1854

1854 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 13 – The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas.
• February 11 – Major streets lit by coal gas for first time.
• February 14 – Texas is linked by telegraph with the rest of the United States, when a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas is completed.
• February 17 – The British recognize the independence of the Orange Free State.
• February 27 – Britain sends Russia an ultimatum to withdraw from two Ottoman provinces it had conquered, Moldavia and Wallachia
• February 28 – The United States Republican Party is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.
• March 1 – German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears, two years later his remains are found in the canal near Charlottenburg
• March 20 – The Boston Public Library opens to the public.
• March 27 – United Kingdom declares war on Russia – Crimean War begins
• March 28 – France declares war on Russia
• March 31 – Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy, signs the Treaty/Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, to be precise, Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. (See History of Japan)
• May 30 – The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the US territories of Nebraska and Kansas.
• June – The Grand Excursion takes prominent Eastern U.S. inhabitants from Chicago to Rock Island, Illinois by railroad, then up the Mississippi River to St. Paul, Minnesota by steamboat.
• June 10 – The first class of the United States Naval Academy graduate at Annapolis, Maryland
• June 21 – In the battle at Bomarsund in Åland, Royal Navy mate Charles D. Lucas throws a live Russian artillery shell overboard by hand before it explodes – the incident is the first that will be retroactively awarded the Victoria Cross in 1857
• July 6 – In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the U.S. Republican Party is held.
• July 13 – In the battle of Guaymas, Mexico, General Jose Maria Yanez stops the French invasion led by Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon.
• July 13 – Assassination of Khedive Abbas I of Egypt
• August 16 – Russian troops in the island of Bomarsund in Åland surrender to French-British troops
• September 20 – Crimean War: At the Alma, the Franco-English alliance wins the first battle of the war.
• October 1 – The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Mass. to become the Waltham Watch Company pioneer in the American System of Watch Manufacturing.
• October 17 – Newspaper The Age is founded in Melbourne, Australia.
• October 21 – Florence Nightingale leaves for Crimea with 38 other nurses
• October 25 – Crimean War: The Battle of Balaclava occurs, overall a victory for the allies, but it included the disastrous cavalry Charge of the Light Brigade, from which only 200 of 700 men survive.
• November 5 – Crimean War: Russians lose again at the Battle of Inkerman.
• November 17 – In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony.

• Frederick Augustus Albert succeeds to the throne of Saxony.
• Stockholm, Wisconsin is founded by immigrants from Karlskoga, Sweden (cf 1252).
• Chemistry Professor Benjamin Silliman, of Yale University is the first to fractionate petroleum by distillation.
• Abraham Pineo Gesner invents a process for extracting kerosene from coal.
• Said Pasha succeeds his nephew Abbas as pasha of Egypt.
• A Russian fort is established at the present site of Almaty.
• Aurora, Ontario is first settled.
• Spiegelthal excavates the tomb of Alyattes II.
• The Ambrotype is introduced for photography.
• Election of New York City mayor Fernando Wood begins the ascendancy of Tammany Hall.
• An epidemic of cholera in London kills 10,000. Dr John Snow traces the source of one outbreak (that killed 500) to a single water pump, validating his theory that cholera is water-borne, and forming the starting point for epidemiology.
• The Iceland trade is opened to foreigners.
• The future site of Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire is purchased by Captain Asa Brewer.

Births

• January 18 – Thomas Watson, American telephone pioneer (d. 1934)
• February 17 – Friedrich Alfred Krupp, German industrialist (d. 1902)
• March 14 – Paul Ehrlich, German physician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1915)
• March 14 – Thomas R. Marshall, Vice President of the United States (d. 1925)
• March 15 – Emil Adolf von Behring, German physician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1917)
• May 11 – Albion Woodbury Small, American sociologist (d. 1926)
• May 24 – John Riley Banister, law officer, cowboy and Texas Ranger (d. 1918)
• July 3 – Leos Janacek, Czech composer (d. 1928)
• July 12 – George Eastman, American inventor (d. 1932)
• July 27 – Takahashi Korekiyo, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1936)
• August 2 – Milan I, King of Serbia (d. 1901)
• October 16 – Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (d. 1900)
• October 20 – Arthur Rimbaud, French poet (d. 1891)
• November 6 – John Philip Sousa, American composer and conductor (d. 1932)
• November 21 – Pope Benedict XV (d. 1922)
• December 23 – Victoriano Huerta, President of Mexico (d. 1916)
• December 24 – Thomas Stevens, English cyclist (d. 1935)
• Edward Harkness, American philanthropist (d. 1940)
• C. W. Post, American cereal manufacturer (d. 1914)

Deaths

• February 17 – John Martin, English painter (b. 1789)
• March 6 – Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (b. 1778)
• March 11 – Willard Richards, American religious leader (b. 1804)
• March 13 – Thomas Noon Talfourd, English jurist (b. 1795)
• April 15 – Arthur Aikin, English chemist and mineralogist (b. 1773)
• July 7 – Georg Ohm, German physicist
• September 8 – Angelo Mai, Italian cardinal and philologist (b. 1782)
• Abbas I, Pasha of Egypt (b. 1813)