1853 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 6 - American President-Elect Franklin Pierce, wife Jane, and son Ben are involved in a train wreck near Andover, Massachusetts. Franklin and Jane survive but eleven-year-old Ben is killed.
• January 19 - Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premieres in Rome
• January 21 - Russell L. Hawes patents the envelope folding machine
• January 29 - Napoleon III marries the Spanish Countess Eugènie at the Tuileries
• March 4 – Inauguration of US president Franklin Pierce
• February 22 - Washington University is founded as Eliot Seminary
• May 23 - The first plat for Seattle, Washington is laid out.
• June 7 - Franklin College of Lancaster, Pennsylvania merges with Marshall College of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania to form Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster
• July 8 - U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Edo Bay with a request for a trade treaty
• July 25 Outlaw and bandit Joaquin Murietta is killed.
• August 12 – New Zealand acquires self-government
• August 23 - 1st true International Meteorological Organization Brussels, Belgium
• August 24 - Potato chips first prepared.
• October 4/October 5 - Crimean War: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
• October 28 - Crimean War: Ottoman army crosses the Danube into Vidin / Kalafat in Wallachia.
• November 3 - Troops of William Walker capture La Paz in Baja California and declare (short-lived) Republic of Lower California
• November 15 - Maria II of Portugal is succeeded by her son Pedro
• November 30 - Crimean War: Battle of Sinop - The Russian fleet destroys the Turkish fleet.
• December 30 - Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest

• Royal Norwegian Navy Museum founded.
• Yellow fever kills 7790 in New Orleans
• Alexander Wood invents the hypodermic syringe
• Argentina adopts federal constitution - Buenos Aires opposes that
• Donald McKay builds the Great Republic, the world's biggest sailing ship, which at 4,500 tons was too large to be successful
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel began work on the Great Eastern passenger steamer

• Start of Crimean War
• Independent Santa Cruz Maya of Eastern Yucatan recognized as an independent nation by British Empire
• Iesada succeeds Ieoshi as Japanese Shogun
• Beginning of the Late Tokugawa shogunate, the last part of the Edo period in Japan.
• Stephen Foster writes "My Old Kentucky Home."
• The University of Florida establilshed
• James Beckwourth discovers Beckwourth Pass.
• Tissot, a Swiss watch company, founded.

Births

• January 28 - José Martí, Cuban revolutionary (d. 1895)
• February 6 - Ignacij Klemenčič, Slovenian physicist (d. 1901)
• March 14 - Ferdinand Hodler, Swiss painter (d. 1918)
• March 30 - Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter (d. 1890)
• May 28 - Carl Larsson, Swedish painter (d. 1919)
• June 3 - William Flinders Petrie, English Egyptologist (d. 1942)
• June 12 - Chester Adgate Congdon, Minnesota mining magnate (d. 1916)
• July 5 - Cecil Rhodes, English businessman (d. 1902)
• July 18 - Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1928)
• September 2 - Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1932)
• September 16 - Albrecht Kossel, German physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1927)
• September 20 - Chulalongkorn, Rama V, king of Thailand (d. 1910)
• September 21 - Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1926)

Deaths

• January 16 - Matteo Carcassi, Italian composer (b. 1792)
• March 17 - Christian Doppler, Austrian mathematician (b. 1803)
• April 28 - Ludwig Tieck, German writer (b. 1773)
• November 15 - Maria II of Portugal (b. 1819)

1853

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