The Bellevue Hospital's new medical school had opened its first preliminary term on its site near the East River in New York City the previous month.  It was the first medical school in the city affiliated with a hospital.  Its president was Dr. Isaac E. Taylor, had sixteen faculty members, and the fee for a full course of lectures per year was $105. The school merged with the New York University College of Medicine in 1898.  (By John Osborne)

The Bellevue Hospital's new medical school opened its first preliminary term on its site near the East River in New York City.  It began its regular term on Wednesday, October 16, 1861 and was the first medical school in the city affiliated with a hospital.  Its president was Dr. Isaac E. Taylor, had sixteen faculty members, and the fees for a full course of lectures per year was $105. The school merged with the New York University College of Medicine in 1898.  (By John Osborne)

At around one-thirty in the afternoon a small meteorite shower struck farming land in northern Spain near Barcelona with some noise and violence.  The largest fragment found, called the Cañellas Meteorite, weighed 859 grams, was of chrondite, and can be found at the Natural History Museum in Madrid.  (By John Osborne)

John Tebbutt, an Australian sheep farmer and amateur astronomer in Windsor, New South Wales, discovered "the Great Comet of 1861" approaching Earth.  One of only eleven comets designated "Great" during the nineteenth century, it was disinctive for its angle of approach which had the Earth actually passing through a portion of its tail.  The comet became visible to the naked eye in the northern hemisphere on June 30, 1861 and remained so until mid-August, passing within 13 million miles.  (By John Osborne)