1854

Decades: 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s - 1850s - 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s

Years: 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 - 1854 - 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859

• January 13 - The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas.
• February 11 - Major streets lit by coal gas for first time.
• February 17 - The British recognize the independence of the Orange Free State.
• February 28 - The United States Republican Party is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.
• March 20 - The Boston Public Library opens to the public.
• March 28 - Crimean War: United Kingdom and France declare war on Russia, to begin the Crimean War.
• March 31 - Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy, signs the Treaty/Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, 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.
• 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.
• September 20 - Crimean War: At the Alma, the Franco-English alliance wins the first battle of the war.
• October 17 - Newspaper The Age is founded in Melbourne, Australia.
• 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.

• 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.

Year in topic

• 1854 in literature:
  • Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity
  • Henry David Thoreau, Walden
• 1854 in science

Births

• January 18 - Thomas Watson, telephone pioneer
• February 17 - Friedrich Alfred Krupp, industrialist (+ 1902)
• March 14 - Paul Ehrlich, physician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1908 (+ 1915)
• March 14 - Thomas R. Marshall, US vice-president (+ 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 (+ 1936)
• August 2 - Milan I, king of Serbia
• October 16 - Oscar Wilde, Irish writer
• October 20 - Arthur Rimbaud, French poet
• December 23 - Victoriano Huerta, Mexican president
• December 24 - Thomas Stevens, world-circling bicyclist
• Diamond Bessie - prostitute and murder victim (+ 1877)
• Edward Harkness - US philanthropist (+ 1940)
• C. W. Post - cereal manufacturer (+ 1914)

Deaths

• 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

Referenced By