1860
1860 was a
leap year starting on Sunday.
January
*
January 2 - The discovery of the planet
Vulcan was announced at a meeting of the
Académie des Sciences in
Paris.
March
*
March 6 -
Abraham Lincoln speaks against
slavery in
New Haven, Connecticut.
*
March 24 -
Savoy and
Nice are
annexed into
France.
April
*
April 3 - The
Pony Express begins its first run from
Saint Joseph, Missouri to
Sacramento, California.
*
April 4 " New uprising in
PalermoMay
*
May 1 - A chondrite type
meteorite fell to earth in
Muskingum County, Ohio near the town of
New Concord.
*
May 5 -
Giuseppe Garibaldi and his troops depart from
Questa on the
Expedition of the Thousand*
May 8 - In
New Granada (modern-day
Colombia) southern state of
Cauca secedes from the central government in protest of the suggestion of increase of presidential powers.
Magdalena and
Bolivar join it
*
May 9 - The U.S.
Constitutional Union Party holds its convention and nominates
John Bell for
President of the United States.
*
May 15 -
Battle of Catalafimi; troops under
Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat the army of
Naples in Sicily, during the
Second Italian independence war.
*
May 18 -
Abraham Lincoln is selected as the US presidential candidate for the
Republican party.
*
May 27 - Garibaldi's forces take
Palermo, the capital of Sicily.
June
*
June 24 - First
nursing school, based on the ideas of
Florence Nightingale, is opened in
St. Thomas Infirmary in
England.
July
*
July 2 -
Vladivostok,
Russia is founded.
*
July 9 -
Mírzá 'Alí-Muhammad was executed by a firing squad in Tabriz, Persia for claiming to be a prophet.
*
July 11 -
Mutsuhito becomes
Crown Prince of
Japan.
*
July 19 -
Ioan Dimitrovich Kasatkin becomes an
Eastern Orthodox monk under the name Nikolai.
*
July 20 - The forces of
Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat royal Neapolitan forces at the
Battle of Milazzo, near Messina. Nearly all of Sicily was now under Garibaldi's control.
*
July 24 - Monk
Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as
deacon.
*
July 25 - Deacon
Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as
priest.
August
*
August 22 - Assisted by the British navy, the troops of
Giuseppe Garibaldi cross from Sicily to the Italian mainland
September
*
September 7 -
Lady Elgin is accidentally rammed and sunk in
Lake Michigan, hundreds drown.
*
September 7 -
Giuseppe Garibaldi's forces capture Naples.
*
September 10 - Piedmontese forces invade the
Papal States hoping to link up with Garibaldi in Naples
*
September 18 -
Battle of Castelfidardo. The Piedmontese decisively defeat the Papal forces, allowing them to continue their march into Neapolitan territory
October
*
John Hanning Speke and
James Augustus Grant leave
Zanzibar to search for source of the
Nile.
*
October 1 - The
Battle of the Volturno*
October 5 -
Austria,
Britain,
France,
Prussia and the
Ottoman Empire form a commission to investigate causes of clashes between
Maronites and
Druzes in
Lebanon earlier in the year.
*
October 10 - The original cornerstone of the
University of the South was laid in
Sewanee,
Tennessee.
*
October 18 - The
British general
Lord Elgin - with protestations from the
French - ordered his forces to set fire to the huge complex of
Beijing's
Old Summer Palace, known as the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, which burned to the ground. It took 3,500
British troops to set the entire place ablaze and took three days to burn.
Elgin justified the order as retaliation for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of several western prisoners of war, among them two British envoys who had been under protection of a flag of truce. The burning of the
Gardens of Perfect Brightness is still a very sensitive issue in
China today.
*
October 19 - New
Māori revolt begins in
New Zealand*
October 26 -
Battle of the Volturno. Garibaldi again defeats the Neapolitan forces, advancing on
Gaeta, the last remaining Neapolitan strong-point.
*
October 26 -
Giuseppe Garibaldi gives
Naples to the king
Victor Emmanuel II.
November
*
November 3 - The combined forces of
Giuseppe Garibaldi and King
Victor Emmanuel II besiege King
Francis II of the
Two Sicilies in
Gaeta, his last remaining stronghold.
*
November 6 -
U.S. presidential election, 1860:
Abraham Lincoln beats
John C. Breckinridge,
Stephen A. Douglas, and
John Bell and is elected as the 16th
President of the United States, the first
Republican to hold that office.
December
*
December 20 - South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union.
*
December 29 - The world's first ocean-going (all) iron-hulled and armoured
battleship, the (British)
HMS Warrior is launched.
Unknown month
* Massacres of the
Christians of
Damascus, Syria, by part of the Muslim population, under the supervision of the
Ottoman Empire.
*
Victor Emmanuel, King of
Sardinia seizes the whole of the Papal States except
Rome (see
Vatican City) and unites
Italy.
*
Robert Wilhelm Bunsen discovers
caesium and
rubidium (see
Discovery of the chemical elements)
*
Buenos Aires leader
Bartolomé Mitre subverts
Argentine Confederation and begins to establish a new centralist government with the help of
Uruguayan
Colorado party leader
Venancio Flores*
Augustana College is founded in
Rock Island, Illinois,
United States by
Swedish immigrants.
*
Sedalia, Missouri is incorporated.
*
First International Chemistry Congress in
Karlsruhe,
Germany.
January-April
*
January 3 -
Kato Takaaki, 24th
Prime Minister of Japan (d.
1926)
*
January 8 -
Emma Booth, the fourth child of
William and
Catherine Booth (d.
1903)
*
January 25 -
Charles Curtis,
Vice President of the United States (d.
1936)
*
January 29 -
William Jacob Baer, American painter (d.
1941)
*
January 29-
Anton Chekhov, Russian writer (d.
1904)
*
February 11 -
Rachilde, French author (d.
1953)
*
February 25 -
Sir William Ashley, economic historian (d.
1927)
*
February 29 -
Herman Hollerith, American businessman and inventor (d.
1929)
*
March 2 -
Susanna M. Salter, first woman mayor in the United States (d.
1961)
*
March 5 -
Sam Thompson, baseball player (d.
1922)
*
March 13 -
Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (d.
1903)
*
March 19 -
William Jennings Bryan, American politician (d.
1925)
*
March 22 -
Alfred Ploetz, German physician, biologist, and eugenicist (d.
1940)
*
March 27 -
Frank Frost Abbott, American classical scholar (d.
1924)
May-August
*
May 2 -
Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism (d.
1904)
*
May 9 -
J. M. Barrie, Scottish author (d.
1937)
*
May 20 -
Eduard Buchner, German chemist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1917)
*
May 21 -
Willem Einthoven, Dutch inventor, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1927)
*
May 25 -
James McKeen Cattell, American psychologist (d.
1944)
*
May 29 -
Isaac Albéniz, Spanish composer (d.
1909)
*
June 20 -
Jack Worrall, Australian cricketer, footballer, and coach (d.
1937)
*
July 3 -
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American feminist (d.
1935)
*
July 7 -
Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer (d.
1911)
*
July 19 -
Lizzie Borden, American murder suspect (d.
1927)
*
August 3 -
W.K. Dickson, Scottish inventor (d.
1935)
*
August 7 -
Alan Leo, British astrologer (d.
1917)
*
August 10 -
Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, Indian musician (d.
1936)
*
August 16 -
Jules Laforgue, French poet (d.
1887)
*
August 13 -
Annie Oakley, American outlaw (d.
1926)
*
August 15 -
Henrietta Vinton Davis, American elocutionist, dramatist, and impersonator (d.
1941)
September-December
*
September 5 -
Andrew Volstead, American politician (d.
1947)
*
September 6 -
Jane Addams, American social worker, recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize (d.
1935)
*
September 13 -
John J. Pershing, American general (d.
1948)
*
November 1 -
Boies Penrose, United States Senator from Pennsylvania (d.
1921)
*
November 6 -
Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Polish pianist and composer (d.
1941)
*
November 23 -
Billy the Kid, American gunfighter (d.
1881)
*
November 23 -
Hjalmar Branting,
Prime Minister of Sweden, recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize (d.
1925)
*
December 4 -
Charles de Broqueville, Belgian Prime Minister (d.
1940)
*
December 7 -
Joseph Cook, sixth
Prime Minister of Australia (d.
1947)
*
December 15 -
Niels Ryberg Finsen, Danish physician, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1904)
Unknown month
*
John Coughlin, American politician (d.
1938)
*
Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer (d.
1938)
*
Albert Giraud, Belgian poet (d.
1929)
*
Soapy Smith, Jefferson R. Smith, infamous American confidence man and crime boss (d.
1898)
*
Lancelot Speed, British illustrator (d.
1931)
*
January 27 -
János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (b.
1802)
*
January 27 -
Thomas Brisbane, Scottish astronomer (b.
1883)
*
January 29 -
Stephanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden (b.
1789)
*
February 20 -
Henry Drummond, Canadian poet (b.
1851)
*
March 17 -
Anna Jameson, German author
*
March 25 -
James Braid, Scottish surgeon (b.
1795)
*
May 12 - Sir
Charles Barry, English architect (b.
1795)
*
May 16 -
Anne Isabella Milbanke, wife of
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (b.
1792)
*
July 1 -
Charles Goodyear, American inventor (b.
1800)
*
October 31 -
Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, British admiral (b.
1775)
*
December 14 -
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th earl of Aberdeen (b.
1784)
*
Dai Xi, Chinese painter (b.
1801)
