The Webster-Ashburton Treaty established the Unites States-Canada border east of the Rocky Mountains. John J. Greenough received a patent for the sewing machine paving the way for a boom in New York’s furnishings and apparel industry. At about the same time, adhesive postage stamps were sold for the first time at New York City post office. The first child labor laws were introduced in the United States, England and Belgium. Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois while Karl Marx became editor of the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, Germany, only to be shut down by authorities the next year. Anesthesia in the form of ether was successfully used in an operation for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long, and would soon to come into widespread use during America’s Civil War. The British Empire, following on the Treaty of Nanking ending the First Opium War, annexed Hong Kong, which would one day become a gateway to the world’s largest population center.

In the world of finance, the Income Tax Act established the first peacetime income tax in the United Kingdom at 7 pence (2.9%) per pound for incomes over 150 pounds. Although promoted as a temporary measure, income tax has been levied continually in Britain ever since. President John Tyler was burned in effigy outside the White House after he vetoed two successive attempts to re-establish a central bank for the United States. Fully, one quarter of the banks operating in the United States in 1837 were bankrupt by 1842. And yet, the New York Curb Exchange, later to change its name to the American Stock Exchange, opened for business trading in securities not qualified for listing on the New York Stock Exchange. And the original Laidlaw & Company was born.