On January 4, 1847, Samuel Colt rescues the future of his faltering gun company by winning a contract to provide the U.S. government with 1,000 of his .44 caliber revolvers.

On February 19, 1847, the first rescuers reach surviving members of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound emigrants stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

During the Mexican-American War, Mexican General Santa Anna surrounds the outnumbered forces of U.S. General Zachary Taylor at the Angostura Pass in Mexico and demands an immediate surrender. Taylor refuses, allegedly replying, “Tell him to go to hell.” Early the next morning, Santa Anna dispatches some 15,000 troops to move against the 5,000 Americans. Thus begins the Battle of Buena Vista, a shocking defeat for the Mexicans.

After 17 months and many miles of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 pioneers into Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Gazing over the parched earth of the remote location, Young declared, “This is the place,” and the pioneers began preparations for the thousands of followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons) who would soon come. Seeking religious and political freedom, the Latter-day Saints began planning their great migration from the east after the murder of Joseph Smith, the Christian sect’s founder and first leader.

The Republic of Liberia, formerly a colony of the American Colonization Society, declares its independence. Under pressure from Britain, the United States hesitantly accepted Liberian sovereignty, making the West African nation the first democratic republic in African history. A constitution modeled after the U.S. Constitution was approved, and in 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts was elected Liberia’s first president.

Seen by some as a vicious murderer and by others as a gallant Robin Hood, the famous outlaw Jesse Woodson James is born on September 5, 1847, in Clay County, Missouri.

On September 6, 1847, writer Henry David Thoreau moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts, after living for two years in a shack he built himself on Walden Pond.

During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott enter Mexico City and raise the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma, concluding a devastating advance that began with an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz six months earlier.

On October 19, 1847, Jane Eyre is published by Smith, Elder and Co. Charlotte Brontë, the book’s author, used the pseudonym Currer Bell. The book, about the struggles of an orphan girl who grows up to become a governess, was an immediate popular success.