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Events of the World: June 1863
Posted By Brian Tomlin on June 30, 2013
June 1863
June 7th.
Mexico City captured by French troops. French troops under Bazaine entered Mexico City on 7 June 1863. The main army entered the city three days later led by General Forey. General Almonte was appointed the provisional President of Mexico on 16 June, by the Superior Junta (which had been appointed by Forey) The Superior Junta with its 35 members met on 21 June, and proclaimed a Catholic Empire on 10 July.
June 13:
Samuel Butler publishes his article/essay “Darwin Among the Machines”. The article raised the possibility that machines were a kind of “mechanical life” undergoing constant evolution, and that eventually machines might supplant humans as the dominant species.
Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
Butler developed this and subsequent articles into The Book of the Machines, three chapters of Erewhon, published anonymously in 1872
June 17:
Traveler’s Insurance C0mpany of Hartford, CT chartered as the first accident insurance company. It was originally founded to provide travel insurance to railroad travelers at a time when travel was far more risky and dangerous than today.
June 20:
The National Banking and Currency Act was passed by Congress and signed into law in 1863. First National Bank in Davenport was the first bank in the country to open under the new act. It was chartered on June 20, 1863 and opened on June 29. A $12.60 check written by Henry Hess was the first check in the country to clear the new banking system.
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