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Year '1856' ('MDCCCLVI') was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Contents

Events of 1856

January - March

April - June

July - September

October - December

Undated

Ongoing events

Births

January - June

July - December

Deaths

January - June

July - December

Events of 1856

January - March

★ January - The first free public school west of the Mississippi River was established in Tipton, Iowa.

★ January 8 - Borax is discovered (John Veatch).

★ January 24 - U.S. President Franklin Pierce declares the new Free-State Topeka government in Bleeding Kansas to be in rebellion.

★ January 29 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross

★ February - The Tintic War in Utah.

★ February 1 - Auburn University is first chartered as the East Alabama Male College.

★ 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 9 - National Fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon is founded at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL.

★ March 20 - Costa Rican troops rout Walker's soldiers

★ March 24 - Taiping Rebellion: Suspecting treachery on the part of East King Yang Xiuqing, Shi Dakai garrisons Anhui and begins his march back to the Heavenly Capital, having defeated a strong Xiang Army dettachment.

★ March 31 - The Treaty of Paris (1856) is signed, ending the Crimean War

April - June

★ April 7 - Foundation of Nelson College, Nelson, New Zealand

★ April 10 - Theta Chi Fraternity founded at Norwich University

★ April 21 - Stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne, Australia, stopped work and marched from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House to achieve an eight hour day.

★ May 1 - The creation of the Province of Isabela in the Philippines in honor to the Queen of Spain, Queen Isabela II.

★ May 16 - the Vigilance Committee founded in San Francisco, California. It lynches two gangsters, arrests most Democratic Party officials and disbands itself on August 18

★ May 21 - Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by proslavery forces (the "Sacking of Lawrence").

★ 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.

★ May 24 - The Pottawatomie Massacre - group of followers of radical abolitionist John Brown kill five homesteaders in Franklin County, Kansas

★ June 2 - Battle of Black Jack between proslavery and antislavery forces, led by John Brown, in Bleeding Kansas.

★ June 9 - 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.

★ June 13 - Taiping Rebellion: Shi Dakai arrives at Nanjing.

★ June 20 - Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army overruns the Southern Imperial Barracks south of Nanjing. The East King orders Shi Dakai to return to Hubei.

July - September

★ July 17 - The Great Train Wreck of 1856 was the worst railroad calamity in the world to date, occurring near Philadelphia, PA, USA.

★ July 31 - Christchurch, New Zealand chartered as a city.

★ August 9 - Taiping Rebellion: Qin Rigang returns to Nanjing, fearing an attempt on Hong Xiuquan's life by the would-be usurper, the East King and supreme commander Yang Xiuqing.

★ August 10 - Hurricane destroys Last Island, Louisiana - 400 dead. The whole island was broken up into several smaller islands by the storm.

★ August 30 - Battle of Osawatomie between proslavery and antislavery forces in Bleeding Kansas.

★ September 1 - Seton Hall University was founded by Archdiocese of Newark Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, a cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt and nephew of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.

★ September 1 - Taiping Rebellion: Wei Changhui returns to the Heavenly Capital.

★ September 2 - Taiping Rebellion: Wei Changhui and Qin Rigang assassinate Yang Xiuqing.

★ September 18 - Taiping Rebellion: Shi Dakai arrives at Nanjing, but leaves soon after fearing that Wei Changhui plans to kill him.

October - December

★ October 8 - The Second Opium War between several western powers and China begins with the ''Arrow Incident'' on the Pearl River.

★ November 1 - Anglo-Persian War: War Is declared between Great Britain and Persia.

★ November 4 - U.S. presidential election, 1856: Democrat James Buchanan defeats former President Millard Fillmore, representing a coalition of "Know-Nothings" and Whigs, and John C. Frémont of the fledgling Republican Party to become the 15th President of the United States.

★ November 11 - Taiping Rebellion: Shi Dakai arrives at the Heavenly Capital once more with 100,000 men and demands that Wei Changhui and Qin Rigang be executed. Shi subsequently becomes head of the government.

★ 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.

★ November 21 - Niagara University founded in Niagara Falls, New York.

★ December 9 - Bushehr surrenders to the British.

Undated

★ Gregor Mendel starts his research on genetics.

★ British Country and Borough Police Act extends London police model to all of England and Wales.

★ Mars Hill College, the oldest college in western North Carolina, is founded in the autumn of 1856.

★ 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.

★ National Portrait Gallery in London opened.

★ Sale of Land starts suburb of Ashgrove, Queensland.

★ The first session concludes at St. Paul's School, a New England Prep School in Concord, New Hampshire.

★ Founding year of St. Paul's School, Camp, Belgaum.

★ Henry Dunant created a business to operate in foreign colonies, and, after granted a land concession by Algeria, a corn-growing and trading company called the "Financial and Industrial Company of Mons-Djémila Mills"

★ Suburb of Goodna founded in Queensland, Australia.

★ Suburb of St John's Wood founded in Queensland, Australia.

★ Western Union is founded.

Ongoing events

★ Anglo-Persian War (1856-1857)

★ Crimean War (1854-1856)

★ Second Opium War (1856-1860)

★ Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864)

Births

January - June

★ January 11 - Christian Sinding, Norwegian composer (d. 1941)

★ January 12 - John Singer Sargent, American-born artist (d. 1925)

★ February 2 - Frederick William Vanderbilt, American railway magnate (d. 1938)

★ February 14 - Frank Harris, Irish author and editor (d. 1931)

★ March 4 - Alfred William Rich, English watercolour painter and author (d. 1921)

★ March 8

★
★ Bramwell Booth, Salvation Army general (d. 1929)

★
★ Tom Roberts, Australian artist (d. 1931)

★ March 9 - Eddie Foy, American singer, dancer, and vaudeville performer (d. 1928)

★ March 16 - Napoléon Eugène Louis John Joseph, Prince Imperial, son of French Emperor Napoleon III (d. 1879)

★ March 20

★
★ Sir John Lavery, Irish artist (d. 1941)

★
★ Frederick Winslow Taylor, American inventor and efficiency expert (d. 1915)

★ April 5 - Booker T. Washington, American educator (d. 1915)

★ April 12 - William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer (d. 1937)

★ April 24 - Henri Philippe Pétain, French soldier and statesman (d. 1951)

★ April 26 - Sir Joseph Ward, 17th Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1930)

★ April 27 - Tongzhi Emperor, Emperor of China (d. 1875)

★ May 6

★
★ Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (d. 1939)

★
★ 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 - December

★ July 23 - Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Indian political activist (d. 1920)

★ July 10 - Nikola Tesla, Serbian inventor (d. 1943)

★ July 26 - George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1950)

★ August 10 - William Willett, inventor of Daylight Saving Time (d. 1915)

★ August 13 - Alfred Deakin, second Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1919)

★ August 15 - Ivan Franko, Ukrainian poet, critic, journalist and political activist (d. 1916)

★ September 1 - Sergei Winogradsky, Russian scientist (d. 1953)

★ September 18 - Wilhelm von Gloeden, German photographer (d. 1931)

★ November 3 - Jim McCormick, baseball player (d. 1918)

★ November 13 - Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (d. 1941)

★ November 21 - William Emerson Ritter, American biologist (d. 1944)

★ November 22 - Heber J. Grant, seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1945)

★ November 24 - Bat Masterson, American lawman (d. 1921)

★ November 29 - Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1921)

★ December 13 - Svetozar Boroević, Austrian field marshal (d. 1920)

★ December 18 - J.J. Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)

★ December 22 - Frank B. Kellogg, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1937)

★ December 25

★
★ Hans von Bartels, German painter (d. 1913)

★
★ Sir Samuel William Knaggs, British civil servant in the West Indies (d. 1924)

★ December 28 - Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1924)
: ''See also .''

Deaths

January - June

★ January 16 - Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist (b. 1795)

★ January 31 - Khedrup Gyatso, eleventh Dalai Lama (b. 1838)

★ February 17 - Heinrich Heine, German writer (b. 1797)

★ May 3 - Adolphe Charles Adam, French composer (b. 1803)

★ June 23 - Ivan Kireevsky, Russian literary critic and philosopher (b. 1806)

July - December

★ July 9 - Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist (b. 1776)

★ July 29 - Robert Schumann, German composer and pianist

★ August 29 - Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, British Christian writer (b. 1778)

★ August 30 - Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, English writer (b. 1811)
: ''See also .''