma Abbott, American opera singer (d. 1891)
• December 21 – Zdenek Fibich, Czech composer (d. 1900)

Deaths

• July 2 – Robert Peel

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