1860


Events

   * April 3 - The Pony Express makes its first run.
   * Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia seizes the whole of the Papal States
     besides Rome (see Vatican City) and unites Italy.
   * Robert Wilhelm Bunsen discovers Cesium and Rubidium (see Discovery of
     the chemical elements)
   * September 7 - Lady Elgin is accidentally rammed and sunk in Lake
     Michigan, hundreds drown.
   * October - John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant leave Zanzibar to
     search for source of the Nile.
   * November - Abraham Lincoln defeats John C. Breckinridge in the U.S.
     presidential election.
   * December 26 - Confederate diplomatic envoys James Mason and John
     Slidell are freed by the United States government, thus heading off a
     possible war between the United States and Great Britain.
   * December 29 - The first British seagoing ironclad warship, the HMS
     Warrior is launched.
   * Vladivostok, Russia is founded.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

   * 1860 in literature:
        o Mason Jackson becomes art editor of the Illustrated London News.
   * 1860 in sports:
        o Willie Park wins the first British Open golf tournament.
        o First running of the Queen's Plate in Toronto, Ontario, North
          America's oldest thoroughbred horse race.

Births

   * January 1 - George Washington Carver, educator, activist, botanist
   * January 11 - Marie Bashkirtseff, artist
   * January 25 - Charles Curtis, American vice-president (+ 1936)
   * January 29 - William Jacob Baer, American painter (+ 1941)
   * January 29 - Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer
     (+ 1904)
   * February 11 - Rachilde (Marguerite Vallette-Eymery), French author
   * February 29 - Herman Hollerith, inventor of the first electric
     tabulating machine.
   * March 13 - Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer
   * March 19 - William Jennings Bryan, American politician
   * May 9 - J. M. Barrie, author (+ 1937)
   * May 25 - James McKeen Cattell, first professor of psychology in U.S.
   * May 29 - Isaac AlbŽniz, Spanish composer
   * July 3 - Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist writer (+ 1935)
   * July 7 - Gustav Mahler, composer
   * July 19 - Lizzie Borden, murder suspect
   * September 13 - John Pershing, American general
   * John Coughlin, Chicago alderman
   * Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer (+ 1938)
   * Albert Giraud, Belgian poet (+ 1929)
   * Lancelot Speed, illustrator (+ 1931)

Deaths

   * January 27 - J‡nos Bolyai, Hungarian mathematican
   * Sir Charles Barry, English architect