1856 Calendar
What Happened In Year 1856?
- January 26, 1856 – First Battle of Seattle. Marines from the USS Decatur drive off American Indian attackers after all day battle with settlers.
- January 29, 1856 – Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross.
- February 7, 1856 – The colonial Tasmanian Parliament passes the second piece of legislation (the Electoral Act of 1856) anywhere in the world providing for elections by way of a secret ballot.
- February 8, 1856 – Barbu Dimitrie Ştirbei abolishes slavery in Wallachia.
- February 22, 1856 – The Republican Party opens its first national meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- March 30, 1856 – The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Crimean War.
- April 10, 1856 – The Theta Chi fraternity is founded at Norwich University.
- April 11, 1856 – Battle of Rivas: Juan Santamaria burns down the hostel where William Walker’s filibusters are holed up.
- May 21, 1856 – Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.
- June 8, 1856 – A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
- June 9, 1856 – Five hundred Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.
- July 17, 1856 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, kills over 60 people.
- July 31, 1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.
- September 2, 1856 – The Tianjing Incident takes place in Nanjing, China.
- October 8, 1856 – The Second Opium War between several western powers and China begins with the Arrow Incident on the Pearl River.
- November 6, 1856 – Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.
- November 17, 1856 – American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase.
- November 27, 1856 – The Coup of 1856 leads to Luxembourg’s unilateral adoption of a new, reactionary constitution.
- December 9, 1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.
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