General
Population: 1.28 Billion*
- Entertainment: Writers include Gautier, Mill's Utilitarianism, Edward Everett Hale, Charles Kingsley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
SR Gardiner (history of England), TH Huxley (man's place in nature), Ernest Renan (life of Jesus)
Art includes Manet (Déjeuner sur l'Herbe) (Picnic on the Grass), Dante Rossetti, Whistler, Gustave Dore illustrates "Don Quichotte"
Music includes Berlioz, Bizet,
- Fashion: Ebenezer Butterick develops first paper dress patterns
- Medicine: Cholera outbreak worldwide leaves millions dead over a decade
- Religion: Salvation Army founded
- Science: Charles Lyell writes about the antiquity of man
Billroth writes about pathology and therapy
Thomas Graham invents process for separating gasses
Sir Francis Galton writes about predicting weather
Hunt proposes separate creation of human races
- Technology: Continuous roll printing press patented
Open-hearth steel furnace developed by Martin brothers in France based on Siemens process
Henry Clifton Sorby discovers microstructure of steel and starts modern metallurgy
- Deaths: Politician John Branch, Folklorist Jakob Grimm, US Legislator John J Crittenden, Artist Ferndinand Delacroix, Novelist WM Thackeray,
Dramatist Friedrich Hebbel, Emir of Kabul Dost Mohammed, Frederick III of Denmark, Mohammed Said Khedive of Egypt, Poet Alfred de Vigny, Sam Houston,
Africa
- General: Al-Hajj 'Umar of Tukolor takes Timbuktu
- Egypt: Death of Mohammed Said Khedive of Egypt and Ismail rules
John Speke and James Grant descend Nile to Gondokoro where they meet Sir Samuel Whit Baker going upriver
- West Africa: Asante people of W Africa defeat British in Third Asante War
- Zanzibar: Becomes independent nation
Americas
- Canada: Brantford Ontario teacher William Young assaulted and beaten for teaching social identity instead of basic literacy
- Chile: Fire in Santiago Chile Jesuit Church kills 2000
- Greater Colombia: (formed by Simon Bolivar) splits to Venezuela Ecuador and New Granda – New Granada changes name to Colombia
- Mexico: French invade and set up Austrian Archduke Maximilian as emperor
Mexico City occupied
Asia
- Cambodia: French establish protectorate
- China: Muslim rebellion in Gansu, Qinghai and Shanxi
Shimonoseki in China bombarded by French and American ships
- Japan: Western powers bombard Kagoshima and Shimonoseki Japan after Satsuma and Choshu forces attack westerners
- Philippines: Earthquake
Europe
- General: Edward Prince of Wales marries Princess Alexandra of Denmark
- Denmark: Death of King Frederick III (VII) succeeded by Christian IX
Schleswig incorporated
- France: Grand Prix de Paris first run
Photographer AF Nadar makes ascent in his balloon
Art center "Salon des Refuses" opens in Paris
- German States: Saxon and Hanoverian troops enter Holstein
German socialists organize
Start of German state of Anhalt with end of Anhalt-Benburg, Anhalt Dessau
- Great Britain: End of cholera outbreak
Football Association founded in London
Scarlet fever sweeps England
Construction of London Underground railroad
- Greece: William Prince of Denmark becomes George I King of Greece
- Poland: Rebellion against Russian rule fails
- Switzerland: International Red Cross formed
Middle East
- Afghanistan: Dost Mohammed dies and civil war starts
Pacific
- New Zealand: First railroad in New Zealand opens between Christchurch and Ferrymead
1863 
