1855

Events

• January 23 - Magnitude 8.1 earthquake on the Wairarapa fault in New Zealand reshapes the shoreline of the young city of Wellington
• January 28 - first locomotive runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the newly completed Panama Railway
• March 2 - accession of Russian Tsar Alexander II
• March 30 - "Border Ruffians" from Missouri invade Kansas and force election of a pro-slavery legislature.
• May - The first American Soo locks on the St. Marys River connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron are completed.
• May 4 - American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.
• July 4 - In Brooklyn, New York, Walt Whitman's first edition of his book of poem's titled Leaves of Grass is published.
• September 3 - Indian Wars: In Nebraska, 700 soldiers under American General William Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village killing 100 men, women, and children.
• November - David Livingstone discovers the Victoria Falls
• accession of Emperor Theodore II of Ethiopia

• Gustave Courbet sets up Pavilion of Realism in protest against "official art" at Paris International Exhibition
• Daily Telegraph newspaper founded in London, England
• Sheffield F.C., the first ever football club is founded

Year in topic

• 1855 in literature
• 1855 in science
  • Maxwell unifies electricity and magnetism into a single theory, classical electromagnetism, thereby showing that light is an electromagnetic wave.
• 1855 in music

Births

• January 5 - King Camp Gillette, inventor († 1932)
• January 21 - John Moses Browning, inventor († 1926)
• January 28 - William Seward Burroughs, inventor of the calculator († 1898)
• March 13 - Percival Lowell, astronomer († 1916)
• March 24 - Andrew Mellon, financier († 1937)
• May 1 - Marie Corelli, novelist
• July 30 - Wilhelm von Siemens, German industrialist
• November 5 - Léon Teisserenc de Bort, French meteorologist († 1913)

Deaths

• February 6 - Josef Munzinger, member of the Swiss Federal Council (*1791)
• February 23 - Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, astronomer and physicist
• March 29 - Henri Druey, member of the Swiss Federal Council (*1799)
• March 31 - Charlotte Brontë, author
• May 23 - Charles Robert Malden explorer
• June 28 - Fitzroy Somerset, 1st Lord Raglan, commander of British forces in the Crimean War
• August 7 - Mariano Arista, president of Mexico
• November 11 - Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher

Heads of State

• China - Xianfeng Emperor of China, Qing Dynasty (1850-1861)
• Denmark - Frederick VII, King of Denmark (1848-1863)
• France - Napoleon III, Emperor of France (1852-1870)
• Norway - Oscar I, King of Sweden and Norway (1844-1859)
• Ottoman Empire - Abd-ul-Mejid, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (July 2, 1839 to June 25, 1861)
• Prussia - Frederick William IV, King of Prussia (1840-1861)
• Russia -
  1. Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia (December 26, 1825 to March 2, 1855)
  2. Alexander II, Tsar of Russia (1855-1881)
• Spain - Isabella II, Queen of Spain (September 29, 1833 to September, 1868)
• United States - Franklin Pierce, President of the United States (1853-1857)