The 1858 senate campaign featured the seven Lincoln – Douglas debates of 1858, the most famous political debates in American history.

* 1858 – Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician ( d. 1932 )

* 1858 – Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, ( d. 1934 )

After 1890 came philosopher Josiah Royce ( 1855 – 1916 ), botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey ( 1858 – 1954 ), the Southern Agrarians of the 1920s and 1930s, novelist John Steinbeck ( 1902 – 1968 ), historian A. Whitney Griswold ( 1906 – 1963 ), environmentalist Aldo Leopold ( 1887 – 1948 ), Ralph Borsodi ( 1886 – 1977 ), and present-day authors Wendell Berry ( b. 1934 ), Gene Logsdon ( b. 1932 ), Paul Thompson, and Allan C. Carlson ( b. 1949 ).

* 1858 – Gaston Doumergue, French politician ( d. 1937 )

* 1858 – Hans Rott, Austrian composer ( d. 1884 )

Bloch was highly interdisciplinary, influenced by the geography of Paul Vidal de la Blache ( 1845 – 1918 ) and the sociology of Émile Durkheim ( 1858 – 1917 ).

* 1858 – The Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is wound up.

* Adrian Kashchenko ( 1858 – 1921 ), Ukrainian writer, historian of Zaporozhian Cossacks

* 1858 – E. Nesbit, English author ( d. 1924 )

* 1858 – U. S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

* 1858 – Arthur Achleitner, German writer ( d. 1927 )

* 1858 – Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria ( d. 1889 )

* Alexander Karađorđević, Prince of Serbia ( 1842 – 1858 )

* 1858 – The Round Oak rail accident occurs in Brierley Hill in the Black Country, England.

* 1858 – Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts.

* 1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.

* 1858 – Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physician, Nobel Prize laureate ( d. 1930 )

** Charles Waring Darwin ( 1856 – 1858 ), youngest son of Charles Darwin ( 1809 – 1882 )

* 1916 – Charles de Foucauld, French religious figure ( b. 1858 )

* 1858 – Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution to the Linnean Society.

Charles Kean and his wife as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, in costumes aiming to be historically accurate ( 1858 )

By 1858 attention had swung back to local issues with a land dispute in New Plymouth prompting Governor Thomas Gore Brown to call out its Militia under Captain Charles Brown.

* 1858 – Charles de Foucauld, French priest ( d. 1916 )

* January 8 – Charles Alexander Eastman, Native American author, physician, reformer, helped found the Boy Scouts of America ( b. 1858 )

* November 15 – Charles Waddell Chesnutt, African American author, essayist, political activist ( b. 1858 )

In 1858, a migrant freethinker and evolutionary named Denton challenged him to a debate ( Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published the next year ).

In 1858, the brief period of unification under the Nguyễn Dynasty ended with a successful attack on Da Nang by French Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly under the orders of Napoleon III.

* 1858 — Charles R. Darwin and Alfred Wallace independently proposed a theory of biological evolution (" descent through modification ") by means of natural selection.

He approved the launching of a naval expedition under Charles Rigault de Genouilly in 1858 to punish the Vietnamese for their mistreatment of French Catholic missionaries and force the court to accept a French presence in the country.

In 1858, Galician Railway of Archduke Charles Louis reached Rzeszów, which resulted in further development of the town.

In 1858, this furnace, known as Valley Forge, became the property of Chouteau, Harrison and Vallé, Charles A. Pilley, superintendent, and was profitably worked until 1863 when the machinery was removed and the buildings and lands sold.

Brooks County was created 11 December 1858 from portions of Lowndes and Thomas counties by an act of the Georgia General Assembly named in honor of Preston Brooks, famous and acclaimed throughout the South for having beaten to unconsciousness, Senator Charles Sumner in 1856 in Congress.

* Birthplace of Major-General Sir Richard Havelock Charles, 1st Baronet ( 1858 – 1934 ), doctor, and Serjeant Surgeon to King George V.

Charles Compton Cavendish, fourth son of the first Earl of Burlington, was created Baron Chesham in 1858.

Charles Benbow's son, Jesse Benbow, built a more refined Greek Revival four-square home in 1858 on land inherited from his father.

Henry Bates was one of a group of outstanding naturalist-explorers who were supporters of the theory of evolution by natural selection ( Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace 1858 ).

In January 1858 Symonds received a letter from his friend Alfred Pretor ( 1840 – 1908 ), telling of Pretor's affair with their headmaster, Charles John Vaughan.

* Weiss, Nancy J. Charles Francis Murphy, 1858 – 1924: respectability and responsibility in Tammany politics ( 1968 ).

* Jourdain, Charles, Sextus Empiricus ( Paris, 1858 )

Lyell and Hooker were instrumental in arranging the peaceful co-publication of the theory of natural selection by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858: each had arrived at the theory independently.

Darwin was hard at work on his " big book " on Natural Selection, when on 18 June 1858 he received a parcel from Wallace, who stayed on the Maluku Islands ( Ternate and Gilolo ).

Lyell and Hooker agreed that a joint paper should be presented at the Linnean Society, and on 1 July 1858, the papers entitled On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties ; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, by Wallace and Darwin respectively, were read out but drew little reaction.

Darwin had his basic theory of natural selection " by which to work " by December 1838, yet almost twenty years later, when Wallace's letter arrived on 18 June 1858, Darwin was still not ready to publish his theory.

In a largely overlooked passage from his famous 1858 paper to the Linnean Society ( which led Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species ) Alfred Russel Wallace says of the evolutionary principle:

* Charles Darwin started the " abstract " which became the Origin of Species at the King's Head Hotel ( now Bar ) in Sandown in mid-July 1858.

Not many days after my return home there reached me the part of the Journal of the Linnean Society which bears on its cover the date 20th August 1858, and contains the papers by Mr Darwin and Mr Wallace, which were communicated to that Society at its special meeting of the first of July preceding ...

Only four days after the publication of the famous 1858 paper, and one day after he read it, Newton started to apply Darwin and Wallace's idea to various problems in ornithology.

He corresponded with Henry Stevenson and one of his first publications was in 1858, the year in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published their paper on natural selection.

* Charles Waring Darwin ( 1856 – 1858 )

* Marianne Darwin ( 1798 – 1858 ), married Henry Parker ( 1788 – 1858 ) in 1824.

Charles Waring Darwin, who died when he was 18 months old ( 6 December 1856 – 28 June 1858 ), was the last of the children of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin, their tenth child and sixth son.

The baby's illness and early death kept Darwin from attending the first publication of Darwin's theory at the joint reading of papers by Alfred Russel Wallace and himself titled On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties ; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection at the meeting of the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858.

In September 1843, the Darwin family increased with the birth of " Etty " in the house, where all their remaining children were born: George in 1845, " Bessy " in 1847, Francis in 1848, Leonard in 1850, Horace in 1851, and their 10th child Charles Waring Darwin who was born in 1856, but died in 1858.