| January 1 | City of Glasgow steamer inaugurates Philadelphia-Liverpool line |
| January 15 | GGeneralen Arista replaces Mexican President Herrera |
| January 25 | Sojourner Truth addresses 1st Black Women's Rights Convention (Akron) |
| January 28 | Northwestern University in Chicago chartered |
| January 31 | Gail Borden announces invention of evaporated milk |
| January 31 | SF Orphan's Asylum, 1st in California, founded |
| February 6 | Robert Schumann's 3rd Symphony "Rhenisch," premieres in Dusseldorf |
| February 11 | 1st cricket 1st-class game in Australia, Tasmania vs. Vic, Launceston |
| February 15 | Black abolitionists invade Boston courtroom rescueing a fugitive slave |
| March 3 | Congress authorizes smallest U.S. silver coin (3 cent piece) |
| March 6 | Dion Boucicault's "Love in a Maze," premieres in London |
| March 7 | Poll tax levied on Russo-Polish Jews entering Austrian Galicia ends |
| March 11 | Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Rigoletto," premieres in Venice |
| March 21 | Yosemite Valley discovered in California |
| April 15 | Earl G. Andrassy sentenced to death in Hungary |
| April 23 | Canada issues its 1st postage stamps |
| May 1 | Great Exhibition opens in Chrystal Palace London |
| May 3 | Most of San Francisco destroyed by fire; 30 die |
| May 4 | 1st major San Francisco fire |
| May 6 | Dr. John Gorrie patents a "refrigeration machine" |
| May 6 | Linus Yale patents Yale-lock |
| May 6 | San Francisco Chamber of Commerce starts |
| May 15 | Rama IV, Phra Chomklao Chaoyuhua, king of Thailand 1851 - 1868, crowned |
| May 18 | Amsterdam-Nieuwediep telegraph connection linked |
| May 28 | Sojourner Truth attends Women's Rights Convention |
| June 2 | 1st U.S. alcohol prohibition law enacted, Maine |
| June 3 | 1st baseball uniforms worn, New York Knickerbockers wear straw hat, white shirt and blue long trousers |
| June 15 | Jacob Fussell, Baltimore dairyman, sets up 1st ice-cream factory |
| June 22 | Fire destroys part of San Francisco |
| July 13 | John F. Loudon discovers tin on East Indian Island of Billiton |
| July 23 | Treaty of Traverse des Sioux signed by Sioux Indians and U.S. |
| July 24 | Window tax abolished in Britain |
| July 28 | Total solar eclipse captured on a daguerreotype photograph |
| August 12 | 1st America's Cup-U.S. schooner America beats British yacht Aurora |
| August 12 | Isaac Singer patents sewing machine |
| August 22 | Gold fields discovered in Australia |
| August 22 | Yacht "America" wins 1st Royal Yacht Squadron Cup (America's Cup) |
| September 18 | New York Times starts publishing at 2 cents a copy |
| October 1 | 1st Hawaiian stamps issued |
| October 24 | William Lassell discovers Ariel and Umbriel, satellites of Uranus |
| October 30 | Alfred de Mussets "Bettine," premieres in Paris |
| November 2 | Louis Napoleon takes power in France |
| November 11 | Alvan Clark patents telescope |
| November 13 | 1st meeting of anti-revolutionary "Netherlands and Orange" |
| November 13 | Telegraph connection between London-Paris linked |
| November 14 | "Moby Dick," by Herman Melville, published |
| November 22 | Opera "La Perle Du Bresil" is produced (Paris) |
| December 4 | President Louis Napolean Boaparte forces crush a coup d'etat in France |
| December 9 | 1st Young Men's Christian Association in North America (Montreal) |
| December 24 | Fire devastates Library of Congress in Wash, destroys 35,000 volumes |
| December 24 | U.S. Library of Congress catches fire; 35,000 books burn |
| December 29 | 1st Young Men's Christian Association chapter opened (Boston) |
BrainyHistory
