Years: 1851 1852 1853 - 1854 - 1855 1856 1857

Decades: 1820s 1830s 1840s - 1850s - 1860s 1870s 1880s

Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century 1854 in art 1854 in literature 1854 in music 1854 in rail transport 1854 in science 1854 in sports List of state leaders in 1854 List of religious leaders in 1854

Events

• January 13 - The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas.
• February 11 - Major streets lit by coal gas for first time.
• 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 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 1 - German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears, two years later his remains are found in the canal near Charlottenburg
• 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)
• May 30 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the US territories of Nebraska and Kansas.
• June - The Grand Excursion takes prominent Eastern U.S. inhabitants from Chicago 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 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 16 - Russian troops in the island of Bomarsund in Åland surrender to French-British troops
• September 20 - Crimean War: At the Alma, the Franco-English alliance wins the first battle of the war.
• October 1 - The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Mass. 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 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.

• 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.

Births

• January 18 - Thomas Watson, telephone pioneer
• February 17 - Friedrich Alfred Krupp, industrialist (d. 1902)
• March 14 - Paul Ehrlich, physician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1908 (d. 1915)
• March 14 - Thomas R. Marshall, US vice-president (d. 1925)
• March 15 - Emil Adolf von Behring, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1901
• May 11 - Albion Woodbury Small, US sociologist
• July 3 - Leos Janacek, Czech composer
• July 12 - George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera
• July 27 - Takahashi Korekiyo, Japanese prime minister (d. 1936)
• August 2 - Milan I, king of Serbia
• October 16 - Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (d. 1900)
• October 20 - Arthur Rimbaud, French poet
• November 6 - John Philip Sousa, famous march composer and conductor
• November 21 - Pope Benedict XV (d. 1922)
• December 23 - Victoriano Huerta, Mexican president
• December 24 - Thomas Stevens, world-circling bicyclist
• Diamond Bessie - prostitute and murder victim (d. 1877)
• Edward Harkness - US philanthropist (d. 1940)
• C. W. Post - cereal manufacturer (d. 1914)

Deaths

• February 17 - John Martin, English painter
• March 13 - Thomas Noon Talfourd, English jurist
• April 15 - Arthur Aikin, English chemist and mineralogist
• July 7 - Georg Ohm, German physicist
• September 8 - Angelo Mai, Italian cardinal and philologist
• Abbas I, pasha of Egypt

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