1855: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Events

• January 23 - Magnitude 8.1 earthquake on the Wairarapa fault in New Zealand reshapes the shoreline of the young city of Wellington
• January 28 - first locomotive runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the newly completed Panama Railway
• February 7 - First treaty of friendship signed between Russia and Japan, defining trade restrictions and settling the border. see Treaty of Shimoda.
• March 2 - accession of Russian Tsar Alexander II
• March 30 - "Border Ruffians" from Missouri invade Kansas and force election of a pro-slavery legislature.
• May - The first American Soo locks on the St. Marys River connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron are completed.
• May 4 - American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.
• July 4 - In Brooklyn, New York, Walt Whitman's first edition of his book of poem's titled Leaves of Grass is published.
• September 3 - Indian Wars: In Nebraska, 700 soldiers under American General William Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village killing 100 men, women, and children.
• November - David Livingstone discovers the Victoria Falls
• accession of Emperor Theodore II of Ethiopia

• Gustave Courbet sets up Pavilion of Realism in protest against "official art" at Paris International Exhibition
• Daily Telegraph newspaper founded in London, England
• Sheffield F.C., the first ever football club is founded

• January 5 - King Camp Gillette, inventor († 1932)
• January 21 - John Moses Browning, inventor († 1926)
• January 28 - William Seward Burroughs, inventor of the calculator († 1898)
• March 13 - Percival Lowell, astronomer († 1916)
• March 24 - Andrew Mellon, financier († 1937)
• May 1 - Marie Corelli, novelist
• July 30 - Wilhelm von Siemens, German industrialist
• November 5 - Léon Teisserenc de Bort, French meteorologist († 1913)

• February 6 - Josef Munzinger, member of the Swiss Federal Council (*1791)
• February 23 - Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, astronomer and physicist
• March 29 - Henri Druey, member of the Swiss Federal Council (*1799)
• March 31 - Charlotte Brontë, author
• May 23 - Charles Robert Malden explorer
• June 28 - Fitzroy Somerset, 1st Lord Raglan, commander of British forces in the Crimean War
• August 7 - Mariano Arista, president of Mexico
• November 11 - Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher