1852 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 14 - President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte proclaims a new constitution for the French Second Republic.
• January 17 - United Kingdom recognizes independence of the Transvaal
• Devil's Island penal colony opens
• February 11 - First British public toilet for women opens in Bedford Street, London
• February 15 - Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits first patient
• February 16 - Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established
• February 19 - The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania
• March 1 - Archibald William Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
• April 1 - Start of Second Burmese War
• September 24 - French engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip from Paris to Trappes
• November - Franklin Pierce defeats Winfield Scott in the U.S. presidential election
• November 4 - Count Cavour becomes Piedmont prime minister
• November 7 - President Bonaparte proclaimed Emperor Napoleon III of France
• November 11 - New Palace of Westminster opened in Britain
• November 21/November 22 New French Empire confirmed by plebiscite: 7,824,000 for, 253,000 against
• December 2 - Napoleon III becomes Emperor of France.

• French replace semaphores with Morse telegraphs
• Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary, produces the first translation of the Bible in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, which is published with the parallel text of the Syriac Peshitta by the American Bible Society

Births

• March 1 - Théophile Delcassé, French statesman (d. 1923)
• April 1 - Edwin Austin Abbey, American painter (d. 1911)
• April 13 - F.W. Woolworth, American merchant/businessman, founder of Woolworth's (d. 1919)
• April 22 - William IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (d. 1912)
• May 4 - Alice Pleasance Liddell, inspiration for the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (d. 1934)
• May 31 - Julius Richard Petri, German bacteriologist, inventor of Petri dish.
• July 12 - Hipólito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina (d. 1933)
• September 12 - Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1928)
• November 3 - Mutsuhito of Japan, later the Meiji Emperor
• November 11 - Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army for much of World War I (d. 1925)
• December 15 - Henri Becquerel, French physicist

Deaths

• January 6 - Louis Braille, teacher, developed writing system for the blind
• March 4 - Nikolai Gogol, writer (b. 1809)
• March 10 - Augusta Louisa Lyons (née Rogers), Novelist and wife of British Admiral, Sir Edmund Lyons (later 1st Lord Lyons)
• September 4 - William MacGillivray, naturalist and ornithologist
• September 14 - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, British commander at the Battle of Waterloo and Prime Minister.
• September 20 - Philander Chase, founder of Kenyon College
• October 24 - Daniel Webster, American lawyer/speaker/Minister of Foreign affairs, dies at 70.
• November 30 - Junius Brutus Booth, English actor.