LXIV. Le mendiant
LXIV. The Beggar
Mexico declares war on the United States over the annexation of Texas, while Paris colleges hold their annual prize-givings.
- Mexico's interim president José Joaquín de Herrera issued a formal declaration of war against the United States, calling all citizens to arms in response to Congress's decree annexing Texas.
- A British warship captured the Brazilian slave-ship La Princesse, which had made three voyages importing 2,400 enslaved Africans to Santos; a second Arab slave vessel carrying 231 captives was seized near Madagascar and destroyed.
- The King of Prussia purchased Anton Schindler's entire collection of Beethoven autograph manuscripts for the state library of Bonn, and Franz Liszt is expected to lay the first stone of a new Beethoven Street in the city.
- The Duc de Montpensier was received in Cairo with extraordinary honours: Ibrahim Pasha presented him with diamond-set amber pipes and curiosities valued at 40,000 thalers.
- At the Collège Charlemagne prize-giving, chemist and peer Louis-Jacques Thénard delivered a rhapsodic address urging pupils to study the sciences, proclaiming that chemistry 'is the terror of crime' and can extract poison traces from a victim's body.
- A grandstand at the Nantes racecourse collapsed under an overcrowded crowd, injuring 67 people of all ages; its owner had slashed admission prices at the climactic moment of the race, overloading posts already weakened by a fortnight of rain.
- Twenty-six defendants, including eating-house keepers and a lemonade-seller's assistant known as Pistolat, appeared before Paris's correctional court in the sensational Rue du Rempart blackmail ring case, promptly heard in closed session.
- Eleven Ojibway Indians newly arrived in Paris visited George Catlin's gallery, recognised acquaintances in his paintings, and arranged performances at the Salle Valentino — rivals in custom and enemies of the Iowa tribe who had visited Paris earlier.