Year 1858 (MDCCCLVIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.
Paul Charles Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy. He was called "The Pride and Sorrow of Chess" because he had a brief and brilliant chess career, but then retired from the game while still young.
Morphy was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to a wealthy and distinguished family. He learned to play chess by simply watching a game between his father and uncle. His family soon realized the boy’s talent and encouraged him to play at family gatherings and by age nine he was considered one of the best players in New Orleans. At just twelve years old, Morphy defeated visiting Hungarian master Johann Löwenthal in a match of three games.
After receiving his degree in 1857, Morphy was not yet of legal age to practice law and found himself with free time. He received an invitation to play at the First American Chess Congress in New York City and, at his uncle's urging, accepted. Morphy won the tournament which included strong players of the day, such as Alexander Meek and Louis Paulsen. Morphy was hailed as the chess champion of the United States and stayed in New York playing chess through 1857, winning the vast majority of his games. In 1858, Morphy travelled to Europe to play European Champion Howard Staunton. While negotiations for a match proved problematic, Morphy played every strong player in Europe, usually winning easily. While the match with Staunton never came about, Morphy was hailed by most in Europe as the world's best player.
Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen (July 6, 1818 – March 13, 1879) was a German chess master. He is considered to have been the world's leading chess player in the 1850s and 1860s. He was "dethroned" temporarily in 1858 by Paul Morphy.
After his defeat by Steinitz in 1866, Anderssen became the most successful tournament player in Europe, winning over half the events he entered—including the Baden-Baden 1870 chess tournament, considered comparable in the strength of its contestants to recent "super GM tournaments". Remarkably, Anderssen achieved most of these successes when he was over the age of 50.
Anderssen is famous even today for his brilliant sacrificial attacking play, particularly in the "Immortal Game" (1851) and the "Evergreen Game" (1852). He was a very important figure in the development of chess problems, driving forward the transition from the "Old School" of problem composition to the elegance and complexity of modern compositions.
He was also one of the most likeable of chess masters and became an "elder statesman" of the game, to whom others turned for advice or arbitration.
Franz Boas (/ˈfrɑːnz ˈboʊ.æz/; July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did post-doctoral work in geography. He applied the scientific method to the study of human cultures and societies; previously this discipline was based on the formulation of grand theories around anecdotal knowledge.
Boas once summed up his approach to anthropology and folklore by saying: "In the course of time I became convinced that a materialistic point of view, for a physicist a very real one, was untenable. This gave me a new point of view and I recognized the importance of studying the interaction between the organic and inorganic, above all the relation between the life of a people and their physical environment."
Franz Uri Boas was born in Minden, Westphalia. Although his grandparents were observant Jews, his parents embraced Enlightenment values, including their assimilation into modern German society. Boas’s parents were educated, well-to-do, and liberal; they did not like dogma of any kind. Due to this, Boas was granted the independence to think for himself and pursue his own interests. Early in life he displayed a penchant for both nature and natural sciences. Boas vocally opposed anti-Semitism and refused to convert to Christianity, he did not identify himself as a Jew; indeed, according to his biographer, "He was an 'ethnic' German, preserving and promoting German culture and values in America." In an autobiographical sketch, Boas wrote:
Saint Marie-Bernarde Soubirous (7 January 1844 – 16 April 1879) was a miller's daughter born in Lourdes, France and is venerated as a Christian mystic and Saint in the Catholic Church. Her name in her native Gascon Occitan (occità) language was actually spelled Bernadeta Sobirós. Occitan's closest relative is Catalan Spanish. Her native language can still be heard in the Val d'Aran region of Catalonia, Spain where it is known as Aranese.
Soubirous is best known for her Marian apparitions of "a small young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at a cave-grotto in Massabielle where the apparitions occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858. She would later receive recognition when the lady who appeared to her identified herself as the Immaculate Conception.
Despite initial skepticism from the Catholic Church, Soubirous's claims were eventually declared "worthy of belief" after a canonical investigation, and the Marian apparition is now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Since her death, Soubirous's body has apparently remained internally incorrupt, but it is not without blemish; during her third exhumation in 1925, the firm of Pierre Imans made light wax coverings for her face and her hands due to the discoloration that her skin has undergone. These masks were placed on her face and hands before she was moved to her crystal reliquary in June 1925.