At about eight o'clock in the evening, the steamboats Nathaniel Holmes, from Pittsburgh to St Louis, and the David Gibson, from New Orleans to Cincinnati collided near Aurora, Indiana on the Ohio River. The Pittsburgh vessel sank immediately and the Gibson while trying to make the shore. Estimates at the time were that forty-two people were drowned. (By John Osborne)

The steamboat St. Nicholas, sailing from St. Louis, Missouri to New Orleans, Louisiana was passing near Island Sixty in the Mississippi River at ten o'clock in the evening when its boilers exploded and the vessel took fire. Around forty people were killed and many more were injured and the steamboat was completely destroyed. (By John Osborne)

The 1500 ton American ship Pomona sailed from Liverpool on April 27, 1859 for New York with a crew of 37 and a passenger list of 372 emigrants. At a little past midnight in deteriorating weather, the vessel hit the Blackwater Bank, a sand bank seven miles off the Irish coast near Ballyconigar and was stuck fast. Through the day the storm intensified and all attempts to launch boats failed. In the evening, the severely damaged ship slipped off the sand bank and sank. Twenty crewmen and three passengers survived when one boat at last pulled clear from the wreck but the remaining 386 lives were lost. (By John Osborne)

The annual university Boat Race on the Thames, over four and a quarter miles from Putney and Mortlake has been regularly contested since 1839 between boats from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The race in 1859 took place on a blustery day and rough water troubled both crews. Cambridge was shipping more water than Oxford, however, and when a spectator steam boat pushed too close its wash swamped the favored Cambridge crew and Oxford rowed on to victory. (By John Osborne)

Despite British coolness to the project, French engineer Ferdinand De Lesseps and his Suez Canal Company began work on the Suez Canal. The work began on the Mediterranean, at what is now Port Said. The canal opened to shipping more than ten years later, on November 17, 1869 and revolutionized world trade. (By John Osborne)

Charles Dickens published the first chapter of The Tale of Two Cities in the April 30 edition of the London weekly magazine, All the Year Round, a new journal he had founded and controlled. Weekly installments continued until November 26, 1859, when the great story of the French Revolution was concluded. (By John Osborne)