1856

1856 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar).

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 5 – Fire destroys Covent Garden Theatre
• March 30 – 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 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.
• June 9 – 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.
• July 31 – Christchurch, New Zealand chartered as a city.
• August 10 – A hurricane destroys Last Island, Louisiana – 400 dead. The whole island was broken up into several smaller islands by the storm.
• November – James Buchanan defeats John C. Fremont in the U.S. presidential election
• 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.
• December 9 – Bushehr surrenders to the British.

• British Country and Borough Police Act extends London police model to the entire country
• Western Union founded
• Kate Warner, the first female private detective, begins to work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency
• Pre-human remains found in the Neanderthal valley in Germany
• Gregor Mendel starts his research on genetics.
• National Portrait Gallery in London opened.

Births

• January 11 – Christian Sinding, Norwegian composer (d. 1941)
• January 12 – John Singer Sargent, American-born artist (d. 1925)
• January 20 – Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch, women's rights activist (d. 1940)
• February 2 – Frederick William Vanderbilt, American railway magnate (d. 1938)
• February 14 – Frank Harris, Irish author and editor (d. 1931)
• March 8 – Tom Roberts, Australian artist (d. 1931)
• March 9 – Eddie Foy, American singer, dancer, and vaudeville performer (d. 1928)
• March 20 – Frederick Winslow Taylor, American inventor and efficiency expert (d. 1915)
• April 5 – Booker T. Washington, African-American educator (d. 1915)
• April 12 – William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer (d. 1937)
• May 6 – Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (d. 1939)
• May 6 – 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 2 – Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Indian political activist (d. 1920)
• July 10 – Nikola Tesla, Serbian inventor (d. 1943)
• July 26 – George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer (d. 1950)
• August 13 – Alfred Deakin, second Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1919)
• September 18 – Wilhelm von Gloeden, German photographer (d. 1931)
• November 22 – Heber J. Grant, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1945)
• November 24  – Bat Masterson, American lawman (d. 1921)
• December 25  – Hans von Bartels, German painter (d. 1913)
• December 25  – Sir Samuel William Knaggs, British civil servant in the West Indies (d. 1924)

Deaths

• February 17 – Heinrich Heine, German writer (b. 1797}
• May 3 – Adolphe Charles Adam, French composer (b. 1803)
• July 9 – Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist (b. 1776)
• August 30 – Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, English writer (b. 1811)