Neptune---A little list

This morning I read a story about a tribe of indigenous people in Peru who have a history of very little to NO contact with the outside world. Lately, they have been poking around with modern man (if I can use that word), which has scientists wondering 'why?' Could be issues involving logging of their forests, airplanes flying over head looking for gas and oil or maybe they are ready to get their cable TV so they too can watch Jersey Shore. Who knows? But the whole thing reminded me of the last time Neptune was in Pisces and how it inspired explorations.

Just for sport I went to Wikipedia to look at a list of explorations and other significant highlights between 1848 and 1861 which was the last time Neptune was in his home sign. I bolded a few that might strike a familiar bone to today's events. Take a look:


1846–48: The Mexican-American War leads to Mexico's cession of much of the modern-day Southwestern United States.
1846–47: Mormon migration to Utah.
1847: The Brontë sisters publish Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey
1847–1901: The Caste War of Yucatán.
1848–1849: Second Anglo-Sikh War
1848: The Communist Manifesto published.
1848: Revolutions of 1848 in Europe
1848: Seneca Falls Convention is the first women's rights convention in the United States and leads to the battle for suffrage and women's legal rights.
1848–58: California Gold Rush1849: The first boatloads of gold prospectors arrive in California, giving them the nickname 49ers.
1849: The safety pin and the gas mask are invented
1849: Earliest recorded air raid, as Austria employs 200 balloons to deliver ordinance against Venice.
[edit] 1850s
1850: The Little Ice Age ends around this time.
1850–1864: Taiping Rebellion is the bloodiest conflict of the century, leading to the deaths of 20 million people.
1851: The Great Exhibition in London was the world's first international Expo or World's Fair.1851: Louis Napoleon assumes power in France in a coup.
1851–52: The Platine War ends and the Empire of Brazil has the hegemony over South America.
1851–60s: Victorian gold rush in Australia
1852: Frederick Douglass delivers his speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" in Rochester, New York.
1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry threatens the Japanese capital Edo with gunships, demanding that they agree to open trade.
1853–56: Crimean War between France, the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire and Russia
1854: Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
1854: The Convention of Kanagawa formally ends Japan's policy of isolation.
1854–1855: Siege of Sevastapol; city falls to British forces.
1855: Bessemer process enables steel to be mass produced.
1856: World's first oil refinery in Romania1856: Neanderthal man first identified.
1857–58: Indian Rebellion of 1857. The British Empire assumes control of India from the East India Company.
1858: Invention of the phonautograph, the first true device for recording sound.
1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1859–1869: Suez Canal is constructed.

1860: The Pony Express started.
1861–65: American Civil War between the Union and seceding Confederacy
1861: Russia abolishes serfdom.