The Continental Theater in Philadelphia was producing Shakespeare's Tempest in ballet form with a large corps of dancers.  Just before a performance, as the women were dressing, the costume of one caught fire from a gas lamp.  Others ran to help her and their dresses caught as well.  Quickly, many in the dressing-room were ablaze.  Seven women dancers died from their burns and others suffered serious injuries.  (By John Osborne) 

At around 7:30 in the evening near Kentish Town in north London, an excursion train from Kew collided with a goods train that had halted to shunt its locomotive from front to rear.  The passenger train had been a late addition to the schedule and was carrying several hundred passengers in twelve carriages.  The collision sent several cars crashing onto the road below the embankment.  Sixteen people were killed and 320 injured, some severely.  (By John Osborne) 

A large boiler in an engine house attached to an oil cake mill at Rotherhithe on the River Thames exploded around six o'clock in the evening as a gang of boilermakers were carrying out repairs. The engine house was completely destroyed and the ten men working there were all killed instantly or died of dreadful burns soon after.  (By John Osborne) 

The third serious fire among the warehouses lining the Thames around the London Docks completely destroyed a nine-storey sugar warehouse and killed at least two men in a boilermaker's crew trapped above the blaze.  The fire was contained to the one building, however.  Total damage was estimated at around £80,000. (By John Osborne)

Two trains collided deep inside the Clayton railway tunnel just outside Brighton in southern England on the line to London.  They were carrying a total of 589 people in twenty-nine carriages.  At around nine o'clock in the morning, the second train's locomotive crashed into the rear carriages of the first, killing at least twenty-four people and injuring 176 others. The cause seemed to be the confusion caused with signalling when three large trains left Brighton for London almost immediately after each other.  (By John Osborne)

Queen Victoria made her third visit to Ireland, her second with Prince Albert.  They visited their eldest son, who was serving with the Grenadier Guards at the Curraugh outside Dublin, and then spent several days in Killarney in fine weather before travelling to Scotland and their summer residence at Balmoral.  (By John Osborne)  

Just six weeks before in this same part of the London Docks, a massive riverfront fire had burned dozens of buildings and killed the head of the London Fire Brigade.  This time firefighters were able to confinethe blaze to a single large warehouse where thousand of pounds in goods, along with the building, were totally destroyed. And no deaths or serious injuries were reported.  (By John Osborne) 

The National Rifle Association held its second annual Prize Shooting Competition on Wimbledon Common outside London.  The elite competions drew 3785 shooters, almost triple the 1860 number, and other open competitions attracted a staggering 46,432, more than a five-fold increase on the previous year.  More than 100,000 rounds were provided to those without their own ammunition. Entry fees brought in £9284 and, in addition, 21, 771 paid spectators watched the firing and the review that followed. (By John Osborne) 

Prince Albert opened the extensive new gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society in South Kensington before a crowd of 10,000 people.  The more than twenty-two acres site remained the fifty-year old society's main garden till it closed in 1882 and the space was taken up for the construction of the Royal Albert Hall, and later the present buildings of the Science Museum, the Royal College of Music, and Imperial College. (By John Osborne) 

British fears for Canada as the American Civil War expanded prompted the government to hire the giant liner Great Eastern as a troop transport.  She sailed from Liverpool, with almost 3300 aboard including 2,600 troops, 350 wives and children, and 122 horses.  She arrived in Canada without incident. (By John Osborne)