Andreas Bemlott

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. On 1 May 1876, she adopted the additional title of Empress of India.

Victoria inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died leaving no surviving legitimate children. She became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality. Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert. After his death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result, republicanism temporarily gained strength but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration.

Ulysses S Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant;[b] April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877, commanding general of the Army, soldier, international statesman, and author.

Elected the youngest 19th Century president in 1868, Grant stabilized the post-war national economy, created the Department of Justice, and prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan. He appointed African-Americans and Jewish-Americans to prominent federal offices. In 1871, Grant created the first Civil Service Commission. The Democrats and Liberal Republicans united behind Grant's opponent in the presidential election of 1872, but Grant was handily re-elected. Grant's new Peace Policy for Native Americans had both successes and failures.

Alexander Mackenzie (January 28, 1822 – April 17, 1892), was a Scottish-Canadian politician who served as the second prime minister of Canada, in office from 1873 to 1878. Mackenzie was born in Logierait, Perthshire, Scotland and emigrated to Canada when he was 19, settling in what became Ontario.

In 1867, Mackenzie was elected to the new House of Commons of Canada for the Liberal Party. He became leader of the party (and thus Leader of the Opposition) in mid-1873, and a few months later succeeded John A. Macdonald as prime minister, following Macdonald's resignation in the aftermath of the Pacific Scandal. Mackenzie and the Liberals won a clear majority at the 1874 election.

As prime minister, Mackenzie continued the nation-building programme that had been begun by his predecessor. His government established the Supreme Court of Canada and Royal Military College of Canada, and created the District of Keewatin to better administer Canada's newly acquired western territories. At the 1878 election, Mackenzie's government suffered a landslide defeat.

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Disraeli's new government enacted many reforms, including: - the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, which made inexpensive loans available to towns and cities to construct working-class housing. - the Public Health Act 1875, modernising sanitary codes through the nation, - the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1875) - the Education Act (1876). - the Factory Act meant to protect workers, - the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875, which allowed peaceful picketing - the Employers and Workmen Act (1875) to enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts.

As a result of these social reforms the Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald said, "The Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty."

The Numbered Treaties were a series of 11 treaties made between the Crown and Indigenous peoples of Canada from 1871 to 1921. They cover the area between the Lake of the Woods (northern Ontario, southern Manitoba) to the Rocky Mountains (northeastern British Columbia and interior Plains of Alberta) to the Beaufort Sea (north of Yukon and the Northwest Territories).

Treaty No. 5 was concluded at Lake Winnipeg ceding an area of approximately 100,000 sq. miles inhabited by Chippewa and Swampy Cree (Maskegon) of Manitoba and Ontario.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

"Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you" were the first intelligible words spoken over the telephone, as recorded in Bell's Journal entry (10 March 1876). These are often misquoted as "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson later recounted that Bell had spilled battery acid and had called for him over the phone with these words, but this may have been in a separate incident.

The Numbered Treaties were a series of 11 treaties made between the Crown and Indigenous peoples of Canada from 1871 to 1921. They cover the area between the Lake of the Woods (northern Ontario, southern Manitoba) to the Rocky Mountains (northeastern British Columbia and interior Plains of Alberta) to the Beaufort Sea (north of Yukon and the Northwest Territories).

Treaty No. 6 was signed at Carlton and at Fort Pitt with the Plains Cree, Woodland Cree and Assiniboine. It ceded an area of 120,000 sq. miles of the plains of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, having served also as an American representative and governor of Ohio. Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings in the antebellum years.

Hayes believed in meritocratic government and equal treatment without regard to race. He ordered federal troops to guard federal buildings and in so doing restore order from the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He implemented modest civil service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland–Allison Act, which would have put silver money into circulation.

The Numbered Treaties were a series of 11 treaties made between the Crown and Indigenous peoples of Canada from 1871 to 1921. They cover the area between the Lake of the Woods (northern Ontario, southern Manitoba) to the Rocky Mountains (northeastern British Columbia and interior Plains of Alberta) to the Beaufort Sea (north of Yukon and the Northwest Territories).

Treaty No. 7 was signed at Blackfoot Crossing in southern Alberta by the Blackfoot, Blood, Peigan, Sarsi and Stoney. Canadian officials understood that by the treaty First Nations surrendered some 35,000 sq miles of land to the Crown in return for reserves, payments and annuities.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

Sir John Alexander Macdonald (11 January 1815 – 6 June 1891) was the first prime minister of Canada (1867–1873, 1878–1891). The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career which spanned almost half a century. Macdonald was born in Scotland; when he was a boy his family immigrated to Kingston in the Province of Upper Canada (today in eastern Ontario).

He was re-elected in 1878. Macdonald's greatest achievements were building and guiding a successful national government for the new Dominion, using patronage to forge a strong Conservative Party, promoting the protective tariff of the National Policy, and completing the railway. He fought to block provincial efforts to take power back from the national government in Ottawa. His most controversial move was to approve the execution of Métis leader Louis Riel for treason in 1885; it alienated many francophones from his Conservative Party. He died in 1891, still in office; he is respected today for his key role in the formation of Canada. Historical rankings have consistently placed Macdonald as one of the highest rated Prime Ministers in Canadian history.

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science.

He is best known to the general public for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory.

William Ewart Gladstone (29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served for twelve years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894.

Historians have debated the wisdom of Gladstone's foreign-policy during his second ministry. Paul Hayes says it "provides one of the most intriguing and perplexing tales of muddle and incompetence in foreign affairs, unsurpassed in modern political history until the days of Grey and, later, Neville Chamberlain."

British sovereignty over the Arctic Islands passed to Canada.

Arctic sovereignty is a key part of Canada’s history and future — 40 per cent of the country’s landmass is in its three northern territories, and the country has 162,000 kilometers of Arctic coastline

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881 until his death by assassination six and a half months later.

Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, DC on July 2, 1881. After eleven weeks of intensive and other care Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.

Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician, microbiologist, and pharmacologist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the world's first antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin (Penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy.

Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885; he was the 20th vice president of the United States and became president upon the death (assassination) of President James Garfield in September 1881.

Arthur arrived in Washington, D.C. on September 21. On September 22, he re-took the oath of office, this time before Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite. Arthur took this step to ensure procedural compliance; there had been a lingering question about whether a state court judge (Brady) could administer a federal oath of office. He initially took up residence at the home of Senator John P. Jones, while White House remodeling he ordered was carried out, including the addition of an elaborate fifty-foot glass screen made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, which remained in a White House corridor until it was dismantled in 1902.

A prime meridian, based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London was established by Sir George Airy in 1851. By 1884, over two-thirds of all ships and tonnage used it as the reference meridian on their charts and maps. In October of that year, at the behest of US President Chester A. Arthur, 41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, D.C., United States, for the International Meridian Conference. This conference selected the meridian passing through Greenwich as the official prime meridian due to its popularity. However, France abstained from the vote, and French maps continued to use the Paris meridian for several decades.