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 )

Siegfried Alkan ( March 30, 1858 – December 24, 1941 ) was a German composer.

* Siegfried Alkan ( 1858 – 1941 ), German composer

Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858 into a family of German expatriates.

* 1858 – Franz Boas, German anthropologist ( d. 1942 )

* 1858 – Heinrich Zille, German illustrator and photographer ( d. 1929 )

* 1858 – Lovis Corinth, German painter ( d. 1925 )

* 1858 – Georg Simmel, German sociologist and philosopher ( d. 1918 )

* 1858 – Rudolf Diesel, German inventor ( d. 1913 )

* 1941 – Ludwig Quidde, German pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize ( b. 1858 )

During the early 1850s, two German Egyptologists, Heinrich Brugsch and Max Uhlemann, produced revised Latin translations based on the demotic and hieroglyphic texts ; the first English translation, the work of three members of the Philomathean Society at the University of Pennsylvania, followed in 1858.

St. Matthew's German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Charleston, South Carolina suffered 308 yellow fever deaths in 1858, reducing the congregation by half.

** Georg Simmel, German sociologist and philosopher ( b. 1858 )

* September 30 – Rudolf Diesel, German engine inventor ( b. 1858 )

* December 22 – Franz Boas, German anthropologist ( b. 1858 )

* April 11 – Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein, Last German Empress, wife of Wilhelm II ( born 1858 )

* July 17 – Lovis Corinth, German painter ( b. 1858 )

* March 23 – Julius Reubke, German composer ( d. 1858 )

It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.

Otté ( 5 volumes 1849 – 1858, the only complete translation of the 4 German volumes ).

The first use of the word geomorphology was likely to be in the German language when it appeared in Laumann's 1858 work.

The first was the English Alpine Club ( founded in the winter of 1857 – 1858 ), followed in 1862 by the Austrian Alpine Club ( which in 1873 was fused, under the name of the German and Austrian Alpine Club, with the German Alpine Club, founded in 1869 ), in 1863 by the Italian and Swiss Alpine Clubs, and in 1874 by the French Alpine Club, not to mention numerous minor societies of more local character.

Georg Simmel ( March 1, 1858 – September 28, 1918 ) was a major German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.

In 1858, he founded the German paper, Hermann.

Barth wrote and published accounts of his travels simultaneously in English and German, under the title Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord-und Zentralafrika ( Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa ; 1857 – 1858, 5 vols., approx.