1852

1852 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1852; MDCCCLII
Ab urbe condita	2605
Armenian calendar	1301; ԹՎ ՌՅԱ
Assyrian calendar	6602
Bahá'í calendar	8–9
Balinese saka calendar	1773–1774
Bengali calendar	1259
Berber calendar	2802
British Regnal year	15 Vict. 1 – 16 Vict. 1
Buddhist calendar	2396
Burmese calendar	1214
Byzantine calendar	7360–7361
Chinese calendar	辛亥年 (Metal Pig); 4548 or 4488; — to —; 壬子年 (Water Rat); 4549 or 4489
Coptic calendar	1568–1569
Discordian calendar	3018
Ethiopian calendar	1844–1845
Hebrew calendar	5612–5613
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1908–1909
- Shaka Samvat	1773–1774
- Kali Yuga	4952–4953
Holocene calendar	11852
Igbo calendar	852–853
Iranian calendar	1230–1231
Islamic calendar	1268–1269
Japanese calendar	Kaei 5; (嘉永５年)
Javanese calendar	1780–1781
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 12 days
Korean calendar	4185
Minguo calendar	60 before ROC ; 民前60年
Nanakshahi calendar	384
Thai solar calendar	2394–2395
Tibetan calendar	阴金猪年; (female Iron-Pig); 1978 or 1597 or 825; — to —; 阳水鼠年; (male Water-Rat); 1979 or 1598 or 826

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	18th century ; 19th century ; 20th century ;
Decades:	1830s ; 1840s ; 1850s ; 1860s ; 1870s ;
Years:	1849 ; 1850 ; 1851 ; 1852 ; 1853 ; 1854 ; 1855 ;

Last updated February 12, 2019

1852 ( MDCCCLII ) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar , the 1852nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 852nd year of the 2nd millennium , the 52nd year of the 19th century , and the 3rd year of the 1850s decade. As of the start of 1852, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Roman numerals Numbers in the Roman numeral system

The numeric system represented by Roman numerals originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers in this system are represented by combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet. Roman numerals, as used today, employ seven symbols, each with a fixed integer value, as follows:

A leap year is a calendar year containing one additional day added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.

A leap year starting on Thursday is any year with 366 days that begins on Thursday 1 January, and ends on Friday 31 December. Its dominical letters hence are DC, such as the years 1880, 1920, 1948, 1976, 2004, 2032, 2060, and 2088, in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 1988, 2016, and 2044 in the obsolete Julian calendar. Any leap year that starts on Monday, Wednesday or Thursday has two Friday the 13ths. This leap year contains two Friday the 13ths in February and August.

Events

January–March

January 14 – President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte proclaims a new constitution for the French Second Republic.
January 15 – Nine men representing various Jewish charitable organizations come together, to form what will become Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
January 17 – The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Transvaal.
February 3 – Battle of Caseros, Argentina: The Argentine provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, allied with Brazil and members of Colorado Party of Uruguay, defeat Buenos Aires troops under Juan Manuel de Rosas.
February 11 – The first British public toilet for women opens in Bedford Street, London.
February 14 – The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient.
February 16 – The Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established in South Bend, Indiana.
February 25 – HMS Birkenhead sinks near Cape Town, British Cape Colony. Only 193 of the 643 on board survive, after troops stand firm on the deck, so as not to overwhelm the lifeboats containing women and children.
March 1 – Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
March 2 – The first American experimental steam fire engine is tested.^[1]
March 4 – Phi Mu sorority is founded in Macon, Georgia.
March 17 – Annibale De Gasparis discovers in Naples the asteroid Psyche from the north dome of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte.
March 18 – Henry Wells and William Fargo created Wells Fargo & Company.
March 20 – Uncle Tom's Cabin , by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is published in book form in Boston.

January 14 is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 351 days remaining until the end of the year.

Napoleon III was the first elected President of France from 1848 to 1852. When he could not constitutionally be re-elected, he seized power in 1851 and became the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. He founded the Second French Empire and was its only emperor until the defeat of the French army and his capture by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He worked to modernize the French economy, rebuilt the center of Paris, expanded the overseas empire, and engaged in the Crimean War and the war for Italian unification. After his defeat and downfall he went into exile and died in England in 1873.

The French Constitution of 1852 was enacted on 14 January 1852 by Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. Slightly modified later that year, on 25 December 1852 the constitution became the basis for the creation of the French Second Empire.

April–June

April 1 – The Second Anglo-Burmese War begins.
April 18 – Taiping Rebellion: Taiping forces begin the siege of Guilin.
May 19 – Taiping Rebellion: The siege of Guilin is lifted.
June 12 – Taiping Rebellion: Taiping forces enter Hunan.

April 1 is the 91st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 274 days remaining until the end of the year.

The Second Anglo-Burmese War or the Second Burma War was the second of the three wars fought between the Burmese and British forces during the 19th century, with the outcome of the gradual extinction of Burmese sovereignty and independence.

April 18 is the 108th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 257 days remaining until the end of the year.

July–September

July 1 – American statesman Henry Clay is the first to receive the honor of lying in state, in the United States Capitol rotunda.
July 5 – Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", in Rochester, New York.
July 28 – Henry Clay steamboat disaster in Riverdale, Bronx, claims several lives, including Stephen Allen.
August 3 – The first American intercollegiate athletic event, the Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, is held.
September 11 – Revolution of 11 September 1852 in Argentina: Buenos Aires Province declares independence.
September 19 – Annibale de Gasparis discovers the asteroid Massalia from the north dome of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples.
September 24 – French engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip, from Paris to Trappes.

July 1 is the 182nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 183 days remaining until the end of the year.

Henry Clay Sr. was an American attorney and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, served as 7th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and served as the 9th U.S. secretary of state. He received electoral votes for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 presidential elections and helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the "Great Compromiser."

Lying in state is the tradition in which the body of a dead official is placed in a state building, either outside or inside a coffin, to allow the public to pay their respects. It traditionally takes place in the principal government building of a country, state, or city. While the practice differs among countries, a viewing in a location other than the principal government building may be referred to as lying in repose.

October–December

October 7 – After learning that U.S. President Fillmore has sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry, to open trade with Japan, Nicholas I of Russia sends Rear Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin to lead the Pallada on a similar mission (Putyatin arrives on August 21, 1853, one month after Perry).^[2]
October 16 – After nearly five years' imprisonment in France, former Algerian Emir Abdelkader El Djezairi is released by orders of then-president Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte.^[3]
October 23 – The conjecture of the four color theorem is first proposed, as student Francis Guthrie of University College London presents the question of proving, mathematically, that no more than four colors are needed to give separate colors to bordering shapes on a map (the theorem is not proven for almost 123 years, until 1976).^[4]
October 31 – General Joaquin Solares of Guatemala leads an invasion of neighboring Honduras, beginning a war that lasts until February 13, 1856.^[5]
November – Leo Tolstoy's debut novel Childhood is published under the initials L. N., in this month's issue of the Saint Petersburg literary journal Sovremennik (and later in book form).
November 2 – U.S. presidential election, 1852: Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire defeats Whig Winfield Scott of Virginia.
November 4 – Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour becomes the Piedmontese prime minister.
November 11 – The new Palace of Westminster opens in London.
November 21 – 22 – The New French Empire is confirmed by plebiscite: 7,824,000 for, 253,000 against.
November 23 – The first roadside pillar boxes in the British Isles are brought into public use in Saint Helier, on Jersey in the Channel Islands, at the suggestion of English novelist Anthony Trollope, at this time an official of the British General Post Office.^[6]
December – The Western Railroad is chartered to build a railroad from Fayetteville, North Carolina to the coal fields of Egypt, North Carolina.^[7]
December 2 – Napoleon III becomes Emperor of the French.
December 4 – The French capture Laghouat.
December 23 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army takes Hanyang and begins the siege of Wuchang.
December 29 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army takes Hankou.

October 7 is the 280th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 85 days remaining until the end of the year.

Matthew Calbraith Perry was a Commodore of the United States Navy who commanded ships in several wars, including the War of 1812 and the Mexican–American War (1846–48). He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854.

Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855. He was also the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland. He is best known as a political conservative whose reign was marked by geographical expansion, repression of dissent, economic stagnation, poor administrative policies, a corrupt bureaucracy, and frequent wars that culminated in Russia's defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–56. His biographer Nicholas V. Riasanovsky says that Nicholas displayed determination, singleness of purpose, and an iron will, along with a powerful sense of duty and a dedication to very hard work. He saw himself as a soldier—a junior officer totally consumed by spit and polish. A handsome man, he was highly nervous and aggressive. Trained as an engineer, he was a stickler for minute detail. In his public persona, says Riasanovsky, "Nicholas I came to represent autocracy personified: infinitely majestic, determined and powerful, hard as stone, and relentless as fate." His reign had an ideology called "Official Nationality" that was proclaimed officially in 1833. It was a reactionary policy based on orthodoxy in religion, autocracy in government, and Russian nationalism. He was the younger brother of his predecessor, Alexander I. Nicholas inherited his brother's throne despite the failed Decembrist revolt against him and went on to become the most reactionary of all Russian leaders. His aggressive foreign policy involved many expensive wars, having a disastrous effect on the empire's finances.

Date unknown

The Devil's Island penal colony opens in the colony of French Guiana.
The semaphore line in France is superseded by the telegraph.
Smith & Wesson is founded as a firearms manufacturer in the United States.
In Hawaii, sugar planters bring over the first Chinese laborers on 3 or 5 year contracts, giving them 3 dollars per month plus room and board for working a 12-hour day, 6 days a week.
Germans are encouraged to immigrate to Chile.
The British Inman Line is the first to offer United States-bound migrants steerage passage in a steamer, SS City of Glasgow.
Loyola College is chartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
Antioch College is founded in Yellow Springs, Ohio (its first president is Horace Mann).
Mills College is founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia, California.
The French Catholic De La Salle Brothers arrive from Europe in Singapore, aboard La Julie, and sail up to Penang in the Straits Settlements, to found the first Lasallian educational institutions in Asia.
Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary, produces the first translation of the Bible in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, which is published with the parallel text of the Syriac Peshitta, by the American Bible Society.
The Spectacled cormorant became extinct around this date.

The penal colony of Cayenne, commonly known as Devil's Island, was a French penal colony that operated in the 19th and 20th century in the Salvation's Islands of French Guiana. Opened in 1852, the Devil's Island system received convicts deported from all parts of the Second French Empire, and was infamous for its harsh treatment of detainees, with a death rate of 75% at their worst, until it was closed down in 1953. Devil's Island was notorious for being used for the internal exile of French political prisoners, with the most famous being Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

French Guiana is an overseas department and region of France, on the north Atlantic coast of South America in the Guyanas. It borders Brazil to the east and south and Suriname to the west. Since 1981, when Belize became independent, French Guiana has been the only territory of the mainland Americas that is still part of a European country.

Smith & Wesson (S&W) is an American manufacturer of firearms, ammunition and restraints. The corporate headquarters are in Springfield, Massachusetts. Smith & Wesson was founded in 1852 and after various corporate changes is now a unit of American Outdoor Brands Corporation.

Births

January–June

January 8 – James Milton Carroll, American Baptist pastor, leader, historian and author (d. 1931)
January 11
- Elnora Monroe Babcock, American suffragist (d. 1934)
- Constantin Fehrenbach, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1926)
January 18 – Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, French admiral (d. 1924)
January 20 – José Guadalupe Posada, Mexican political engraver and printmaker (d. 1913)
January 26 – Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, Italian-born explorer of Africa (d. 1905)
February 5 – Terauchi Masatake, 9th Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1919)
February 16 – Charles Taze Russell (Pastor Russell), American Protestant reformer, evangelist, forerunner of Jehovah's Witnesses (d. 1916)
February 26
- John Harvey Kellogg, American Adventist doctor and health reformer (d. 1943)
- Felix von Winiwarter, Austrian physician (d. 1931)
February 29 – Frederic, a protagonist in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance (date of death unknown)
March 1 – Théophile Delcassé, French statesman (d. 1923)
March 17 – Cora Linn Daniels, American author (unknown year of death)
April 1 – Edwin Austin Abbey, American painter (d. 1911)
April 13 – F. W. Woolworth, American merchant, businessman (d. 1919)
April 22 – William IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (d. 1912)
May 1 – Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1934)
May 4 – Alice Pleasance Liddell, inspiration for the English children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (d. 1934)
May 11 – Charles W. Fairbanks, 26th Vice President of the United States (d. 1918)
May 13 – Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, Chinese Buddhist leader (d. 1927)
May 14
- Émile Fayolle, French general (d. 1928)
- Alton B. Parker, American judge, Democratic political candidate (d. 1926)
May 31
- Aleksei Aleksandrovich Bobrinsky, Soviet historian and politician (d. 1927)
- Julius Richard Petri, German bacteriologist (d. 1921)
June 13 – Anna Whitlock, Swedish women's right activist (d. 1930)
June 22 – Mary Canfield Ballard, American poet and hymnwriter (d. 1927)
June 25
- Antoni Gaudí, Spanish modernist architect (d. 1926)
- Friedrich Loeffler, German bacteriologist (d. 1915)
June 30 – Karl Petrovich Jessen, Russian admiral (d. 1918)