1850s

Technology

• Production of steel revolutionised by invention of the Bessemer process
• Benjamin Silliman fractionates petroleum by distillation for the first time
• First transatlantic telegraph cable laid
• First safety elevator installed by Elisha Otis

Science

• Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species, putting forward the theory of evolution by natural selection
• Epidemiology begins when John Snow traces the source of an outbreak of cholera in London to a contaminated water pump.
• Discovery of Neandertal fossils in Neanderthal, Germany
• Solar flares discovered by Richard Christopher Carrington

War, peace and politics

• Crimean war (1854 - 1856) fought between Imperial Russia and an alliance consisting of the United Kingdom, the Second French Empire, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire. The majority of the conflict takes place around Crimea, on the northern coasts of the Black Sea.
• The Indian Mutiny: revolt against British colonial rule in India
• Dissolution of the Mughal Empire by the British.
• 156 are killed in Paris in a failed assassination attempt on Napoleon III, Emperor of France
• Moldavia and Wallachia are unified and form Romania.