List of 1854 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1854
Date | Event |
---|---|
January 4, 1854 | The McDonald Islands are discovered by Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang. |
January 21, 1854 | The RMS Tayleur sinks off Lambay Island on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Australia with great loss of life. |
February 7, 1854 | A law is approved to found the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Lectures started October 16, 1855. |
February 17, 1854 | The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Orange Free State. |
February 23, 1854 | The official independence of the Orange Free State is declared. |
February 24, 1854 | A Penny Red with perforations becomes the first perforated postage stamp to be officially issued for distribution. |
March 20, 1854 | The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin, US. |
March 24, 1854 | President José Gregorio Monagas abolishes slavery in Venezuela.[24] |
March 28, 1854 | Crimean War: France and Britain declare war on Russia. |
March 31, 1854 | Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade. |
May 30, 1854 | The Kansas–Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the U.S. territories of Kansas and Nebraska. |
June 1, 1854 | Åland War: The British navy destroys merchant ships and about 16,000 tar barrels of the wholesale stocks area in Oulu, Grand Duchy of Finland. |
June 10, 1854 | The United States Naval Academy graduates its first class of students. |
July 6, 1854 | In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the United States Republican Party is held. |
July 13, 1854 | In the Battle of Guaymas, Mexico, General José María Yáñez stops the French invasion led by Count Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon. |
July 28, 1854 | USS Constellation (1854), the last all-sail warship built by the United States Navy and now a museum ship in Baltimore Harbor, is commissioned. |
August 4, 1854 | The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships. |
August 9, 1854 | American Transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau publishes his memoir Walden. |
August 19, 1854 | The First Sioux War begins when United States Army soldiers kill Lakota chief Conquering Bear and in return are massacred. |
September 20, 1854 | Crimean War: British and French troops defeat Russians at the Battle of Alma. |
September 27, 1854 | The paddle steamer SS Arctic, owned by the Collins Line of New York, sinks off the coast of Newfoundland, following a collision with a smaller vessel, the SS Vesta. Only 88 of over 300 people on board survive. About a dozen of the occupants of the Vesta are killed when their lifeboat is hit by the Arctic. |
October 6, 1854 | In England the Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead leads to 53 deaths and hundreds injured. |
October 9, 1854 | Crimean War: The siege of Sevastopol begins. |
October 21, 1854 | Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War. |
October 25, 1854 | The Battle of Balaclava takes place during the Crimean War. It is soon memorialized in verse as The Charge of the Light Brigade. |
December 3, 1854 | Battle of the Eureka Stockade: More than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences. |
December 8, 1854 | In his Apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogmatic definition of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived free of Original Sin. |
December 18, 1854 | The Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada abolishes the seigneurial system. |