1854

Updated on Oct 06, 2024

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1854 (MDCCCLIV) was a common year starting on Sunday (dominical letter A) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday (dominical letter C) of the Julian calendar, the 1854th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 854th year of the 2nd millennium, the 54th year of the 19th century, and the 5th year of the 1850s decade. As of the start of 1854, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

January–March

January 3 –Charles Dickens commences writing the novel Hard Times.

January 6 – The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is born.

January 9 –The Teutonia Männerchor in Pittsburgh, U.S.A. is founded to promote German culture.

January 20 –The North Carolina General Assembly in the United States charters the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad to run from Goldsboro through New Bern to the newly created seaport of Morehead City near Beaufort.

January 21 –The iron clipper RMS Tayleur runs aground off the east coast of Ireland on her maiden voyage out of Liverpool bound for Australia with the loss of at least 300 of around 650 on board.

February 11 –Major streets are lit by coal gas for the first time.

February 13 –Mexican troops force William Walker and his troops to retreat to Sonora.

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 in Southern Africa; its official independence is declared 6 days later.

February 27 –Britain sends Russia an ultimatum to withdraw from two Romanian provinces it has conquered, Moldavia and Wallachia.

February 28 –The Republican Party (United States) is founded in Ripon, Wisconsin.

March – The British East India Company annexes Jhansi State in India under the doctrine of lapse.

March 1 –German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears; 2 years later his remains are found in the canal near Charlottenburg.

March 3 –Australia's first telegraph line, linking Melbourne and Williamstown, opens.

March 11 –A Royal Navy fleet sails from Britain under Vice Admiral Sir Charles Napier.

March 20 –The Boston Public Library opens to the public.

March 24 –In Venezuela, slavery was abolished

March 27 –Crimean War: The United Kingdom declares war on Russia.

March 28 –France declares war on Russia.

March 31 –Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States Navy signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese government (the Tokugawa shogunate), opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade (see History of Japan).

April–June

April 1 –Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens' magazine, Household Words.

April 16 –The United States packet ship Powhattan is wrecked off the New Jersey shore with more than 200 victims.

May 18 –The Catholic University of Ireland (forerunner of University College Dublin) is founded.

May 27 –Taiping Rebellion: United States diplomatic minister Robert McLane arrives at the Heavenly Capital aboard the American warship USS Susquehanna.

May 30 –The Kansas–Nebraska Act becomes law (replacing the Missouri Compromise of 1820), creating the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory, west of the State of Missouri and the State of Iowa. The Kansas–Nebraska Act also establishes that these two new Territories will decide either to allow or disallow slavery depending on balloting by their residents. These areas would have been strictly "free territory" under the Missouri Compromise, which allowed slavery in the State of Missouri but disallowed it in any other new state north of latitude 36° 30', which forms most of the southern boundary of Missouri. This prohibition of slavery extended all the way from the western boundary of Missouri to the Pacific Ocean.

June –The Grand Excursion takes prominent Eastern United States inhabitants from Chicago to Rock Island, Illinois by railroad, then up the Mississippi River to Saint Paul, Minnesota by steamboat.

June 10 –The first class of the United States Naval Academy graduates at Annapolis, Maryland.

June 21 –Battle of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands off the coast of Finland. British Royal Navy seaman's mate Charles D. Lucas throws a live Russian artillery shell overboard by hand before it explodes, for which he is awarded the first Victoria Cross in 1857.

July–September

July 4 –James Ambrose Cutting takes out the first of his three United States patents for improvements to the wet plate collodion process (Ambrotype photography).

July 6

In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the U.S. Republican Party is held.

Said Pasha succeeds his nephew Abbas as the Pasha of Egypt.

July 7 –Bombay Spinning and Weaving Company established as the first cotton mill in India by Cowasjee Nanabhoy Davar and associates.

July 17 –Bienio progresista: Revolutionary coup in Spain.

July 19 –Wood's despatch is sent by Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax to Lord Dalhousie, Governor General of India, proposing radical improvements to the Indian educational system.

August 9 –Johann succeeds to the throne of Saxony on the death of his brother.

August 16 –Battle of Bomarsund: Russian troops in the island of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands surrender to French–British troops.

August 27 –English lawyer Alfred Wills and party set out for the first ascent of the Wetterhorn in Switzerland, regarded as the start of the "golden age of alpinism".

August 31–September 8 –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.

September 20 –Crimean War: Battle of Alma – The French–British alliance wins the first major land engagement of the war.

September 27 –SS Arctic disaster: The American paddle steamer SS Arctic sinks after a collision with the much smaller French ship SS Vesta 50 miles (80 km) off the coast of Newfoundland with approximately 320 deaths.

October–December

October 1 –The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury, Massachusetts by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham to become the Waltham Watch Company, pioneer in the American system of watch manufacturing.

October 9–11 – United States diplomats in Europe meet and draft the Ostend Manifesto, setting out a rationale for the U.S. to acquire Cuba from Spain.

October 6 –The great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead in England is ignited by a spectacular explosion.

October 17 –The Age newspaper is founded in Melbourne, Australia.

October 25 –Crimean War – Battle of Balaclava: The allies gain an overall victory, except for the disastrous cavalry Charge of the Light Brigade, from which only 200 of 700 men survive.

November –Florence Nightingale and her team of 38 trained volunteer nurses, having set out on October 21 from England, arrive at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari in the Ottoman Empire to care for British Army troops invalided from the Crimean War.

November – The Mute riot in Sweden.

November 5 –Crimean War – Battle of Inkerman: The Russians are defeated.

November 17 –In Egypt, the Suez Canal company is formed.

December 3 –The Eureka Stockade Miners' Rebellion breaks out in Ballarat, Victoria (Australia).

December 8 –Pope Pius IX in the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus defines ex Cathedra the dogma of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin.