Explore 785 historical events from 1850–1859.
Granville Tailer Woods was an American inventor who held more than 60 patents in the United States. He was the first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the C…
Granville Woods, American inventor and engineer (died 1910)
The Australian labour movement began in the early 19th century and since the late 19th century has included industrial and political wings. Trade unions in Australia may be formed …
Australian labour movement: Stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne march from the Universit
The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the Ho…
Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina severely beats Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane in the h
John Brown was an American Christian abolitionist in the decades preceding the American Civil War. First reaching national prominence in the 1850s for his radical abolitionism and …
John Brown and his men kill five slavery supporters at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas
The Pitcairn Islands, officially Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands, are a group of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean that form the sole British Overseas…
A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the
Henri Philippe Bénoni Omer Joseph Pétain, better known as Marshal Pétain, was a French military officer who commanded the French Army in World War I and later became the head of th…
Philippe Pétain, French general and politician, 119th Prime Minister of France (died 1951)
Sir Joseph George Ward, 1st Baronet, was a New Zealand politician who served as the 17th prime minister of New Zealand from 1906 to 1912 and from 1928 to 1930. He was a dominant fi…
Joseph Ward, Australian-New Zealand businessman and politician, 17th Prime Minister of New Zealand (died 1930)
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies arising from conflicts in the psyche through …
Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst (died 1939)
Robert Edwin Peary was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was long …
Robert Peary, American admiral and explorer (died 1920)
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island and the second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand. Christchurch has an urban population of 407,800, and a met…
Christchurch, New Zealand, is chartered as a city.
The 1856 Last Island hurricane was a deadly and destructive tropical cyclone that is tied with 2020's Hurricane Laura and 2021's Hurricane Ida as the strongest hurricane on record …
The Last Island hurricane strikes Louisiana, resulting in over 200 deaths.
The Tianjing Incident was a major internal political conflict within the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom occurring during the late Qing dynasty from September 2 to October 1856. The confl…
The Tianjing incident takes place in Nanjing, China.
The Second Opium War, also known as the Second Anglo-Chinese War or Arrow War, was fought between the United Kingdom and France against the Qing dynasty of China between 1856 and 1…
The Second Opium War between several western powers and China begins with the Arrow Incident.
The 1856 Heraklion earthquake, also known as the Crete earthquake or Rhodes earthquake, occurred on the morning of October 12 at 02:45 am local time. This extremely catastrophic ea…
An M 7.7–8.3 earthquake off the Greek island of Crete cause major damage as far as Egypt and Malta.
Pedro José Domingo de la Calzada Manuel María Lascuráin Paredes was a Mexican politician and lawyer who served as the 38th president of Mexico for 45 minutes on 19 February 1913, t…
Pedro Lascuráin, Mexican politician (died 1952)
Tom O'Rourke was born in Boston and became a boxing manager in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Tom O'Rourke, American boxer and manager (died 1938)
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author best known for his children's fantasy books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum…
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The 1856 Heraklion earthquake, also known as the Crete earthquake or Rhodes earthquake, occurred on the morning of October 12 at 02:45 am local time. This extremely catastrophic ea…
An M 7.7–8.3 earthquake off the Greek island of Crete causes major damage as far as Egypt and Malta.
The Second Opium War, also known as the Second Anglo-Chinese War or Arrow War, was fought between the United Kingdom and France against the Qing dynasty of China between 1856 and 1…
Second Opium War: Dissatisfied with imperial commissioner Ye Mingchen's reparations for the alleged slighting of a…
Matthias Zurbriggen (15 May 1856 in Saas-Fee – 21 June 1917 in Geneva) was a Swiss mountaineer. He climbed throughout the Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas and New Zealand.
Matthias Zurbriggen, Swiss mountaineer (died 1917)
Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, was a French painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played an important role i…
Henri-Edmond Cross, French Neo-Impressionist painter (died 1910)
José Pablo Torcuato Batlle y Ordóñez, nicknamed Don Pepe, was a prominent Uruguayan politician who served two terms as President of Uruguay for the Colorado Party. The son of a for…
José Batlle y Ordóñez, Uruguayan journalist and politician, President of Uruguay (died 1929)
Louis Félix Marie François Franchet d'Espèrey was a French general during World War I. In September 1914, as the new commander of the French 5th Army, he played a notable role in o…
Louis Franchet d'Espèrey, Algerian-French general (died 1942)
Andrey Andreyevich Markov was a Russian mathematician celebrated for his pioneering work in stochastic processes. He extended foundational results—such as the law of large numbers …
Andrey Markov, Russian mathematician and theorist (died 1922)