1855
| Years: 1852 1853 1854 - 1855 - 1856 1857 1858 | |||||||||||
| Decades: 1820s 1830s 1840s - 1850s - 1860s 1870s 1880s | |||||||||||
| Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century
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1855 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).
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Events
- January 1 - London, Ontario is incorporated as a city.
- January 23 - The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.
- January 23 - The region of Wairarapa, New Zealand was hit by the strongest earthquake ever recorded in New Zealand, which reached Magnitude 8.1 on the Richter Scale. There were five deaths.
- January 29 - Lord Aberdeen resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom over the management of the Crimean War.
- February 5 - Lord Palmerston becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- February 11 - Kassa Hailu is crowned Tewodros II, Emperor of Ethiopia, by Abuna Salama III in a ceremony at the church of Derasge Maryam.
- March 3 - US Congress appropriates $30,000 to create US Camel Corps
- March 16 - Bates College in Lewiston, Maine was founded.
- May 15 - The Great Gold Robbery of 1855 in England
- June 29 - The Daily Telegraph begins publication
- September 3 - Last Bartholomew Fair on London, England
- September 11 - Sevastapol falls to the British troops
- December 22 - Metropolitan Board of Works established.
- Stamp duty was removed from newspapers in Britain creating mass market media in the UK.
- The Panama Railway becomes the first railroad to connect the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean by rail as the railroad's route across Panama is completed.
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Births
- January 5 - King Camp Gillette, American inventor (d. 1932)
- January 20 - Ernest Chausson, French composer (d. 1899)
- January 21 - John Moses Browning, American firearms inventor (d. 1926)
- January 28 - William Seward Burroughs, American bank clerk and inventor (d. 1898)
- March 13 - Percival Lowell, American astronomer (d. 1916)
- March 24 - Andrew Mellon, American banker and philanthropist (d. 1937)
- April 21 - Hardy Richardson, 19th century baseball player (d. 1931)
- April 27 - Caroline Rémy, French feminist (d. 1929)
- May 1 - Marie Corelli, English novelist (d. 1924)
- May 9 - Julius Röntgen, German-Dutch classical composer (d. 1932)
- July 26 - Ferdinand Tönnies, German sociologist (d. 1936)
- October 21 - Howard Hyde Russell, American temperance movement leader and founder of Anti-Saloon League and Lincoln-Lee Legion (d. 1946)
- November 5 - Léon Teisserenc de Bort, French meteorologist (d. 1913)
- November 6 - Ezra Seymour Gosney, American philanthropist and eugenicist (d. 1942)
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Deaths
- January 6 - Giacomo Beltrami, Italian explorer (b. 1779)
- January 26 - Gérard de Nerval, French writer (b. 1808)
- February 6 - Josef Munzinger, member of the Swiss Federal Council (b. 1791)
- February 23 - Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (b. 1777)
- March 29 - Henri Druey, member of the Swiss Federal Council (b. 1799)
- March 31 - Charlotte Brontë, English author (b. 1816)
- May 5 - Robert Inglis, English politician (b. 1786)
- May 23 - Charles Robert Malden English explorer (b. 1797)
- June 28 - Fitzroy Somerset, 1st Lord Raglan, commander of British forces in the Crimean War (b. 1788)
- August 7 - Mariano Arista, President of Mexico (b. 1802)
- November 11 - Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (b. 1813)
- November 26 - Adam Mickiewicz, Lithuanian - Polish poet and writer (b. 1798)
