1853 - Definition and Overview

Events

• January 19 - Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premieres in Rome
• January 21 - Russell L. Hawes patents the envelope folding machine
• January 29 - Napoleon III marries the Spanish Countess Eugènie at the Tuileries
• March 4 – Inauguration of US president Franklin Pierce
• June 7 - Franklin College of Lancaster, Pennsylvania merges with Marshall College of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania to form Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster
• June 20 - Pope Pius X elected
• July 8 Commodore Perry arrives in Edo Bay with a request for a trade treaty
• July 25 Outlaw and bandit Joaquin Murietta is killed.
• August 12 – New Zealand acquires self-government
• August 24 - Potato chips first prepared.
• November 15 - Maria II of Portugal is succeeded by her son Pedro
• November 30 - Crimean War: Battle of Sinope - The Russian fleet destroys the Turkish fleet.
• December 30 - Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest

• Yellow fever kills 7790 in New Orleans
• Alexander Wood invents the hypodermic syringe
• Argentina adopts federal constitution - Buenos Aires opposes that
• Donald McKay builds the Great Republic, the world's biggest sailing ship, which at 4,500 tons was too large to be successful
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel began work on the Great Eastern passenger steamer
• Start of Crimean War
• Independent Santa Cruz Maya of Eastern Yucatan recognized as an independent nation by British Empire
• Iesada succeeds Ieoshi as Japanese Shogun
• Beginning of the Late Tokugawa shogunate, the last part of the Edo period in Japan.

Births

• January 28 - José Martí, revolutionary (+ 1895)
• February 6 - Ignacij Klemenčič, Slovene physicist (+ 1901)
• March 14 - Ferdinand Hodler, painter (+ 1918)
• March 30 - Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter
• May 28 - Carl Larsson, painter (+ 1919)
• June 3 - William Flinders Petrie, Egyptologist
• July 5 - Cecil Rhodes, South African politician
• July 18- Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate

Deaths

• January 16 - Matteo Carcassi, Italian composer
• March 17 - Christian Doppler, mathematician
• July 23 - Ieoshi, Japanese Shogun
• November 15 - Maria II of Portugal