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"That was the year of the floods...which come like God's wrath, finished destroying everything that had been softened by the pouring rain." (38-39) "The earthquake of 1835 occurred around 11 a.m. and lasted about two minutes. The main shock destroyed much of Concepcion in just six seconds. There were aftershocks for several weeks and three tsunamis, each one larger than the last..."
https://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/01/vanwyhe.quake.chile.darwin/index.html -
"In the 1839, when the Opium War between China and Great Britain broke out, Tao Chi'en was sixteen years old." (200) "The conflicts marked the start of the era of unequal treaties and other inroads on Qing sovereignty that helped weaken and ultimately topple the dynasty in favor of republican China in the early 30th century."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Wars -
"To top it off, rich veins of silver and gold were discovered in the north." (65) "Chilean silver mining grew at an unprecedented pace, which transformed mining into one of the country's principal sources of wealth."
https://dbpedia.org/page/Chilean_silver_rush -
"The village of Yerba Buena was founded in 1769...that innocent little village awakened with the name San Francisco and fame that had reached the farthest points of the globe." (270) "San Francisco was originally named Yerba Buena in the 1700s by Spanish-speaking explorers. The name was officially changed to San Francisco in 1847 by Washington Bartlett, the first American mayor of Yerba Buena." https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/The-origin-stories-behind-Bay-Area-city-names-16747364.php -
"The yellow pellet that unleashed the madness... with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo." (145) "This treaty, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the war between the United States and Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including the present-day states, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona, and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming." https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-guadalupe-hidalgo -
"In January of that year, near the mill of a Swiss farmer on the banks of the American River, a man by the name of Marshall had found a scale of gold in the water." (144-145) "James Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill brought people to California from every corner of the world." Allende uses the discovery of gold to exemplify the importance of this event. As the starting point, this snowballed into a larger and more impactful event, the Gold Rush. -
"Finally, they were approaching the rocky island that announced the proximity of the famous Golden Gate, the threshold of the bay of San Francisco." (261) "At the beginning of 1849, San Francisco was the sleepy little village of 800, but in the summer of that year, one contemporary observed that it had compressed 50 years growth into four months."
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gold-rush-1849 -
"On the night of December twenty-second, he kissed Eliza and his mother goodbye, and the next morning set off for California." (153) "The same day, they met six Chinamen, and after relieving them of their valuables, the fiends tied their quests together and killed them all by cutting their throats."
https://www.historicalcrimedetective.com/ccca/joaquin-murieta-and-tiburcio-vasquez/ -
"In September of 1850, Tao... California became the newest state in the union." (386) "The Compromise of 1850 contained the following provisions: (1) California was admitted to the Union as a free state..."
https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/compromise-1850#:~:text=The%20Compromise%20of%201850%20contained,portion%20of%20New%20Mexico%20was