Events of 1846 back to top

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The Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel divides his own party by repealing the unpopular Corn Laws, which prohibited the import of cheap grain from overseas, viewed by many as causing the famines in Ireland (which peaked in this year), as well as domestic hardships following a bad harvest. Peel, defeated on a separate issue, resigns. The Whig Earl Russell becomes Prime Minister.Ether is used for the first time as anaesthetic in an operation by the dentist William Morton, while surgeon John Collins Warren removes a tumor on a patient's neck.Edward Lear, the popular humourist and artist, and author of illustrated nonsense verse (including 'The Owl and the Pussycat'), publishes hisThe first Anglo-Sikh war ends with the Treaty of Lahore, by which Jammu and Kashmir are ceded to the British. The war had been fought between the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab and the British East India Company, with conflict escalating after internal disorder in the Punjab led the East India Company to increase their military presence on the border.