1854

{| align=right cellpadding=3 id=toc style="margin-left: 15px;"\n|- \n| align="center" colspan=2 | Years:
1851 1852 1853 - 1854 - 1855 1856 1857 \n|-\n| align="center" colspan=2 | Decades:
1820s 1830s 1840s - 1850s - 1860s 1870s 1880s \n|- \n| align="center" | Centuries:
18th century - 19th century - 20th century

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\n1854 in art
\n1854 in literature
\n1854 in music
\n1854 in science
\n1854 in sports\n----\nList of state leaders in 1854
\nList of religious leaders in 1854\n|} \n

Table of contents

1 Events 2 Births 3 Deaths

Events

\n* January 13 - The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas.\n* February 11 - Major streets lit by coal gas for first time.\n* 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.\n* February 17 - The British recognize the independence of the Orange Free State.\n* February 27 – Britain sends Russia an ultimatum to withdraw from two Ottoman provinces it had conquered, Moldavia and Wallachia\n* February 28 - The United States Republican Party is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.\n* March 1 - German pyschologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears, two years later his remains are found in the canal near Charlottenburg\n* March 20 - The Boston Public Library opens to the public.\n* March 27 – United Kingdom declares war on Russia – Crimean War begins\n* March 28 – France declares war on Russia\n* March 31 - Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy, signs the Treaty/Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, to be precise, Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. (See History of Japan)\n* May 30 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the US territories of Nebraska and Kansas.\n* June - The Grand Excursion takes prominent Eastern U.S. inhabitants from Chicago to Rock Island, Illinois by railroad, then up the Mississippi River to St. Paul, Minnesota by steamboat.\n* June 10 - The first class of the United States Naval Academy graduate at Annapolis, Maryland\n* June 21 - In the battle at Bomarsund in Åland, Royal Navy mate Charles D. Lucas throws a live Russian artillery shell overboard by hand before it explodes - the incident is the first that will be retroactively awarded the Victoria Cross in 1857\n* July 6 - In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the U.S. Republican Party is held.\n*July 13 - In the battle of Guaymas, Mexico, General Jose Maria Yanez stops the French invasion led by Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon.\n* July 13 - Assassination of Khedive Abbas I of Egypt\n* August 16 - Russian troops in the island of Bomarsund in Åland surrender to French-British troops\n* September 20 - Crimean War: At the Alma, the Franco-English alliance wins the first battle of the war.\n* October 01 - The 1850 in Roxbury founded Boston Watch Co relocated to Waltham, Mass. Waltham Watch Company\n* October 17 - Newspaper The Age is founded in Melbourne, Australia.\n* October 21 - Florence Nightingale leaves for Crimea with 38 other nurses\n* October 25 - Crimean War: The Battle of Balaclava occurs, overall a victory for the allies, but it included the disastrous cavalry Charge of the Light Brigade, from which only 200 of 700 men survive.\n* November 5 - Crimean War: Russians lose again at the Battle of Inkerman. \n* Frederick Augustus Albert succeeds to the throne of Saxony.\n* Stockholm, Wisconsin is founded by immigrants from Karlskoga, Sweden (cf 1252).\n* Chemistry Professor Benjamin Silliman, of Yale University is the first to fractionate petroleum by distillation.\n* Abraham Pineo Gesner invents a process for extracting kerosene from coal.\n* Said Pasha succeeds his nephew Abbas as pasha of Egypt.\n* A Russian fort is established at the present site of Almaty.\n* Aurora, Ontario is first settled.\n* Spiegelthal excavates the tomb of Alyattes II.\n* The Ambrotype is introduced for photography.\n* Election of New York City mayor Fernando Wood begins the ascendancy of Tammany Hall.\n* 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.

Births

\n* January 18 - Thomas Watson, telephone pioneer\n* February 17 - Friedrich Alfred Krupp, industrialist (+ 1902)\n* March 14 - Paul Ehrlich, physician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1908 (+ 1915)\n* March 14 - Thomas R. Marshall, US vice-president (+ 1925)\n* March 15 - Emil Adolf von Behring, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1901\n* May 11 - Albion Woodbury Small, US sociologist\n* July 3 - Leos Janacek, Czech composer\n* July 12 - George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera\n* July 27 - Takahashi Korekiyo, Japanese prime minister (+ 1936)\n* August 2 - Milan I, king of Serbia\n* October 16 - Oscar Wilde, Irish writer\n* October 20 - Arthur Rimbaud, French poet\n* November 6 - John Philip Sousa, famous march composer and conductor\n* November 21 - Pope Benedict XV (+ 1922)\n* December 23 - Victoriano Huerta, Mexican president\n* December 24 - Thomas Stevens, world-circling bicyclist\n* Diamond Bessie - prostitute and murder victim (+ 1877)\n* Edward Harkness - US philanthropist (+ 1940)\n* C. W. Post - cereal manufacturer (+ 1914)

Deaths

\n* February 17 - John Martin, English painter\n* March 13 - Thomas Noon Talfourd, English jurist\n* April 15 - Arthur Aikin, English chemist and mineralogist\n* July 7 - Georg Ohm, German physicist\n* September 8 - Angelo Mai, Italian cardinal and philologist\n* Abbas I, pasha of Egypt \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n