Year 1852 (MDCCCLII) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar.  It was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

Events

January–March 
 January 14 – President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte makes a new constitution for the French Second Republic.
 January 15 – Nine men from various Hebrew charitable organizations come together to form what will become the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
 January 17 – The United Kingdom recognizes the independence of the Transvaal.
 February 3 – Battle of Caseros or Battle of Monte Caseros, Argentina
 February 11 – The first British public toilet for women opens in Bedford Street, London.
 February 15 – The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient.
 February 16 – The Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company is started.
 February 19 – The Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity is founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
 February 25 – The HMS Birkenhead sinks near Cape Town, South Africa. Only 193 of the 643 on board survive.
 March 1 – Archibald William Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton is made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
 March 2 – The first American steam fire engine was tested.
 March 4 – Phi Mu Sorority is founded in Macon Georgia 
 March 20 – Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is published.

April–June 
 April 1 – The Second 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.

July–September 
 July 1 – United States statesman Henry Clay is the first to have the honor of lying in state in the United States Capitol rotunda.
 July 4 – Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" in Rochester, New York.
 July 28 – Henry Clay steamboat disaster in Riverdale, Bronx, with several deaths including Stephen Allen.
 August 3 – The first Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, the first American intercollegiate athletic event, is held.
 September 24 – French engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip from Paris to Trappes.

October–December 
 November 2 – U.S. presidential election, 1852: Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire defeats Whig Winfield Scott of Virginia.
 November 4 – Count Cavour becomes the Piedmontese prime minister.
 November 11 – The new Palace of Westminster opens in Britain.
 November 21–November 22 – The New French Empire is confirmed 
 December 2 – Napoleon III becomes Emperor of the French.
 December 23 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army takes Hanyang and begins the siege of Wuchang.
 December 29 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army takes Hankou.

Date unknown 
 Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary, makes the first translation of the Bible in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic.
 The Devil's Island penal colony opens.
 In Hawaii sugar planters bring over the first Chinese laborers on 3 or 5 year contracts.
 Loyola College is chartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
 Germans are encouraged to move to Chile
 Gef's supposed birth
 Antioch College is started. Its first president is Horace Mann.
 Mills College is started.
 Leo Tolstoy's first novel, Childhood, is published in book form.

Births

January–June 
 January 8 – James Milton Carroll, Baptist pastor, leader, historian, and writer (d. 1931)
 January 11 – Konstantin Fehrenbach, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1926)
 February 16 – Charles Taze Russell (Pastor Russell), prominent Protestant reformer and evangelist (d. 1916)
 March 1 – Théophile Delcassé, French statesman (d. 1923)
 April 1 – Edwin Austin Abbey, American painter (d. 1911)
 April 13 – F.W. Woolworth, American merchant and businessman (d. 1919)
 April 22 – Guillaume 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 children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (d. 1934)
 May 31 – Julius Richard Petri, German scientist (d. 1921)
 June 25 – Antoni Gaudi, Spanish modernist architect (d. 1926)

July–December 
 July 12 – Hipólito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina (d. 1933)
 August 23 – Clímaco Calderón, President of Colombia (d. 1913)
 August 30 – Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1911)
 September 10 – Hans Niels Andersen, Danish businessman, founder of the East Asiatic Company (d. 1937)
 September 12 – Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1928)
 September 15 – Edward Bouchet, American physicist (d. 1918)
 September 28
 John French, 1st Earl of Ypres, British general, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I (d. 1925)
 Henri Moissan, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1907)
 September 30 – Charles Villiers Stanford, Irish composer, resident in England (d. 1924)
 October 2 – William Ramsay, Scottish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1916)
 October 9 – Hermann Emil Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919)
 November 1 – Eugene W. Chafin, American politician (d. 1920)
 November 3 – Prince Mutsuhito of Japan, the future Emperor Meiji (d. 1912)
 November 11 – Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Austro-Hungarian field marshal (d. 1925)
 November 22 – Paul-Henri-Benjamin d'Estournelles de Constant, French diplomat, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1924)
 November 26 – Yamamoto Gonnohyōe, the 16th and 22nd Prime Minister of Japan, an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy
 December 15 – Henri Becquerel, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1908)
 December 19 – Albert Abraham Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
 December 21 – George Callaghan, British admiral (d. 1920)

Deaths

January–June 
 January 1 – John George Children, British chemist, mineralogist and zoologist (b. 1777)
 January 6 – Louis Braille, French teacher of the blind and inventor of braille (b. 1809)
 May 3 – Sara Coleridge, English writer and translator (b. 1802)
 March 4 – Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (b. 1809)
 April 17 – Étienne Maurice Gérard, Marshal of France and Prime Minister of France (b. 1773)
 June 7 – José Joaquín Estudillo, second alcalde of Yerba Buena (b. 1800)
 June 29 – Henry Clay, American statesman (b. 1777)

July–December 
 July 20 – José Antonio Estudillo, early California settler (b. 1805)
 July 22 – Auguste Marmont, French marshal (b. 1774)
 September 4 – William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist (b. 1796)
 September 14
 Augustus Pugin, English architect (b. 1812)
 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, British general and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1769)
 September 20 – Philander Chase, American founder of Kenyon College (b. 1775)
 October 13 – John Lloyd Stephens, American traveler, diplomat and Mayanist archaeologist (b. 1805)
 October 24 – Daniel Webster, American statesman (b. 1782)
 October 25 – John C. Clark, American politician (b. 1793)
 October 26 – Vincenzo Gioberti, Italian philosopher (b. 1801)
 November 2 – Pyotr Kotlyarevsky, Russian military hero (b. 1782)
 November 27 – Augusta Ada King (née Byron), Countess of Lovelace, early English computer pioneer (b. 1815)
 November 29 – Nicolae Bălcescu, Wallachian revolutionary (b. 1819)
 November 30 – Junius Brutus Booth, English-born actor (b. 1796)
 December 16 – Andries Hendrik Potgieter, Voortrekker leader (b. 1792)

References