1854 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1854 in the United Kingdom.

[edit] Events

Original map by Dr John Snow showing the clusters of cholera cases in the London epidemic of 1854

21 January - Loss of the RMS Tayleur - 380 drowned, later dubbed "the first Titanic".
17 February - The British recognise the independence of the Orange Free State.
27 February - Britain sends Russia an ultimatum to withdraw from two Ottoman provinces it had conquered, Moldavia and Wallachia.
11 March - Royal Navy fleet sails from Britain under Vice Admiral Sir Charles Napier.
27 March - United Kingdom declares war on Russia — Crimean War begins.
1 April - Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens magazine, Household Words.
21 June - In the battle at Bomarsund in Åland, Royal Navy mate Charles D. Lucas throws a live Russian artillery shell overboard by hand before it explodes — the incident is the first that will be retroactively awarded the Victoria Cross in 1857.
22 July - Discovery of the asteroid 30 Urania by John Russell Hind.
16 August - Russian troops in the island of Bomarsund in Åland surrender to French-British troops.
20 September - Crimean War: At the Alma, the French-British alliance wins the first battle of the war.
6 October - The great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead is ignited by a spectacular explosion.
21 October - Florence Nightingale leaves for Crimea with 38 other nurses.
25 October - Crimean War: The Battle of Balaclava occurs, overall a victory for the allies, but it included the disastrous cavalry Charge of the Light Brigade, from which only 200 of 700 men survive.
5 November - Crimean War: Russians defeated at the Battle of Inkerman.

An epidemic of cholera in London kills 10,000. Dr John Snow traces the source of one outbreak (that killed 500) to a single water pump, validating his theory that cholera is water-borne, and forming the starting point for epidemiology.
George Boole publishes his influential work on logic, The Laws of Thought.
George Airy calculates the mean density of the Earth by measuring the gravity in a coal mine in South Shields.