Year '1860' ('
MDCCLX') was a
leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the
Gregorian Calendar (or a
leap year starting on Friday of the 12-day slower
Julian calendar).
Events of 1860
January - June
★
April 3 - The
Pony Express begins its first run from
Saint Joseph, Missouri to
Sacramento, California.
★
April 4 – New uprising in
Palermo.
★
May 1 - A Chondrite type
meteorite fell to earth in
Muskingum County,
Ohio near the town of
New Concord.
★
May 6 -
Giuseppe Garibaldi and his troops depart from
Quarto on the
Expedition of the Thousand.
★
May 8 - In
New Granada (modern-day
Colombia) southern state of
Cauca secedes from the central government in protest of the suggestion of increase of presidential powers.
Magdalena and
Bolivar join it.
★
May 9 - The U.S.
Constitutional Union Party holds its convention and nominates
John Bell for
President of the United States.
★
May 15 -
Battle of Catalafimi; troops under
Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat the army of
Naples in Sicily, during the
Second Italian independence war.
★
May 17 - German soccer club
TSV 1860 München is founded
★
May 18 -
Abraham Lincoln is selected as the U.S. presidential candidate for the
Republican party.
★
May 27 - Garibaldi's forces take
Palermo, the capital of Sicily.
★ - The
State Bank of the Russian Empire established.
★
June 24 - First
nursing school, based on the ideas of
Florence Nightingale, is opened in
St. Thomas Infirmary in
England.
July - September
★
July 2 -
Vladivostok,
Russia is founded.
★
July 9 -
Mírzá 'Alí-Muhammad was executed by a firing squad in Tabriz, Persia for claiming to be a prophet.
★
July 11 - Mutsuhito (the future
Emperor Meiji) becomes
Crown Prince of
Japan.
★
July 19 -
Ioan Dimitrovich Kasatkin becomes an
Eastern Orthodox monk under the name Nikolai.
★
July 20 - The forces of
Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat royal Neapolitan forces at the
Battle of Milazzo, near Messina. Nearly all of Sicily was now under Garibaldi's control.
★
July 24 - Monk
Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as
deacon.
★
July 25 - Deacon
Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as
priest.
★
August 22 - Assisted by the British navy, the troops of
Giuseppe Garibaldi cross from Sicily to the Italian mainland.
★
September 7
★
★ ''
Lady Elgin'' is accidentally rammed and sunk in
Lake Michigan, hundreds drown.
★
★
Giuseppe Garibaldi's forces capture Naples.
★
September 10 - Piedmontese forces invade the
Papal States hoping to link up with Garibaldi in Naples.
★
September 18 -
Battle of Castelfidardo: The Piedmontese decisively defeat the Papal forces, allowing them to continue their march into Neapolitan territory.
October - December
★
October -
John Hanning Speke and
James Augustus Grant leave
Zanzibar to search for source of the
Nile.
★
October 1 -
Battle of the Volturno, Garibaldi defeats the last organized army of the
Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
★
October 5 -
Austria,
Britain,
France,
Prussia and the
Ottoman Empire form a commission to investigate causes of the massacres of
Maronite Christians, committed by
Druzes in
Lebanon earlier in the year.
★
October 10 - The original cornerstone of the
University of the South was laid in
Sewanee,
Tennessee.
★
October 18 - The first
Convention of Peking formally ended the
Second Opium War.
★
October 18-
21 -
Beijing's
Old Summer Palace is burned to the ground by orders of
British general
Lord Elgin in retaliation for mistreatment of several
prisoners of war during the
Second Opium War.
★
October 19 - New
Māori revolt begins in
New Zealand
★
October 26
★
★ Garibaldi again defeats the Neapolitan forces, advancing on
Gaeta, the last remaining Neapolitan strong-point.
★
★ Meeting of
Teano -
Giuseppe Garibaldi gives
Naples to the king
Victor Emmanuel II.
★
October 31 -
Juliette Gordon Low , the founder of Girl Scouts, was born.
★
November 3 - The combined forces of
Giuseppe Garibaldi and King
Victor Emmanuel II besiege King
Francis II of the
Two Sicilies in
Gaeta, his last remaining stronghold.
★
November 6 -
U.S. presidential election:
Abraham Lincoln beats
John C. Breckinridge,
Stephen A. Douglas, and
John Bell and is elected as the sixteenth
President of the United States, the first
Republican to hold that office.
★
December 1 -
Charles Dickens publishes the first installment of ''
Great Expectations'' in his magazine ''
All the Year Round''.
★
December 20 -
South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union.
★
December 29 - The world's first ocean-going (all) iron-hulled and armoured
battleship, the (British)
''HMS Warrior'' is launched.
Undated
★ Massacres of the
Christians of
Damascus, Syria, by part of the Muslim population, under the supervision of the
Ottoman Empire.
★
Victor Emmanuel, King of
Sardinia seizes the whole of the Papal States except
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
Chicago, Illinois,
United States by
Swedish immigrants. The college would move to Paxton, Illinois, in 1862, and to its eventual home in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1875.
★
Sedalia, Missouri is incorporated.
★
First International Chemistry Congress in
Karlsruhe,
Germanyhi
Ongoing events
★
Second Opium War (
1856-1860)
★
Taiping Rebellion (
1851-
1864)
Births
January - June
★
January 3 -
Kato Takaaki, 24th
Prime Minister of Japan (d.
1926)
★
January 8 -
Emma Booth, the fourth child of
William and
Catherine Booth (d.
1903)
★
January 25 -
Charles Curtis,
Vice President of the United States (d.
1936)
★
January 29
★
★
William Jacob Baer, American painter (d.
1941)
★
★
Anton Chekhov, Russian writer (d.
1904)
★
February 11 -
Rachilde, French author (d.
1953)
★
February 25 -
Sir William Ashley, economic historian (d.
1927)
★
February 29 -
Herman Hollerith, American businessman and inventor (d.
1929)
★
March 2 -
Susanna M. Salter, first woman mayor in the United States (d.
1961)
★
March 5 -
Sam Thompson, baseball player (d.
1922)
★
March 13 -
Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (d.
1903)
★
March 19 -
William Jennings Bryan, American politician (d.
1925)
★
March 22 -
Alfred Ploetz, German physician, biologist, and eugenicist (d.
1940)
★
March 27 -
Frank Frost Abbott, American classical scholar (d.
1924)
★
May 2 -
Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism (d.
1904)
★
May 9 -
J. M. Barrie, Scottish author (d.
1937)
★
May 20 -
Eduard Buchner, German chemist,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1917)
★
May 21 -
Willem Einthoven, Dutch inventor, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1927)
★
May 25 -
James McKeen Cattell, American psychologist (d.
1944)
★
May 29 -
Isaac Albéniz, Spanish composer (d.
1909)
★
June 20 -
Jack Worrall, Australian cricketer, footballer, and coach (d.
1937)
★
June 22 -
Tom O'Brien, American 19th century baseball player (d.
1921)
★
June 23 -
Albert Giraud, Belgian poet (d.
1929)
July - December
★
July 3 -
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American feminist (d.
1935)
★
July 7 -
Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer (d.
1911)
★
July 16 -
Otto Jespersen, Danish mathematician, creator of
Ido and
Novial languages (d.
1943)
★
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 10 -
Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, Indian musician (d.
1936)
★
August 16 -
Jules Laforgue, French poet (d.
1887)
★
August 13 -
Annie Oakley, American west show performer (d.
1926)
★
August 15 -
Henrietta Vinton Davis, American elocutionist, dramatist, and impersonator (d.
1941)
★
August 20 -
Raymond Poincare, French President (d.
1934)
★
September 5 -
Andrew Volstead, American politician (d.
1947)
★
September 6 -
Jane Addams, American social worker, recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize (d.
1935)
★
September 13 -
John J. Pershing, American general (d.
1948)
★
November 1 -
Boies Penrose, United States Senator from Pennsylvania (d.
1921)
★
November 6 -
Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Polish pianist and composer (d.
1941)
★
November 16 -
John Henry Kirby, Texas legislator and American businessman (d.
1940)
★
November 23
★
★
Billy the Kid, American gunfighter (d.
1881)
★
★
Hjalmar Branting,
Prime Minister of Sweden, recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize (d.
1925)
★
November 22 -
Fusajiro Yamauchi, founder of
Nintendo (d.
1940)
★
December 4 -
Charles de Broqueville, Belgian Prime Minister (d.
1940)
★
December 7 -
Joseph Cook, sixth
Prime Minister of Australia (d.
1947)
★
December 15 -
Niels Ryberg Finsen, Danish physician, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1904)
★
December 31 -
Joseph S. Cullinan, American oil industrialist, founder of
Texaco (d.
1937)
★ ''date unknown''
★
★
John Coughlin, American politician (d.
1938)
★
★
Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer (d.
1938)
★
★
Soapy Smith, Jefferson R. Smith, infamous American confidence man and crime boss (d.
1898)
★
★
Lancelot Speed, British illustrator (d.
1931)
: ''See also .''
Deaths
January - June
★
January 13 -
William Mason, American politician (b.
1786)
★
January 27
★
★
János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (b.
1802)
★
★
Thomas Brisbane, Scottish astronomer (b.
1773)
★
January 29 -
Stephanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden (b.
1789)
★
March 6 -
Justus Johann Friedrich Dotzauer, German cellist and composer (b.
1783)
★
March 17 -
Anna Jameson, German author
★
March 25 -
James Braid, Scottish surgeon (b.
1795)
★
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 - December
★
July 1 -
Charles Goodyear, American inventor (b.
1800)
★
September 21 -
Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (b.
1788)
★
October 31 -
Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, British admiral (b.
1775)
★
November 1 -
Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia), the Empress Consort of Russian Emperor
Nicholas I (b.
1798)
★
December 14 -
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen,
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b.
1784)
★ ''date unknown'' -
Dai Xi, Chinese painter (b.
1801)
: ''See also .''