1854
1854 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).
Events
January 13 - The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas .
February 11 - Major streets lit by coal gas for first time.
February 14 - Texas is linked by telegraph with the rest of the United States , when a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas is completed.
February 17 - The British recognize the independence of the Orange Free State .
February 27 – Britain sends Russia an ultimatum to withdraw from two Ottoman provinces it had conquered, Moldavia and Wallachia
February 28 - The United States Republican Party is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin .
March 1 - German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears, two years later his remains are found in the canal near Charlottenburg
March 20 - The Boston Public Library opens to the public.
March 27 – United Kingdom declares war on Russia – Crimean War begins
March 28 – France declares war on Russia
March 31 - Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy , signs the Treaty /Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, to be precise, Tokugawa Shogunate , opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. (See History of Japan )
May 30 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the US territories of Nebraska and Kansas .
June - The Grand Excursion takes prominent Eastern U.S. inhabitants from Chicago to Rock Island, Illinois by railroad , then up the Mississippi River to St. Paul, Minnesota by steamboat .
June 10 - The first class of the United States Naval Academy graduate at Annapolis, Maryland
June 21 - In the battle at Bomarsund in Åland , Royal Navy mate Charles D. Lucas throws a live Russian artillery shell overboard by hand before it explodes - the incident is the first that will be retroactively awarded the Victoria Cross in 1857
July 6 - In Jackson, Michigan , the first convention of the U.S. Republican Party is held.
July 13 - In the battle of Guaymas , Mexico , General Jose Maria Yanez stops the French invasion led by Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon .
July 13 - Assassination of Khedive Abbas I of Egypt
August 16 - Russian troops in the island of Bomarsund in Åland surrender to French-British troops
September 20 - Crimean War : At the Alma , the Franco-English alliance wins the first battle of the war.
October 1 - The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Mass. to become the Waltham Watch Company pioneer in the American System of Watch Manufacturing .
October 17 - Newspaper The Age Melbourne , Australia .
October 21 - Florence Nightingale leaves for Crimea with 38 other nurses
October 25 - Crimean War : The Battle of Balaclava occurs, overall a victory for the allies, but it included the disastrous cavalry Charge of the Light Brigade , from which only 200 of 700 men survive.
November 5 - Crimean War : Russians lose again at the Battle of Inkerman .
November 17 - In Egypt , the Suez Canal , linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea , is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony.
Births
January 18 - Thomas Watson , telephone pioneer
February 17 - Friedrich Alfred Krupp , German industrialist (d. 1902 )
March 14 - Paul Ehrlich , physician, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1908 (d. 1915 )
March 14 - Thomas R. Marshall , U.S. vice-president (d. 1925 )
March 15 - Emil Adolf von Behring , winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1901
May 11 - Albion Woodbury Small , American sociologist
July 3 - Leos Janacek , Czech composer
July 12 - George Eastman , inventor of the Kodak camera
July 27 - Takahashi Korekiyo , Japanese prime minister (d. 1936 )
August 2 - Milan I , King of Serbia
October 16 - Oscar Wilde , Irish writer (d. 1900 )
October 20 - Arthur Rimbaud , French poet (d. 1891 )
November 6 - John Philip Sousa , American march composer and conductor
November 21 - Pope Benedict XV (d. 1922 )
December 23 - Victoriano Huerta , Mexican president
December 24 - Thomas Stevens , world-circling bicyclist
Diamond Bessie - prostitute and murder victim (d. 1877 )
Edward Harkness - U.S. philanthropist (d. 1940 )
C. W. Post - cereal manufacturer (d. 1914 )
Deaths
