The Victorian era was between 1837-1901 and was during the reign of Queen Victoria which is where it got its name from. The Victorian era is defined by the Industrial Revolution with many major inventions and scientific and technological advancements. Early in the Victorian era the great famine or the great potato famine struck Ireland, it was a period of mass starvation and disease, the population dropped by about 4.1 million with about 1 million of those being deaths and the others being people who fled the country. The main cause of the famine was the infection of potato crops with blight which is a disease that causes plants to rapidly wither and die. During the Victorian era Literacy and childhood education became nearly universal in Great Britain, but despite efforts to improve living conditions slum housing and disease were still major issues. The period from 1815-1914 is known as Pax Britannica and it was a time of relative peace between the worlds great powers. The only war in which the British empire fought against another major power during Pax Britannica was the Crimean war between 1853 and 1856. The war was fought by an alliance of Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia against Russia, in the end the allied forces won against Russia. In 1840, Queen Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha who was German. They had 9 children and Queen Victoria became known as the grandmother of Europe because all her kids married into royal families as well. But in 1861 Albert died and the queen was devastated. She went into mourning and withdrew from all of her public life for 10 years. On the 22nd of January 1901 Queen Victoria died, she was Queen for 63 years 7 months and 2 day and currently is the second longest reigning monarch in British history. A variety of reading types grew in popularity in the Victorian era like novels, magazines and newspapers. Music also grew in popularity with genres such as folk music, brass bands and theatre music. Many sports were introduce or made popular in the Victorian era. Some examples are cricket, football and tennis. Lots of inventions were made in the Victorian era and some of them are the telephone, underground railways, the bicycle, lightbulbs, radios, the sewing machine and telegraphs. The population of the British empire in 1837 when the Victorian era started was between 100 and 150 million people and by 1901 when Queen Victoria died there were about 400 million people. The main reasons for this crazy grow in population was because Britain took control over more countries but also because of the Industrial revolution in Britain and so lots of people saw better lives in Britain because of that.
