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Production of steel revolutionised by invention of the Bessemer process

Benjamin Silliman fractionates petroleum by distillation for the first time

First transatlantic telegraph cable laid

First safety elevator installed by Elisha Otis

Railroads begin to supplant canals in the United States as a primary means of transporting goods.

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Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species, putting forward the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859

Epidemiology begins when John Snow traces the source of an outbreak of cholera in London to a contaminated water pump.

Discovery of Neandertal fossils in Neanderthal, Germany

Solar flares discovered by Richard Christopher Carrington

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Crimean war (1854 - 1856) fought between Imperial Russia and an alliance consisting of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Second French Empire, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire. The majority of the conflict takes place around Crimea, on the northern coasts of the Black Sea.

The Indian Mutiny: revolt against British colonial rule in India

Bleeding Kansas (1854 - 1859): battles erupt in Kansas Territory between proslavery and "Free-State" settlers, directly presaging the American Civil War.

Dissolution of the Mughal Empire by the British.

156 are killed in Paris in a failed assassination attempt on Napoleon III, Emperor of the French (1858).

Moldavia and Wallachia are unified and form Romania.

Gideon T. Stewart attempts to create a Prohibition Party.

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Emperor Franz Josef (Austria-Hungary)

Emperor Napoleon III (Second French Empire)

Pope Pius IX

Emperor Nicholas I (Russia)

Emperor Alexander II (Russia)

Queen Isabella II (Spain)

Queen Victoria, (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

Prime Minister Lord John Russell (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

Prime Minister Lord Palmerston (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)

President Millard Fillmore (United States)

President Franklin Pierce (United States)

President James Buchanan (United States)

Nasser-al-Din Shah of Qajar dynasty (Persia)

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Ukrainian settlers bring Carniolan honeybees to