Directory

1858 CE

Abraham Lincoln accepts the Republican Party nomination for a seat in the United States Senate, delivering his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois. In Bengal, India, British officer William James Herschel uses the hand impression of Rajyadhar Konai, as a contract fingerprint signature. Cochinchina Campaign: French warships, under Charles Rigault de Genouilly, attack and occupy Da Nang, Vietnam.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • April 19 – The United States signs a treaty with the Yankton Sioux Tribe.source
  • May 11 – Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.source
  • May 28 - The Treaty of Aigun is signed by Yishan and Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky on behalf of the Qing Dynasty and the Russian Empire.source
  • June 13–17 – The Treaty of Tientsin is signed, ending the first part of the Second Opium War.source
  • June 16 – Abraham Lincoln accepts the Republican Party nomination for a seat in the United States Senate, delivering his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.source
  • July 29 – The United States and Japan sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, negotiated by Townsend Harris.source
  • August 2 – The Government of India Act, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, transfers the territories of the British East India Company and their administration to the direct rule of the British Crown, through a Secretary of State for India.source
  • August 8 – Ottoman Penal Code decriminalized homosexual sex between consenting adults in the Ottoman Empiresource
  • December 24 — Manuel Robles Pezuela (1817–1862) becomes Conservative president of Mexico.source
  • Queen Victoria announces her choice of Ottawa as capital of the Province of Canada.source
  • Feudalism and serfdom in Bulgaria are abolished in the Ottoman Empire (practically in 1880).source
  • William M. Tweed begins his 13-year term as "Boss" of Tammany Hall.source
  • Benito Juárez becomes the Liberal President of Mexico and its first indigenous president. At the same time, the conservatives installed Félix María Zuloaga as a rival president.source
  • The Russian Empire changes its flag.source

Conflict & Security

  • January 9 – Revolt of Rajab Ali: British forces finally defeat Rajab Ali Khan of Chittagong.source
  • January 14 – Orsini affair: Piedmontese revolutionary Felice Orsini and his accomplices fail to assassinate Napoleon III in Paris, but their bombs kill eight and wound 142 people. Because of the involvement of French émigrés living in Britain, there is a brief anti-British feeling in France, but the emperor refuses to support it.source
  • March 13 – Felice Orsini is executed by guillotine for the attempted assassination of Napoleon III of France.source
  • March 21 – Indian Rebellion: British troops retake Lucknow.source
  • April 28–May 1 – Battle of Grahovac: The Ottomans are decisively defeated by Montenegrin forces. The Bawani Imli massacre, (April 28) where 52 Indian freedom fighters were hanged to death on a tamarind tree by British colonial forces.source
  • May 19 – "Bleeding Kansas: The Marais des Cygnes massacre is perpetrated by pro-slavery forces in the U.S. state of Kansas.source
  • May–July – Mahtra War: Peasants in the Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire revolt against ongoing serfdom, which was officially abolished in 1816.source
  • June 20 – Indian Rebellion of 1857: The last rebels surrender in Gwalior.source
  • July 8 – A peace treaty ends the Indian Rebellion.source
  • July 28 – In Bengal, India, British officer William James Herschel uses the hand impression of Rajyadhar Konai, as a contract fingerprint signature.source
  • September – Cochinchina Campaign: French warships, under Charles Rigault de Genouilly, attack and occupy Da Nang, Vietnam.source
  • December 7 — Mexican Conservative interim president Félix María Zuloaga proclaims the Plan of Tacubaya to abolish the Reform Laws, setting off a three-year civil war (1857–1860).source
  • Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour goads Austria into attacking Sardinia.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • February 13 – Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke become the first Europeans to discover Lake Tanganyika.source
  • May 13 – John Ruskin begins a tour of Europe; he considers it a significant turning point in his life.source
  • May 14 – David Livingstone's 6-year Second Zambesi expedition arrives at the African coast.source
  • May (unknown date) – Japanese trading company Itochu founded in Toyosato, Shiga Prefecture, Japan.source
  • August 11 – The Eiger is first ascended.source
  • October 28 – Macy's department store, founded by R. H. Macy, opens for business in New York City.source
  • December 30 – Paraguay expedition: Seventeen U.S. Navy warships, under the command of William Shubrick, depart from Uruguay on a mission to demand concessions from Paraguay, and to go to war if necessary.source

Religion & Belief

  • June 23 – Police of the Papal States seize Jewish boy Edgardo Mortara, and take him away to be raised as a Catholic.source

Economy & Finance

  • November 17 – Modified Julian Day zero starts on this date.source
  • The haute couture firm of Worth and Bobergh is established in Paris.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • March 30 – Hymen Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser in the United States.source
  • June 17 – The Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad opens, operating 95 miles from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to New Bern, North Carolina.source
  • July 12 – The Advertiser, a daily newspaper still in circulation, begins publication in Adelaide, Australia.source
  • August 5 – Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable, after several unsuccessful attempts. The service ends on September 1, due to weak current.source
  • August 16 – U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria. However, a weak signal forces a shutdown of the service in a few weeks.source
  • September 11 – Dom, the third-highest summit in the Alps, is first ascended.source
  • December 29 – The Northern Railway Company is established in Madrid, Spain, with a purpose to construct the Northern Railway.source
  • Pike's Peak Gold Rush: Fifty-Niners stream into the Rocky Mountains of the western United States.source

Science & Discovery

  • February 11 – Lourdes apparitions: Pauper girl Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes, fourteen, has a vision at the grotto of Massabielle, the first in a series of eighteen events which will come to be regarded as Marian apparitions.source
  • June 2 – Comet Donati, the first comet to be photographed, is discovered by Giovanni Battista Donati, and remains visible for several months afterwards.source
  • July 1 – A joint presentation of papers by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, announcing a theory of evolution by natural selection, are read at London's Linnean Society.source
  • August – The first aerial photography is carried out by Nadar, from a moored balloon in France.source
  • November 16 – The 2,400,000th day of the Epoch of the Julian day is reached.source

Health & Medicine

  • April 16 – The Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is wound up.source
  • August 2 – A bill is passed to create a modern sewage system in London as a result of the Great Stink, when the heat of the summer made the smell from sewage in the Thames unbearable.source
  • Prince Wilhelm of Prussia becomes regent for his brother, King Frederick William IV, who has suffered a stroke. After Prince William's term acting as a regent for the King had been extended three times, the ailing Frederick William signed a regency charter for him on 7 October 1858, based on an expert opinion from the royal personal physicians.source
  • Squibb Pharmacy, as predecessor of Bristol Myers Squibb, a worldwide pharmaceutical brand, is founded in New York, United States.source

Crime & Justice

  • July 17 – The Lutine bell is salvaged, and subsequently hung in Lloyd's of London.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • January 9 – Anson Jones, the last president of the Republic of Texas, commits suicide.source
  • The Miners Association is established in Cornwall, England, UK.source

Climate & Environment

  • June 19 – A six-minute earthquake destroys much of Mexico City and devastates Texcoco.source

Culture & Society

  • January 25 – The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn becomes a popular wedding recessional, after it is played on this day at the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter Victoria, Princess Royal, to Prince Friedrich of Prussia in St James's Palace, London.source
  • August 7 – A football match, played under an unknown set of rules, is held between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College.source
  • August 21 – The first of the Lincoln–Douglas debates is held in Illinois.source
  • October 21 – Jacques Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, featuring music associated with the can-can, is first performed in Paris.source
  • November 12 – Johann II, Prince of Liechtenstein, succeeds to the throne aged 18; he will rule until his death in 1929, the second-longest in European royal history and the longest precisely documented tenure of any monarch without a regent since antiquity.source
  • November 17 – The city of Denver, Colorado, is founded.source

Births

  • February 15 – John Joseph Montgomery, American glider pioneer (d. 1911)source
  • February 18 – Wilhelm Schmidt, German pioneer of superheated steam for use in locomotives (d. 1924)source
  • April 23 – Max Planck, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1947)source
  • April 24 – Philogone Segard, French radical anarchist linked to Ravachol (d. 20th century)source
  • June 16 – William D. Boyce, founder of the Boy Scouts of America (d. 1929)source
  • June 20 – Charles W. Chesnutt, African-American author, essayist, political activist (d. 1932)source
  • July 9 – Franz Boas, German anthropologist (d. 1942)source
  • July 14 – Emmeline Pankhurst, English suffragette, mother of Christabel, Sylvia and Adela Pankhurst (d. 1928)source
  • August 11 – Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physician, pathologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1930)source
  • August 13 – G. E. M. Skues, Newfoundland-born British inventor of nymph fly fishing (d. 1949)source
  • September 16 – Bonar Law, Canadian-born Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1923)source
  • October 27 – Saitō Makoto, Japanese admiral, 19th Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1936)source
  • November 20 – Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)source
  • November 26 – Katharine Drexel, American Roman Catholic saint (d. 1955)source

Deaths

  • January 5 – Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, Austrian field marshal (b. 1766)source
  • February 23 – Vicente Ramón Roca, 3rd President of Ecuador (b. 1792)source
  • March 4 – Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, American naval officer (b. 1794)source
  • May 21 – José de la Riva Agüero, Peruvian soldier and politician, 1st President of Peru and 2nd President of North Peru (b. 1783)source
  • June 18 – Rani of Jhansi, Indian queen of Jhansi and independence activist (b. 1828)source
  • June 18 – The Queen of Jhansi, Rani Lakshmibai, dies at 30 at Gwalior, having been mortally wounded in combat against the British.source
  • June 28 – Jane Marcet, British science writer (b. 1769)source
  • June 28 – Auguste de Montferrand, French architect (b. 1786)source
  • August 31 – Chief Oshkosh, Menominee chief (b. 1795)source
  • September 9 – Thomas Assheton Smith II, English politician, cricketer (b. 1776)source
  • September 17 – Dred Scott, African-American slave (b. c. 1795)source
  • November 3 – Harriet Taylor Mill, British philosopher, women's rights advocate (b. 1807)source
  • November 17 – Robert Owen, British social reformer (b. 1771)source
  • December 17 – Mustafa Reşid Pasha, Ottoman statesman (b. 1800)source