1858

Events 
 Charles Darwin proposes the natural selection of species.
 A civil war between conservatists and liberals starts in Mexico.
 The British Empire or rule, begins in India after the surrender and exile of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II

 Births 
 January 7 – Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Russian-born advocate of the Hebrew language (d. 1922)
 January 10 – Heinrich Zille, German illustrator and photographer (d. 1929)
 January 11 – Harry Gordon Selfridge, American department store magnate (d. 1947)
 March 10 – Kokichi Mikimoto, Japanese pearl farm pioneer (d. 1954)
 March 18 – Rudolf Diesel, German inventor (d. 1913)
 March 23 – Ludwig Quidde, German pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1941)
 April 23 – Max Planck, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1947)
 June 16 – King Gustaf V of Sweden (d. 1950)
 June 16 – William Dickson Boyce, founder of the Boy Scouts of America (d. 1929)
 July 9 – Franz Boas, German anthropologist (d. 1942)
 August 1 – Hans Rott, Austrian composer (d. 1884)
 August 11 – Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physician and pathologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1930)
 August 27 – Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician (d. 1932)
 September 18 – Kate Booth, the oldest daughter of William and Catherine Booth (d. 1955)
 October 3 – Eleonora Duse, Italian actress (d. 1924)
 October 27 – Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize recipient (d. 1919)
 November 20 – Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
 November 30 – Jagdish Chandra Bose, Indian physicist (d. 1937)
 December 22 – Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer (d. 1924)
 December 25 – Herman P. Faris, American temperance movement leader (d. 1936)