"Poor Folk"
Jan 15 Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky's first novel "Poor Folk" is published in the St Petersburg Collection almanac
"The Daily News"
Jan 21 1st edition of Charles Dickens' newspaper "The Daily News"
- Jan 23 Tunisia becomes the first Arab nation to outlaw slavery in decree issued by Ahmed I Bey [1]
- Jan 28 Battle of Allwal, British beat Sikhs in Punjab
- Jan 31 After the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown unified as the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Feb 1 Theophile Gautier publishes "Hashish Club" about his initiation
- Feb 4 Mormons leave Nauvoo, Illinois, for settlement in the west
- Feb 5 "Oregon Spectator" is 1st newspaper to be published on the West Coast
- Feb 10 Beginning of Mormon march to western US
- Feb 10 British defeat Sikhs in battle of Sobraon, India
- Feb 16 Battle of Sobraon ends 1st Sikh War in India
- Feb 19 Texas state government formally installed in Austin
- Feb 20 British occupy Sikh citadel of Lahore
- Feb 21 1st US woman telegrapher is Sarah G. Bagley of Lowell, Massachusetts
- Feb 23 Polish revolutionaries march on Kraków, but are defeated
- Mar 4 8th Grand National: William Taylor aboard outsider Pioneer wins by 3 lengths from Culverthorpe
- Mar 13 Friedrich Hebbel's play "Maria Magdalena" premieres in Königsberg
Exploration of the Northern Territory
Mar 25 German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt arrives in Sydney to a hero's welcome after completing his exploration of Australia's Northern Territory
- Apr 25 Thornton Affair: Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican–American War
- May 1 Austrian explorer Ida Laura Pfeiffer (48) begins her first trip around world, leaving by boat from Hamburg bound for Rio de Janeiro
- May 3 Mexican Army begins the Siege of Fort Texas near Brownsville, Texas, during the Mexican–American War
- May 4 US state of Michigan ends the death penalty
Congress Votes for War
May 13 US Congress votes in favor of President James K. Polk’s request to declare war on Mexico over border disputes
- May 18 US troops attack Rio Grande occupying Matamoros, during the Mexican–American War
- May 21 1st steamship arrives in Hawaii
- Jun 5 Telegraph line opens between Philadelphia and Baltimore
- Jun 8 Battle at Gwanga: British troops beat Bantu
- Jun 10 Robert Thomson obtains an English patent on a rubber tyre
- Jun 14 Belgian Liberal Party forms
- Jun 14 California (Bear Flag) Republic proclaimed in Sonoma, declaring independence from Mexico
- Jun 15 Oregon Treaty signed, setting US-British boundary at 49°N
- Jun 19 First officially recognised baseball game (played by Cartwright Rules) - NY Nines 23 defeat Knickerbockers 1 at Hoboken, New Jersey
- Jun 24 Residency tax on Jews of Hungary abolished
- Jun 28 The saxophone is patented by Antoine-Joseph "Adolfe" Sax
- Jul 9 Captain John B. Montgomery claims Yerba Buena (San Francisco) for US
- Jul 9 The territory of the District of Columbia south of the Potomac River (39 mi² or about 100 km²) is returned to Virginia through an Act of Congress
- Jul 21 Mormons found 1st English settlement in California (San Joaquin Valley)
- Aug 5 Oregon territory divided between the United States and Britain at the 49th parallel
- Aug 10 US Act of Congress passes establishing the Smithsonian Institution, now world's largest museum and research complex
Thoreau Jailed for Tax Protest
Aug 14 American naturalist Henry David Thoreau jailed for refusing to pay taxes
Mendelssohn's Elijah
Aug 26 Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio "Elijah" premieres at the Birmingham Festival in England
- Aug 26 W. A. Bartlett appointed 1st US mayor of Yerba Buena (San Francisco)
The Lockstitch Sewing Machine
Sep 10 Elias Howe takes out a US patent for a lockstitch sewing machine
- Sep 15 Jung Bahadur Rana grabs power in Nepal
Two Poets in Love
Sep 18 Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning exchange their last letters before they move to Italy
- Sep 23 Johann Gottfried Galle & Heinrich d'Arrest find Neptune
- Sep 25 US troops under General Zachery Taylor occupy Monterey, Mexico, during Mexican–American War
- Sep 30 Anesthetic ether is used for the 1st time, by American dentist Dr William Morton who extracts a tooth
- Oct 10 Alexis de Tocqueville writes about "Algerian problem"
- Oct 10 Neptune's moon Triton discovered by William Lassell
- Oct 15 American Dr William Thomas Green Morton's 1st public use of ether
- Oct 16 Dentist William T Morton demonstrates effectiveness of ether
- Oct 28 Pioneers suffer blizzard in Sierra Nevada; 42 die
- Oct 31 Donner party, unable to cross the Donner Pass, construct a winter camp
- Nov 4 American inventor Benjamin Palmer from Meredith, New Hampshire, patents the artificial leg
- Nov 5 Robert Schumann's 2nd Symphony in C premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany, with Felix Mendelssohn conducting
- Dec 5 German-Swiss chemist Christian Freidrich Schoenbein obtains a patent for cellulose nitrate explosive
La Damnation de Faust
Dec 6 Hector Berlioz's dramatic oratorio "La Damnation de Faust" premieres, conducted by the composer at the Opéra-Comique, Paris
- Dec 28 Iowa becomes 29th state of the United States of America
Admirals
Aviators
Gangsters
Generals
Industrialists
Suffragists