1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday.

Events

March

• March 6 - Abraham Lincoln speaks against slavery in New Haven, Connecticut

April

• April 3 - The Pony Express makes its first run.

May

• May 1 - A chondrite type meteorite fell to earth in Muskingum County, Ohio near the town of New Concord.
• May 9 - The Constitutional Union Party holds its convention and nominates John Bell for President of the United States.
• May 13 - Battle of Catalafimi ; troops under Giuseppe Garibaldi defeat the army of Naples, during the Second Italian independence war.
• May 18 - Abraham Lincoln is selected as the US presidential candidate for the Republican party.

June

• June 24 - First nursing school, based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale, is opened in St. Thomas Infirmary in England.

July

• July 2 - Vladivostok, Russia is founded.
• July 11 - Mutsuhito becomes Crown Prince of Japan.
• July 19 - Ioan Dimitrovich Kasatkin becomes an Eastern Orthodox monk under the name Nikolai.
• July 24 - Monk Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as deacon.
• July 25 - Deacon Nikolai Kasatkin appointed as priest.

September

• September 7 - Lady Elgin is accidentally rammed and sunk in Lake Michigan, hundreds drown.
• September 7 - Troops of Giuseppe Garibaldi reach Naples.

October

• John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant leave Zanzibar to search for source of the Nile.
• October 5 - Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire form a commission to investigate causes of clashes between Maronites and Druzes in Lebanon earlier in the year
• October 19 - New Maori revolt begins in New Zealand
• October 26 - Giuseppe Garibaldi gives Naples to the king Victor Emmanuel II.

November

• November 6 - U.S. presidential election, 1860: Abraham Lincoln beats John C. Breckinridge and is elected as the 16th President of the United States, the first Republican to hold that office.

December

• December 20 - South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union.
• December 29 - The first British seagoing ironclad warship, the HMS Warrior is launched.

Unknown Dates

• Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia seizes the whole of the Papal States besides Rome (see Vatican City) and unites Italy.
• Robert Wilhelm Bunsen discovers caesium and rubidium (see Discovery of the chemical elements)
• Buenos Aires leader Bartolomé Mitre subverts Argentine Confederation and begins to establish a new centralist government with the help of Uruguayan Colorado party leader Venancio Flores
• Augustana College is founded in Rock Island, Illinois, United States by Swedish immigrants.

Births

January

• January 1 - George Washington Carver, educator, activist, botanist
• January 11 - Marie Bashkirtseff, artist
• January 25 - Charles Curtis, American vice-president († 1936)
• January 29 - William Jacob Baer, American painter († 1941)
• January 29 - Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short story writer († 1904)

February

• February 11 - Rachilde (Marguerite Vallette-Eymery), French author
• February 29 - Herman Hollerith, inventor of the first electric tabulating machine.

March

• March 1 - Joe Natus , musician
• March 13 - Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer
• March 19 - William Jennings Bryan, American politician
• March 27 - Frank Frost Abbott, American classical scholar (d. 1924)

May

• May 9 - J. M. Barrie, author († 1937)
• May 25 - James McKeen Cattell, first professor of psychology in U.S.
• May 29 - Isaac Albéniz, Spanish composer (d. 1909)

July

• July 3 - Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist writer († 1935)
• July 7 - Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer (d. 1911)
• July 19 - Lizzie Borden, murder suspect

August

• August 3 - W.K. Dickson, Scottish inventor (d. 1935)
• August 16 - Jules Laforgue, French poet (d. 1887)

September

• September 13 - John J. Pershing, American General

November

• November 6 - Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Polish pianist and composer (d. 1941)
• November 23 - Billy the Kid

December

• December 7 - Joseph Cook, sixth Prime Minister of Australia († 1947)
• John Coughlin, Chicago alderman
• Frederick George Jackson, British Arctic explorer († 1938)
• Albert Giraud, Belgian poet († 1929)
• Lancelot Speed, illustrator († 1931)

Deaths

January

• January 27 - János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician
• January 27 - Thomas Brisbane, astronomer
• January 29 - Stephanie de Beauharnais, former Grand Duchess of Baden.

February

• February 20 - Henry Drummond, Canadian poet

March

• March 17 - Anna Jameson , German author

May

• May 12 - Sir Charles Barry, English architect
• May 16 - Anne Isabella Milbanke, widow of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron.

July

• July 1 - Charles Goodyear, inventor of the vulcanization process

December

• December 14 - George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th earl of Aberdeen.