1856

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Year 1856 (MDCCCLVI) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1856

January - June

January 8 - Borax is discovered (John Veatch).
January 24 - U.S. President Franklin Pierce declares the new Free-State Topeka government in Bleeding Kansas to be in rebellion.
January 26 - First Battle of Seattle (1856). Marines from the USS Decatur drive off American Indian attackers after all day battle with settlers.
January 29 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross
February - The Tintic War in Utah.
February 1 - Auburn University is first chartered as the East Alabama Male College.
February 7 - The nawab of Oudh Wajid Ali Shah is exiled to Metiabruz
February 18 - The American Party (Know-Nothings) convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore.
March 5 - Fire destroys Covent Garden Theatre
March 6 - Maryland Agricultural College (present-day University of Maryland, College Park) chartered
March 9 - National Fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon is founded at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL.
March 20 - Costa Rican troops rout Walker's soldiers
March 24 - Taiping Rebellion: Suspecting treachery on the part of East King Yang Xiuqing, Shi Dakai garrisons Anhui and begins his march back to the Heavenly Capital, having defeated a strong Xiang Army dettachment.
March 31 - The Treaty of Paris (1856) is signed, ending the Crimean War

April 7 - Foundation of Nelson College, Nelson, New Zealand
April 10 - Theta Chi Fraternity founded at Norwich University
May 1 - The creation of Isabela province in the Philippines in honor to the Queen of Spain, Queen Isabela II.
May 16 - the Vigilance Committee founded in San Francisco, California. It lynches two gangsters, arrests most Democratic Party officials and disbands itself on August 18
May 21 - Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces (the "Sacking of Lawrence").
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.
May 24 - The Pottawatomie Massacre - group of followers of radical abolitionist John Brown kill five homesteaders in Franklin County, Kansas
June 2 - Battle of Black Jack between proslavery and antislavery forces, led by John Brown, in Bleeding Kansas.
June 9 - 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.
June 13 - Taiping Rebellion: Shi Dakai arrives at Nanjing.

July - December

July 17 - The Great Train Wreck of 1856 was the worst railroad calamity in the world to date, occurring near Philadelphia, PA, USA.
July 31 - Christchurch, New Zealand chartered as a city.
August 10 - Hurricane destroys Last Island, Louisiana - 400 dead. The whole island was broken up into several smaller islands by the storm.
August 30 - Battle of Osawatomie between proslavery and antislavery forces in Bleeding Kansas.
September 1 - Seton Hall University was founded by Archdiocese of Newark Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, a cousin of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and nephew of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.
September 2 - Taiping Rebellion: Wei Changhui and Qin Rigang assassinate Yang Xiuqing.
October 8 - The Second Opium War between several western powers and China begins with the Arrow Incident on the Pearl River.
November 1 - Anglo-Persian War: War Is declared between Great Britain and Persia.
November 4 - U.S. presidential election, 1856: Democrat James Buchanan defeats former President Millard Fillmore, representing a coalition of "Know-Nothings" and Whigs, and John C. Frémont of the fledgling Republican Party to become the 15th President of the United States.
November 11 - Taiping Rebellion: Shi Dakai arrives at the Heavenly Capital once more with 100,000 men and demands that Wei Changhui and Qin Rigang be executed. Shi subsequently becomes head of the government.
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.
November 21 - Niagara University founded in Niagara Falls, New York.
December 9 - Bushehr surrenders to the British.

Undated

Gregor Mendel starts his research on genetics.
British Country and Borough Police Act extends London police model to all of England and Wales.
Kate Warne, the first female private detective, begins to work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency
Pre-human remains found in the Neanderthal valley in Germany.
National Portrait Gallery in London opened.
Founding year of St. Paul's School, Camp, Belgaum.
Western Union is founded.

Ongoing events

Births

January - June

January 11 - Christian Sinding, Norwegian composer (d. 1941)
January 12 - John Singer Sargent, American-born artist (d. 1925)
February 2 - Frederick William Vanderbilt, American railway magnate (d. 1938)
February 14 - Frank Harris, Irish author and editor (d. 1931)
March 4 - Alfred William Rich, English watercolour painter and author (d. 1921)
March 8

Bramwell Booth, Salvation Army general (d. 1929)
Tom Roberts, Australian artist (d. 1931)

March 16 - Napoléon Eugène Louis John Joseph, Prince Imperial, son of French Emperor Napoleon III (d. 1879)
March 20

Sir John Lavery, Irish artist (d. 1941)
Frederick Winslow Taylor, American inventor and efficiency expert (d. 1915)

April 5 - Booker T. Washington, American educator (d. 1915)
April 12 - William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer (d. 1937)
April 24 - Henri Philippe Pétain, French soldier and statesman (d. 1951)
April 26 - Sir Joseph Ward, 17th Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1930)
April 27 - Tongzhi Emperor, Emperor of China (d. 1875)
May 6

Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (d. 1939)
Robert Peary, American Arctic explorer (d. 1920)

May 15 - L. Frank Baum, American author (d. 1919)
June 14 - Andrey Markov, Russian mathematician (d. 1922)

July - December

July 23 - Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Indian political activist (d. 1920)
July 10 - Nikola Tesla, Serbian inventor (d. 1943)
July 26 - George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1950)
August 10 - William Willett, inventor of Daylight Saving Time (d. 1915)
August 13 - Alfred Deakin, second Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1919)
August 15 - Ivan Franko, Ukrainian poet, critic, journalist and political activist (d. 1916)
September 1 - Sergei Winogradsky, Russian scientist (d. 1953)
September 18 - Wilhelm von Gloeden, German photographer (d. 1931)
November 13 - Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (d. 1941)
November 21 - William Emerson Ritter, American biologist (d. 1944)
November 22 - Heber J. Grant, seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1945)
November 24 - Bat Masterson, American lawman (d. 1921)
November 29 - Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1921)
December 11 - Georgi Plekhanov, Russian revolutionary and Marxist theoretician (d. 1918)
December 13 - Svetozar Boroević, Austrian field marshal (d. 1920)
December 18 - J.J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
December 22 - Frank B. Kellogg, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1937)
December 25 - Hans von Bartels, German painter (d. 1913)
December 28 - Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1924)

Deaths

January 16 - Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist (b. 1795)
January 31 - Khedrup Gyatso, eleventh Dalai Lama (b. 1838)
February 17 - Heinrich Heine, German writer (b. 1797)
May 3 - Adolphe Charles Adam, French composer (b. 1803)
June 23 - Ivan Kireevsky, Russian literary critic and philosopher (b. 1806)
July 9 - Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist (b. 1776)
July 29 - Robert Schumann, German composer and pianist
August 29 - Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, British Christian writer (b. 1778)
August 30 - Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, English writer (b. 1811)
October 19 - William Sprague III, American politician from Rhode Island (b. 1799)
December 20 - Francesco Bentivegna, Italian revolutionary (b. 1820)