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A Greek assembly at Epidauros proclaims independence from the Ottoman Empire January 13 (see 1456; 1821). The Albanian brigand Tepelenë Ali is shot dead at Janina (later Ioánnina) February 5 at age 77, having ruled capriciously over much of Albania, Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly, and the Morea since 1788. An Ottoman fleet takes the island of Chios in April, massacres much of the island's population, and sells most of the rest into slavery. Ioánnis Kapodistrías takes an extended leave from his position in the Russian foreign service, Greek Admiral Konstantinos Kanáris, 32, sets the Ottoman admiral's flagship afire off Chios June 18, and a flotilla under his command forces the Ottoman fleet to retreat to the Dardanelles June 19. A 35,000-man Ottoman army invades Greece in July, overrunning the peninsula north of the Gulf of Corinth, and forces the new Greek government to take refuge in the islands, but Admiral Kanáris destroys another large Turkish ship at Tenedos in November. Greek guerrilla leaders gain victories over the Turks; the guerrillas include Demetrius Ypsilanti, 29, Alexander's brother (see 1823).
Robert Stewart, 2nd Viscount Castlereagh, slits his throat with a penknife at London August 12 and dies at age 53. Paranoid in recent months, he has either been blackmailed or thought he was going to be charged with homosexual acts and was about to sail for Italy, where the Congress of Verona is scheduled to open in October. He is succeeded as foreign minister and leader of the Commons by George Canning, now 52. Politician Robert Peel, now 34, becomes secretary for home affairs, and a liberal wing of the Tory cabinet begins to make important reforms.
Orangemen at Dublin attack the British viceroy and the city has bottle riots.
The Congress of Verona that opens October 20 addresses issues raised by the second Treaty of Paris in November 1815 plus questions related to the Spanish monarchy and the revolt of Spain's colonies. Russia's Aleksandr I and Prince Metternich have settled issues regarding the Greek insurrection in preliminary conferences at Vienna in September but they attend the Verona meetings in person, as does Count Nesselrode; Prussia's chancellor Karl, Fürst von Hardenberg; the duke of Wellington (who has gone in place of the late Viscount Castlereagh); writer-statesman François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, now 54; Mathie de Mont-Morency-Laval, vicomte de Montmorency, 56; and others. Montmorency favors armed intervention in Spain, Aleksandr offers to march 150,000 troops through Germany to Piedmont and hold them there in case they are needed for action against Jacobins either in France or Spain, Metternich and Montmorency reject that idea, Wellington rejects Metternich's suggestion that all four countries address a joint note to Madrid supporting French intervention, the Congress finally adopts Metternich's proposal that the Allies send four separate notes to Madrid supporting French intervention, but Wellington takes no further part in the conferences (see 1823); Montmorency resigns in December and is made a duke.
Prussian chancellor Karl August, Fürst von Hardenberg dies at Genoa November 26 at age 72 after attending the Congress of Verona. In his 12-year ministry he has put through legislation that regulated the redemption of peasant land holdings, introduced freedom of trade and a tax on profits, given the executive branch more flexibility in handling administrative problems, and granted civic equality to Jews. Created a prince (Fürst) in 1814 for having held Prussia together in the face of overwhelming French military might, his reforms encountered resistance beginning in 1815 and his efforts to create a representative assembly will not bear fruit until 1847.
An Ashanti War begins in West Africa following an exchange of insults between an Ashanti trader and a Fanti policeman. The tribesmen go into battle blowing war horns, the other side plays "God Save the King"; hostilities will continue for 9 years (see 1824).
Portuguese colonial authorities tighten their hold on Angola, Mozambique, part of Guinea, parts of India (Daman, Diu, and Goa), East Timor in the East Indies, and Macao off the southern coast of China as Brazil breaks away to become an independent empire.
The Portuguese princess Maria Leopoldina at Rio de Janeiro persuades her husband, Dom Pedro, to defy his father's orders to return to Lisbon (see 1821). He announces January 9 that he will remain in Brazil, makes José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva his prime minister, proclaims independence September 7, is crowned emperor December 1, and will reign until 1831 as Pedro I over the country that occupies 47 percent of South America (see Silva Xavier, 1792). Now 24, Dom Pedro took refuge in Brazil with his father 15 years ago when the French invaded Portugal, has been prince regent since his father's return to Portugal last year, and has sided with the Brazilians against the reactionary policies of Lisbon, but the emperor has met the voluptuous beauty Domitila de Castro, 25, at São Paulo and begun an adulterous affair that he will make little effort to conceal from Leopoldina (see 1823; Portugal, 1824).
The Battle of Pichincha outside Quito May 24 gives José de Sucre a decisive victory over a Spanish royalist army. Sucre has moved up the Andes, José de San Martín has sent forces to help him, he liberates Quito, and San Martín meets with Simón Bolívar at Guayaquil July 26 (see 1821). San Martín returns quickly to Lima, resigns the protectorship of Peru, and exiles himself to Europe, where he will spend the rest of his life living with his daughter at Brussels and Boulogne-sur-Mer. Bolívar becomes dictator of Peru (see 1824).
Haiti conquers Santo Domingo from Spain and takes over the entire island of Hispaniola (see 1818; 1825).
Mexico's revolutionary coalition dissolves as Agustín de Iturbide strips General Vicente Guerrero and his insurgents of power and crowns himself emperor May 19 (he is formally crowned July 21) (see 1821). A first-generation Creole, Agustín I dismisses congress October 31 and rules through an appointed 45-man junta; he sends troops to bring other Central American nations into the new Mexican Empire, which gains recognition from the United States December 12 when the Mexican minister is received at Washington, D.C. (see 1823).
General John Stark dies at his Manchester, New Hampshire, farm May 8 at age 93, the last surviving general of the Continental Army. His wife, Molly, died of typhus in 1814 at age 78.
Vesey's Rebellion fails in South Carolina June 16 when authorities at Charleston arrest 10 slaves who have heeded the urgings of local freedman Denmark Vesey, 55. Originally named Telemaque, Vesey was purchased at age 12 in the Danish West Indies by Bermuda-born ship's captain and slave trader Joseph Vesey. The young man somehow acquired an education, learned to speak French as well as English, won $1,500 in the East Bay Street Lottery, purchased his freedom, and set himself up in business as a carpenter. Having planned the most elaborately organized slave rebellion in U.S. history and come close to succeeding in a proposed slaughter of every white man, woman, and child in Charleston, Vesey himself is betrayed by a house servant before his plan can be implemented; arrested and indicted, he defends himself eloquently in court but is hanged July 2 with four other blacks. About 130 blacks are arrested in the next 2 months, 30 are hanged, 32 exiled, four white men are fined and imprisoned for having encouraged the plot, and several southern states will tighten their slave codes.
The U.S. government appoints clergyman Jehudi Ashmun, 28, to accompany a party of free-born blacks to the new African colony of Liberia, which he finds ravaged by disease and threatened by hostile tribesmen (see 1821). Agents of the American Colonization Society have deserted the colony, Ashmun falls ill, his wife dies; yet he restores order, organizes defenses, and will remain in Liberia until his health fails in 1828. Native tribesmen will resist expansion of the colony, but by 1831 some 2,638 U.S. blacks will be in the area, and the colony will enter into an agreement with the U.S. Government to accept freed slaves captured from slave ships (see politics, 1847).
Slaves on the French Caribbean island of Martinique rebel once again as they did 7 years ago but fail to gain their freedom (see 1848).
Britain's prime minister Lord Liverpool suspends the Habeas Corpus Act for Ireland (see Britain, 1817).
Ostend-born British seal hunter-explorer James Weddell, 34, sails into the Antarctic on his brig Jane in February and finds some islands that he names the South Orkneys (see 1820). It is his second voyage into the region (see 1823).
Exploration of the upper Missouri River gains impetus from Missouri Lieut. Governor William H. Ashley, 44, who places a notice in the newspaper at St. Louis: "To enterprising young men. The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years." Within a week, Ashley and his associate Andrew Henry, 43, have the men they want to establish a permanent fur trade, including keelboatman Mike Fink, 52; James Bridger, 18; Jedediah Strong Smith, 22; William Lewis Sublette, 23; and Joseph Reddeford Walker, 23 (see South Pass, 1824).
Trader William Becknell and his party arrive back at Arrow Rock, Mo., January 22 with rawhide bags full of silver dollars and news that Mexico has gained independence from Spain (see 1821). The frontier post has received reports of the political event a few months earlier, but no one knows whether the new government will be receptive to trade with gringos, the danger posed by hostile Indians on the plains discourages trade in anything more than goods that can be carried on horseback, but Bucknell loads a wagon train with merchandise and leaves May 22 with three wagons, 24 oxen, and 21 men. The party nearly dies of thirst, but Bucknell shoots a buffalo, knows the animal would fill its belly with water before going into the desert, slits it open, obtains enough water to slake his party's thirst, and reaches Santa Fe; regular trade will follow (see exploration, 1841).
The S.S. Robert Fulton completes the first steamboat voyage from New York to New Orleans and proceeds to Havana. Scottish-born shipbuilder Henry Heckford, 47, has constructed the vessel.
The S.S. Aaron Manby that slides down the ways at Rotherhithe, England, April 30 is the world's first iron steamship. Named for the proprietor of the Horsley Ironworks at Tipton, Staffordshire, she undergoes trials on the Thames and then goes into service across the Channel, arriving at Paris June 10 with a cargo of linseed oil and iron.
George Stephenson completes the world's first iron railroad bridge for the Stockton-Darlington line (see 1814; 1825).
French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, 32, deciphers the Rosetta stone found in 1799, making it possible to read the papyri and stones and thus expanding knowledge of ancient Egyptian civilizations. Having spent years studying the stone's hieroglyphics and their translations by the English physician and physicist Thomas Young, Champollion completes his translations and reports that the script contains both sound-signs (phonograms) and sense-signs (ideograms) that provide the necessary clues for deciphering all Egyptian inscriptions.
The Analytical Theory of Heat (Théorie analytique de la chaleur) by French mathematician and Egytologist (Jean-Baptiste) Joseph Fourier, 54, introduces the expansion of functions in trigonometric series (later to be called the Fourier series) to show how the conduction of heat in solid bodies may be analyzed in terms of infinite mathematical series. Fourier accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt 24 years ago, did research on Egyptian antiquities, was created a baron by Napoleon in 1808, and is elected perpetual secretary of the Académie des Sciences, to which he was elected in 1817. His work stimulates studies in mathematical physics and will have a strong influence on the theory of functions of a real variable (he has also discovered an important theorem on the roots of algebraic equations).
German chemist Leopold Gmelin, 34, at the University of Heidelberg discovers potassium ferricyanide (it will become known as Gmelin salt). Gmelin will introduce the terms ester and ketone into organic chemistry.
Natural History of Invertebrate Animals (Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans vertèbres) by the chevalier de Lamarck proposes an erroneous theory of evolution that states environmental changes can produce structural changes in plants and animals (see 1809). Now 78, Lamarck contributes to science by introducing the classes Annelida, Arachnids, Crustacea, Infusoria, and Tunicata, but he claims that environmental changes can induce new or increased use of certain organs or parts and that these acquired characteristics can be transmitted to offspring.
English physician-geologist-paleontologist Gideon (Algernon) Mantell, 32, finds several large fossil teeth in the chalk downs of his native Sussex (his wife, Mary, may actually have discovered them). He cannot identify their origin, and although French anatomist Georges Cuvier says they are from a rhinoceros Mantell will insist that they came from a giant, iguana-like Mesozoic creature at least 60 feet (18 meters) in length (see 1825; Buckland, 1824)
Mineralogist René-Just Haüy dies at Paris June 1 at age 79; astronomer Sir William Herschel at Slough, Buckinghamshire, August 25 at age 83; chemist Claude-Louis, comte Berthollet, at Arcueil November 6 at age 73.
Surgeon-pathologist Guillaume Dupuytren at Paris devises a surgical treatment for wry neck. Now 44, he pioneered treatment of aneurysms by compression 4 years ago.
U.S. Army physician William Beaumont, 36, begins pioneer observations on the action of human gastric juices. A 19-year-old French-born voyageur employed by John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company is brought to him June 6 while he is serving on Michilmacinac (Mackinac) Island in the straits between Lakes Michigan and Huron: Alexis St. Martin has been wounded at close range by a shotgun-blast in his left side, the shot has removed part of the abdominal wall, leaving a perforation in the anterior wall of the stomach, the wound will take a full year to heal, and the remaining gastric fistula can be depressed with a finger, permitting Beaumont to observe what goes on inside St. Martin's stomach. Determined to prove his hypothesis that digestion is carried out by chemicals in the stomach (see Sylvius, 1661; Réaumur, 1752), Beaumont collects samples of gastric juice and sends them for analysis to chemists, who establish the presence of hydrochloric acid (see 1833; Prout, 1823).
Yellow fever strikes New York; thousands flee to Greenwich Village, whose growth is spurred by the influx.
The Society for the Propagation of the Faith is founded May 3 at Lyons, where a meeting of French laymen has been called to raise funds for the missions in Louisiana. Pauline Jaricot has been soliciting contributions for the cause since 1818 (she will be named as founder of the Society by Pope Leo XIII), the laymen join with her and adopt her methods, and the Society will move its headquarters to Rome a century hence.
Former U.S. president James Madison writes to Edward Livingston July 10 that he has "no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion and Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together" (see Jefferson, 1802). Now 58, Livingston has been selected unanimously to represent New Orleans in Congress.
A French law takes effect January 2 making newspapers subject to suspension if they show a "tendency" to flout the public peace, the respect of religion, and the authority of the king. Parlement adopts an even stricter law March 25 that forces editors to moderate their views.
The Church Typesetting Machine patented in England by Boston inventor William Church has a keyboard on which each key releases a piece of type corresponding to a letter stored in channels of a magazine; the first machine of its kind, it casts letters in hot lead and composes words automatically, but spacing the words to desired line measurements must still be done by hand, and even with improvements it does not permit typesetting at a speed of more than 5,000 characters per hour, making it no faster than typesetting by hand (see Mergenthaler, 1884; literature [Lanston's Monotype], 1897).
Calligraphy professor Valentin Haüy dies at Paris March 10 at age 76, having gained a name as "father and apostle of the blind" (see Perkins Institution, 1829; Braille, 1834).
The Sunday Times begins publication at London (see 1788).
Nonfiction: Treatise on Domestic Agricultural Association (Traité d'association domestique agricole) by Charles Fourier, who proposes a utopian socialist reorganization of society into self-sufficient communities (phalantières) that are scientifically planned to offer their members a maximum of cooperation and self-fulfillment; Narrative Journal of Travels Through the Northwestern Regions of the United States . . . to the Sources of the Mississippi River by Henry R. Schoolcraft, who is appointed Indian agent to the tribes of the Lake Superior region and soon marries an Ojibwa (Chippewa) woman.
Fiction: The Fortunes of Nigel by Sir Walter Scott; Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock, who has taken a position in the examiner's office of the East India Company.
Poetry: Il Cinque Maggio (The Fifth of May) by Italian poet Alessandro Manzoni (originally Francesco Tomasso Antonio), 37, is about the death last year of the emperor Napoleon; The Bride's Tragedy by Somerset-born Oxford student Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 19, whose work has been inspired by a real murder committed by a fellow undergraduate; A Vision of Judgment by Lord Byron.
Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley dies in a sailing accident in the Gulf of Spezia July 8 at age 29; his body is cremated and his ashes are buried at Rome's Protestant Cemetery.
Painting: View of the Stour near Dedham and Cloud Study by John Constable; The Barque of Dante by French painter and engraver (Ferdinand Victor) Eugène Delacroix, 24; Shipwreck in the Ice by Caspar David Friedrich.
Sculptor Antonio Canova dies at Venice October 13 at age 64.
Nicéphore Niepce makes the first permanent photograph (see transportation [bicycle], 1816). Seeking a compound that will stabilize a photographic image on paper, the French physicist and his kinsman Claude Niepce, 17, follow Thomas Wedgwood's 1802 work and produce a heliograph, or heliotype, by using asphaltum, or bitumen of Judea, used for years in etching. The compound becomes insoluble in its usual solvents when exposed to light, they find, and in addition to giving a resist for the etching of metal, it produces transparent images on glass (see 1826).
The Comédie-Française comedian Fleury (Abraham-Joseph Bénard) dies at Ménars-le-Château March 3 at age 71.
Opera: Giuditta Pasta dazzles audiences at Paris in the 1816 Rossini opera Tancredi and Mosè in Egitto.
Ballet: Italian ballerina Marie Taglione makes her debut at Vienna at age 8 and is soon dancing at the Paris Opéra. Within a few years she will be setting the standard against which all other dancers are judged, and by the time she retires in 1847 she will be world-famous for her choreography as well as her dancing.
The Royal Academy of Music founded at London under the auspices of Lord Burghersh will receive a royal warrant in 1830 from George IV.
Hungarian pianist Franz (Ferencz) Liszt makes his debut at Vienna December 1 at age 11 and meets composer Franz Schubert. Liszt will invent the piano recital and become a leading pianoforte player as well as an eminent composer.
Popular songs: "The Old Oaken Bucket" ("Araby's Daughter") by English-born U.S. composer George Kiallmark, 41, with lyrics from the 1818 Samuel Woodworth poem.
Britain's George IV has the first Royal Enclosure erected at Ascot, where horse races have been run since 1711.
Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. has its beginnings in a small factory started by Christopher Fouls at Belleville, Ill. (see 1847).
United States Tobacco Co. has its beginnings in the Weyman Bruton Co. snuff shop opened at Pittsburgh by George Weyman, who will introduce Copenhagen brand snuff. His company will grow to become the leading U.S. producer of and marketer of moist smokeless tobacco products.
New York's Greenwich Village is a rural Manhattan area whose streets will never conform to the grid pattern established for the rest of the city in 1811.
Potato crops fail in the west of Ireland as they will do again to some degree in 1831, 1835, 1836, and—most disastrously—in the mid-1840s (see 1739; 1816; 1821).
The first U.S. spice-grinding company is established at Boston by English immigrant William Underwood, who from 1812 to 1817 was apprentice to the London shop MacKey & Company, picklers and perservers. He opens a shop on Boston's Russia Wharf, where he produces a ground mustard from imported seed. By employing English-style labels on the bottles and tin canisters that contain his dry ground mustard and selling his product at a price 25 percent below that of imported English mustards, Underwood will drive the English out of the Charleston and New Orleans markets in the next 4 years (see fish, shellfish, 1846).
French vintner Charles Heidsick of Reims produces his first champagne.
English reformer Francis Place, 51, recommends contraception in his pamphlet "To the Married of Both Sexes of the Working People." Dropped in quantities throughout London and handed out in the marketplace, it advises coitus interruptus or the insertion of a soft wool or cotton sponge "as large as a green walnut, or a small apple" and "tied by a bobbin or penny ribbon."
New York City's population reaches 124,000; a family of 14 can live comfortably on $3,000 per year.
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