General
Population: 1.25 Billion*
- Entertainment: Writers include Angier and Sandeau (French social play), FD Guerazzi, Charles Kingsley (Westward Ho!),
De Nerval, Coventry Patmore, Joseph Viktor von Scheffel, Tennyson Charge of the Light Brigade regarding Battle of Balaklava,
Thackeray, Thoreau Walden, or Life in the Woods
Art includes Courbet's "Bonjour Monsier Coubet", William Frith's "Ramsgate Sands", Millet's "The Reaper", Waldmuller's "Vienna Woods Landscape"
Music includes Berlioz (Christmas oratorio), Liszt, Schumann attempts suicide
- Medicine: Manuel Garcia the singing teacher invents laryngoscope
- Military: Crimean War
First use of mines to protect a harbor
- Religion: Pope Pius IX declares dogma of Immaculate Conception to be an article of faith
- Science: George Boole writes about math and logic
Christian Ehrenberg writes "Microgeology"
George Newport publishes on amphibian ova and sperm
Georg Riemann writes about geometry
- Technology: S.S. Brandon first ship with compound expansion engines
Elisha Graves Otis demonstrates safety elevator
German watchmaker Heinrich Geobel invents first form of electric light bulb
- Transportation: US clipper James Baines sails from London to Melbourne in 63 days
- Deaths: Musician Joseph Elsner (Chopin's teacher), Author HFR de Lamennais, Author Jeremias Gotthelf, Heir Roger Charles Tichborne,
Egyptian Viceory Abbas, Artist Karl Begas,
Africa
- Egypt: Assassination of Egyptian Viceroy Abbas - succeeded by Mohammed Said
- Orange Free State: Founded by Boers
Convention of Bloemfontein – British leave territory north of Orange River
- Senegal: Occupied by France
- West Africa: Umar ibn Said Tal founds Tukolor empire
Americas
- Canada: Elgin treaty between Britain and US on Canadian trade
Beginning of Canadian government collapse
- Cuba: Ostend Manifesto advises US to annex Cuba
Asia
- India: India's first cotton mill in Bombay
- Japan: Treaty of Kanagawa – US and Japan trade treaty negotiated by Commodore Matthew Perry
Quakes estimated at 8.4, 8.4, and 7.4 also cause tsunami
Europe
- General: Crimean War begins
Storm on Black Sea destroys much of French fleet in Crimean War
Britian and France conclude alliance with Turkey and declare war on Russia – unopposed landing of the Allies in Crimea –
Siege of Sebastopol begins – Allied victories at Balaklava and Inkerman
- Austria: Francis Joseph I Emperor of Austria marries Bavarian Princess Elizabeth
- France: "Le Figaro" begins publication in Paris
- German States: Jewish seminary established at Breslau
First street-poster pillars erected in Berlin
Strange hoofmarks seen in Devon England – single-file upright walker – crawled through 6” drainpipe and possibly hot – of course some reported it was the devil
- Great Britain: Cholera outbreak in London
Juvelile Offenders Act
University College of Dublin founded
Northcote-Trevelyan report leads to British Civil Service Commission
Working Men's College in London founded
End of Potato Famine in Ireland
- Italian States: Turlin-Genoa railroad opened
Cholera epidemic
- Spain: Liberal revolution overthrows government
Middle East
- Ottoman Empire: Crimean Empire
Turkey agrees to Austrian occupation of Danubian principalities until end of war
Florence Nightingale takes 38 women to Turkey to nurse wounded soldiers in Crimean war
Pacific
- Ballarat: Eureka stockade - brief miner's revolt
1854 
