1826
1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830
Portugal's João VI dies at his native Lisbon March 10 at age 56 after a 10-year reign of which half was spent in Brazil. His son Dom Pedro of Brazil succeeds to the Portuguese throne as Pedro IV, draws up a charter giving Portugal a moderate British-style parliamentary government, but refuses to leave Brazil. He celebrates his 28th birthday in October by granting patents of nobility to the father, brothers, and a distant cousin of his mistress, Domitila (see 1824). Pedro's empress, Leopoldina, asks the Austrian minister to convey news of her situation to her father, the emperor Franz, in Vienna, and orders Pedro to send Domitila away. Pedro refuses, she suffers a miscarriage December 2, and he dies of puerperal fever December 11 at age 29, survived by four of her six children, including a year-old son who will rule Brazil from 1841 to 1889 as Pedro II.
Pedro I abdicates the Portuguese throne to his infant daughter, Maria da Gloria, and she will reign until 1853, with her uncle Dom Miguel, 24, as regent (see 1828).
Russia and Norway establish a border that supersedes the arrangement made 500 years ago in the Treaty of Novgorod.
Constantinople receives a Russian ultimatum April 5 demanding a return to the status quo in the Danubian principalities. The sultan Mahmud II yields on the advice of Austria and France.
Ottoman Janissaries revolt in May following a decree by Mahmud II ordering formation of a new military corps to replace them. A small corps loyal to the sultan bombards the barracks at Constantinople, the city's mob joins in the attack, and 6,000 to 10,000 Janissaries are massacred.
The Afghan capital Kabul falls to Ghazni's ruler Dost Mohammed, 33, who deposes the Afghan king Shah Shujah al-Moolk and will reign until his death in 1863 as Dost Mohammed Khan, establishing the Barakzai dynasty; Dost Mohammed begins to extend his sphere of influence (see 1835; Harlan, 1827).
Persian troops invade Russia's transcaucasian territories as Fath Ali Shah tries to regain lands lost in the war that ended in 1813, hoping to take advantage of the death late last year of Czar Aleksandr I, but a Russian army sent by Nicholas I under the command of Ivan Feodorovich Paskevich, 44, defeats the invaders September 26 at the Battle of Ganja. A 3-year war begins (see 1827).
A British siege of Bharatpur 75 miles south of Delhi ends January 18 after weeks of bombardment that have left the "impregnable" Jat fortress little damaged. Sir Stapleton Cotton, 53, 1st Viscount Combermere, explodes two mines, the fort's defenders crowd its walls to meet the British attack, a mine containing 10,000 pounds of gunpowder is then detonated beneath them, and the British storm the breach with one cavalry and two infantry divisions. The British have intervened in a dispute over succession to Jat rule, and they lose about 1,000 killed and wounded; Indian losses are about 8,000 killed and wounded (many are burned to death when their quilted armor catches fire), and the effect on the native population is immense.
The Treaty of Yandabu February 24 ends the 2-year Anglo-Burmese War. Britain acquires Assam, Arakan, and Tenasserim. The Laotian king Anouvong (Chao Anou) sees an opportunity in the British success against Burma to mobilize his forces against Siam (see 1827).
Singapore's founder Sir Stamford Raffles dies of apoplexy in England July 5 at age 45, 7 years after establishing the British crown colony (see 1823; Raffles Hotel, 1886). John Crawfurd gives up his position as resident of Singapore, which combines with Malacca and Penang to form the Straits Settlements (see 1867).
British forces crush the Ashanti August 7 at Dodowa near Accra (see 1824), but hostilities will continue until 1831 (see 1874).
Britain's Cape Colony extends her borders north to the Orange River (see 1820; 1834).
Bolivian independence gains recognition from Peru (see 1825). Simón Bolívar organizes a government for the new mountain republic, whose territory initially covers 1,917,236 square miles (2,376,258 square kilometers); José de Sucre becomes Bolivia's first president at Bolívar's invitation, and he will serve until 1828 before resigning in the face of opposition from native Bolivians (see 1830). Bolívar departs for New Granada and the Pan American Congress at Panama in June; no U.S. representative attends (one delegate sent by Washington dies en route, the other arrives too late). Bolívar decides to keep Venezuela as part of Gran Colombia despite opposition from Francisco de Santander, with whom he has had increasing political differences (see 1828; Venezuela, 1823; 1829).
Former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson dies bankrupt and heavily in debt at Monticello July 4 at age 83 on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence that he wrote in 1776; former president John Adams dies at Quincy, Massachusetts, a few hours later at age 90.
The Treaty of Washington January 24 abrogates last year's Treaty of Indian Springs with the Creek nation. The Creek cede a smaller area to the United States, and the treaty permits them to remain on their lands until January 1 of next year. "I have listened to a great many talks from our Great Father," Creek chief Speckled Snake will say in 1829, "but they always began and ended in this—Get a little farther; you are too near me."
The late Thomas Jefferson's creditors sell Monticello's slaves in bankruptcy proceedings that fetch high prices. They have represented the largest part of his estate, but a provision in his will has freed children born to his mistress Sally Hemings. (Only his son Madison will remain black, as will Madison's survivors, the others and their survivors passing as white.)
A Pennsylvania law that makes kidnapping a felony effectively nullifies the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 (but see 1842).
North Carolina Quaker Levi Coffin, now 27, moves to Indiana and sets himself up as a merchant at Newport (later Fontain City), which he soon finds to be on the route of the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves. Coffin will open his home as a way station to help fugitives (see 1847).
Police arrest Batavia, New York, freemason William Morgan, 52, on trumped up charges of theft and indebtedness after he has conspired with local printer David Miller to publish a book revealing the secrets of the Masonic order that has existed since ancient times. Committed to the Canandaigua jail in September, Morgan is kidnapped from the jail, spirited off to Canada, and disappears. The case brings accusations that the Masonic order has obstructed justice and murdered Morgan, charges that begin press assaults on Freemasonry.
Explorer Gordon Laing reaches Timbuktu August 18, beating a French effort and becoming the first European to do so (see 1825), but he has been severely wounded in a fight for his life before arriving, finds the city to be no more than a collection of mud huts, leaves September 24, and is murdered in the Sahara Desert September 26 at age 32.
British explorer Frederick W. Beechey discovers the headland of Alaska's northernmost point on the Arctic Ocean and names it Point Barrow in honor of the second secretary of the Admiralty Sir John Barrow, now 62, who has promoted Arctic exploration.
The first overland journey to Southern California begins August 22 as Jedediah Strong Smith leaves Great Salt Lake at the head of an expedition that reaches the lower Colorado River, crosses the Mojave Desert, and arrives November 27 at San Diego, where a mission was established in 1769. The expedition also visits Los Angeles (El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles), which has never before received outsiders who have come overland, has flown the flag of an independent Mexico since 1822, and will have a population of nearly 1,250 within 10 years. Smith and two partners bought out William Ashley earlier in the year and have started a fur-trading company at Great Salt Lake (see 1824; Vancouver, 1827).
Northampton, Mass.-born silk importer Arthur Tappan, 40, relocates to New York from Montreal to start a business in which he will be joined in 1828 by his brother Lewis, now 38. The firm will survive until 1837 (see communications [Journal of Commerce], 1827; Mercantile Agency, 1841).
New York merchant William Bayard of Le Roy, Bayard & Company dies at Greenwich September 18 at age 64, his sons William, Jr. and Robert having shamed him last year with profiteering at the expense of Greek independence fighters. Their firm has failed, and the G. G. & S. Howland has become the city's principal trading company, with agents at nearly every port in Latin America (see Aspinwall, 1837).
Lord & Taylor opens at New York, where English-born merchant Samuel Lord, 23, borrows $1,000 from his wife's uncle John Taylor to start a dry goods shop at 47 Catherine Street. By year's end Lord has taken into partnership his wife's cousin George Washington Taylor, and by 1832 their business will have an annex in an adjoining building.
The internal combustion engine patented April 1 by inventor Samuel Morey, now 63, will lead to the invention of the automobile (see Lenoir, 1860).
Gas lamps illuminate Berlin's Unter den Linden.
A 580-foot chain-suspension bridge designed by engineer Thomas Telford spans the Menai Straits in northwestern Wales. Eyebar cables consisting of wrought-iron bars 20 to 30 feet long with holes at each end carry loads by tension, each eye matching the eye on another bar with iron pins linking the two. The world's longest bridge thus far, its timber deck will be replaced with a steel deck in 1893, steel chains will replace its corroded wrought-iron chains in 1940, and it will survive into the 21st century, as will Telford's suspension bridge across the River Conwy, also completed this year.
Connecticut's six-mile Windsor Locks Canal opens to provide safe passage around the Enfield Falls and rapids in the Connecticut River 12 miles upstream from Hartford.
The first horse-powered railroad in America opens October 7 at a Quincy, Massachusetts, granite quarry with three miles of track (see Baltimore & Ohio, 1827).
The S.S. Curaçao crosses the Atlantic to pioneer use of steam power in oceanic transportation (seeSavannah, 1819), but while the Dutch vessel has steam-driven paddle wheels to supplement her sails, lack of fresh water for steam boilers delays the introduction of transatlantic steamers that operate entirely on steam power (see 1830; 1838). Steam propulsion remains an auxiliary to sail; of Britain's 2.3 million tons of merchant shipping, only 24,000 are in steamships (see 1846).
U.S. silk production gets a boost from Gideon B. Smith of Baltimore, who plants the first of the new quick-growing Chinese mulberry trees (morus multicaulis) that will spur development of the infant silk industry.
Industrialist Friedrich Krupp dies, leaving to his 14-year-old son Alfred the secret of making high-quality cast steel (see 1816). Production at his workshop has come almost to a stop, but young Alfred takes over and will soon expand into manufacturing steel rolls, inventing the spoon roll for producing spoons and forks, designing and developing new machines, and supplying government mints with rolling mills produced by his factory (see 1838).
Electrodynamics by André Ampère expands knowledge of electricity (see 1820).
French chemist Antoine-Jérôme Balard, 24, discovers the element bromine. Newly graduated from the Montpeliere Ecole de Pharmacie, he has studied salt marsh flora from the Mediterranean, crystallized sodium chloride sodium sulfate from the seawater, saturated the residue with chlorine, distilled the product, and found the only liquid nonmetallic element. Balard will devise a process for extracting sodium sulfate directly from seawater (see Dow, 1889).
The British Lying-in Hospital establishes courses for "monthly nurses"—women who will nurse mothers during the lying-in period but who are not, at least officially, supposed to deliver children.
Surgeon-pathologist Guillaume Dupuytren at Paris gives the first clear description of the pathology of congenital hip dislocation. Dupuytren will devise a way to operate on patients with cancer of the uterine cervix and in 1828 will create an artificial anus.
Stethoscope inventor René Laénnec dies of the "white disease" (tuberculosis) at Kerbouarnec in his native Brittany August 13 at age 45, having named the liver disease that will become known as cirrhosis, presented evidence of the skin tumors that will become known as melanomas, described the role that organ tissues play in disease, and shown that lesions known as tubercles can be found in any of the body's organs; physician Phillipe Pinel dies at Paris October 25 at age 81, having pioneered in the humane treatment of persons with mental disease. He was dismissed 4 years ago because of his associations with revolutionaries in the 1790s and because he served as a consulting physician to Napoleon I for a few years after 1805, but he has remained active to the end at Salpêtrière.
Pope Leo XII orders that Rome's Jews be confined to the city's ghetto. Thousands of Jews leave Rome and the Papal States, to the economic detriment of both.
The Education of Man (Menschenerziehung) by German educator Friedrich (Wilhelm August) Froebel, 44, is a philosophical presentation of educational theories which the author has developed at a school that he and some supporters opened 10 years ago in Thuringia after an association with the Swiss educator Johann H. Pestalozzi (see kindergarten, 1837).
New Englander Josiah Holbrook, 31, spurs the lyceum movement in U.S. adult education with recommendations that will be adopted by associations of villagers and urban workers who have had little formal education but seek learning. The National American Lyceum will coordinate the activities of member groups beginning in 1831, and by 1839 there will be 137 lyceums in Massachusetts alone, drawing 33,000 to lectures on the arts, sciences, and public issues; by 1860 some 3,000 lyceums will be operating in New England, New York, and the upper Mississippi Valley.
West Point cadets riot at Christmas to protest what they call arbitrary decisions by the academy's superintendent, Sylvanus Thayer (see 1818; 1833).
Le Figaro begins publication at Paris in January under the direction of Maurice Allhoy, whose satirical sheet will ultimately become a leading daily (see 1856).
Juvenile Miscellany is founded by Lydia Maria Francis; the first monthly magazine for children, it will continue only until 1833.
Burke's Peerage by Irish genealogist John Burke, 39, is the first dictionary of British baronets and peers in alphabetic order (see Debrett's, 1769). Burke will later issue a dictionary of commoners under the title Burke's Landed Gentry.
Nonfiction: Sketches of History, Life and Manners of the United States by Anne Newport Royall, who calls on booksellers at Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, New Haven, Springfield, Hartford, Worcester, and Boston to push sales; Diary of an Ennuyée by Irish critic Anna Brownell Jameson (née Murphy), 32.
Grammarian Lindley Murray dies at York, England, January 16 at age 80; clergyman-geographer Jedediah Morse at New Haven, Connecticut, June 9 at age 64, having seen his son Samuel become a successful portrait painter. Ejected by his congregation in 1819, he has served as a War Department agent investigating conditions among Native Americans.
Fiction: Woodstock by Sir Walter Scott, whose publisher partners James Ballantyne, 53, and Archibald Constable, 51, go bankrupt in January, leaving Scott with £130,000 in liabilities. Scott's wife dies and he works feverishly despite failing health to clear his debts; Vivian Grey by English novelist Benjamin Disraeli, 21, whose father, Isaac D'Israeli, had a quarrel with London's synagogue of Bevis Marks in 1813 and had his children baptized in the Anglican Church at the end of July 1817. Young Benjamin has lost his money in a mining venture, is heavily in debt, but does well enough with his novel that a sequel will be published next year; Cinq-Mars by French poet-novelist Alfred Victor, comte de Vigny, 29; I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni, whose romantic and patriotic novel describes life under Spanish domination in the 17th century; The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper continues the Leatherstocking Tales that began with The Pioneers in 1823.
Poetry: Pictures of Travel (Reisebilder) by German lyric poet Heinrich Heine, 29, who last year adopted the Christian faith and changed his name from Harry. Further volumes of Heine's travel sketches will appear in the next 5 years; "Past and Present" by London-born lyric poet Thomas Hood, 27: "I remember, I remember/ The house where I was born"; Silva a la Agricultura de la Zona Torrida by Caracas-born poet Andrés Bello, 44, who serves at London as a diplomatic representative for Simón Bolívar.
Painting: The Cornfield by John Constable; Greece in the Ruins of Missolonghi and Execution of the Doge Marino Falieri by Eugène Delacroix.
Aloys Senefelder invents a process for lithographing in color (see 1798). He has been inspector of maps at the royal printing office in Munich for 20 years, and his color process will lead not only to cheap reproductions of paintings but also to a profusion of eye-catching product labels, advertisements, billboards, and the like.
Photography is advanced by the Parisian printer Lemâitre, who has received etched metal plates from Nicéphore Niepce with instructions to print them (see Niepce, 1822). Lemâitre exposes the plates to iodine vapors in order to make the hardened bitumen highlights more distinct and the pictures sharper; he suggests using silvered copper plates. Louis (Jacques Mandé) Daguerre, 39, approaches Niepce and proposes a partnership; Daguerre paints scenery for the Paris Opéra but has dabbled with silver salts in photography (see 1829).
Theater: Philadelphia-born actor Edwin Forrest, 20, makes his New York debut 6/23 at the city's Park Theater, gains acclaim for his portrayal of Othello, and is immediately engaged by the new Bowery Theater at $800 per week. The Bowery will pay him $200 per night next year but he will later return to the Park.
Playwright-novelist-lawyer Royall Tyler dies at Brattleboro, Vermont, August 26 at age 69; actor-theatrical manager François-Joseph Talma makes his final appearance June 3 in Delaville's Charles VI and dies at his native Paris October 19 at age 63.
Opera: Zelmira in March at Paris with Giuditta Pasta, music by Gioaccino Rossini; Oberon 4/12 at London's Covent Garden Theatre, with music by Carl Maria von Weber; Henrietta Sontag makes her Paris debut 5/15 at the Théâtre des Italiens singing the role of Rosina in the 1816 Rossini opera Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
Composer Carl Maria von Weber dies of tuberculosis at London June 5 at age 39 and is buried at St. Mary's Moorfields (his remains will be removed in 1844 to Dresden).
First performances: String Quartet in B flat major by Ludwig van Beethoven 3/21 at Vienna without the Grosse Fugue that Beethoven will write for the last movement; Marche Militaire by Franz Schubert.
Sing Sing prison opens its first cell block some 30 miles north of New York on the Hudson River at what soon will be called Ossining, New York. Its first warden is a former Army captain, Elam Lynds, who has come by Erie Canal barge and Hudson freight steamer with some inmates and "keepers" from the Auburn State Prison, where he has established a reputation for cruel but innovative disciplinary measures. The inmates have quarried local stone for the cell block of what is initially called Mt. Pleasant State Prison. Lynds will remain warden until 1844, when floggings and other abuses will lead a legislative committee charged with examining conditions at Sing Sing to order his dismissal. Use of the cat-o'-nine-tails will be eliminated in 1848.
John Nash completes London's Cumberland Terrace. The new royal palace overlooks Regent's Park, which Nash will complete in 5 years.
The Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park is founded by the Zoological Society of London with the help of a bequest by the late Sir Thomas Raffles (see "zoo," 1828).
The first giraffe ever seen in France arrives at Marseilles October 31. A gift to Charles X from Muhammad Ali, Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, the zirafa stands 12 feet two inches tall and has come aboard a specially-built ship with a hole cut in the deck, and since it drinks only milk the ship has carried three milch cows. Walked to Lyons by two Egyptian handlers, Paris zoo founder Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and some gendarmes, the animal attracts a crowd of 30,000, and after a 551-mile journey that has taken 41 days it arrives at Paris along with an antelope that the viceroy has sent.
The first workable reaper joins two triangular knives to two horizontal bars at the front of a machine that is pushed through a field of ripe grain by two horses. Scottish clergyman Patrick Bell, 27, has invented a reaper whose lower bar is fixed, while the upper bar is geared to the ground wheels to give it a reciprocal motion; revolving sails hold the grain to the knives while a canvas drum lays aside the stalks in a neat swath, but horses cannot see ahead, and they resist pushing Bell's reaper; it is difficult to turn and will achieve only moderate success (see McCormick, 1831).
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of Physiologie du goût on gastronomy, dies at Paris February 2 at age 70, never having married.
The first commercially practicable gas stove is designed by Northampton, England, gas company executive James Sharp and is installed in the kitchen of his home. Sharp will open a factory to produce the stoves in 1836 (see Reform Club, 1838).
Boston's Quincy Market opens August 26 across the cobble-stoned square from Faneuil Hall. Designed by architect Alexander Parris, Josiah Quincy's handsome Greek revival building will soon be surrounded by pushcarts.
An English biscuit company that will become Huntley & Palmers is established at Reading by Thomas Huntley (see 1851).
English Quaker John Horniman, 23, introduces the first tea to be retailed in sealed packages under a proprietary name, using sealed, lead-lined packages designed in part to protect his tea from adulteration (see consumer protection [Accum], 1820). Horniman will live to 1893; his tea will acquire an enviable reputation and make his firm the largest in the business (see Tetley, 1837; Salada, 1886; Lipton, 1890; White Rose, 1901).
Boston's Union Oyster House opens in a Union Street house used as a home during his exile by the late Philippe-Egalité, duc d'Orléans, who returned to France and was guillotined in 1793.
A sixth edition of the 1798 Essay on Population by Thomas R. Malthus expands the original pamphlet into a massive book which points out that national income in an industrialized society tends to outpace population growth. The size of the family becomes a function of choice through adequacy and prevalence of contraceptive measures. The Poor Laws encourage large families with doles, says Malthus. He recommends late marriage and "moral restraint" to relieve mankind, at least briefly, of its inevitable fate (see 1830).
1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830
