1856 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 8 - Borax is discovered (John Veatch).
• January 29 - Queen Victoria institutes the Victoria Cross
• February 18 - The American Party (Know-Nothings) convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore.
• March 5 – Fire destroys Covent Garden Theatre
• March 30 - The Treaty of Paris (1856) is signed, ending the Crimean War
• April 7 - Foundation of Nelson College, Nelson, New Zealand
• April 10 - Theta Chi Fraternity founded at Norwich University
• May 21 - Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.
• May 22 - Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas"). Sumner was unable to return to duty for three years while he recovered. Brooks became a hero across the South.
• June 9 - 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.
• July 31 - Christchurch, New Zealand chartered as a city.
• August 10 – A hurricane destroys Last Island, Louisiana - 400 dead. The whole island was broken up into several smaller islands by the storm.
• November - James Buchanan defeats John C. Fremont in the U.S. presidential election
• November 17 - American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase.

• British Country and Borough Police Act extends London police model to the entire country
• Western Union founded
• Kate Warner , the first female private detective, begins to work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency
• Pre-human remains found in the Neanderthal valley in Germany
• Gregor Mendel starts his research on genetics.
• National Portrait Gallery in London opened.

Births

• January 11 - Christian Sinding, composer (d. 1941)
• January 12 - John Singer Sargent, artist (d. 1925)
• January 20 - Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch , women's rights activist (d. 1940)
• February 2 - Frederick William Vanderbilt, railway magnate (d. 1938)
• February 14 - Frank Harris, author and editor (d. 1931)
• March 8 - Tom Roberts, artist (d. 1931)
• March 9 - Eddie Foy, singer, dancer, vaudeville performer (d. 1928)
• March 20 - Frederick Winslow Taylor, inventor, efficiency expert
• April 5 - Booker T. Washington, African-American educator (d. 1915)
• April 12 - William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer (d. 1937)
• May 6 - Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist, founder of psychoanalysis
• May 6 - Robert Peary, explorer (d. 1920)
• May 15 - L. Frank Baum, author (d. 1919)
• June 14 - Andrey Markov, Russian mathematician (d. 1922)
• July 2 - Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Indian political activist (d. 1920)
• July 10 - Nikola Tesla, inventor (d. 1943)
• July 26 - George Bernard Shaw, writer (d. 1950)
• August 13 - Alfred Deakin, second Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1919)
• September 18 - Wilhelm von Gloeden, photographer (d. 1931)
• November 22 - Heber J. Grant, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1945)
• November 24 - Bat Masterson, "Wild West" legend (d. 1921)
• December 25 - Hans von Bartels, German painter
• December 25 - Sir Samuel William Knaggs, civil servant (West Indies) (d. 1924)

Deaths

• February 17 - Heinrich Heine, German writer (b. 1797}
• May 3 - Adolphe Charles Adam, French composer (b. 1803)
• July 9 - Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist (b. 1776)
• August 30 - Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, writer. (b. 1811)