1842
Maine boundary question settled by a treaty negotiated by Daniel Webster for the United States and Lord Ashburton for Great Britain. Congress resisted a threatened invasion by the French of the Hawaiian Islands. Dorr's "rebellion" in Rhode Island, by which T.W. Dorr, "free suffragist," tried to get governorship, to which S.W. King had been elected under the old charter.
War between Great Britain and China ended, Great Britain winning at all points, and reopening the opium trade. In the retreat from Kabul, Afghanistan, a British detachment and its followers were slaughtered in Khyber Pass, Dr. Brydon alone of fifteen thousand who started reaching Jelalabad, though a few who were captured were later freed. British envoys to Bokhara beheaded. Jelalabad, besieged by the Afghans, was relieved by the British, Kabul was recaptured, and Akbar Khan, leader of the insurgents, fled.
In Great Britain, Parliament rejected a Chartist petition for universal suffrage, etc., containing over three million signatures. A general strike was conducted by the Chartists; Feargus O'Connor, the leader, convicted of inciting to riot, but escaped sentence. Two attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria. Law passed by Parliament restricting the employment of women and children in coal mines. The bore of the Thames Tunnel was finished. In Algeria, the war went on, with several serious reverses for the French. The Illustrated London News, first publication of its kind, started. Luigi Cherubini, Italian musician; Marie Henri Beyle (better known as "Stendhal"), French novelist; Thomas Arnold, the famous head master of Rugby; and Allan Cunningham, Scottish poet, died.
RULERS—The same as in the previous year.