1854

Events 
 January 6 – The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is born.
 March 20 –The Boston Public Library opens to the public.
June 24 - Franz Liszt shows Franz Schubert's opera Alfonso und Estrella in Weimar. This was thirty-two years after it was composed.
 August 9 –Johann succeeds to the throne of Saxony on the death of his brother.
 October 6 –The great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead in England
 November 5 –Crimean War – Battle of Inkerman: The Russians are defeated.
 December 3 – Eureka Stockade miner's rebellion, Ballarat, Australia
 The French fashion label Louis Vuitton is founded.

 Births 
 January 1 – James George Frazer, Scottish social anthropologist (d. 1941)
 March 15 – Emil von Behring, German physiologist, 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1917)
 April 29 –Henri Poincaré, French mathematician and physicist (d. 1912)
 June 26 –Robert Borden, 8th Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1937)
 July 27 –Takahashi Korekiyo, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1936)
 October 3 –William C. Gorgas, American physician and Surgeon General (d. 1920)
 October 16 – Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (d. 1900)
 November 17 –Hubert Lyautey, Marshal of France (d. 1934)
 December 23 –Victoriano Huerta, President of Mexico (d. 1916)

 Deaths 
 February 17 –John Martin, English painter (b. 1789)
 April 11 –Karl Adolph von Basedow, German physician (b. 1799)
 June 7 – Charles Baudin, French admiral (b. 1784)
 July 6 –Georg Ohm, German physicist (b. 1789)
 August 21 –Thomas Clayton, American lawyer and politician (b. 1777)
 September 8 –Angelo Mai, Italian cardinal and philologist (b. 1782)
 October 26 –Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen, queen consort of Bavaria (b. 1792)
 November 25 –John Gibson Lockhart, Scottish writer (b. 1794)
 December 9 –Almeida Garrett, Portuguese writer (b. 1799)
 December 15 –Kamehameha III, King of Hawaii (b. c. 1814)

New books
Charles Dickens – Hard Times
Fanny Fern – Ruth Hall
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Mosses from an Old Manse
Caroline Lee Hentz – The Planter's Northern Bride
Alfred Tennyson – "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
Henry David Thoreau – Walden, or Life in the Woods
Leo Tolstoy – Boyhood