- Jan 1 Slavery abolished in the Dutch East Indies for areas under direct rule
Jeanie Deans
Jan 9 Dion Boucicault's stage drama "Jeanie Deans" opens at Laura Keene's Theatre, NYC
- Jan 20 Dutch troops conquer Watampone in Celebes
- Jan 28 Britain formally returns Mosquito Coast to Nicaragua
- Jan 29 American College established in Rome by Pope Pius IX
- Feb 1 1st rabbi to open House of Representatives, Morris Raphall of NYC
- Feb 3 Thomas Clemson takes office as 1st US superintendent of agriculture
- Feb 10 Johannes Brahms' orchestral music piece "Serenade No. 2 in A" premieres in Hamburg
- Feb 13 King Basse Kajuara departs Boni South-Celebes
- Feb 16 Dutch Rochussen/Van Bosse government resigns
- Feb 22 Organized baseball played in San Francisco for 1st time between the Eagles and the Red Rovers
- Feb 22 Shoe-making workers of Lynn, Massachusetts, strike successfully for higher wages
Cooper Union Address
Feb 27 Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency
Japanese Embassy to the US
Mar 17 Six years after the forcible ending of Japan's isolationist policy by US Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry, the Japanese Embassy arrives in San Francisco to sign a Treaty of Friendship
The Mill on the Floss
Mar 21 English novelist George Eliot finishes her novel "The Mill on the Floss" in Wandsworth, London
- Mar 21 US extradition treaty with Sweden
- Mar 24 Clipper Andrew Jackson arrives in San Francisco, 89 days out of New York
- Mar 27 M L Byrn patents "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (corkscrew)
- Mar 28 First Taranaki War: The Battle of Waireka begins in New Zealand
- Mar 29 Dion Boucicault's stage melodrama "The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen" at Laura Keene's Theatre, NYC
- Apr 2 1st Italian Parliament meets at Turin
Pony Express Begins
Apr 3 Start of the Pony Express, delivers mail by horse and rider relay teams between St Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California
- Apr 6 Joseph Smith III, creates the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by reorganizing the previous church organized by his father, Joseph Smith, Jr.
- Apr 7 Grand duke Frederik I liberalizes laws in Bathe
- Apr 9 Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville uses his phonautograph to make a 10-second recording of "Au Clair de la Lune"
- Apr 13 1st Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California
- Apr 14 1st Pony Express rider arrives in San Francisco from St Joseph, Missouri
Police Halt Boxing Match
Apr 17 Champion of England Tom Sayers and American John Heenan fight out brutal 2 hour, 27 minute draw near Farnborough, England; police stop fight acknowledged as first world title bout
Garibaldi's Mille Sets Sail
May 6 Giuseppe Garibaldi's Mille sets sail from Genoa to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
- May 6 San Francisco Olympic Club, 1st US athletic club forms
- May 16 -18] Chicago: Republican convention selects Abraham Lincoln as candidate
- May 17 German football club TSV 1860 München is founded
- May 18 US Republican Party nominates Abraham Lincoln for president
- May 26 Giuseppe Garibaldi occupies Palermo, Italy
- Jun 3 Comanche, Iowa, completely destroyed by one of a series of tornadoes
- Jun 7 Workmen start laying track for Market Street Railroad, San Francisco
- Jun 9 1st US "dime novel" published: "Malaseka, The Indian Wife of the White Hunter," by Mrs Ann Stevens
- Jun 12 The State Bank of the Russian Empire is established
- Jun 15 1st White settlement in Idaho (Franklin)
- Jun 23 US Congress establishes Government Printing Office
- Jun 27 First running of the Queen's Plate at Toronto's Carleton Track - North America's oldest continuously run horse race [1]
Oxford Debate on Evolution
Jun 30 Famous debate on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution held at the Oxford University Museum and dominated by arguments between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce
- Jul 9 Temperature hits 115°F in Fort Scott and 112°F in Topeka, Kansas
- Jul 19 1st railroad reaches Kansas
- Jul 24 Olympics beat St. George, 25-17 at St. Georges Cricket Grounds, Philadelphia in first baseball game played in enclosed field
- Jul 25 1st US intercollegiate billiard match (Harvard vs Yale)
- Aug 3 The Second Maori War begins in New Zealand
- Aug 5 Carl IV of Sweden-Norway is crowned King of Norway in Trondheim
- Aug 8 Queen of Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) arrives in NYC
- Aug 11 US's 1st successful silver mill (Virginia City, Nevada)
- Aug 25 Tubular Victoria Bridge across the St Lawrence River at Montreal is officially opened by the Prince of Wales - an engineering wonder of the day [1]
- Aug 30 1st British tram begins operating in Birkenhead
- Sep 8 Excursion steamer "Lady Elgin" sinks after being rammed in a storm on Lake Michigan drowning about 300. Largest loss of life on the Great Lakes.
First Royal Visits the US
Sep 20 First British royalty to visit US, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII)
Abraham Lincoln, the Presidential Icon
Oct 15 11-year-old Grace Bedell writes to Abraham Lincoln telling him to grow a beard
1st British Golf Open
Oct 17 1st British Open Men's Golf, Prestwick GC: Willie Park Sr. wins inaugural event by 2 strokes from fellow Scot Tom Morris Sr
- Oct 18 The Second Opium War finally ends at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.
On Translating Home
Nov 3 Poet and critic Matthew Arnold begins his series of lectures "On Translating Home" as Oxford Professor of Poetry at Oxford University
- Nov 6 Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois elected the 16th President of the United States of America
- Dec 17 Anaheim Township created in Los Angeles County
- Dec 20 South Carolina General Assembly votes 169-0 to secede from the United States, declaring itself an "independent commonwealth". Is quickly followed by other Southern states triggering the American Civil War.
- Dec 24 Actor Joseph Jefferson's dramatization of "Rip Van Winkle" premieres in NYC
- Dec 26 First ever inter-club football match between Hallam F.C. and Sheffield F.C. at Sandygate Road ground in Sheffield, England
- Dec 26 Major Robert Anderson, under cover of darkness, concentrates his small force at Ft Sumter
Tubmans' Last Mission
Dec 28 Harriet Tubman arrives in Auburn, New York, on her last mission to free slaves, having evaded capture for 8 years on the Underground Railroad
- Dec 29 The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, HMS Warrior is launched
Authors
Civil Rights Activists
Inventors
Kings
Revolutionaries
Scientists