Events of 1860

January–June

• January 10 – The Pemberton Mill collapses in Lawrence, Massachusetts, killing 145 workers.

• March 22 – The Grand Duchy of Tuscany is annexed to the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.

• March–August – The second rout of the Jiangnan DaYing (Army Group Jiangnan) destroys the Qing's army of 180,000.

• April 3 – The Pony Express begins its first run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.

• April 4 – A new uprising erupts in Palermo.

• April 9 – French typesetter Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville sings the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" to his phonautograph; producing the world's earliest known sound recording (however, it is not rediscovered until 2008).

• May 1 – A Chondrite type meteorite falls 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) the 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 Calatafimi: Troops under Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat the army of Naples in Sicily, during the Second Italian independence war.

• May 17 – The 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.

• May 28 – One of the worst storms ever experienced in the region hits the east coast of England, sinking more than 100 ships and killing at least 40 people. Among those rescued at sea is the crew of the brig Hannah, captained by George Jezzard, the great-great-great-grandfather of the actor David Suchet

• – The State Bank of the Russian Empire is established.

• June 24 – St. Thomas Infirmary, the first nursing school based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale, is opened in England.

• June 30 – The historic debate about evolution is held at the Oxford University Museum.

July–September

July 20: Garibaldi.

• July 2 – Vladivostok, Russia is founded.

• July 11 – Mutsuhito (the future Emperor Meiji) becomes Crown Prince of Japan.

• July 20 – Battle of Milazzo: The forces of Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat royal Neapolitan forces near Messina; nearly all of Sicily is now under Garibaldi's control.

• August 22 – Assisted by the British navy, the troops of Giuseppe Garibaldi cross from Sicily to the Italian mainland.

• September 3–September 5 – The First International Chemistry Congress is held in Karlsruhe, Germany.

• September 7

• * The 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.

• September 24 – Battle of Guayaquil: Ecuadorian Generals Juan José Flores and Gabriel García Moreno take the port of Guayaquil from occupying Peruvian forces.

October–December

• October – John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant leave Zanzibar to search for the source of the Nile River.

• 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 the causes of the massacres of Maronite Christians, committed by Druzes in Lebanon earlier in the year.

• October 17 – The Open Championship, also known as the British Open, is played for the first time at Prestwick Golf Club in Ayrshire, Scotland. The event was won by Willie Park Snr.

• October 18 – The first Convention of Peking formally ends 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 – A 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.

• 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 16th 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 United States Union.

December 29: HMS Warrior (restored).

• December 29 – The world's first ocean-going (all) iron-hulled and armoured battleship, the (British) HMS Warrior, is launched.

Undated

• Christians and Druzes clash in Damascus, Syria.

• 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 the 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 moves to Paxton, Illinois, in 1862, and to its eventual home in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1875.

• Sedalia, Missouri is incorporated.

• Britain produces 20% of the entire world's output of industrial goods.

• Count Camillo Benso di Cavour returns to power.

• The Russian Empire has c. of railroads.

• The American South has c. 4 million slaves.

• China agrees in an unequal treaty imposed on it to allow missionaries to proselytize throughout the country.

• 1860–1900 – 14 million immigrants come to the USA.

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 14 – Eugen Schiffer, German politician (d. 1954)

• February 25 – Sir William Ashley, economic historian (d. 1927)

• February 28 – Carl Georg Barth, American mathematician and mechanical engineer (d. 1939)

• 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 16 – Herman Webster Mudgett, American serial killer (d. 1896)

• 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 linguist, 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 7 – Anna Mary Robertson Moses aka Grandma Moses, painter & centoginerean (d. 1961)

• September 13 – John J. Pershing, American general (d. 1948)

• September 15 – Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya, Indian engineer and statesman (d. 1962)

• October 31 – Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts

• 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)

• *Abner Powell, Major league baseball player (d. 1953)

• December 25 – Manuel Dimech, Maltese philosopher and social reformer (d. 1921)

• December 31 – Joseph S. Cullinan, American oil industrialist, founder of Texaco (d. 1937)

• date unknown

• *Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer (d. 1938)

• *John Coughlin, American politician (d. 1938)

• *Lancelot Speed, British illustrator (d. 1931)

• *Soapy Smith (Jefferson R. Smith), infamous American confidence man and crime boss (d. 1898)

Deaths

January–June

• January 5 – St. John Neumann, Saint and Roman Catholic Bishop of Philadelphia (b. 1811)

• 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, British 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)