Quotes

Congress, in a mood of parsimony, refused to extend funds, so the money had to be raised privately. Unfortunately, when the American products arrived

The 1851 census also showed that more people in Britain now lived in cities than in the countryside—the first time that this had happened

The most popular feature at the Great Exhibition was not an exhibition at all, but rather the elegant “retiring rooms,” where visitors could relieve

In the middle of the nineteenth century, London had just 218 acres of burial grounds. People were packed into them in densities almost beyond

Practical Instructions in Gardening for Ladies, published in 1841, which proved to be magnificently timely. It was the first book of any type ever

Bell treated his friend and colleague Watson generously. Though he had no legal obligations to do so, he awarded Watson 10 percent of the

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, no one anywhere, Bell included, saw its full potential. Many didn’t see any potential for

both born in 1847

Devonshire (but located in that peculiar English way in Derbyshire). Paxton was a wonder. Born into a poor farming family in Bedfordshire in 1803,

So the idea of a park built by a city for the free use of all its citizenry, whatever their station in life, was