Directory

1852 CE

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is published in book form in Boston, Massachusetts. The first American intercollegiate athletic event, the Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, is held. The Western Railroad is chartered to build a railroad from Fayetteville, North Carolina, to the coal fields of Egypt, North Carolina.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 14 – President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte proclaims a new constitution for the French Second Republic.source
  • January 17 – The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Transvaal.source
  • June 30 – The New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 is passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to grant the British colony self-government with a representative constitution.source
  • July 1 – American statesman Henry Clay is the first to receive the honor of lying in state in the United States Capitol rotunda.source
  • September 11 – Revolution of 11 September 1852 in Argentina: Buenos Aires Province declares independence.source
  • October 7 – After learning that U.S. President Fillmore has sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry to open trade with Japan, Nicholas I of Russia sends Rear Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin to lead the Pallada on a similar mission (Putyatin arrives on August 21, 1853, one month after Perry).source
  • November 2 – 1852 United States presidential election: Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire defeats Whig Winfield Scott of Virginia.source
  • November 4 – Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour becomes the Piedmontese prime minister.source
  • November 11 – The new Palace of Westminster opens in London as the home of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.source
  • November 21–22 – The New French Empire is confirmed by plebiscite: 7,824,000 for, 253,000 against.source
  • December 2 – Napoleon III becomes Emperor of the French.source
  • The Devil's Island penal colony opens in the colony of French Guiana.source

Conflict & Security

  • February 3 – Battle of Caseros, Argentina: The Argentine provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, allied with Brazil and members of Colorado Party of Uruguay, defeat Buenos Aires troops under Juan Manuel de Rosas.source
  • March 1 – Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton, is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.source
  • April 1 – The Second Anglo-Burmese War begins.source
  • April 18 – Taiping Rebellion in China: Taiping forces begin the siege of Guilin.source
  • May 19 – Taiping Rebellion: The siege of Guilin is lifted.source
  • June 12 – Taiping Rebellion: Taiping forces enter Hunan.source
  • October 16 – After nearly five years' imprisonment in France, former Algerian Emir Abdelkader El Djezairi is released by orders of then-president Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte.source
  • October 31 – General Joaquin Solares of Guatemala leads an invasion of neighboring Honduras, beginning a war that lasts until February 13, 1856.source
  • December 4 – The French capture Laghouat.source
  • December 23 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army takes Hanyang and begins the siege of Wuchang.source
  • December 29 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army takes Hankou.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • Germans are encouraged to immigrate to Chile.source
  • The French Catholic De La Salle Brothers arrive from Europe in Singapore, aboard La Julie, and sail up to Penang in the Straits Settlements, to found the first Lasallian educational institutions in Asia.source

Religion & Belief

  • February 15 – The Helsinki Cathedral (known as St. Nicholas' Church at time) is officially inaugurated in Helsinki, Finland.source
  • March 4 – Phi Mu sorority is founded in Macon, Georgia.source
  • August 23 – Boston missionary Reverend Benjamin Galen Snow lands on the island of Kosrae in the Caroline Islands (Micronesia) first to bring the gospel to the island.source

Economy & Finance

  • March 18 – Henry Wells and William Fargo create Wells Fargo & Company.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • February 11 – The first British public toilet for women opens in Bedford Street, London.source
  • February 16 – The Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established in South Bend, Indiana.source
  • March 2 – The first American experimental steam fire engine is tested.source
  • September 24 – French engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip, from Paris to Trappes.source
  • November 23 – The first roadside pillar boxes in the British Isles are brought into public use in Saint Helier, on Jersey in the Channel Islands, at the suggestion of English novelist Anthony Trollope, at this time an official of the British General Post Office.source
  • December – The Western Railroad is chartered to build a railroad from Fayetteville, North Carolina, to the coal fields of Egypt, North Carolina.source
  • The semaphore line in France is superseded by the telegraph.source
  • Smith & Wesson is founded as a firearms manufacturer in the United States.source
  • In Hawaii, sugar planters bring over the first Chinese laborers on 3- or 5-year contracts, giving them 3 dollars per month plus room and board for working a 12-hour day, 6 days a week.source
  • The grooved rail is developed by Alphonse Loubat.source

Science & Discovery

  • March 17 – Annibale de Gasparis discovers the asteroid Psyche from the north dome of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples.source
  • September 19 – Annibale de Gasparis discovers the asteroid Massalia from the north dome of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples.source
  • October 23 – The conjecture of the four color theorem is first proposed, as student Francis Guthrie of University College London presents the question of proving, mathematically, that no more than four colors are needed to give separate colors to bordering shapes on a map (the theorem is not proven for almost 123 years, until 1976).source

Health & Medicine

  • January 15 – Nine men representing various Jewish charitable organizations come together to form what will become Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.source
  • February 14 – The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • February 25 – sinks near Cape Town, British Cape Colony. Only 193 of the 643 on board survive, after troops stand firm on the deck so as not to overwhelm the lifeboats containing women and children.source
  • July 28 – Henry Clay steamboat disaster in Riverdale, Bronx, claims several lives, including Stephen Allen.source

Climate & Environment

  • November 27 – A magnitude 7.5 to 8.8 earthquake strikes near the Banda Islands, Dutch East Indies, triggering a deadly tsunami.source

Culture & Society

  • February 19 – Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is founded in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, at Jefferson College.source
  • March 20 – Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is published in book form in Boston, Massachusetts.source
  • July 5 – Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", in Rochester, New York.source
  • August 3 – The first American intercollegiate athletic event, the Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, is held.source
  • November – Leo Tolstoy's debut novel Childhood is published under the initials L. N., in this month's issue of the Saint Petersburg literary journal Sovremennik (and later in book form).source
  • Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary, produces the first translation of the Bible in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, which is published with the parallel text of the Syriac Peshitta, by the American Bible Society.source
  • Loyola College is chartered in Baltimore, Maryland.source
  • Mills College is founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia, California.source
  • Antioch College is founded in Yellow Springs, Ohio (its first president is Horace Mann).source

Births

  • February 16 – Charles Taze Russell (Pastor Russell), American Protestant reformer, evangelist, forerunner of Jehovah's Witnesses (d. 1916)source
  • February 26 – John Harvey Kellogg, American Adventist doctor and health reformer (d. 1943)source
  • May 1 – Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1934)source
  • June 25 – Antoni Gaudí, Spanish modernist architect (d. 1926)source
  • August 12 – Blessed Michael J. McGivney, American priest and founder of the Knights of Columbus (d. 1890).source
  • August 30 – Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1911)source
  • September 8 – Gojong, 26th king of the Korean Joseon dynasty, first emperor of Korea (d. 1919)source
  • September 12 – H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1928)source
  • September 28 – Henri Moissan, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1907)source
  • September 28 – John French, 1st Earl of Ypres, British field marshal, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I (d. 1925)source
  • September 30 – Charles Villiers Stanford, Irish composer, resident in England (d. 1924)source
  • December 15 – Henri Becquerel, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1908)source
  • December 19 – Albert A. Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)source
  • December 28 – Leonardo Torres Quevedo, Spanish engineer, one of pioneers of computing and the radio control, inventor of El Ajedrecista (The Chess Player) (d. 1936)source

Deaths

  • January 6 – Louis Braille, French teacher of the blind, inventor of braille (b. 1809)source
  • March 4 – Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (b. 1809)source
  • March 22 – Auguste de Marmont, French general, nobleman and marshal (b. 1774)source
  • April 17 – Étienne Maurice Gérard, French general, statesman and marshal, 11th Prime Minister of France (b. 1773)source
  • May 15 – Louisa Adams, First Lady of the United States (b. 1775)source
  • August 14 – Margaret Taylor, First Lady of the United States (b. 1788)source
  • August – Táhirih, Iranian Baha'i theologian, poet and feminist (b. 1814)source
  • September 14 – Augustus Pugin, English architect (b. 1812)source
  • September 20 – Philander Chase, American founder of Kenyon College (b. 1775)source
  • October 15 – Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, German gymnastics educator (b. 1778)source
  • October 23 – Georg August Wallin, Finnish orientalist, explorer and professor (b. 1811)source
  • November 10 – Gideon Mantell, English geologist, palaeontologist (b. 1790)source
  • November 27 – Augusta Ada King (née Byron), Countess of Lovelace, early English computer pioneer (b. 1815)source
  • November 30 – Junius Brutus Booth, English-born stage actor, father of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth (b. 1796)source