1860

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

Decades: 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s - 1860s - 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s

Years: 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 - 1860 - 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865

Events

• April 3 - The Pony Express makes its first run.
• Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia seizes the whole of the Papal States besides Rome (see Vatican City) and unites Italy.
• Robert Wilhelm Bunsen discovers Cesium and Rubidium (see Discovery of the chemical elements)
• September 7 - Lady Elgin is accidentally rammed and sunk in Lake Michigan, hundreds drown.
• October - John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant[?] leave Zanzibar to search for source of the Nile.
• November - Abraham Lincoln defeats John C. Breckinridge in the U.S. presidential election.
• December 26 - Confederate diplomatic envoys James Mason[?] and John Slidell[?] are freed by the United States government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and Great Britain.
• December 29 - The first British seagoing ironclad[?] warship, the HMS Warrior[?] is launched.
• Vladivostok, Russia is founded.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1860 in literature:
  • Mason Jackson becomes art editor of the Illustrated London News[?].
• 1860 in sports:
  • Willie Park[?] wins the first British Open golf tournament.
  • First running of the Queen's Plate in Toronto, Ontario, North America's oldest thoroughbred horse race.

Births

• January 1 - George Washington Carver, educator, activist, botanist
• January 11 - Marie Bashkirtseff, artist
• January 25 - Charles Curtis, American vice-president (+ 1936)
• January 29 - William Jacob Baer, American painter (+ 1941)
• January 29 - Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer (+ 1904)
• February 11 - Rachilde[?] (Marguerite Vallette-Eymery), French author
• February 29 - Herman Hollerith, inventor of the first electric tabulating machine.
• March 13 - Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer
• March 19 - William Jennings Bryan, American politician
• May 9 - J. M. Barrie, author (+ 1937)
• May 29 - Isaac Albéniz, Spanish composer
• July 3 - Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist writer (+ 1935)
• July 7 - Gustav Mahler, composer
• September 13 - John Pershing, American general
• John Coughlin, Chicago alderman
• Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer (+ 1938)
• Albert Giraud, Belgian poet (+ 1929)
• Lancelot Speed, illustrator (+ 1931)

Deaths

• January 27 - János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematican
• Sir Charles Barry, English architect