1853

This article is about the year 1853.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	18th century – 19th century – 20th century
Decades:	1820s  1830s  1840s  – 1850s –  1860s  1870s  1880s
Years:	1850 1851 1852 – 1853 – 1854 1855 1856

1853 in topic:

Humanities

Archaeology – Architecture – Art – Literature – Music

By country

Australia – Canada – France – Germany – Mexico – South Africa – US – UK

Other topics

Rail Transport – Science – Sports

Lists of leaders

Colonial Governors – State leaders

Birth and death categories

Births – Deaths

Establishments and disestablishments categories

Establishments – Disestablishments

Works category

Works

1853 in other calendars

Gregorian calendar	1853 MDCCCLIII
Ab urbe condita	2606
Armenian calendar	1302 ԹՎ ՌՅԲ
Assyrian calendar	6603
Bahá'í calendar	9–10
Bengali calendar	1260
Berber calendar	2803
British Regnal year	16 Vict. 1 – 17 Vict. 1
Buddhist calendar	2397
Burmese calendar	1215
Byzantine calendar	7361–7362
Chinese calendar	壬子年十一月廿二日 (4489/4549-11-22) — to — 癸丑年十二月初二日 (4490/4550-12-2)
Coptic calendar	1569–1570
Ethiopian calendar	1845–1846
Hebrew calendar	5613–5614
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1909–1910
- Shaka Samvat	1775–1776
- Kali Yuga	4954–4955
Holocene calendar	11853
Iranian calendar	1231–1232
Islamic calendar	1269–1270
Japanese calendar	Kaei 6 (嘉永6年)
Korean calendar	4186
Minguo calendar	59 before ROC 民前59年
Thai solar calendar	2396

Year 1853 (MDCCCLIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

Events

January–March

• January 8 – Taiping Rebellion: Zeng Guofan is ordered to assist the governor of Hunan in organising a militia force to search for local bandits.
• January 12 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army occupies Wuchang.
• January 19 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore premieres in performance at Teatro Apollo in Rome.
• February 10 – Taiping Rebellion: Taiping forces assemble at Hanyang, Hankou and Wuchang for the march on Nanjing.
• February 12 – Puerto Montt is founded in the Reloncaví Sound, Chile.
• February 22 – Washington University in St. Louis is founded as Eliot Seminary.
• March 4 – Franklin Pierce succeeds Millard Fillmore as the 14th President of the United States.
• March 20 – Taiping Rebellion: A rebel army of around 750,000 seizes Nanjing, killing 30,000 Imperial troops.

April–June

• April 26 – Foundation of Indian Railways.
• May
  • The first Public Aquarium opens at the London Zoo.
  • An outbreak of yellow fever kills 7,790 in New Orleans.
• May 12–October 31 – Great Industrial Exhibition held in Dublin, Ireland.
• May 23 – The first plat for Seattle, Washington is laid out.
• June 27 – Taiping Rebellion: The Northern Expeditionary Force crosses the Yellow River.

July–September

• 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 in California.
• August 12 – New Zealand acquires self-government.
• August 23 – The first true International Meteorological Organization is established in Brussels, Belgium.
• August 24 – Potato chips are first prepared.
• September 19 – Hudson Taylor first leaves for China.

October–December

The Battle of Sinop was the last major naval battle involving sailing warships.

• October 4–October 5 – Crimean War: The Ottoman Empire starts war with Russia.
• October 28 – Crimean War: The Ottoman army crosses the Danube into Vidin/Kalafat in Wallachia.
• October 30 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping Northern Expeditionary Force comes within three miles (5 km) of Tianjin.
• November 3 – Troops of William Walker capture La Paz in Baja California and declare the (short-lived) Republic of Lower California.
• November 4 – Crimean War – Battle of Oltenitza: Turkish victory over Russians.
• 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 6 – Taiping Rebellion: French minister de Bourboulon arrives at the Heavenly Capital aboard the Cassini.
• December 30 – Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.

Date unknown

• The Royal Norwegian Navy Museum is founded.
• The American and German piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons is founded.
• Alexander Wood invents the hypodermic syringe.
• Donald McKay builds the Great Republic, the world's biggest sailing ship, which at 4,500 tons is too large to be successful.
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel begins work on the Great Eastern passenger steamer.
• The Independent Santa Cruz Maya of Eastern Yucatan are recognized as an independent nation by the British Empire.
• Iesada succeeds Ieyoshi as Japanese Shogun.
• The Late Tokugawa shogunate (the last part of the Edo period in Japan) begins.
• Stephen Foster writes My Old Kentucky Home.
• The University of Florida is established.
• The Swiss watch company Tissot is founded.
• Wheaton Academy founded in West Chicago, Illinois
• 1853–1873 – More than 130,000 Chinese laborers come to Cuba.
• Manchester England granted city status
• The clothing company Levi Strauss & Co. is founded.
• "Golden year" of the Piano History: Bechstein, Julius Blüthner and Steinway & Sons - three prominent piano makers founded

Births

January–June

• January 2 – Packy Dillon, American professional baseball player (d. 1902)
• January 10 – John Martin Schaeberle, German-American astronomer (d. 1924)
• January 16 – Johnston Forbes-Robertson, actor (d. 1937)
• January 28 – José Martí, Cuban revolutionary (d. 1895)
• January 29 – Kitasato Shibasaburō, Japanese physician and bacteriologist (d. 1931)
• February 4 – Kaneko Kentarō, Japanese politician and diplomat (d. 1942)
• February 6 – Ignacij Klemenčič, Slovenian physicist (d. 1901)
• February 18 – Ernest Fenollosa, Catalan American philosopher (d. 1908)
• February 31 – William O'Malley, Irish Parliament member. Notable for his bizarre date of birth. (d. 1939)
• March 5 – Howard Pyle, American artist and fictional writer (d. 1911)
• March 14 – Ferdinand Hodler, Swiss painter (d. 1918)
• March 25 – Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar, fifth Qajarid Shah of Persia (d. 1907)
• March 30 – Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter (d. 1890)
• April 7 – Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (d. 1884)
• 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–December

• July 4 – Ernst Otto Beckmann, German chemist (d. 1923)
• July 5 – Cecil Rhodes, English businessman (d. 1902)
• July 18 – Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1928)
• July 24 – William Gillette, American actor, playwright and stage-manager (d. 1937)
• August 28 – Vladimir Shukhov, Russian engineer-polymath, scientist and architect (d. 1939)
• August 28 – Franz I, Prince of Liechtenstein, (d. 1938)
• 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)
• September 21 – Edmund Leighton, English painter (d. 1922)
• October 17 – Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, wife of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (d. 1920)
• October 26 – Tokugawa Akitake, Japanese Daimyo, the last lord of Mito Domain, younger brother of the last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu (d. 1910)
• October 30 – Louise Abbéma French painter, sculptor, and designer of the Belle Époque (d. 1927)
• November 9 – Stanford White, American architect (d. 1906)
• November 13 – John Drew, Jr., American stage actor, (d. 1927)
• December 6 – Haraprasad Shastri, Indian academic, Sanskrit scholar, archivist and historian of Bengali literature (d. 1931)
• December 17 – Émile Roux, French physician (d. 1933)
• December 23 – William Henry Moody, 35th United States Secretary of the Navy, 45th United States Attorney General (d. 1917)

Deaths

January–June

• January 8 – Mihály Bertalanits, Slovene (Prekmurian) poet in Kingdom of Hungary (b. 1788)
• January 16 – Robert Lucas, governor of Ohio, United States (b. 1781)
• January 16 – Matteo Carcassi, Italian composer (b. 1792)
• January 16 – Archduke Rainer Joseph of Austria, Archduke of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia (b. 1783)
• February 6 – Anastasio Bustamante, Mexican President
• March 17 – Christian Doppler, Austrian mathematician (b. 1803)
• April 18 – William R. King, 13th Vice President of the United States (b. 1786)
• April 28 – Ludwig Tieck, German writer (b. 1773)
• June 2
  • Lucas Alamán, Mexican statesman and historian (b. 1792)
  • Henry Trevor, 21st Baron Dacre, British peer and soldier (b. 1777)
• June 8 – Richard William Howard Vyse (b. 1784)

July–December

• July 27 – Tokugawa Ieyoshi, 12th shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan (b. 1793)
• August 19 – George Cockburn, British Naval commander (b. 1772)
• August 23 – Alexander Calder, first mayor of Beaumont, Texas (b. 1806)
• September 3 – Augustin Saint-Hilaire, French botanist and traveller (b. 1799)
• October 2 – François Arago, French Catalan mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician (b. 1786)
• October 3 – George Onslow, French composer (b. 1784)
• October 5 – Mahlon Dickerson, American judge and politician (b. 1770)
• October 13 – Jan Cock Blomhoff, Dutch director of Dejima, Japan (b. 1779)
• November 15 – Maria II of Portugal (b. 1819)