1854

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Years:
1851 1852 1853 - 1854 - 1855 1856 1857

Decades:
1820s 1830s 1840s - 1850s - 1860s 1870s 1880s

Centuries:
18th century - 19th century - 20th century

1854 in art
1854 in literature
1854 in music
1854 in science
1854 in sports

List of state leaders in 1854
List of religious leaders in 1854

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 �land, 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 �land surrender to French-British troops
September 20 - Crimean War: At the Alma, the Franco-English alliance wins the first battle of the war.
October 01 - 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 is founded in 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.

Frederick Augustus Albert succeeds to the throne of Saxony.
Stockholm, Wisconsin is founded by immigrants from Karlskoga, Sweden (cf 1252).
Chemistry Professor Benjamin Silliman, of Yale University is the first to fractionate petroleum by distillation.
Abraham Pineo Gesner invents a process for extracting kerosene from coal.
Said Pasha succeeds his nephew Abbas as pasha of Egypt.
A Russian fort is established at the present site of Almaty.
Aurora, Ontario is first settled.
Spiegelthal excavates the tomb of Alyattes II.
The Ambrotype is introduced for photography.
Election of New York City mayor Fernando Wood begins the ascendancy of Tammany Hall.
An epidemic of cholera in London kills 10,000. Dr John Snow traces the source of one outbreak (that killed 500) to a single water pump, validating his theory that cholera is water-borne, and forming the starting point for epidemiology.