1860

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	USA, UK [statistics and demography]	Emigration to the USA from Britain is 423,964, and from Ireland, 914,119.
1851–1860	world [photography]	Photographic exposure times become short enough to capture movement.
1860	UK [medicine]	English nurse Florence Nightingale establishes the Nightingale School for Nurses. The first nursing school in England, it establishes nursing as a profession for women.
1860	UK [postal services]	British publisher Jeremiah Smith invents the self-adhesive envelope.
c. 1860	France [public health]	The French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur develops the process of pasteurization: sterilizing milk and other beverages by heating to a high temperature for a few minutes to kill micro-organisms.
1860	Switzerland [art]	The Swiss art historian Jakob Christoph Burckhardt publishes Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien/The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy. His most important work, it has a profound effect on the study of art history.
1860	England [fiction]	The English writer William Wilkie Collins publishes his novel The Woman in White.
1860	England [fiction]	The English writer George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Anne Evans) publishes her novel The Mill on the Floss.
1860	Russia [fiction]	The Russian writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev publishes his novel Nakanune/On the Eve.
1860	UK [food and drink]	The British Adulteration of Food Law is passed after medical testimony that some food colouring is fatally poisonous.
c. 1860	UK [food and drink]	The Cadbury brothers of Birmingham, England, produce their first drinking chocolate.
17 January 1860	Russia [births and deaths]	Anton Chekhov, Russian writer and dramatist known for his mastery of the short story, born in Taganrog, Russia (–1904).
23 January 1860	UK, France [treaties]	The Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (negotiated between the British Liberal politician and economist Richard Cobden and the French economist Michel Chevalier) establishes a substantial degree of free trade between Britain and France.
17 March 1860	New Zealand, UK [wars]	The Second Maori War breaks out in New Zealand, arising out of grievances against British settlers encroaching on aboriginal territory.
19 March 1860	USA [births and deaths]	William Jennings Bryan, US lawyer, three-time Democratic presidential candidate, and prosecuting attorney in the Scopes trial against Tennessee schoolteacher John T Scopes for teaching Darwinism, born in Salem, Illinois (–1925).
3 April 1860	USA [postal services]	The Pony Express begins mail service between St Louis, Missouri and Sacramento, California. Riders change horses at 157 stations along the 2,897 km/1800 mi route and mail takes ten days. Within a few months it is made obsolete by the establishment of the transcontinental telegraph system.
5 May 1860	Italy [political events]	The Italian soldier and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Redshirts (‘The Thousand’) sail from Genoa, northwest Italy, to attempt to complete the unification of Italy.
30 June 1860	UK [Christianity]	At the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Oxford, Darwin's theory of evolution is widely discussed, especially its implications for the origin of humans among apes. Conservative English cleric Archbishop Samuel Wilberforce joins forces with scientists opposed to Darwin's theories. English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley aggressively defends Darwin, earning the reputation of his ‘bulldog’. is an important advocate of his friend Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection.
August 1860 - June 1861	Australia [exploration]	Irish settler Robert Burke and English surveyor William Wills lead an expedition out of Victoria to cross Australia from south to north. The four-man advance party turns back only a few miles from the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria and misses the support party in the desert of Cooper Creek; only one member of the expedition, John King, survives.
7 September 1860	Naples [political events]	The Italian soldier and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi and his followers enter Naples as part of their attempt to unify Italy, forcing King Francis II of Naples to flee.
11 September 1860	Sardinia-Piedmont, Papal States, Italy [political events]	King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia-Piedmont invades the Papal States (which he intends to annex as part of a unified Italy under his sovereignty), after the rising in favour of union with Italy there on 8 September.
17 October 1860	UK [golf]	A 3-round 36-hole strokeplay competition for professional golfers at Prestwick, Scotland, regarded as the first British Open golf championship, is won by Scottish golfer Willie Park, Sr.
20 October 1860	Austrian Empire [administration]	The October Diploma amends the Austrian constitution, restoring the federal institutions as they existed before 1848. The Habsburg territories are granted considerable autonomy in the hope of conciliating the subject nationalities.
6 November 1860	USA [elections]	In the US presidential election, Abraham Lincoln (Republican), opposing further extension of slavery, secures a majority of popular votes, but only 180 out of 303 electoral votes; John C Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) has 72 votes, John Bell (Constitutional Union), 39, and Stephen A Douglas (Northern Democrat), 12.
20 December 1860	USA [political events]	The state of South Carolina secedes from the Union, in protest at the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln as president of the USA.