Entries for 1866
There is material for
February,
March,
April,
June,
August,
September,
October,
November,
December 1866:
- 19 February 1866: The Diana, Hull’s first steam-assisted whaler and its last of any nature, leaves on its fateful voyage to the Arctic
- 19 March 1866: Corn-merchant J.R. Mortimer of Driffield opens a prehistoric burial mound on the Wolds and suggests a link to ancient Greek descriptions of Balearic rites
- 30 March 1866: On Good Friday, lost northwest of Jan Mayen in the Arctic Ocean and battered by old sea ice in a terrible gale, the crew of the whaler Diana of Hull stoically awaits death
- 28 April 1866: On appeal in London, one Mr Clark is jailed for a second time for refusing to honour his employment contract with Unwin & Rogers, Sheffield cutlers
- 5 June 1866: Crew members of the whaler Diana (Hull) climb an Arctic hillside and leave a memento of home
- 24 June 1866: Captain Gravill of the Diana of Hull celebrates his crew’s failure to catch a whale on the Sabbath
- 30 June 1866: The crew of the Diana of Hull kill and process two right whales worth £200K (2023) in Melville Bay, off northwestern Greenland
- 12 August 1866: William Allison (15) goes grouse shooting for the first time, on Saltergate Moor (Pickering)
- 19 September 1866: Ostentatiously breaking with medical tradition, Clifford Allbutt, physician, and Claudius Galen Wheelhouse, surgeon, cooperate at Leeds Infirmary to cure a pericarditis
- 27 October 1866: Dr Hook, Dean of Chichester, writes to his wife from his old vicarage in Leeds
- 5 November 1866: Bonfire Night firework riots at Halifax
- 7 November 1866: James Robinson of Barnsley is observed teaching his dog to worry cats
- 7 November 1866: The Huddersfield Improvement Commissioners hear of the unsatisfactory arrangements for married couples in dosshouses
- 14 December 1866: At quarter to five in the morning, the signal bell rings and a voice calls out from the depths of Oaks Colliery (Barnsley), tomb to 361 men and boys in the last day and a half
- 25 December 1866: Starving amidst Arctic ice, and with Captain Gravill on his deathbed, the crew of the Diana of Hull celebrate a “horrible mockery of the spirit of an English Christmas”