| 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 | Germany [physics] | German mathematical physicist Rudolf Clausius develops the mathematics of the kinetic theory of heat and demonstrates that evaporation occurs when more molecules leave the surface of a liquid than return to it, and that the higher the temperature, the greater the number of molecules that will leave. |
| 1857 | France [poetry] | The French writer Charles Baudelaire publishes his poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal/Flowers of Evil, one of the major works of 19th-century European poetry. It is banned for obscenity and the author, publishers, and printers fined. An enlarged edition appears in 1861. |
| 1857 | USA [consumer products] | The first toilet paper, Gayetty's Medicated Paper, is launched in the USA. |
| 1857 | UK [legislation] | The Matrimonial Causes Act sets up divorce courts, allowing divorcees to remarry without recourse to a private act of Parliament, and outlines permissible terms for divorce in Britain: men must prove adultery and women adultery and cruelty or desertion. The legislation also introduces the principle of a husband's responsibility for alimony. |
| 1857 | Hungary [orchestral music] | The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt completes his Faust Symphonie/Faust Symphony. It is based on Goethe's verse drama Faust, published in 1808. He also completes his Symphonic Poem Hunnenschlacht/Battle of the Huns. |
| 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. |
| 1857 | England [fiction] | The English writer Thomas Hughes publishes Tom Brown's Schooldays, which becomes a classic of English ‘public school’ literature. |
| 1857 | England [fiction] | The English writer William Makepeace Thackeray begins to publish his novel The Virginians (which he also illustrates) in serial form. It appears as a book in 1859. |
| 1857 | England [fiction] | The English writer Anthony Trollope publishes his novel Barchester Towers. |
| 1857 | England [historical study] | The English historian Henry Thomas Buckle publishes the first part of his History of Civilization. The second part appears in 1861. |
| 1857 | England, Mesopotamia [language studies] | The British army officer Henry Creswicke Rawlinson deciphers the Mesopotamian cuneiform. |
| 7 March 1857 | USA [legislation] | The US Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott v. Sandford that no free black person was entitled to claim US citizenship. The decision renders the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. |
| 14 June 1857 | France, Russian Empire [treaties] | A commercial treaty is signed between France and Russia. France is developing freer trade and Russia is more receptive to western ideas under Tsar Alexander II. |
| 10 October 1857 | UK, USA [political parties] | The Irish Republican Brotherhood (whose members are known as Fenians) is founded in New York City to fight for Irish independence from Britain |
| 16 November 1857 | India, UK [wars] | British troops, under the Scottish general Sir Colin Campbell, commander of the forces in India, future field marshal and Baron Clyde, relieve the north Indian city of Lucknow, besieged by Indian rebels. |
| 26 November 1857 | Switzerland [births and deaths] | Ferdinand de Saussure, Swiss linguist whose ideas about the structure of language lay the foundation of modern linguistics, born in Geneva, Switzerland (–1913). |
| 3 December 1857 | UK, Poland [births and deaths] | Joseph Conrad (pen-name of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), Polish-born British novelist whose works include Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Chance, born in Berdichev, Poland (–1924). |
| 6 December 1857 | India, UK [wars] | British forces recapture the rebel-held city of Cawnpore (now Kanpur) from Indian rebel forces. |
