1854
This page is about the year 1854. For the board game, see 1854.1854 was a
common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).
January
*
January 4 - The
McDonald Islands are discovered by
Captain William McDonald aboard the
Samarang.
*
January 13 - The
accordion is patented by
Anthony Faas.
*
January 21 - Loss of the
RMS Tayleur - 380 drowned, later dubbed "the first
Titanic".
February
*
February 11 - Major streets lit by
coal gas for first time.
*
February 13 -
Mexican troops force
William Walker and his troops to retreat to
Sonora.
*
February 14 -
Texas is linked by
telegraph with the rest of the
United States, when a connection between
New Orleans and
Marshall, Texas is completed.
*
February 17 - The
British recognize the independence of the
Orange Free State.
*
February 23 - The official independence of the
Orange Free State is declared.
*
February 27 –
Britain sends
Russia an ultimatum to withdraw from two
Ottoman provinces it had conquered,
Moldavia and
Wallachia.
*
February 28 - The
United States Republican Party is organized in
Ripon, Wisconsin.
March
*
March 1 -
German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears, two years later his remains are found in the canal near
Charlottenburg.
*
March 11-
Royal Navy fleet sails from
Britain under
Vice Admiral Sir Charles Napier.
*
March 20 - The
Boston Public Library opens to the public.
*
March 27 –
United Kingdom declares war on
Russia –
Crimean War begins.
*
March 28 –
France declares war on
Russia.
*
March 31 -
Commodore Matthew Perry of the
U.S. Navy, signs the
Treaty/
Convention of Kanagawa with the
Japanese government, to be precise,
Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of
Shimoda and
Hakodate to
American trade. (See
History of Japan)
April
*
April 1 -
Hard Times begins serialisation in
Charles Dickens magazine,
Household Words.
May
*
May 30 -
Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law, rescinding the
Missouri Compromise of
1820 and creating
Kansas Territory and
Nebraska Territory. Provision that settlers will vote on slavery in the new territories leads to
Bleeding Kansas violence beginning the next year.
June
* June - The
Grand Excursion takes prominent
Eastern U.S. inhabitants from
Chicago, Illinois to
Rock Island, Illinois by
railroad, then up the
Mississippi River to
St. Paul, Minnesota by
steamboat.
*
June 10 - The first class of the
United States Naval Academy graduate at
Annapolis, Maryland.
*
June 21 - In the battle at
Bomarsund in
Åland,
Royal Navy mate
Charles D. Lucas throws a live
Russian artillery shell overboard by hand before it explodes - the incident is the first that will be retroactively awarded the
Victoria Cross in
1857.
July
*
July 6 - In
Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the
U.S. Republican Party is held.
*
July 13 - In the
battle of Guaymas,
Mexico,
General Jose Maria Yanez stops the
French invasion led by
Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon.
*
July 13 - Assassination of
Khedive Abbas I of Egypt.
August
*
August 16 -
Russian troops in the island of
Bomarsund in
Åland surrender to
French-
British troops.
September
*
September 20 -
Crimean War: At the
Alma, the
French-
British alliance wins the first battle of the war.
October
*
October 1 - The watch company founded in
1850 in
Roxbury by
Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to
Waltham,
Massachusetts to become the
Waltham Watch Company pioneer in the
American System of Watch Manufacturing.
*
October 17 - Newspaper
The Age is founded in
Melbourne,
Australia.
*
October 21 -
Florence Nightingale leaves for
Crimea with 38 other nurses.
*
October 25 -
Crimean War: The
Battle of Balaclava occurs, overall a victory for the allies, but it included the disastrous cavalry
Charge of the Light Brigade, from which only 200 of 700 men survive.
November
*
November 5 -
Crimean War:
Russians lose again at the
Battle of Inkerman.
*
November 17 - In
Egypt, the
Suez Canal, linking the
Mediterranean Sea with the
Red Sea, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony.
December
*
December 8 -
Pope Pius IX proclaims the
dogma of
Immaculate Conception, which holds that
the Virgin Mary was born free of
original sin.
.
Unknown dates
* The
Polyglotta Africana, an early classification of
African languages based on field work under freed slaves in
Freetown,
Sierra Leone, is published by
Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle.
*
Frederick Augustus Albert succeeds to the throne of
Saxony.
*
Stockholm, Wisconsin is founded by immigrants from
Karlskoga,
Sweden (cf
1252).
*
Chemistry Professor Benjamin Silliman, of
Yale University is the first to fractionate
petroleum by
distillation.
*
Abraham Pineo Gesner invents a process for extracting
kerosene from
coal.
*
Said Pasha succeeds his nephew
Abbas as pasha of
Egypt.
* A
Russian fort is established at the present site of
Almaty.
*
Aurora, Ontario is first settled.
*
Spiegelthal excavates the tomb of
Alyattes II.
* The
Ambrotype is introduced for
photography.
* Election of
New York City mayor Fernando Wood begins the ascendancy of
Tammany Hall.
* An epidemic of
cholera in
London kills 10,000.
Dr John Snow traces the source of one outbreak (that killed 500) to a single
water pump, validating his theory that
cholera is water-borne, and forming the starting point for
epidemiology.
* The
Iceland trade is opened to foreigners.
* The future site of
Franklin Pierce College in
Rindge, New Hampshire is purchased by
Captain Asa Brewer.
*
January 18 -
Thomas Watson, American telephone pioneer (d.
1934)
*
February 17 -
Friedrich Alfred Krupp, German industrialist (d.
1902)
*
March 14 -
Paul Ehrlich, German scientist, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1915)
*
March 14 -
Thomas R. Marshall,
Vice President of the United States (d.
1925)
*
March 15 -
Emil Adolf von Behring, German physician, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1917)
*
April 22 -
Henri La Fontaine, Belgian lawyer and activist, recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize (d.
1943)
*
April 29 -
Henri Poincaré, French mathematician and physicist (d.
1912)
*
May 11 -
Albion Woodbury Small, American sociologist (d.
1926)
*
May 24 -
John Riley Banister, law officer, cowboy, and Texas Ranger (d.
1918)
*
June 26 -
Robert Laird Borden, eighth
Prime Minister of Canada (d.
1937)
*
July 3 -
Leoš Janáček, Czech composer (d.
1928)
*
July 12 -
George Eastman, American inventor (d.
1932)
*
July 27 -
Takahashi Korekiyo,
Prime Minister of Japan (d.
1936)
*
August 2 -
Milan I,
King of Serbia (d.
1901)
*
August 23 -
Moritz Moszkowski, Polish/German composer (d.
1918)
*
September 1 -
Engelbert Humperdinck, German composer (d.
1921)
*
September 6 -
Georges Picquart, French general and Minister of War (d.
1914)
*
October 16 -
Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (d.
1900)
*
October 20 -
Arthur Rimbaud, French poet (d.
1891)
*
November 5 -
Paul Sabatier, French chemist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1941)
*
November 6 -
John Philip Sousa, American composer and conductor (d.
1932)
*
November 17 -
Hubert Lyautey, Marshal of France (d.
1934)
*
November 21 -
Pope Benedict XV (d.
1922)
*
December 23 -
Victoriano Huerta,
President of Mexico (d.
1916)
*
December 24 -
Thomas Stevens, English cyclist (d.
1935)
*
Edward Harkness, American philanthropist (d.
1940)
*
C. W. Post, American cereal manufacturer (d.
1914)
*
January 8 -
William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, British general and politician (b.
1768)
*
February 17 -
John Martin, English painter (b.
1789)
*
March 6 -
Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (b.
1778)
*
March 11 -
Willard Richards, American religious leader (b.
1804)
*
March 13 -
Thomas Noon Talfourd, English jurist (b.
1795)
*
April 15 -
Arthur Aikin, English chemist and mineralogist (b.
1773)
*
April 29 -
Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey, British general (b.
1768)
*
July 6 -
Georg Ohm, German physicist
*
September 8 -
Angelo Mai, Italian cardinal and philologist (b.
1782)
*
December 9 -
Almeida Garrett, Portuguese writer (b.
1799)
*
December 15 -
Kamehameha III,
King of Hawaii (b.
1814?)
*
Abbas I, Pasha of Egypt (b.
1813)
*
Samuel Wilson, thought to be Uncle sam.(b.
1813)
