Explore 657 historical events from 1850–1859.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an English civil and marine engineer considered "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution", "perhaps the most eminent Victorian engineer…
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, English architect and engineer, designed the Great Western Railway (born 1806)
Charles Blondin was a French tightrope walker and acrobat who achieved international fame in the mid-19th Century. Known for crossing the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, he toured th…
French acrobat Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Gorge, making him one of the world's most famous tightrope walkers
Edwin Laurentine Drake, also known as Colonel Drake, was an American businessman and the first American to successfully drill for oil.
Edwin Drake successfully drilled for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the Pennsylvania oil rush, the…
The San Juan Islands are part of an archipelago in the Pacific Northwest of the United States between the U.S. state of Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. T…
The shooting of a pig in the San Juan Islands led to the so-called Pig War over the border between the United States and
The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking on 1–2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral displays that were r…
A powerful solar flare caused a coronal mass ejection that struck Earth a few hours later, generating the most intense…
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the fourth-most populous city in California and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with a population of…
Disgruntled with the legal and political structures of the United States, Joshua Norton (pictured) distributed letters…
The Wernerian Natural History Society, commonly abbreviated as the Wernerian Society, was a learned society interested in the broad field of natural history, and saw papers prese…
The Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is dissolved
The Principality of Montenegro was a principality in Southeastern Europe that existed from 13 March 1852 to 28 August 1910. It was then proclaimed a kingdom by Nikola I, who then b…
Montenegrin forces under Grand Duke Mirko Petrović-Njegoš defeat an Ottoman army under Hussein Pasha in the battle of Gr
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating t…
Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois
The Lourdes apparitions are several Marian apparitions reported in 1858 by Bernadette Soubirous, the 14-year-old daughter of a miller, in the town of Lourdes in Southern France.
The last apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France.
The Bawani Imli massacre was the execution of 52 Indian freedom fighters including Jodha Singh Ataiya by British East India Company forces on 28 April 1858 during the Indian Rebell…
The Bawani Imli massacre, where 52 Indian freedom fighters are hanged to death on a tamarind tree by British colonial fo
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have…
Charles Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have…
Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution to the Linnean Society of London.
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States , also called the Harris Treaty was a treaty signed between the United States and Tokugawa Shogunate, which ope…
United States and Japan sign the Harris Treaty.
The Government of India Act 1858 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on 2 August 1858. Its provisions called for the liquidation of the East India Company and…
The Government of India Act 1858 replaces Company rule in India with that of the British Raj.
Cyrus West Field was an American businessman and financier who, along with other entrepreneurs, created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the…
Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts. It…
George Mary Searle was an American astronomer and Catholic priest.
George Mary Searle discovers the asteroid 55 Pandora.
Alexander Minasi Movsisian, better known by his pen name Alexander Shirvanzade was an Armenian playwright and novelist. He was one of the main representatives of the realist moveme…
Alexander Shirvanzade, Armenian playwright and author (died 1935)
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, chora…
Ethel Smyth, English composer (died 1944)
Frédéric Henri Godefroid Émile Constantin (Fritz) ridder Mayer van den Bergh was a Belgian art collector and art historian.
Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, Belgian art collector and art historian (died 1901)
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German theoretical physicist. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the services he rendered to the advancement of physics by his discovery…
Max Planck, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1947)
Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply footy or just football, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an o…
The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
The Eiger is a 3,967-metre (13,015 ft) mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, just north of the main waters…
The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and…
James Buchanan Jr. was the 15th president of the United States, serving from 1857 to 1861. He also served as the 17th United States secretary of state from 1845 to 1849 and represe…
U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen…