History's Best Selling Products of 1867

Make way for the hits of 1867! This remarkable era stood as a testament to the golden era of American industry and the march of first-rate items. Crowd-pleasers such as Dynamite shared the spotlight with mega-bestsellers The New Life and essential classics. Brought to you by top-notch makers from industry leaders like Alfred Nobel and Dante Alighieri (Translated by C.E. Norton), these trailblazing products swept main street from coast to coast as genuine top-flight hits and earned a permanent place in cultural lore. Check out the complete rank-ordered ledger below to relive the finest releases of the year.

1. Dynamite

   Released in 1867 by Alfred Nobel

   On November 25, 1867, the world of engineering and industry was irrevocably changed when Alfred Nobel was granted a Swedish patent for his new invention, which he called 'Dynamite'. This date marks the official commercial and legal birth of a manageable high explosive. At the height of the Industrial Revolution, there was an immense need for a safer, more powerful alternative to black powder for blasting through rock in mines, quarries, and for the construction of canals and railways. Liquid nitroglycerin was potent but terrifyingly unstable. Nobel's patent represented the crucial solution: a method to tame nitroglycerin's power, turning it from an unpredictable killer into a reliable industrial tool, thereby paving the way for unprecedented construction projects and securing Nobel's legacy.

2. The New Life

   Released in 1867 by Dante Alighieri (Translated by C.E. Norton), Ticknor and Fields

   The 1867 publication of Charles Eliot Norton's translation of Dante Alighieri's "The New Life" (La Vita Nuova) was a landmark event, signaling a significant maturation in American intellectual and cultural life. Occurring in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, a period marked by national reconstruction and a burgeoning desire for cultural refinement, this translation underscored a growing ambition within American higher education to engage with and contribute to global scholarship. It demonstrated that American scholars were not merely consumers of European culture but were capable of producing translations of profound depth and accuracy, thereby establishing new benchmarks for literary scholarship and introducing a foundational work of Western literature to a wider, more appreciative American audience.