January 22 in Victorian History
What the Victorians were up to on this date, year by remarkable year.
The Battle of Isandlwana
Some 20,000 Zulu warriors overrun a British column camped beneath the sphinx-like hill of Isandlwana in Natal. Around 1,300 British soldiers and colonial troops are killed in one of the worst defeats ever inflicted on a Victorian army. News of the disaster stuns London -- and that same afternoon, a tiny garrison at Rorke's Drift begins its famous stand.
Queen Victoria dies
At half past six in the evening, after a reign of 63 years and 216 days, Queen Victoria dies at Osborne House, aged 81. The Victorian age ends as it began -- with bells tolling across an empire that now spans a fifth of the world's land. Her coffin is dressed, at her own instruction, in white, with photographs and mementoes of Albert beside her.