Decades: 1810s1820s1830s1840s1850s - 1860s - 1870s1880s1890s1900s1910s
Years: 18551856185718581859 - 1860 - 18611862186318641865
Events
- April 3 - first run of the Pony Express
- Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia seizes the whole of the Papal States besides Rome (see Vatican City) and unites Italy
- Robert Wilhelm Bunsen discovers Cesium and Rubidium (see Discovery of the chemical elements)
- November - Abraham Lincoln defeats John C. Breckinridge in the U.S. presidential election
- December 26 - Confederate diplomatic envoys James Mason and John Slidell are freed by the United States government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and Great Britain
- December 29 - The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, the HMS Warrior is launched.
- 1860 in sports:
- Willie Park wins the first British Open golf tournament.
- First running of the Queen's Plate in Toronto, Ontario, North America's oldest thoroughbred horse race.
- January 1 - George Washington Carver, educator, activist, botanist
- January 11 - Marie Bashkirtseff, artist
- January 29 - Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer (+ 1904)
- February 11 - Rachilde (Marguerite Vallette-Eymery), French author
- February 29 - Herman Hollerith, inventor of the first electric tabulating machine.
- March 13 - Hugo Wolf, composer
- March 19 - William Jennings Bryan, American politician
- May 29 - Isaac Albéniz, Spanish composer
- July 7 - Gustav Mahler, composer
- J. M. Barrie, novelist and dramatist