1856

Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century

Decades: 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s - 1850s - 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s

Years: 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 - 1856 - 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861

• January 8 - Borax is discovered (John Veatch[?]).
• January 29 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross
• February 18 - The American Party (Know-Nothings) convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore.
• March 30 - The Treaty of Paris (1856) is signed, ending the Crimean War
• April 7 - Foundation of Nelson College, Nelson, New Zealand
• May 21 - Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.
• 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.

• Gregor Mendel starts his research on genetics.
• End of the Crimean war.
• November - James Buchanan defeats John C. Fremont in the U.S. presidential election
• National Portrait Gallery in London opened.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1856 in literature:

Births

• January 12 - John Singer Sargent, artist (+ 1925)
• January 20 - Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch[?], women's rights activist († 1940)
• February 14 - Frank Harris, author and editor
• March 9 - Edie Foy[?], singer, dancer, vaudeville performer (+ 1928)
• March 20 - Frederick W. Taylor, inventor, efficiency expert
• April 5 - Booker T. Washington
• May 6 - Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist, founder of psychoanalysis.
• May 6 - Robert Peary, explorer (+ 1920)
• May 15 - L. Frank Baum, author (+ 1919)
• December 25 - Hans von Bartels German painter

• George Bernard Shaw, writer
• Nikola Tesla, inventor of the alternating current electrical generation and transmission system.
• Balganghadar Tilak
• L. Frank Baum, writer.
• Wilhelm von Gloeden, photographer.

Deaths

• February 17 - Heinrich Heine, writer
• July 9 - Amedeo Avogadro, chemist
• August 30 - Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, writer.