- Jan 5 1st steamboat sails, Red River
- Jan 22 Brahms' 1st piano concerto (in D minor) premieres in Hanover
- Jan 23 Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii begins an eruption that lasts 300 days
- Jan 24 Political union of Moldavia and Wallachia; Alexandru Ioan Cuza is elected as ruler
- Feb 5 Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities
The Indian Mutiny
Feb 10 General Horsford defeats Begum of Oude and Nana Sahib in Indian Mutiny
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Music Premiere
Feb 17 Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Un Ballo in maschera" premieres in Napoli
Giuseppe Verdi
- Feb 25 1st use of "insanity plea" to prove innocence
- Feb 26 Paul Morphy's chess match vs Augustus Mongredien begins; Morphy wins
- Feb 28 Arkansas legislature requires free blacks to choose exile or slavery
- Mar 1 Present seal of San Francisco adopted (its 2nd)
- Mar 2 21st Grand National: Chris Green aboard Half Caste IRE wins
- Mar 18 Vera Cruz besieged by Miramon (Cons) in Mexican War of Reform
- Mar 19 Opera "Faust" by Charles Gounod premieres in Paris
- Mar 21 Scottish National Gallery opens in Edinburgh
- Mar 21 Zoological Society of Philadelphia, 1st in US, incorporated
- Mar 26 1st supposed sighting of Vulcan, a planet thought to orbit inside Mercury; it doesn't exist
- Mar 28 1st performance of John Brahms' 1st Serenade for orchestra
- Apr 4 Opera "Dinorah" is produced (Paris)
- Apr 4 Bryant's Minstrels debut "Dixie" in New York City in the finale of a blackface minstrel show
- Apr 6 US recognizes Liberal government in Mexico's War of Reform
- Apr 12 Hibernia Savings & Loan Society of San Francisco incorporates
- Apr 25 Ground broken for Suez Canal
- Apr 26 Dan Sickles is acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity - 1st time this defense used successfully in the US
- Apr 27 "Pomona" sinks in North Atlantic drowning all 400 aboard
Historic Publication
Apr 30 Charles Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities" is first published in literary periodical "All the Year Round" (weekly installments until Nov 26)
Charles Dickens
- Apr 30 Paul Morphy returns from 10-month chess tour of Europe, retires
- May 4 The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England.
- May 17 Australian Rules Football first 'laws of the game' published
- May 31 Philadelphia A's organize to play "town ball" became baseball 20 years later
- Jun 4 Second Italian War of Independence: Battle of Magenta, results in a French-Sardinian victory under Napoleon III over the Austrians under Marshal Ferencz Gyulai
- Jun 6 Australia: Queensland is established as a separate colony from New South Wales (Queensland Day).
- Jun 12 Comstock Silver Lode in Nevada discovered, first major silver discovery in the US
- Jun 15 Pig War: Ambiguity in the Oregon Treaty leads to the "Northwestern Boundary Dispute" between U.S. and British/Canadian settlers
Victory in Battle
Jun 24 Battle of Solferino, Northern Italy: a French Army under Napoleon III and Sardinian Army under Victor Emmanuel II overcame the Austrian Army under Emperor Franz Joseph I
Victor Emmanuel II
- Jun 28 1st dog show held (Newcastle-on-Tyne, England)
- Jun 30 French acrobat Charles Blondin is 1st to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope
- Jul 1 1st intercollegiate baseball game, Amherst beats Williams 66-32
- Jul 1 Balloon covers a record 809 miles over St Louis
- Jul 5 Capt N C Brooks discovers Midway Islands
- Jul 8 King Charles XV/Carl IV accedes to the throne of Sweden-Norway
- Jul 12 Paper bag manufacturing machine patents by William Goodale, Massachusetts
- Jul 22 V E Walker takes 10-74 in an innings for England v Surrey
- Aug 9 Otis Tuft patents the first passenger elevator in the US
- Aug 17 1st air mail (in a balloon) took off from Lafayette, Indiana
- Aug 27 1st successful oil well drilled, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin Drake
- Aug 28 A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it is seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and even as far afield as Japan.
- Sep 1 1st Pullman sleeping car in service
- Sep 1 R C Carrington & R Hodgson make 1st observation of solar flare
- Sep 1 A solar superstorm affects electrical telegraph service.
- Sep 2 Gas lighting introduced to Hawaii
- Sep 2 A solar super storm affects electrical telegraph service.
Event of Interest
Sep 16 Lake Nyasa, which forms Malawi's boundary with Tanzania & Mozambique discovered by British explorer David Livingstone
David Livingstone
Event of Interest
Sep 17 Joshua Abraham Norton, English-born resident of San Francisco, proclaims himself his Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America
Emperor Norton
Murder of Interest
Sep 17 James Donnelly is sentenced to hang for murdering Patrick Farrell, but a petition for clemency reduces his sentence to 7 years in Kingston Penitentiary
James Donnelly
- Sep 20 George Simpson patents electric range
- Sep 29 Great auroral display in US
- Oct 12 Self-proclaimed Emperor of the USA, Emperor Norton issues edict abolishing the US Congress
Event of Interest
Oct 16 John Brown leads 21 in raid on federal arsenal, Harper's Ferry, Va
John Brown
- Oct 19 Wilhelm Tempel discovers diffuse nebula around Pleid star Merope
- Oct 25 Merchant vessel Royal Charter runs aground at Liverpool, 459 die
- Oct 26 The steam clipper Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, north Wales with 459 dead
- Oct 29 Spain declares war on Morocco
- Nov 1 The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse was lit for the first time. Its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for about 19 miles (30 kilometers), in good conditions.
- Nov 12 Jules Leotard performs 1st Flying Trapeze circus act (Paris) He also designed garment that bears his name
- Nov 16 Aleksandr Ostrovsky's "Groza" premieres in Moscow
Historic Publication
Nov 24 English naturalist Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species" radically changing the view of evolution and laying the foundation for evolutionary biology
Charles Darwin
- Nov 26 Last weekly installment of Charles Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities" is published in literary periodical "All the Year Round"
- Dec 5 Dion Boucicault's "Octaroon" premieres in NYC
- Dec 15 GR Kirchoff describes chemical composition of Sun
- Dec 18 South Carolina declared an "independent commonwealth"
- Dec 19 Grading started for Market Street RR
- Dec 31 Dutch colony in Dutch Indies counts 4,800 slaves