1856

Births 
 April 5 – Booker T. Washington, American inventor, educator, and writer (d. 1915)
 July 10 – Nikola Tesla, Croatian physicist (d. 1943)
 July 26 – George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer (d. 1950)
 August 3 – Alfred Deakin, 2nd Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1919)
 December 28 – Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize recipient (d. 1924)