Events January–March January 1 – The Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge opens between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky, in the United States, becoming the longest single-span bridge in the world. It was renamed after its designer, John A. Roebling, in 1983. January 8 – African-American men are granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia. January 11 – Benito Juárez becomes Mexican president again. January 30 – Emperor Kōmei of Japan dies suddenly, age 36, leaving his 14-year-old son to succeed as Emperor Meiji. January 31 – Maronite nationalist leader Youssef Bey Karam leaves Lebanon aboard a French ship for Algeria. February 3 – Shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu abdicates, and the late Emperor Kōmei's son, Prince Mutsuhito, becomes Emperor Meiji of Japan in a brief ceremony in Kyoto, ending the Late Tokugawa shogunate. February 7 – West Virginia University is established in Morgantown, West Virginia. February 13 – The Covering of the Senne in Brussels begins. February 14 – Augusta Institute is founded in Augusta, Georgia, later known as Morehouse College. February 15 – Johann Strauss II's waltz The Blue Danube (An der schönen blauen Donau) is first performed, at a concert of the Vienna Men's Choral Association. Later this year, Strauss will adapt it into its popular purely orchestral version for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. February 19 – Battle of Inlon River: The Qing Dynasty defeats the Nien rebels in Hubei, China. February 22 – The Indiana Daily Student is established at Indiana University in Bloomington. February 28 – After almost 20 years (1848), the United States Congress forbids taxpayer funding of diplomatic envoys to the Holy See (Vatican), and breaks off relations. Funding resumes, along with relations, in 1984. March – The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is established (opened one year later). March 1 – Nebraska is admitted as the 37th U.S. state. March 5 – The Fenian Rising breaks out in Ireland. March 16 – An article by Joseph Lister, outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery, is first published in The Lancet. March 23 – William III of the Netherlands accepts an offer of 5,000,000 guilders from Napoleon III for the sale of Luxembourg, leading to the Luxembourg Crisis. March 29 – The British North America Act receives royal assent, forming the Dominion of Canada, in an event known as the Confederation. This unites the Province of Canada (Quebec and Ontario), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia on