Also in March 1868
2nd: The composer and violinist Carl Eberwein dies aged 81. Born in Weimar, Eberwein held several positions in the German city, where he was championed by and worked closely with Goethe. He set many of Goethe’s texts as songs and, in 1829, composed music for an 80th-birthday performance of Faust.
5th: In England, CH Gould is awarded a patent for the stapler. Though his design is the first to receive official recognition, staplers of some description are known to have been existence since the reign of Louis XV in 18th-century France. Two years prior to Gould’s patent, George Mcgill has received a US patent for a small bendable brass paper fastener.
9th: Ambroise Thomas’s opera Hamlet premieres at the Paris Opéra with a cast including baritone Jean-baptiste Faure in the title role and Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson as Ophélie. Though the five-act work is based loosely on Shakespeare’s play, the libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier contains significant changes to the plot. 12th: During the first ever visit by a member of the British royal family to Australia, Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, is shot and wounded while picknicking on a beach in Sydney. His would-be assassin is John O’farrell, an Irishborn fruit and vegetable seller. Despite a plea for clemency from Alfred himself, O’farrell is hanged the following month.
13th: The impeachment trial of president Andrew Johnson begins in the US Senate. Johnson’s presidency, occasioned by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, has often seen him at odds with radical Republicans in Congress and things reach a head when he violates a restriction by sacking the secretary of war, Edwin M Stanton. The Senate acquits him by one vote, however.