|Centuries:||18th century – 19th century – 20th century|
|Decades:||1820s 1830s 1840s – 1850s – 1860s 1870s 1880s|
|Years:||1856 1857 1858 – 1859 – 1860 1861 1862|
Year 1859 (MDCCCLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).
Events of 1859
January - March
- January 24 - Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza under the name Romania (see December 1 1918 for the final unification, Transylvania and other regions were still missing at this time).
- January 28 - The city of Olympia is incorporated in the state of Washington in the United States of America.
- February 14 - Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.
- February 27 - US congressman Daniel Sickles shoots Philip Barton Key for having an affair with his wife.
- March 9 - The army of Piedmont-Sardinia mobilizes against Austria, beginning the crisis which will lead to the Austro-Sardinian War.
- March 26 - A French amateur astronomer claims to have noticed a planet closer to the Sun than Mercury - later named Vulcan.
April - June
- April 20 - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is published.
- April 25 - Ground is broken for the Suez Canal.
- April 26 - Austro-Sardinian War - Giuseppe Garibaldi's Hunters of the Alps confront Austrian forces led by Field Marshal-Lieutenant Carl Baron Urban at Varese.
- April 28 - The Pomona is wrecked off the English coast, with 424 dead
- April 29 - Austrian troops begin to cross the Ticino River to Piedmont.
- May 4 - Cornwall Railway opened across the Royal Albert Bridge linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England.
- May 5 - Border Treaty between Brazil and Venezuela: The two countries agreed their borders should be traced at the water divide between the Amazon and the Orinoco basins.
- May 21 - The bell Big Ben first activated.
- May 22 - Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies is succeeded by his 23-year-old son Francis II of the Two Sicilies.
- May 30 - Sardinians defeat the Austrian army at Battle of Palestro.
- June 4 - Battle of Magenta in Austro-Sardinian War - French and Sardinians defeat Austrians.
- June 6 - The British Crown colony of Queensland in Australia is created by devolving part of the territory of New South Wales ( Queensland Day).
- June 15 - The so called Pig War border dispute between the Americans and the British on the San Juan Islands begins by the death of the namesake pig.
- June 24 - Battle of Solferino: Kingdom of Sardinia and Napoleon III of France armies defeat Franz Josef I of Austria in northern Italy. Battle inspires Henri Dunant to found the Red Cross.
- June 30 - Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope for the first time.
July - September
- July 1 - First intercollegiate baseball game is played, between Amherst and Williams Colleges.
- July 8
- July 11 - By the preliminary treaty signed at Villafranca, Italy, Lombardy is ceded to the French (who immediately cede it to Sardinia), while the Austrians keep Venetia and the French promise to restore the Central Italian rulers expelled in the course of the war. This brings the Austro-Sardinian War effectively to a close.
- August 27 - Edwin Drake drills the first oil well in the United States, near Titusville, Pennsylvania.
- August 28- September 2 - Great geomagnetic solar superstorm, which caused the Northern lights aurora to be visible as far south as Cuba knocked out telegraph communication.
October - December
- October 16 - John Brown raids the Harpers Ferry Armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an unsuccessful bid to spark a general slave rebellion.
- October 18 - Troops under Colonel Robert E. Lee overpower Brown at the Federal arsenal.
- October 26 - The steamship Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, Wales with 454 dead.
- November 1 - The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse was lighted for the first time. Its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for nineteen miles.
- November 10 - The Treaty of Zürich, reaffirming the terms of Villafranca, brings the Austro-Sardinian War to an official close.
- 24 November - The French Navy's La Gloire ("Glory"), the first ocean-going ironclad warship in history, is launched.
- November 24 - British naturalist Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species, a book which argues that species gradually evolve through natural selection. (It immediately sold out its initial print run.)
- December 2 - Militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16th raid on Harper's Ferry.
- December 4 - Mekteb-i Mülkiye founded.
- December 10 - Ateneo de Manila University founded.
- Pike's Peak Gold Rush.
- Island of Timor is divided between Portugal and the Netherlands.
- Rincon de Los Esteros Land Grant confirmed to Rafael Alvisa, (part of the present Santa Clara County, California.
- Codex Sinaiticus found by Constantin von Tischendorf on his third visit to the monastery of Santa Katerina, on Mount Sinai.
- Bernhard Riemann formulates the Riemann hypothesis, one of the most important open problems of contemporary mathematics.
- Solar flares first observed on the Sun by English astronomer Richard Carrington.
- Brisbane declared the capital of newly-made-separate colony Queensland, Australia.
- University of Michigan Law School founded.
- Second Opium War (1856- 1860)
- Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864)
- Spanish-Moroccan War (1859) (until 1860)
|Ab urbe condita||2612|
|British Regnal year||22 Vict. 1 – 23 Vict. 1|
|Chinese calendar|| 戊午年十一月廿八日
— to —己未年十二月初八日
|- Vikram Samvat||1915–1916|
|- Shaka Samvat||1781–1782|
|- Kali Yuga||4960–4961|
|- Ǹrí Ìgbò||859–860|
|Japanese calendar|| Ansei 6
|Juche calendar||N/A (before 1912)|
|Julian calendar||Gregorian minus 12 days|
|Minguo calendar||53 before ROC
|Thai solar calendar||2402|
January - June
- January 11 - Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, British statesman and Viceroy of India (d. 1925)
- January 27 - Wilhelm II of Germany, last Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia (d. 1941)
- February 1 - Victor Herbert, Irish-born composer (d. 1924)
- February 3 - Hugo Junkers, German industrialist and aircraft designer (d. 1935)
- February 6 - Elias Disney, American farmer and father of Walt Disney (d. 1941)
- February 14 - Henry Valentine Knaggs, English physician and author (d. 1954)
- February 16 - George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., inventor of the Ferris wheel (d. 1896)
- February 19 - Svante Arrhenius, Swedish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927)
- February 28 - Florian Cajori, Swiss historian of mathematics (d. 1930)
- March 2 - Sholom Aleichem, Ukrainian Yiddish novelist (d. 1916)
- March 4 - Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Russian physicist (d. 1905)
- March 8 - Kenneth Grahame, English author (d. 1932)
- March 12 - Abraham H. Cannon, American Morman apostle (d. 1896)
- March 26 - Alfred Edward Housman, English poet (d. 1936)
- April 8 - Edmund Husserl, Austrian philosopher (d. 1938)
- May 15 - Pierre Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1906)
- May 22 - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish writer (d. 1930)
July - December
- July 6 - Verner von Heidenstam, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
- July 11 ( June 29 Julian Calendar) - Peter Verigin, Doukhobor leader (d. 1924)
- August 4 - Knut Hamsun, Norwegian author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1952)
- October 9 - Alfred Dreyfus, French military officer (d. 1935)
- October 18 - Henri Bergson, French philosopher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (d. 1941)
- October 21 - Francesc Macià, President of the Catalan Generalitat (d. 1933)
- November 14 - Alexandru Averescu, Romanian soldier and politician (d. 1938)
- November 19 - Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Russian composer (d. 1935)
- November 23 - Billy the Kid, Outlaw (d. July 14, 1881)
- December 2 - Georges Seurat, French painter (d. 1891)
- December 15 - L. L. Zamenhof, Russo-Polish initiator of Esperanto (d. 1917)
- December 17 - Paul César Helleu, French artist (d. 1927)
- date unknown
- William Bliss Baker, American painter (d. 1886)
January - June
- January 28 - Frederick John Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1782)
- February 13 - Eliza Acton, English cookery writer (b. 1799)
- February 27 - Philip Barton Key, U.S. District Attorney (b. 1818)
- April 16 - Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian (b. 1805)
- May 6 - Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and geographer (b. 1769)
- June 11 - Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, Austrian diplomat (b. 1773)
- June 23 - Maria Pavlovna of Russia, Grand duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach (b. 1786)
July - December
- July 8 - Oscar I, King of Sweden and Norway (b. 1799)
- August 2 - Horace Mann, American educator and abolitionist (b. 1796)
- September 15 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer (b. 1806)
- September 28 - Carl Ritter, German geographer, (b. 1779)
- October 4 - Karl Baedeker, German author and publisher (b. 1801)
- October 22 - Louis Spohr, German violinist and composer (b. 1784)
- November 28 - Washington Irving, American author (b. 1783)
- December 2 - John Brown, American abolitionist (hanged) (b. 1800)
- December 8 - Thomas de Quincey, English writer (b. 1785)
- December 16 - Wilhelm Grimm, German writer (b. 1786)
- date unknown - Abderrahmane, Sultan of Morocco (b. 1778)