Events of 1859

January–March

• January 24 – Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza under the name Romania (see December 1, 1918 for the final unification, Transylvania and other regions are still missing at that time).

• January 28 – The city of Olympia is incorporated in the territory of Washington in the United States of America.

• February 14 – Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.

• February 27 – U.S. Congressman Daniel Sickles shoots Philip Barton Key for having an affair with his wife.

• March 9 – The army of Piedmont-Sardinia mobilizes against Austria, beginning the crisis which will lead to the Austro-Sardinian War.

• March 21 – The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania issues the charter establishing the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, the first organization of its kind in the United States and founder of the nation's first zoo.

• March 26 – A French amateur astronomer claims to have noticed a planet closer to the Sun than Mercury – later named Vulcan.

April–June

• April 20 – A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is published.

• April 25 – Ground is broken for the Suez Canal.

• April 26 – Austro-Sardinian War: Giuseppe Garibaldi's Hunters of the Alps confront Austrian forces led by Field Marshal-Lieutenant Carl Baron Urban at Varese.

• April 28 – The Pomona is wrecked off the English coast, with 424 dead.

• April 29 – Austrian troops begin to cross the Ticino River to Piedmont.

• May 4 – The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge, linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England.

• May 5 – Border Treaty between Brazil and Venezuela: The two countries agree their borders should be traced at the water divide between the Amazon and the Orinoco basins.

• May 22 – Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies is succeeded by his 23-year-old son Francis II of the Two Sicilies.

• May 30 – Battle of Palestro: The Sardinians defeat the Austrian army.

• May 31 – The Great Clock at the Palace of Westminster, London was started.

• June 4 – Austro-Sardinian War – Battle of Magenta: The French and Sardinians defeat the Austrians.

• June 6 – The British Crown colony of Queensland in Australia is created by devolving part of the territory of New South Wales (Queensland Day).

• June 8 – The discovery of the Comstock Lode in the western Utah Territory setting off the Rush to Washoe

• June 15 – The so-called Pig War border dispute between the Americans and the British on the San Juan Islands begins by the death of the namesake pig.

• June 18 – Aletschhorn, second summit of the Bernese Alps, is first ascended.

• June 24 – Battle of Solferino: The Kingdom of Sardinia and the armies of Napoleon III of France defeat Franz Josef I of Austria in northern Italy; the battle inspires Henri Dunant to found the Red Cross.

• June 30 – Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope for the first time.

July–September

• July – Count Camillo Benso di Cavour resigns.

• *Pike's Peak Gold Rush begins in the Colorado Territory.

• July 1 – The first intercollegiate baseball game is played, between Amherst and Williams Colleges.

• July 8

• *Charles XV succeeds his father Oscar I of Sweden and Norway (as Charles IV).

• *An armistice is declared between Austria and others.

• July 11 – The chimes of Big Ben ring for the first time in London.

• July 11 – By the preliminary treaty signed at Villafranca, Italy, Lombardy is ceded to the French (who immediately cede it to Sardinia), while the Austrians keep Venetia and the French promise to restore the Central Italian rulers expelled in the course of the war. This brings the Austro-Sardinian War effectively to a close.

• July 30 – Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps, is first ascended.

• August 16 – The Tuscan National Assembly formally deposes the House of Habsburg-Lorraine; ending an ascendancy of 109 years.

• August 27 – Edwin Drake drills the first oil well in the United States, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, starting the Pennsylvanian oil rush.

• August 28 – September 2 – The solar storm of 1859, the largest geomagnetic solar storm on record, causes the Northern lights aurora to be visible as far south as Cuba and knocks out telegraph communication. (This is also called the Carrington event). (Carrington is the first known person to observe solar flares, due to this storm. This is also the first major solar radiation storm to be recorded, according to Dr. Phillip C. Plait (Phil Plait) in his latest book: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/213308765 .)

October–December

• October 16 – John Brown raids the Harpers Ferry Armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an unsuccessful bid to spark a general slave rebellion.

• October 18 – Troops under Colonel Robert E. Lee overpower Brown at the Federal arsenal.

• October 26 – The steamship Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, Wales with 454 dead.

• November 1 – The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse is lighted for the first time (its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for 19 miles).

• November 10 – The Treaty of Zürich, reaffirming the terms of Villafranca, brings the Austro-Sardinian War to an official close.

• November 24 – The French Navy's La Gloire ("Glory"), the first ocean-going ironclad warship in history, is launched.

• November 24 – British naturalist Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species, a book which argues that species gradually evolve through natural selection (it immediately sells out its initial print run).

• December 2 – Militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16 raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

• December 4 – The Mekteb-i Mülkiye School is founded in the Ottoman Empire.

• December 10 – The Ateneo Municipal de Manila is founded.

Undated

• District Nursing begins in Liverpool, England, when philanthropist William Rathbone employs Mary Robinson to nurse the sick poor in their own homes in the city.

• The island of Timor is divided between Portugal and the Netherlands.

• The Rancho Rincon de Los Esteros Land Grant is confirmed to Rafael Alvisa, (part of the present Santa Clara County, California).

• The Codex Sinaiticus is found by Constantin von Tischendorf on his third visit to Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai.

• Bernhard Riemann formulates the Riemann hypothesis, one of the most important open problems of contemporary mathematics.

• Brisbane is declared the capital of newly separated colony Queensland, Australia.

• The University of Michigan Law School is founded.

• 1859–1860 – A French naval force seizes Saigon and 3 surrounding provinces in southern Vietnam, making it a French colony.

Ongoing events

• Second Opium War (1856–1860)

• Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864)

• Spanish-Moroccan War (1859) (until 1860)

Births

January–June

• January 11 – Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, British statesman and Viceroy of India (d. 1925)

• January 27 – Wilhelm II of Germany, last Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia (d. 1941)

• February 1 – Henry Miller, stage actor & producer (d. 1926)

• February 1 – Victor Herbert, Irish-born composer (Babes In Toyland) (d. 1924)

• February 3 – Hugo Junkers, German industrialist and aircraft designer (d. 1935)

• February 6 – Elias Disney, American farmer and father of Walt Disney (d. 1941)

• February 14 – Henry Valentine Knaggs, English physician and author (d. 1954)

• February 16 – George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., inventor of the Ferris wheel (d. 1896)

• February 19 – Svante Arrhenius, Swedish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927)

• February 28 – Florian Cajori, Swiss historian of mathematics (d. 1930)

• March 2 – Sholom Aleichem, Ukrainian Yiddish novelist (d. 1916)

• March 4 – Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Russian physicist (d. 1905)

• March 8 – Kenneth Grahame, English author (d. 1932)

• March 12 – Abraham H. Cannon, American Mormon apostle (d. 1896)

• March 26 – Alfred Edward Housman, English poet (d. 1936)

• April 8 – Edmund Husserl, Austrian philosopher (d. 1938)

• May 15 – Pierre Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1906)

• May 22 – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish writer (d. 1930)

• June 21 – Henry Ossawa Tanner, American artist (d. 1937)

July–December

• July 6 – Verner von Heidenstam, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)

• July 11 (June 29 Julian Calendar) – Peter Verigin, Doukhobor leader (d. 1924)

• August 4 – Knut Hamsun, Norwegian author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1952)

• August 18 – Anna Ancher, Dansk painter (d. 1935)

• September 3 – Jean Jaurès, French socialist (d. 1914)

• September 16 – Yuan Shikai, Chinese dictator (d. 1916)

• September 18 – Lincoln Loy McCandless, Hawaiian politician and rancher (d. 1940)

• October 9 – Alfred Dreyfus, French military officer (d. 1935)

• October 18 – Henri Bergson, French philosopher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (d. 1941)

• October 20 – John Dewey, American philosopher, psychologist, and educator (d. 1952)

• October 21 – Francesc Macià, President of the Catalan Generalitat (d. 1933)

• November 14 – Alexandru Averescu, Romanian soldier and politician (d. 1938)

• November 19 – Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Russian composer (d. 1935)

• November 23 – Billy the Kid, American outlaw (d. July 14, 1881)

• December 2 – Georges Seurat, French painter (d. 1891)

• December 15 – L. L. Zamenhof, Russo-Polish initiator of Esperanto (d. 1917)

• December 17 – Paul César Helleu, French artist (d. 1927)

• date unknown

• *William Bliss Baker, American painter (d. 1886)

Deaths

January–June

• January 28 – Frederick John Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1782)

• February 13 – Eliza Acton, English cookery writer (b. 1799)

• February 27 – Philip Barton Key, U.S. District Attorney (b. 1818)

• April 16 – Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian (b. 1805)

• May 6 – Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and geographer (b. 1769)

• June 11 – Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, Austrian diplomat (b. 1773)

• June 23 – Maria Pavlovna of Russia, Grand duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach (b. 1786)

July–December

• July 8 – King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway (b. 1799)

• August 2 – Horace Mann, American educator and abolitionist (b. 1796)

• August 4 – John Vianney, French Saint known as the Cure de Ars (b. 1786)

• August 15 – Nathaniel Claiborne, U.S. politician (b. 1777)

• August 28 – Leigh Hunt, British critic and essayist (b. 1784)

• September 15 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer (b. 1806)

• September 28 – Carl Ritter, German geographer (b. 1779)

• October 4 – Karl Baedeker, German author and publisher (b. 1801)

• October 22 – Louis Spohr, German violinist and composer (b. 1784)

• November 28 – Washington Irving, American author (b. 1783)

• December 2 – John Brown, American abolitionist (hanged) (b. 1800)

• December 8 – Thomas de Quincey, English writer (b. 1785)

• December 16 – Wilhelm Grimm, German children's writer (b. 1786)

• date unknown – Abderrahmane, Sultan of Morocco (b. 1778)