* John Austin ( legal philosopher ) ( 1790 – 1859 ), English jurist

In 1859, Nobel's father left his factory in the care of the second son, Ludvig Nobel ( 1831 – 1888 ), who greatly improved the business.

* 1859 – Petroleum is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world's first commercially successful oil well.

* 1779 – Carl Ritter, German geographer ( d. 1859 )

* 1785 – Thomas De Quincey, English author ( d. 1859 )

* 1859 – Charles Comiskey, American baseball player and manager ( d. 1931 )

* 1859 – The Tuscan National Assembly formally deposes the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.

* 1859 – Katharine Lee Bates, American poet ( d. 1929 )

* Alexander John Cuza, prince of Romania ( 1859 – 1866 )

* 1859 – A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it is seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and even as far away as Japan.

* 1859 – Matilda Howell, American archer ( d. 1938 )

* 1859 – Vittorio Sella, Italian photographer ( d. 1943 )

* 1917 – L. L. Zamenhof, Polish creator of Esperanto ( b. 1859 )

* 1859 – Knut Hamsun, Norwegian writer, Nobel Prize laureate ( d. 1952 )

* 1859 – British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal.

* 1944 – William Stephens, American politician ( b. 1859 )

* 1803 – James Curtiss, American politician, Mayor of Chicago ( d. 1859 )

* 1859 – Walter Camp, American football player, coach, and writer ( d. 1925 )

* 1943 – Alexandre Millerand, French politician, President of France ( b. 1859 )

Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936 ), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.

* Page, Norman, ‘ Housman, Alfred Edward ( 1859 – 1936 )’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 )

His siblings included Sarah ( 1802 – 1859 ), Naphtali ( 1807 ), Ralph ( 1809 – 1898 ), and James ( 1813 – 1868 ).

The Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister 1855 – 58, 1859 – 65

The first ironclad battleship, with iron armour over a wooden hull, La Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in 1859 ; she prompted the British Royal Navy to build a counter.

An example was Royal Charter, built in 1857 and wrecked on the coast of Anglesey in 1859.

Admiral of the Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe, GCB, OM, GCVO SGM ( 5 December 1859 – 20 November 1935 ) was a British Royal Navy admiral who commanded the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in World War I.

* 1859 – The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England.

The 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom ordered, inter alia, a third outer ring of forts: these included Fort Luton, Fort Bridgewood, and Fort Borstal.

Its roots can be traced back to 1859 when the Brighton School of Art was opened in the Brighton Royal Pavilion.

Speke returned to England before Burton, on 8 May 1859, and made their trip famous in a speech to the Royal Geographical Society, in which he claimed to have discovered the source of the Nile.

The two presented joint papers concerning the expedition to the Royal Geographical Society on 13 June 1859.

The South Devon Railway was completed in 1849, extending the broad gauge to Plymouth, whence the Cornwall Railway took it over the Royal Albert Bridge and into Cornwall in 1859 and, in 1867, it reached over the West Cornwall Railway which originally had been laid with the standard gauge or " narrow gauge " as it was known at the time.

Scott was awarded the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 1859.

To which Fitzgerald adds the following footnote ( 1st edition, 1859 ): " Bahram Gur-Bahram of the Wild Ass from his fame in hunting it-a Sassanian sovereign, had also his seven palaces, each of a different colour ; each with a Royal mistress within ; each of whom recounts to Bahram a romance.

The Tamar Bridge is located above the Hamoaze, and runs parallel to Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge ( sometimes referred to as the Brunel Bridge ) which opened in 1859 and is considered to be one of his greatest railway achievements.

Newhaven Fort, one of the Palmerston Forts, was built on Castle Hill on the recommendation of the 1859 Royal Commission to defend the growing harbour It was the largest defence work ever built in Sussex and is now open as a museum.

Born Mansfield George Smith on 1 April 1859 in British India, the youngest in the family of five sons and eight daughters of Colonel John Thomas Smith ( 1805 – 1882 ) of the Royal Engineers, of Föelallt House, Cardigan Kent, and his wife, Maria Sarah Tyser.

" Sent in anonymously the Royal Theatre, the play was rejected by a manager, causing Lassalle to publish it by his own name during 1859.

Banbury remained without a cross for more than 250 years until the current Banbury Cross was erected in 1859 at the centre of the town to commemorate the marriage of Victoria, Princess Royal ( eldest child of Queen Victoria ) to Prince Frederick of Prussia.

The whereabouts of the diary were long unknown, but it was discovered in the Royal Library in the 1850s and published in 1859 as Drömboken, or Journal of Dreams.

The British Admiralty had been considering armored warships since 1856 and prepared a draft design for an armored corvette in 1857 ; however, in early 1859 the Royal Navy started building two iron-hulled armored frigates, and by 1861 had made the decision to move to an all-armored battle fleet.

A terrible storm in 1859 that caused the loss of the Royal Charter inspired FitzRoy to develop charts to allow predictions to be made, which he called " forecasting the weather ", thus coining the term weather forecast Fifteen land stations were established to use the new telegraph to transmit to him daily reports of weather at set times.

The Philosophical Institute of Victoria was founded in 1854 and became the Royal Society of Victoria after receiving a Royal Charter in 1859.

Princess Helena began an early flirtation with her father's former librarian, Carl Ruland, following his appointment to the Royal Household on the recommendation of Baron Stockmar in 1859.

In 1848, Mihajlo Barić ( 1791 – 1859 ), a Croatian minor official in the Hungarian Royal Chancellery, resigned his post and embarked upon a tour of several countries, including Egypt.

The loss of the passenger vessel, the Royal Charter, and 459 lives off the coast of Anglesey in a violent storm in October 1859 led to the first gale warning service.