The Great Exhibition and Nightingale

The Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park, London, inside a huge building of steel and glass called the Crystal Palace, where nations from across the globe put their goods on show, though most of the objects on display were British. Behind that industry stood an empire: the British Empire in the Victorian age saw its population put at more than 400 million people, the largest empire the world had seen.

The Nightingale Training School for nurses opened at St Thomas' Hospital, London. It was the first school of its kind, and Florence Nightingale is often seen as the founder of modern nursing.

Elsewhere, industry kept moving. The Great Western Railway became known for being the first major railway built in Britain. Ireland fared worse in these same years: the famine in Ireland followed the failure of the potato crop, which many had depended on for much of their diet, and it drove large numbers of people to leave the country.