Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, English lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1799)
Edward George Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, (29 March 1799 – 23 October 1869, known before 1834 as Edward Stanley, and from 1834 to 1851 as Lord Stanley) was a British statesman, three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and, to date, the longest-serving leader of the Conservative Party. He was scion of one of Britain's oldest, wealthiest and most powerful families. He is one of only four British prime ministers to have three or more separate periods in office. However, his ministries each lasted less than two years and totalled three years and 280 days. Derby reformed education in Ireland, and reformed Parliament.Historian Frances Walsh has written that it was Derby:
who educated the party and acted as its strategist to pass the last great Whig measure, the 1867 Reform Act. It was his greatest achievement to create the modern Conservative Party in the framework of the Whig constitution, though it was Disraeli who laid claim to it.
Scholars long ignored his role but in the 21st century rank him highly among all British prime ministers.
1869Oct, 23
Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby
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Events on 1869
- 6Mar
Periodic table
Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society. - 28Apr
First Transcontinental Railroad
Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay ten miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched. - 15May
Susan B. Anthony
Women's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association. - 17Nov
Suez Canal
In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated. - 22Nov
Clipper
In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched and is one of the last clippers ever built, and the only one still surviving today.