What Happened in March 1856

Historical Events

  • Mar 5 Covent Garden Opera House, London, destroyed in a fire
  • Mar 5 Georgia becomes 1st state to regulate railroads
  • Mar 9 Sigma Alpha Epsilon is founded in the Johnston Mansion House on the University of Alabama
  • Mar 23 18-year-old English chemist William Perkin accidentally produces the first synthetic aniline dye ‘mauveine’ (purple) during his Easter holiday [1]
  • Mar 25 A E Burnside patents Burnside carbine
  • Mar 26 New South Wales's first 1st-class game, v Victoria at Melbourne NSW wins

The 1856 Treaty of Paris

Mar 30 The Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, France and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War


Famous Birthdays

  • Mar 1 Florimond Fonteyne, Belgian priest and politician (Volkseeuw), born in Houtem (d. 1923)
  • Mar 4 Alfred William Rich, English painter (d. 1921)
  • Mar 4 Toru Dutt, English and French poet and author (d. 1877)
  • Mar 7 Matilde Serao, Italian writer and journalist (Land of Cockayne, 1st woman to edit Italian newspaper), born in Patras, Greece (d. 1927)
  • Mar 8 Bramwell Booth, 2nd General of The Salvation Army, born in Halifax, England (d. 1929)
  • Mar 8 Tom Roberts, British-Australian artist (Shearing the Rams), born in Dorchester, Dorset, England (d. 1931)
  • Mar 9 Eddie Foy Sr. [Edwin Fitzgerald], Irish-American actor, singer and dancer (A Favorite Fool), born in Manhattan, New York (d. 1928)
  • Mar 16 Napoléon IV, Prince Imperial, Head of the House of Bonaparte (1873-79), born in Paris, French Empire (d. 1879)
  • Mar 17 Mikhail Vrubel, Russian painter (d. 1910)

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915)

Mar 20 American mechanical engineer and the father of scientific management, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  • Mar 20 Sir John Lavery, Irish artist (d. 1941)

Henry Ossian Flipper (1856-1940)

Mar 21 American soldier, former slave and first African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1877, born in Thomasville, Georgia

  • Mar 26 David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount Rhondda, Welsh coal-mining entrepreneur, born in Ysgyborwen, Wales (d. 1918)

Famous Deaths

  • Mar 11 James Beatty, Irish railway engineer (b. 1820)
  • Mar 28 Pyotr Ivanovich Turchaninov, Russian church composer, and choirmaster, dies at 76