| Year Summary | Monarch is Queen Victoria. Prime Minister is George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (Coalition). US President is Franklin Pierce (D-New Hampshire). It's the Crimean War; Florence Nightingale and other trained volunteer nurses go to assist; Victory at the the <em>Battle of Balaclava</em> but a disastrous cavalry Charge of the Light Brigade. Alfred Tennyson writes a poem about it and Charles Dickens writes <em>Hard Times</em>. The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) is nearly over. |
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