1856

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

Years: 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 - 1856 - 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861

Events

• January 8 - Borax is discovered (John Veatch).
• January 29 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross
• February 18 - The American Party (Know-Nothings) convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore.
• March 30 - The Treaty of Paris (1856) is signed, ending the Crimean War
• April 7 - Foundation of Nelson College, Nelson, New Zealand
• May 21 - Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.
• May 22 - Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas"). Sumner was unable to return to duty for three years while he recovered. Brooks became a hero across the South.
• July 31 - Christchurch, New Zealand chartered as a city.
• November 17 - American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase.

• Gregor Mendel starts his research on genetics.
• End of the Crimean war.
• November - James Buchanan defeats John C. Fremont in the U.S. presidential election
• National Portrait Gallery in London opened.

Year in topic

• 1856 in literature
• 1856 in science

Births

• January 11 - Christian Sinding, composer (+ 1941)
• January 12 - John Singer Sargent, artist (+ 1925)
• January 20 - Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch, women's rights activist († 1940)
• February 14 - Frank Harris, author and editor
• March 9 - Edie Foy, singer, dancer, vaudeville performer (+ 1928)
• March 20 - Frederick Winslow Taylor, inventor, efficiency expert
• April 5 - Booker T. Washington, African-American educator (+ 1915)
• April 12 - William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer (+ 1937)
• May 6 - Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist, founder of psychoanalysis
• May 6 - Robert Peary, explorer (+ 1920)
• May 15 - L. Frank Baum, author (+ 1919)
• July 2 - Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Indian political activist (+ 1920)
• July 10 - Nikola Tesla, inventor (+ 1943)
• July 26 - George Bernard Shaw, writer (+ 1950)
• September 18 - Wilhelm von Gloeden, photographer (+ 1931)
• November 24 - Bat Masterson, "Wild West" legend (+ 1921)
• December 25 - Hans von Bartels, German painter

Deaths

• February 17 - Heinrich Heine, writer
• July 9 - Amedeo Avogadro, chemist
• August 30 - Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, writer.

Referenced By