Major Events
- Feb 25 First Legal Tender Act 1862 is passed by the US Congress, authorizing the United States note (greenback) into circulation, the first fiat paper money that was legal tender in America
- Apr 20 First pasteurization test is completed by Frenchmen Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard
- May 20 US President Abraham Lincoln signs into law the Homestead Act to provide cheap land for the settlement of the American West (80 million acres by 1900)
- Jun 2 Robert E. Lee takes command of Confederate armies of North Virginia during the American Civil War
- Jun 19 Slavery outlawed in US territories
- Aug 29 Second Battle of Bull Run, fought in Manassas, Virginia begins, Confederate victory (US Civil War)
- Aug 30 Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, ends with a Confederate victory over Union forces
- Sep 4 General Lee begins the Maryland Campaign invading the North with 50,000 Confederate troops (US Civil war)
- Sep 17 Battle of Antietam [Battle of Sharpsburg], bloodiest day in the American Civil War: 22,000 dead, wounded or missing in first battle on Union soil
- Sep 22 US President Abraham Lincoln issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, threatening to free all enslaved people in the rebel southern states if those states fail to re-join the Union by January 1, 1863 [1]
- Sep 23 Otto von Bismarck appointed Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Prussia by King Wilhelm I
- Sep 30 Minister-President of Prussia Otto von Bismarck delivers his famous "Blood and Iron" speech on the unification of German territories
- Nov 4 American inventor Richard Jordan Gatling patents the hand cranked Gatling machine gun in Indianapolis
- More 1862 Events
1862 in Sport
Did You Know?
Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) creates Alice in Wonderland for Alice Liddell on a family boat trip on the river Isis (Thames) in Oxford
Aristide Briand
Ida B. Wells
Claude Debussy
O. Henry
Gerhart Hauptmann
Connie MackMore People Born in 1862
Samuel Colt
John Tyler
Henry David Thoreau
Martin Van BurenMore 1862 Deaths
Articles About 1862
United States One Dollar Bill
Image of the first US one dollar bill (United States Note) issued in 1862February 25
Westminster Bridge Defies a King and the Church
London's present Westminster Bridge was opened on this day, bringing to an end years of conflict which even involved the payment of a big bribe to the King.May 24
Second Battle of Bull Run
The Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, fought August 29th and 30th, 1862August 29
Famous Weddings in 1862
- Apr 27 Chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (28) weds Feozva Nikitichna Leshcheva at Nikolaev Engineering Institute's church in Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Sep 16 Future Queen of Hawaii Lili'uokalani (24) weds American secretary John Owen Dominis (29) until his death in 1891
- Sep 23 Russian novelist and author of "War and Peace" Leo Tolstoy (34) marries Sophia Andreevna Behrs (18) daughter of a physician in Moscow, Russia until his death in 1910
Charles Dickens
Giuseppe Verdi
Abraham Lincoln
Henry John Temple