1858

1810–1859	USA [agriculture]	US cotton production, the vast majority of which is grown in the southern states, rises from 171,000 bales in 1810 to just under 5.4 million in 1859.
1840–1860	world [plagues and epidemics]	A cholera pandemic kills millions of people worldwide.
1845–1958	Germany [earth sciences]	German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion.
1851–1860	world [photography]	Photographic exposure times become short enough to capture movement.
1851–1860	USA, UK [statistics and demography]	Emigration to the USA from Britain is 423,964, and from Ireland, 914,119.
1857–1859	Africa [exploration]	British explorers John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton explore inland east Africa, becoming the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika (February 1858). Speke continues northwards, and on 30 July 1858 he visits and names Lake Victoria, which he guesses to be the source of the Nile.
1858	France [photography]	The French inventor Louis Ducos du Hauron patents a method of making colour photographs. He uses colour filters and prints on zinc plates.
1858	UK [medicine]	The British physician Henry Gray publishes Anatomy of the Human Body, Descriptive and Surgical (Gray's Anatomy). It remains the standard text in anatomy for over 100 years.
1858	France [opera]	The comic opera Orphée aux enfers/Orpheus in the Underworld by the German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach is first performed, in Paris, France. It is an immediate success and popularizes the French dance the cancan.
1858	England [painting]	The English artist William Powell Frith paints Derby Day, commemorating the annual horse race at Epsom, England.
1858	UK [anthropology]	Stone tools in situ with Pleistocene animals are discovered by English school-master William Pengelly at Windmill Hill Cave at Brixham, Dorset, England. They demonstrate that human beings are as old as now extinct animals thus founding the science of prehistory.
1858	Germany [biology]	The German biologist Rudolf Virchow publishes Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebenlehre/Cellular Pathology as Based upon Physiological and Pathological Histology. In it he expands his ideas on the cell as the basis of life and disease, establishing cellular pathology as essential in understanding disease.
1858	Germany [chemistry]	German chemist Friedrich Kekulé von Stradonitz publishes Uber die Konstitution und die Metamorphosen der chemischen Verbindungen and über die chemische Natur des Kohlenstoffs/On the Constitution and Changes of Chemical Compounds and on the Chemical Nature of Carbon, in which he shows that carbon atoms can link together to form long chains, the basis of organic molecules.
1858	England [chemistry]	English chemists William Henry Perkin and B F Duppa synthesize the amino acid, glycine.
1858	USA [churches and temples]	Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, designed by the US architect James Renwick, is completed. It is one of the best-known examples of American Gothic Revival.
1858	USA [statistics and demography]	About 100,000 Americans move west in reaction to the discovery of gold at two sites in the Colorado territory.
1858	Australia [sports]	Australian cricketer Thomas Wills and his cousin Henry Colden Harrison devise Australian Rules football, and help to form the first club, Melbourne Football Club.
31 January 1858	England [transport]	English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship Great Eastern is launched. With a displacement of 19,222 tonnes/18,918 tons, and 211 m/692 ft long, it is the largest ship in the world. It has two sets of engines that drive two screw propellers and two paddlewheels, and is the first steamship with a double iron hull. Its design serves as the prototype for modern ocean liners.
26 February 1858	UK [administration]	The English statesman Edward Stanley, Lord Derby, becomes prime minister of a Conservative government in Britain following the resignation of the Whig Henry Temple, Lord Palmerston.
23 April 1858	Germany [births and deaths]	Max Planck, German theoretical physicist who is the originator of quantum theory, born in Kiel, in the duchy of Schleswig (–1947).
26 June 1858	UK, China, France [treaties]	The Treaty of Tianjin between China and Britain ends the Second Opium War, by which China opens more ports to British commerce and legalizes the opium trade. A similar treaty is signed between the Chinese and the French on 27 June.
8 July 1858	UK, India [wars]	The British declare the Indian Mutiny officially at an end.
14 July 1858	England [births and deaths]	Emmeline Pankhurst, militant English suffragette, born in Manchester, England (–1928).
2 August 1858	Canada, UK [colonies and mandate]	British Columbia in Canada is organized as a British colony following the discovery of gold there.
12 August 1858	Canada [telephone services]	The first message by transatlantic telegraph cable is sent from Newfoundland, Canada, to Valentia, Ireland.
16 August 1858	UK, USA [technology]	Queen Victoria of Britain and US president James Buchanan are the first to exchange messages on the first successful Atlantic telegraph cable laid between Valentia, Ireland, and Newfoundland, Canada. The cable lasts for only 27 days.
8 November 1858	Montenegro, Ottoman Empire [decolonization]	The formal independence of Montenegro is accepted by the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, together with the borders of the former Ottoman possession as fixed by France, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, following friction between Montenegro and the Ottomans.