January 24 in Victorian History
What the Victorians were up to on this date, year by remarkable year.
1848
Gold discovered at Sutter's Mill
James W. Marshall spots flakes of gold in the tailrace of Sutter's Mill on the American River in California, then still Mexican territory. Word leaks, then floods: within a year some 300,000 prospectors — the forty-niners — pour in from around the world, and the Gold Rush reshapes the American West. California becomes a US state in 1850, its breakneck growth financed by the very metal Marshall found.