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1855

year

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ7673
Source-derived summary

1855 (MDCCCLV) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar, the 1855th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 855th year of the 2nd millennium, the 55th year of the 19th century, and the 6th year of the 1850s decade. As of the start of 1855, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events

January–March

January 1 – Ottawa, Ontario, is incorporated as a city.'

January 5 – Ramón Castilla begins his third term as President of Peru.

January 23

The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in modern-day Minneapolis, a predecessor of the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.

The 8.2–8.3 Mw Wairarapa earthquake claims between five and nine lives near the Cook Strait area of New Zealand.

January 26 – The Point No Point Treaty is signed in the Washington Territory.

January 27 – The Panama Railway becomes the first railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

January 29 – Lord Aberdeen resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, over the management of the Crimean War.

February 5 – Lord Palmerston becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

February 11 – Kassa Hailu is crowned Tewodros II, Emperor of Ethiopia.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1855” as year. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around year.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1855, 1923—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with year providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1855”, the useful work is to connect “year” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7673. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1855 and 1923.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1855”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1855 primary sources, 1855 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1855”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 1855” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.