1854 - What happened in 1854 ?

January 1854

Wednesday 04:

The McDonald Islands are discovered by Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang.

Thursday 05:

The San Francisco steamer sinks, 300 dead.

Friday 13:

The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas.

February 1854

Tuesday 14:

Texas is linked by telegraph with the rest of the United States, when a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas is completed.

Friday 17:

The British recognize the independence of the Orange Free State.

Tuesday 28:

The United States Republican Party is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.

March 1854

Wednesday 01:

German pyschologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke disappears; two years later his remains are found in the canal near Charlottenburg.

Tuesday 28:

Crimean War: United Kingdom and France declare war on Russia.

Friday 31:

Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.

April 1854

Saturday 01:

Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens magazine, Household Words.

Saturday 29:

The Ashmun Institute is officially chartered, becoming the first college for African American students.

May 1854

Tuesday 30:

The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the US territories of Nebraska and Kansas.

June 1854

Saturday 10:

The first class of United States Naval Academy students graduate.

July 1854

Thursday 06:

In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the U.S. Republican Party is held.

Thursday 13:

In the battle of Guaymas, Mexico, General Jose Maria Yanez stops the French invasion led by Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon.

August 1854

Friday 04:

The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships.

Saturday 12:

Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon is executed by shooting, in regard to the Battle of Guaymas.

September 1854

Wednesday 20:

Battle of Alma: British and French troops defeat Russians in the Crimea.

Wednesday 27:

The steamship Arctic sinks with 300 people on board. This marks the first great disaster in the Atlantic Ocean.

October 1854

Sunday 01:

The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Massachusetts, to become the Waltham Watch Company, a pioneer in the American System of Watch Manufacturing.

Saturday 21:

Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to the Crimean War.

Wednesday 25:

Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade)

November 1854

Wednesday 15:

In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is given the needed royal concession by Said.

December 1854

Sunday 03:

Eureka Stockade: More than twenty goldminers at Ballarat, Australia were killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences. Claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy.

Friday 08:

Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogma of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin.