The federal government of the United States moves from Philadelphia to its newly constructed capital at Washington, D.C.

William Wordsworth's preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and serves as the seminal manifesto of European Romanticism.

Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invents the electric battery, providing the first source of a continuous circuit.

German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism, a treatise on the philosophy of nature, influences the development of Romanticism on the European continent.

John Chapman, better known as Jonny Appleseed, begins scattering religious tracts and apple seeds in pioneer communities throughout the American Midwest.

Peter Andreas Heiberg, the radical Danish satirist and one of the lions of Scandinavian literature, is exiled to Paris.

Charles Stanhope revolutionizes publishing with the invention of the iron-framed printing press, allowing for the development of large sheet printing and thick advertising fonts.

The United States Congress passes the first federal bankruptcy law, by virtue of which Founding Father Robert Morris gains release from debtors' prison.

Parson Weems publishes The Life of Washington, creating much of the myth and lore surrounding the first American president.

The Royal College of Surgeons is founded in London.

Virginian John Marshall is appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his 34-year tenure, he will become the nation's leading spokesman for the third branch of government.

After a five-year reign marked by tight censorship, autocratic Czar Paul of Russia is assassinated and succeeded by his reform-minded son, Alexander I.

Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson takes office after defeating incumbent Federalist John Adams for the United States presidency, ensuring the viability of the American two-party system.

Giussepe Piazzi, an Italian monk and professor of astronomy, discovers the first asteroid.

Ireland becomes part of Great Britain under the Act of Union, spawning more than a century of religious conflict between independence-minded Catholics and pro-British Protestants.

The North African state of Tripoli declares war on the United States in an attempt to compel the young nation to pay tribute to commerce-raiding Arab corsairs.

The first complete census puts the population of Great Britain at 11 million, three quarters of it rural.

The English government of William Pitt resigns when King George III refuses to endorse Catholic emancipation.

Mastodon fossils are discovered on a New York farm, the first skeletons ever found of the extinct mammal.

President Thomas Jefferson submits his first annual message to the United States Congress in writing, a precedent unbroken until Woodrow Wilson's tenure.

Chateaubriand's The Genius of Christianity attempts to rehabilitate Christianity after Enlightenment-era attacks by stressing its role in the growth of European culture.

The United States Military Academy is established at West Point to train an officer corps in case of foreign invasion.

Englishman John Debrett publishes the first edition of his Peerage, for nearly a century the official register of the British aristocracy.

Scottish physicist John Leslie explains the role of capillaries in the process of pumping blood.

Sophie Gay, the grande dame of 19th century French literature who chronicled the lives of the upper classes, publishes her first novel.

United States and Great Britain settle Revolutionary War claims for $2,664,000.

Geologist Samuel Hutton's posthumously published Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth explains the features of the Earth's crust by means of natural processes over geologic time; the volume paved the way for the work of Lyell and Darwin.

The Library of Congress issues its first catalog in which it lists the entirety of its collection: 964 volumes and nine maps.

Japanese novelist Jippensha Ikku begins two decades of work on his comic masterpiece, Shank's Mare.

Georgia cedes her western lands to the federal government, the last of the original states to do so. This act paves the way for new states to enter the union.

Robert Emmett leads an abortive revolt against British rule in Ireland and is subsequently executed.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Marbury v. Madison declares a law unconstitutional for the first time and establishes the principle of judical review.

Missionary Peter Cartwright begins 50 years of circuit riding and preaching on the American frontier.

English authorities estimate the population of India at 200 million, about the same size as all of Europe.

Ohio enters the United States as a free state.

Czar Alexander I of Russia issues a series of decrees that establish free, universal education.

President Thomas Jefferson purchases the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, effectively doubling the size of the United States.

Shah Shoja becomes king of Afghanistan, heralding an era of pro-Western foreign policy.

French composer Hector Berlioz is born in La Côte-Saint-André.

English chemist John Dalton arranges the known atomic elements into a periodic table for the first time.

Emperor Gia Long names his kingdom Vietnam.

U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Toussaint L'Overture's successful slave revolt against the French government of Haiti makes his nation the first Caribbean colony to gain independence.

Ludwig van Beethoven's Third Symphony, written as the composer adjusts to the loss of his hearing, elevates the symphonic form to its premier place in classical music.

Napoleon proclaims himself emperor of France. In a limited accommodation with the gains of the French Revolution, he advocates equality before the law, taxation of all social classes, and political rights for Jews.

Welsh mill-owner Robert Owen founds a short-lived utopian community at New Lanark, Scotland, as part of his larger effort to establish communes that guaranteed residents job security and free education.

French chef Nicolas Appert demonstrates a way to preserve food by storing it in hermetically sealed containers.

German philosopher Immanual Kant, among the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment, dies in Konigsberg, Prussia.

Parisian throngs cheer the return of explorer Alexander von Humboldt and botanist Aime Bonplant from their three-year exploration of South America's interior.

The debut of French painter Antoine-Jean Gros's Napoleon Visiting the Pest House at Jaffa partially rejects the neoclassical tradition and greatly influences Romantic artists Theodore Gericault and Eugene Delacroix.

U.S. President Thomas Jefferson dispatches pioneers Lewis and Clark to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. The success of their expedition helps open the Trans-Mississippi West to settlement.

British naval commander Horatio Nelson outmaneuvers a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, ensuring Great Britain mastery of the high seas. Nelson is mortally wounded during the course of the engagement.

By the terms of the Peace of Pressburg, Hapsburg, Austria, cedes all of its Italian possessions, paving the way for Napoleon to declare himself King of Italy.

America's first covered bridge is built over the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia.

Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini is born in Genoa.

Achim von Arnim, the German folklorist, publishes his seminal Des Knaben Wunderhorn, paving the way for the work of the Brothers Grimm.

Ippolito Pindemonte's translation of the Odyssey brings Homer's work to Italian-speaking audiences.

Seventy-one Philadelphia gentlemen organize the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Mihaly Csokonai Vitéz, the leading literary figure of the Hungarian Enlightenment, dies in Debrecen at the age of 31.

Tom Cribb, the champion of English bare-knuckle boxers, first enters the ring.

Sir Walter Scott's The Lay of the Last Ministrel is the first full-length narrative poem in the Romantic tradition.

Napoleon's armies crush their Russian opponents at the Battle of Austerlitz in the French emperor's most spectacular military triumph

Future Mexican President Benito Juarez is born in Oaxaca.

Taking advantage of Napoleon's preoccupation with continental affairs, the British seize the African colony of Capetown from the French-dominated Dutch.

Noah Webster publishes The Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. The volume rapidly becomes the recognized authority on American English.

The abdication of Emperor Ferdinand leads to the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire.

Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning is born in Durham, England.

Lord Byron's Fugitive Pieces is printed privately and immediately suppressed when the Church of England objects to the morality of the poems.

Coal gas is first used for lighting by David Melville at Newport, Rhode Island.

American explorer Zebulon Pike identifies the Colorado peak that will eventually bear his name.

Explorer Mungo Park's final Niger River expedition ends in tragedy as Park and several others are attacked and killed by African tribesmen.

Napoleon, in an attempt to leave his mark on the Parisian landscape, orders his great neoclassical commissions: Chalgrin and Jean-Armand Raymond's Arc de Triumphe (1806-35); Pierre-Alexandre Vignon's Church of the Madeleine (1806-42) and Bernard Poyet's Chamber of Deputies (1806-51).

Robert Fulton navigates the first successful steamboat journey, chugging up the Hudson River from New York to Albany in 32 hours.

Muhammad Ali, the fiercely nationalistic and anti-European governor of Egypt, defeats a British invading force and solidifies his reign.

In an effort to keep the fledgling United States out of the ongoing conflict between Britain and France, Congress bans all foreign trade and forbids ships to set sail for foreign ports.

London becomes the first city to boast gas street lights.

Great Britain, in an effort to blockade Napoleon to submission, bans all trade with continental Europe.

Great Britain outlaws the African slave trade.

Former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr is tried for treason after attempting to create an independent nation on the western shores of the Mississippi River. He is acquitted of all charges.

The United States frigate Chesapeake fires on the British man-of-war Leopard in a conflict over the impressment of seaman, leading to an international crisis.

Thomas Moore publishes the first of his Irish Melodies, poems that advanced the cause of Irish nationalism.

John Jacob Astor, on his way to becoming the richest man in America, incorporates the American Fur Company with himself as the sole stockholder.

In accordance with the timetable allowed by the United States Constitution, Congress outlaws the importation of slaves.

The first section of Romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust appears in Germany. It retells the legend of a man who sells his soul for worldly success.

J. G. Fichte delivers a series of Addresses to the German Nation, in which he declares the existence of a German national spirit superior to those of other nations.

As a result of rising hostility between the United States and France, Napoleon issues the Bayonne Decree, ordering the seizure of all U. S. ships in French ports.

Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy, is born in rural Kentucky.

Democratic-Republican James Madison trounces opponent Charles Pickney in the U.S. presidential election, a critical moment in the slow but steady decline of the aristocratically minded Federalist Party.

Henry Crabb Robinson becomes the first war correspondent when The Times of London dispatches him to cover Napoleon's Peninsular Campaign in Spain.

American Calvinists establish the Andover Theological Seminary.

The Missouri Gazette of St. Louis becomes the first newspaper published west of the Mississippi River.

Neoclassicism rapidly emerges as the dominant force in British architecture with the construction of architect Sir Robert Smirke's Covent Garden Theatre, London's first Doric Greek building.

Joseph Haydn, one of the leading composers of the classical style, dies in Vienna.

American local colorist Washington Irving publishes Rip Van Winkle, a humorous tale of a Dutch colonist who sleeps for 20 years.

Future U.S. President John Quincy Adams is appointed American minister to Russia.

Radical American propagandist Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense, dies in New York City.

Britain's secretary of war, Robert Casterlaegh, wounds its foreign minister, George Canning, in a duel over the conduct of the war against Napoleon.

Napoleon annexes the Papal States and takes Pope Pius VII prisoner.

In the Treaty of Fort Wayne, General William Henry Harrison obtains cession to the United States of over 3 million acres of Indian land.

Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin is born in Shropshire, England

At the height of his power, Napoleon marries Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria in hopes of an heir to his empire. He annexes Holland and five German states.

French chemist Louis Nicholas Vauquelin identifies the active ingredient in tobacco, naming it nicotianine after Jean Nicot, the French diplomat who sent tobacco back to France from Portugal.

New York overtakes Philadelphia to become the largest city in the United States.

Simon Bolivar begins his activism in revolutionary politics in South America by taking part in the Venezuelan rebellion against Spain.

Londoners can enjoy the first public billiards rooms in England at Covent Garden.

The U.S. Supreme Court declares congressional legislation unconstitutional for the first time in Fletcher v. Peck.

German physician Samuel Hahnemann founds homeopathy, though this term will not be used until 1826.

A festival held to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen will become an annual affair under the name of the Munich Oktoberfest.

The number of American cotton mills (269) has more than quadrupled in one year; soon to be the largest cotton mill in the world, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company is founded in what will become Manchester, New Hampshire.

Walter Scott pens The Lady of the Lake, which includes the words, Some feelings are to mortals given/ With less of earth in them than heaven.

The first American pediatrics book, The Maternal Physician, is published in Philadelphia.

Napoleon, having failed to sire a son, divorces the Empress Josephine in the hope of forming a more strategic match and producing a male heir.

Entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt establishes ferry service between Staten Island and New York City.

Under strong pressure from the British government, Portugal agrees to a gradual abolition of the slave trade.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the two emissaries of English Romanticism, suffer a falling out that drives Coleridge to opium addiction.

Romantic composer Frederic Chopin is born near Warsaw, Poland.

The American cotton crop exceeds 175,000 bales.

In his Rambouillet Decree, Napoleon orders the seizure and sale of all U.S. ships in French ports.

Elkanah Watson stages a cattle show in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in what is now recognized as the first American county fair.

Italian chemist Amadeo Avogadro theorizes that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain equal numbers of molecules.

The Spanish stop the motley rebel army of Father Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo at the gates of Mexico City, ending the first phase of the Mexican War for Independence.

In Tippecanoe, Indiana, the Shawnee Indians are defeated by future President William Henry Harrison; the Shawnee leader Tecumseh has traveled to the South and is thus absent when the battle takes place.

Jane Austen, age 36, writes Sense and Sensibility; two years later, Pride and Prejudice will be published.

A grid pattern is adopted for all future streets in New York City, but the city is still chiefly farmland above Canal Street.

After the death of his favorite daughter Amelia, George III of Britain goes insane, and Parliament appoints the Prince of Wales as Prince Regent.

The machines that have replaced artisans in textile workshops in Nottingham, England, are destroyed in Luddite riots; next year, the unrest will spread to surrounding towns.

Earthquakes beginning December 16 make the Mississippi River flow upstream for several hours and push the town of New Madrid, Missouri, into the river. The tremors are felt across the eastern United States and continue for months.

Iodine is isolated by French chemist Bernard Courtois; it will be used as an antiseptic and to purify drinking water. It will later prove to be an essential nutrient in the human diet.

German poet, novelist, and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 64, completes his autobiography, Poetry and Truth.

Work is begun on the first national roadway, but states' rights politics will obstruct federal funding for the Cumberland Road, which heads west from Cumberland, Maryland.

Taking advantage of the political turmoil in Spain caused by Napoleon, revolutionary forces in Venezuela declare independence; Paraguay and Cartagena (later part of Colombia) follow in quick succession

Napoleon invades Russia and reaches Moscow after the horrific Battle of Borodino; he torches the city but is soon forced to retreat and then flee. War, hunger, and cold kill all but 20,000 of the 550,000 soldiers in his Grande Army.

The United States declares war on Britain. The War of 1812 is the culmination of years of hostility between the two countries, sparked by the impressment of American sailors from their ships and by clashes between American settlers and allied British and Indian forces in the West.

Scotsman Henry Bell advances transportation technology with his new steamboat, the three-horsepower Comet, in which he plies the waters of the River Clyde.

The term gerrymander is coined after Elbridge Gerry, the governor of Massachusetts and future vice president, is accused of pushing electoral redistricting for the benefit of his political party; the charge is false, but the word, a combination of the governor's name and the salamander shape of the new district, sticks.

Prussia emancipates its Jews, but these political rights will not be extended to Jews in the extensive territories that Prussia will acquire at the 1815 Congress of Vienna.

Louisiana is the 18th state to gain statehood and the first to be created out of the territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

Charles Dickens is born into a middle-class family in Portsmouth, England, but his family will fall into financial hardship, and he will start factory work at age 12.

James Madison is elected president over De Witt Clinton, the mayor of New York City and future New York State governor

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm begin to compile their collection of folk tales, which includes Tom Thumb, Little Red-Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Snow White, and Cinderella.

Swiss orientalist John Lewis Burckhardt, 27, rediscovers Petra, the ancient Nabatean city carved out of the rock of what is today southern Jordan.

Lord Byron, 24, pens Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, an autobiographical story in verse based on his travels in southern Europe. The work expresses the English mood of gloom and failed hopes after the American Revolution and Napoleon's successes.

The City Bank of New York opens on June 16, the forerunner of today's Citibank.

The final shipment of the Elgin Marbles arrives in England. The transfer from Greece of the group of ancient sculptures and architectural details has caused much controversy in England.

Prussia allies itself with Russia against France as various wars of liberation against Napoleon begin across Europe in the wake of his colossal military defeat in Russia. After a series of battles, Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig.

Swiss writer and philosopher Johann Rudolf Wyss completes and edits The Swiss Family Robinson, begun by his father, Johann David. Wyss earlier wrote the Swiss national anthem.

Mexico declares itself independent from Spain.

The inauguration party of James Madison is greatly enhanced by the ice cream served by first lady Dolley Madison, who has gained a reputation as a munificent and gracious hostess.

The India trade is opened to competition, but the British East India Company retains its hold on all trade with China.

European ballrooms are witness to the new dance craze sweeping the Continent, the waltz.

Americans win two victories over the British in the Battle of Lake Erie and the Battle of the Thames as the War of 1812 continues.

An editorial in the Troy Post in New York pioneers the term Uncle Sam to refer to the United States.

Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley, 21, writes his first major work, Queen Mab, a poem of social protest: Power, like a desolating pestilence/ Pollutes whate'er it touches.

In revenge for the burning of York (Toronto), British troops burn much of Washington, D.C., after the Battle of Bladensburg. The Library of Congress is destroyed, but Congress decides to start anew by purchasing Thomas Jefferson's personal library.

Armies allied against France enter Paris; Napoleon abdicates and is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba.

The Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812, but the Battle of New Orleans is fought two weeks later (in January 1815) because word of the peace has not yet arrived.

Franz Schubert begins composing Lieder, lyrical songs in the Romantic tradition.

Briton George Stephenson invents the first steam locomotive, which will be used instead of horses and mules to haul coal.

General Andrew Jackson leads his troops to victory over Creek Indians allied with Britain in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. The Creeks will never again be a force in the West.

Francis Scott Key watches British ships bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore and pens the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, which Congress will declare the national anthem in 1931.

The term grapefruit is used for the first time in a printed work to describe that fruit, probably because its clusters resemble those of grapes.

Britons can now purchase canned food, thanks to the pioneering work of the Donkin-Hall factory.

Napoleon returns to France from exile to rule for 100 Days. He is defeated at Waterloo by British, Dutch, and German troops and is exiled to St. Helena in the South Atlantic. He will die there six years later.

The Tambora volcano erupts in Indonesia, killing 10,000. The dust thrown up by the eruption, perhaps the greatest in recorded history, will cause the summer of 1816 to be unusually cold in many parts of the world; disease and famine caused by the volcanic ash will kill another 80,000.

With the ratification of the Swiss Federal Pact, Switzerland is constituted as a confederation of 22 cantons. Later in the year, seven European nations guarantee Switzerland's neutrality.

10,000 Spanish troops land in Venezuela and defeat the revolutionary armies there.

The era of the Biedermeier has arrived in art and furniture; the style will be seen as a transition from the neoclassical to the Romantic, with a strong emphasis on the role and importance of the middle class.

The North American Review is founded in Boston and will soon be the foremost literary journal in America.

The Congress of Vienna redraws the map of Europe in order to create a lasting balance of power. Among the decisions reached: the Holy Roman Empire is replaced by the Confederation of the Rhine, the Netherlands are united, and Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden make important territorial gains. The rules of diplomacy formulated at the Congress of Vienna have not been replaced or surpassed to this day.

British road surveyor John McAdam pioneers a harder, smoother road surface made of crushed stones and is immortalized when the new paving is called macadam.

Canova sculpts The Three Graces.

Jane Austen writes Emma and dies a year later. Two more of her novels will be published posthumously.

Indiana is the 19th state to be admitted to the Union.

Large numbers of British immigrants arrive in the United States and Canada following a postwar economic downturn in Britain.

Argentina declares its independence.

Secretary of State James Monroe is elected as the fifth president of the United States, defeating Georgian William H. Crawford.

Regular clipper ship service begins between New York and Liverpool. The new sailing vessels can complete the transatlantic crossing faster than ever before; the record of 15 days will be set in 1860.

Rossini's The Barber of Seville sparks an uproar in Rome because Roman audiences prefer the original play to the new opera; it is well received elsewhere in Italy.

G.W.F. Hegel finishes the final volume of his Science of Logic, one of several works setting forth his philosophy of idealism, which will dominate the world of metaphysics for the next 25 years.

The American Bible Society is founded in New York; one of its goals will be to place a Bible in every American home.

French physician R.T. Laënnec, the father of chest medicine, invents the stethoscope to better observe cardiac and pulmonary functions. It also means that women will not have to endure his ear pressed against their bosoms.

The Seminole War begins on the border between the United States and Spanish Florida.

English economist David Ricardo advances liberal economic theory with his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which presents economics as a science with its own laws. Ricardo's iron law of wages and his labor theory of value, which states that a product's value results from the labor required to make it, will become foundations of modern economics.

The Serbs are given partial autonomy by the Ottoman Turks.

Mississippi gains statehood.

John Jacob Astor receives a fur trade monopoly in the Mississippi Valley, the foundation of his fortune.

Cadmium, lithium, and selenium are discovered.

English physician James Parkinson describes the degenerative disease that will carry his name.

Irish poet Thomas Moore writes his Lalla Rookh.

Construction on the Erie Canal, connecting Albany and Buffalo, begins and will take eight years.

Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is an immediate bestseller; it will eventually be translated into 30 languages.

The United States and Canada agree that the 49th Parallel will serve as their common border.

Congress resolves that the American flag will have 13 red and white stripes and a blue field with a white star for each state.

Austrian schoolteacher F.X. Huber puts music to Father Josef Mohr's lyrics Stille Nacht (words by Father Josef Mohr); the Christmas carol will be known in English as Silent Night.

Masterpieces of English literature appearing this year include Byron's Don Juan; Keats' Endymion; and Scott's Heart of Midlothian and Rob Roy.

Englishman Thomas Bowdler publishes the Family Shakespeare, omitting words and expressions which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family. His name will be immortalized in the word bowdlerize, meaning to expurgate by omitting parts considered vulgar.

Ludwig van Beethoven continues to compose despite the fact that he has become completely deaf.

Future philosopher and communist Karl Marx is born to a Jewish family in Prussia, but Marx's father has already converted to Christianity, and Marx will be baptized at age six.

After revolutionary leader Jos San Martin wins a decisive battle over Spanish forces, Chile declares its independence with Bernardo O'Higgins as its ruler.

Illinois becomes the 21st state.

F.W. Bessel publishes his Fundamenta Astronomiae, a catalog of over 3,000 stars; by 1833, he will have cataloged 50,000 stars.

In the decision McCulloch v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court widens federal powers by allowing Congress to charter a bank, an act not specifically permitted by the Constitution, and by barring Maryland from taxing the federal bank.

Singapore is purchased by the British East India Company.

Spain cedes Florida to the United States; the territory will become a state 26 years later.

An obelisk called Cleopatra's Needle is presented to Britain by Egyptian Pasha Muhammad Ali, but it will not be moved to London until 1878.

Britain declares a maximum 12-hour working day for children.

Memphis and Fort Snelling, the future Minneapolis, are founded.

Unitarianism is founded by William Ellering Channing in Boston; the denomination denies the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. The movement has roots in the Protestant Reformation and liberal New England Congregationalism.

The first commercially produced eating chocolate is made in Vevy, Switzerland.

English landscape painterJohn Constable paints View on the Stour.

Several people are killed and hundreds wounded at the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, England, after a demonstration protesting government repression, political rigidity, and economic policies that favor the wealthy.

Danish physicist Hans C. Oersted discovers electromagnetism.

The Savannah takes 24 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean, pioneering the use of steam to make the transatlantic voyage; the new mode of transportation is not trusted, and thus she carries neither passengers nor cargo.

The United States Senate passes the Missouri Compromise, which combines the admission to the Union of free state Maine with the admission of slave state Missouri, thus setting a precedent of keeping an equal number of slave and free states. Slavery is to be excluded from the Union north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Congress passes the Public Land Act, lowering the price of western lands to $1.25 an acre. Though real estate speculators gain the most from the Act, it is intended to promote settlement of the West.

Daniel Boone, explorer, pioneer, and scourge of Native Americans, dies at 85.

President James Monroe wins re-election, defeating John Quincy Adams.

The ship Mayflower of Liberia sets sail for Sierra Leone, carrying 86 free blacks who are immigrating to the British colony.

A revolution in Spain, led by Colonel Rafael Riego, eventually ends the Spanish Inquisition, which had begun under Castile's Isabella in 1478.

On a sealing expedition, American Nathaniel Palmer spots the continent of Antartica, the first person to lay eyes on the giant icy land mass.

French physicist Andre Marie Ampere discovers the basic workings of electric currents.

Literary Romanticism reaches a high point in Europe, as John Keats writes his Ode on a Grecian Urn, celebrating the immediate emotional impact of ancient art.

About 4,000 British settlers move to Dutch-dominated South Africa, the first British immigrants to the region. The move inaugurates nearly 90 years of conflict between Great Britain and the Dutch settlers over the region.

Missouri joins the Union a year after the Missouri Compromise. The state had wanted to ban free blacks and mulattos, but Henry Clay fought the proposal in the Senate. Thomas Hart Benton is the new state's first senator; he will represent it for 30 years.

William Becknell leads a wagon train out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, initiating the Santa Fe Trail.

The New York State constitution abolishes nearly all property qualifications for the vote but continues to deny the suffrage to blacks.

The American Colonization Society founds the colony of Liberia in West Africa, which it intends to give to freed slaves. The idea that American blacks could just go back to Africa lingered in intellectual circles until the Civil War.

James Fenimore Cooper becomes the first popular American novelist with publication of his second novel, The Spy, which is about the American Revolution.

A Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire begins; the bloody war will last until 1831.

Mexico declares independence from Spain, the mother country having been weakened by internal political conflict.

Revolution sweeps South America. Under the leadership of Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin, Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela declare their independence from Spain. Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras also proclaim themselves independent nations.

Quaker saddle maker Benjamin Lundy starts publishing his anti-slavery newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation, one of the first abolitionist journals in the United States.

Michael Faraday, British chemist-physicist, invents the electric motor.

The first tuition-free public high school in the United States opens in Boston, Massachusetts.

Tell-all journalist and Oxford dropout Thomas De Quincey writes one of the first pieces of anti-drug propaganda, Confessions of an Opium Eater, which is published in London Magazine.

Sailors in New Orleans invent the game of poker.

President James Monroe proposes United States recognition of the new Latin American republics that have recently won their independence. The United States ultimately recognizes Mexico and Gran Colombia, which includes the present-day countries of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama.

An informer reveals a plot led by Denmark Vesey, a free black man, for a massive slave uprising in South Carolina. Thirty-five blacks, including Vesey, will be hanged, and severely repressive slave codes will be passed throughout the region.

Diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia worsen, as the United States protests Russia's claim to the American Pacific coast.

The Holy Alliance of Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia agrees to support Spain's attempt to regain control over her former New World colonies. Great Britain leaves the Holy Alliance in protest.

French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion deciphers the Rosetta stone, found in 1799, enabling scholars to read ancient papyri and stones and to study the civilizations of antiquity.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck publishes a theory of evolution that suggests, erroneously, that environmental changes provoke changes in physical structure that can then be passed down to offspring.

William Beaumont, U.S. Army physician, begins observations of human gastric juices. He carries out his observations on a sailor who suffered a bullet wound in the stomach that did not quite heal.

An Ashanti War begins in West Africa, which will continue for nine years.

Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt makes his debut at age 11; he will grow up to be one of the century's great Romantic composers

President James Monroe presents the Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming that the United States will consider any attempt by European powers to meddle in the affairs of the Americas an affront to the national interest. The American continents...are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

Nicholas Biddle, the Golden Boy of Philadelphia, takes over the presidency of the Second Bank of the United States. Though he lacked the financial tools to implement his vision, Biddle had a genuine, precocious understanding of the principles of central banking.

Two of the era's great political figures rise on Capitol Hill, as Daniel Webster of Massachusetts takes a seat in the House, and Henry Clay becomes the Speaker of the House.

American troops defeat the Sauk and Fox chief Black Hawk, who had allied with the Winnebago, Pottawotamie, and Kickapoo to prevent white settlement of the Illinois territory.

An assembly at Guatamala City proclaims the United Provinces of Central America, consisting of Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The federation falls apart by 1840.

A 17-year-old British rugby player invents football when he scoops up the ball and defies the rules of rugby to run with it.

New York lexicographer Clement Clark Moore writes Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Britain abolishes the death penalty for more than 100 crimes.

Congress passes the Tariff Act of 1824, promoted by Henry Clay to support American industry. The American system, defined by Clay, refers to protective tariffs which, in addition to protecting industry, provide the government with revenues to fund internal improvements.

The Marquise de Lafayette, America's French ally during the Revolutionary War, comes for a year-long tour of the nation. It seems to symbolize the conclusion of the Revolutionary era.

Robert Owen becomes a prominent British reformer, preaching in favor of the abolition of slavery, the liberation of women, and the end of exploitation. He starts the New Harmony commune in Indiana, the first of many doomed Owenite communities in the United States.

French physicist Nicholas Leonard Sadi Carnot articulates the principle that William Thomson will restate as the Second Law of Thermodynamics (energy moves from a warm to a cold body, not vice versa).

A Burmese War begins when the Burmese ignore East India Company property rights. Burma quickly capitulates.

Cherokee scholar Sequoyah develops a Cherokee language alphabet with 85 letters. Literacy spreads so rapidly among the Cherokee that the Cherokee Phoenix will start publication just four years later, the first Native American newspaper.

Ludvig van Beethoven's Mass in D Major is performed for the first time in St. Petersburg, and his Symphony No. 9 in D Minor is performed for the first time at Vienna. Beethoven is quite deaf and must be turned around at the end to see the applauding audience.

John Quincy Adams is elected president of the United States in a special vote in the House of Representatives, with John Calhoun his vice president. The old party system of Federalists and Democratic-Republicans has collapsed, and the next few years will see the emergence of a new American party system, as pro- and anti-Adams forces coalesce into the Democratic and Whig parties.

The Chippewa, Iowa, Potawami, Sauk and Fox, Sioux, and Winnebago tribes sign a treaty establishing territorial boundaries in order to avoid further intertribal warfare and bloodshed.

The Erie Canal, linking New York City with the Great Lakes, is completed. Its opening stimulates commercial growth of New York City and other cities along the canal's route and also triggers the development of cities along the Lakes.

Uruguay, supported by Argentina, revolts against Brazilian rule. Brazil goes to war with Argentina.

Bolivia becomes independent of Peru.

Six hundred Boston carpenters strike for a 10-hour day. The master carpenters denounce the strike, which is led by journeymen.

France compensates the country's nobility for losses of land during the revolution.

The New York Stock Exchange opens. Most of the securities traded are in canal, turnpike, mining, and gas lighting companies, and few industrials will trade until after the Civil War.

London's Buckingham Palace is remodeled for the royal family.

In what becomes known as the Decembrist uprising, young aristocratic Russian army officers rebel against Romanov rule. The czar orders a cavalry charge to suppress the riot, but the horses slip and fall on the icy cobblestone streets of St. Petersburg. The revolt fails quickly anyway.

French scientist J.N. Niepce produces the first permanent photograph.

The first issue of the United States Telegraph, an anti-John Quincy Adams newspaper, is published. The paper reflects the great political conflicts marking Adams' years in office.

The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance is founded in Boston, as a passion for moral reform sweeps the land.

On July 4, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams--founding fathers and former presidents--both die, concluding the revolutionary era in American history. Jefferson was rumored to have asked during the night, "Is it the Fourth?" while Adams, who died four hours after Jefferson, is supposed to have murmured, "Thomas Jefferson still survives."

The first American third party, the Anti-Masonic Party, is founded in Batavia, New York, after a freemason disappears under suspicious circumstances, having disclosed some of the society's secrets.

Secretary of State Henry Clay and John Randolph, a supporter of Andrew Jackson, fight a duel over Randolph's accusation that Clay made a corrupt bargain in supporting Adams for president. Both men misfire, and no blood is shed.

A Pennsylvania law makes kidnapping a felony, effectively nullifying the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

Jedediah Strong Smith leads the first overland journey to Southern California. Hollywood, here we come.

British forces destroy the Ashanti, but hostilities will continue until 1831.

The Pan American Congress is held in Panama. No United States representative attends; one dies en route, the other arrives late.

The lyceum movement in American adult education gains popularity. Public lectures and educational societies teaching farmers and workers proliferate.

Cincinnati enjoys its brief heyday before the rise of Chicago as the Queen City of the West, second in population only to New Orleans.

New York City's first public transit system starts operation; it's a horse-drawn bus that seats 12.

The Freeman's Journal is the first black newspaper in the United States. It urges the abolition of slavery.

Having made it to Southern California, explorer Jedediah StrongSmith tries to take his expedition north to Fort Vancouver, but Indian attackers kill many of his men.

The Second Great Awakening, a period of intense, emotional religious revivalism, sweeps the United States.

Peru secedes from Gran Colombia, charging Simon Bolivar with tyranny.

Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream premieres, the same year that Ludwig van Beethoven dies of cirrhosis.

The Tariff of Abominations, imposing duties on imported manufactured goods, passes Congress.

Northern and Southern political differences become evident when the Tariff of Abominations is passed, as Southern state legislatures protest the tariff and Vice President John Calhoun pens an anonymous essay arguing that states can nullify federal laws. The battles over the tariff are really conflicts over whether North or South is the more powerful political partner in the Union, with slavery always lurking in the background.

Noah Webster publishes his American Dictionary of the English Language, with 70,000 definitions (12,000 more than any other English dictionary), including many words derived from immigrant and Native American languages (like skunk).

John James Audubon issues the first volume of Birds in America, an engraved series of 1,065 birds in their natural habitats.

The king Shaka, who founded the Zulu nation, is assassinated after he goes mad. His 12-year reign transformed the traditional pattern of life in southern Africa.

Military hero and southwestern upstart Andrew Jackson defeats incumbent John Quincy Adams for the presidency. John Calhoun is re-elected vice president.

Construction starts on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, ushering in an era of railroad building in the United States.

The Duke of Wellington introduces a new corn law in Britain, which imposes a sliding scale of duties on imports, depending on domestic prices.

The Treaty of Turkmanchai concludes a three-year Russo-Persian War. Russia cedes two territories, including part of Armenia, in exchange for obtaining the exclusive right to maintain a navy on the Caspian Sea. It promptly declares war on the Ottoman Empire.

Greece gains independence from the Ottoman Empire after 400 years of Ottoman rule, and Russian attacks severely weaken the Empire.

Mexico abolishes slavery, but the Texas territory is exempted from abolition.

The Perkins Institution for the Blind is founded in Boston, one of the first schools for the blind in the United States; later in the century, Helen Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, will be taught at Perkins.

American anti-sex crusader Sylvester Graham attacks meats, fats, catsup, mustard, pepper, and white bread, which he says stimulate the carnal appetites. It's one of the era's wacky reform movements inspired in part by the Second Great Awakening.

The American South gets more defensive about slavery. Slavery is not a national evil; on the contrary, it is a national benefit, says the governor of South Carolina.

London's Bobbies are introduced to make the city streets safe after dark.

Musical compositions by Romantic composers Felix Mendelssohn and Frederic Chopin premiere in Europe.

London's Baring Brothers finance the Planters Association in Louisiana--the first state loan in the United States to be underwritten by a British banking house.

Body poacher William Burke is hanged for murdering people and then selling their bodies to physicians for dissection.

Photographer Louis Daguerre accidentally finds that silver iodide is light-sensitive, and so invents the daguerreotype, one of the most commonly used forms of photography during the 19th century.

Charleston women Sarah and Angelina Grimke move to the North, where they become prominent actors in the abolitionist and feminist movements.

The Duke of Wellington pushes the Catholic Emancipation Bill through Parliament, giving Catholics full political rights in Britain.

Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina debates Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts on the issue of states' rights and federal power, kicking off a rancorous decade of suppressed, though barely concealed, conflict over slavery. "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever!" says Webster.

Joseph Smith, inspired by his vision of messages on golden tablets, founds the Church of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon church).

President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, which authorizes the government to move eastern Indians to western lands, so that the United States can take control of all Indian lands east of the Mississippi.

The first locomotive built in the United States makes its first trip on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, built only a few months before.

The first successful women's magazine in America, Godey's Lady's Book, begins publication in Philadelphia. It's edited by Sarah Josepha Hale (best known as the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb) and is the predecessor to Cosmopolitan, only much less racy.

Temperance activist Sylvester Graham advocates a diet based on vegetables and whole wheat, which he claims will calm the sex drive. He will invent the graham cracker to help keep passion under control.

The Republic of Ecuador is created as Gran Colombia (formerly New Granada) is broken up. Antonio Jose de Sucre and Simon Bolivar die in the same year, symbolizing the end of an era of Latin American liberation.

France occupies Algeria, which it will rule as a colony for the next 132 years.

France's liberal middle class overthrows ultraroyalist Charles X in the July Revolution. Radicals want to re-establish a republic in France, but liberals simply want to trade Charles X for, in the words of journalist Louis Adolphe Thiers, a citizen king: Louis Phillipe.

Inspired by the July Revolution in Paris, Belgian peasants and workers demand independence from the Netherlands, which they win.