1860 was a leap year starting on Sunday.

Events

January

• January 2 - The discovery of the planet Vulcan was announced at a meeting of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

March

• March 6 - Abraham Lincoln speaks against slavery in New Haven, Connecticut.
• March 24 - Savoy and Nice are annexed into France.

April

• April 3 - The Pony Express begins its first run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.
• April 4 – New uprising in Palermo

May

• May 1 - A chondrite type meteorite fell to earth in Muskingum County, Ohio near the town of New Concord.
• May 5 - Giuseppe Garibaldi and his troops depart from Questa on the Expedition of the Thousand
• May 8 - In New Granada (modern-day Colombia) 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 Catalafimi; troops under Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat the army of Naples in Sicily, during the Second Italian independence war.
• May 18 - Abraham Lincoln is selected as the US presidential candidate for the Republican party.
• May 27 - Garibaldi's forces take Palermo, the capital of Sicily.

June

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

July

• July 2 - Vladivostok, Russia is founded.
• July 9 - Mírzá 'Alí-Muhammad was executed by a firing squad in Tabriz, Persia for claiming to be a prophet.
• July 11 - Mutsuhito becomes Crown Prince of Japan.
• July 19 - Ioan Dimitrovich Kasatkin becomes an Eastern Orthodox monk under the name Nikolai.
• July 20 - The forces of Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat royal Neapolitan forces at the Battle of Milazzo, near Messina. Nearly all of Sicily was now under Garibaldi's control.
• July 24 - Monk Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as deacon.
• July 25 - Deacon Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as priest.

August

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

September

• September 7 - Lady Elgin is accidentally rammed and sunk in Lake Michigan, hundreds drown.
• September 7 - 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

October

• John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant leave Zanzibar to search for source of the Nile.
• October 1 - The Battle of the Volturno
• October 5 - Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire form a commission to investigate causes of clashes between Maronites and Druzes in Lebanon earlier in the year.
• October 10 - The original cornerstone of the University of the South was laid in Sewanee, Tennessee.
• October 18 - The British general Lord Elgin - with protestations from the French - ordered his forces to set fire to the huge complex of Beijing's Old Summer Palace, known as the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, which burned to the ground. It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze and took three days to burn. Elgin justified the order as retaliation for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of several western prisoners of war, among them two British envoys who had been under protection of a flag of truce. The burning of the Gardens of Perfect Brightness is still a very sensitive issue in China today.
• October 19 - New Māori revolt begins in New Zealand
• October 26 - Battle of the Volturno. Garibaldi again defeats the Neapolitan forces, advancing on Gaeta, the last remaining Neapolitan strong-point.
• October 26 - Giuseppe Garibaldi gives Naples to the king Victor Emmanuel II.

November

• 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, 1860: 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

• December 20 - South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union.
• December 29 - The world's first ocean-going (all) iron-hulled and armoured battleship, the (British) HMS Warrior is launched.

Unknown month

• Massacres of the Christians of Damascus, Syria, by part of the Muslim population, under the supervision of the Ottoman Empire.
• 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 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 Rock Island, Illinois, United States by Swedish immigrants.
• Sedalia, Missouri is incorporated.
• First International Chemistry Congress in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Births

January-April

• 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)
• January 29- Anton Chekhov, Russian writer (d. 1904)
• February 11 - Rachilde, French author (d. 1953)
• February 25 - Sir William Ashley, economic historian (d. 1927)
• 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-August

• May 2 - Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism (d. 1904)
• May 9 - J. M. Barrie, Scottish author (d. 1937)
• 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)
• July 3 - Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American feminist (d. 1935)
• July 7 - Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer (d. 1911)
• 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 outlaw (d. 1926)
• August 15 - Henrietta Vinton Davis, American elocutionist, dramatist, and impersonator (d. 1941)

September-December

• September 5 - Andrew Volstead, American politician (d. 1947)
• September 6 - Jane Addams, American social worker, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1935)
• September 13 - John J. Pershing, American general (d. 1948)
• November 1 - Boies Penrose, United States Senator from Pennsylvania (d. 1921)
• November 6 - Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Polish pianist and composer (d. 1941)
• November 23 - Billy the Kid, American gunfighter (d. 1881)
• November 23 - Hjalmar Branting, Prime Minister of Sweden, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1925)
• 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)

Unknown month

• John Coughlin, American politician (d. 1938)
• Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer (d. 1938)
• Albert Giraud, Belgian poet (d. 1929)
• Soapy Smith, Jefferson R. Smith, infamous American confidence man and crime boss (d. 1898)
• Lancelot Speed, British illustrator (d. 1931)

Deaths

• January 27 - János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1802)
• January 27 - Thomas Brisbane, Scottish astronomer (b. 1883)
• January 29 - Stephanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden (b. 1789)
• February 20 - Henry Drummond, Canadian poet (b. 1851)
• March 17 - Anna Jameson, German 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 1 - Charles Goodyear, American inventor (b. 1800)
• October 31 - Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, British admiral (b. 1775)
• December 14 - George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th earl of Aberdeen (b. 1784)

Unknown month

• Dai Xi, Chinese painter (b. 1801)

1860 | 1860s

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