1860

1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday.

Events

January

• January 2 – The discovery of the planet Vulcan was announced at a meeting of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

March

• March 6 – Abraham Lincoln speaks against slavery in New Haven, Connecticut

April

• April 3 – The Pony Express makes its first run.

May

• May 1 – A chondrite type meteorite fell to earth in Muskingum County, Ohio near the town of New Concord.
• May 9 – The Constitutional Union Party holds its convention and nominates John Bell for President of the United States.
• May 13 – Battle of Catalafimi; troops under Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat the army of Naples, during the Second Italian independence war.
• May 18 – Abraham Lincoln is selected as the US presidential candidate for the Republican party.

June

• June 24 – First nursing school, based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale, is opened in St. Thomas Infirmary in England.

July

• July 2 – Vladivostok, Russia is founded.
• July 11 – Mutsuhito becomes Crown Prince of Japan.
• July 19 – Ioan Dimitrovich Kasatkin becomes an Eastern Orthodox monk under the name Nikolai.
• July 24 – Monk Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as deacon.
• July 25 – Deacon Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as priest.

September

• September 7 – Lady Elgin is accidentally rammed and sunk in Lake Michigan, hundreds drown.
• September 7 – Troops of Giuseppe Garibaldi reach Naples.

October

• John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant leave Zanzibar to search for source of the Nile.
• October 5 – Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire form a commission to investigate causes of clashes between Maronites and Druzes in Lebanon earlier in the year
• October 19 – New Maori revolt begins in New Zealand
• October 26 – Giuseppe Garibaldi gives Naples to the king Victor Emmanuel II.

November

• November 6 – U.S. presidential election, 1860: Abraham Lincoln beats John C. Breckinridge and is elected as the 16th President of the United States, the first Republican to hold that office.

December

• December 20 – South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union.
• December 29 – The first British seagoing ironclad warship, the HMS Warrior is launched.

Unknown Dates

• Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia seizes the whole of the Papal States besides Rome (see Vatican City) and unites Italy.
• Robert Wilhelm Bunsen discovers caesium and rubidium (see Discovery of the chemical elements)
• Buenos Aires leader Bartolomé Mitre subverts Argentine Confederation and begins to establish a new centralist government with the help of Uruguayan Colorado party leader Venancio Flores
• Augustana College is founded in Rock Island, Illinois, United States by Swedish immigrants.

Births

January-April

• January 11 – Marie Bashkirtseff, Russian artist (d. 1884)
• January 25 – Charles Curtis, Vice President of the United States (d. 1936)
• January 29 – William Jacob Baer, American painter (d. 1941)
• January 29 – Anton Chekhov, Russian writer (d. 1904)
• February 11 – Rachilde, French author (d. 1953)
• February 29 – Herman Hollerith, American businessman and inventor (d. 1929)
• March 1 – Joe Natus, musician
• March 13 – Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (d. 1903)
• March 19 – William Jennings Bryan, American politician (d. 1925)
• March 27 – Frank Frost Abbott, American classical scholar (d. 1924)

May-August

• May 9 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish author (d. 1937)
• May 20 – Eduard Buchner, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1917)
• May 25 – James McKeen Cattell, American psychologist (d. 1944)
• May 29 – Isaac Albéniz, Spanish composer (d. 1909)
• July 3 – Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American feminist writer (d. 1935)
• July 7 – Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer (d. 1911)
• July 19 – Lizzie Borden, American murder suspect (d. 1927)
• August 3 – W.K. Dickson, Scottish inventor (d. 1935)
• August 7 – Alan Leo, British astrologer (d. 1917)
• August 16 – Jules Laforgue, French poet (d. 1887)

September-December

• September 13 – John J. Pershing, American general (d. 1948)
• November 6 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Polish pianist and composer (d. 1941)
• November 23 – Billy the Kid, American gunfighter (d. 1881)
• December 7 – Joseph Cook, sixth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1947)
• John Coughlin, American politician (d. 1938)
• Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer (d. 1938)
• Albert Giraud, Belgian poet (d. 1929)
• Lancelot Speed, British illustrator (d. 1931)

Deaths

• January 27 – János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1802)
• January 27 – Thomas Brisbane, Scottish astronomer (b. 1883)
• January 29 – Stephanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden (b. 1789)
• February 20 – Henry Drummond, Canadian poet (b. 1851)
• March 17 – Anna Jameson, German author
• May 12 – Sir Charles Barry, English architect (b. 1795)
• May 16 – Anne Isabella Milbanke, wife of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (b. 1792)
• July 1 – Charles Goodyear, American inventor (b. 1800)
• December 14 – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th earl of Aberdeen (b. 1794)