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The 1800s

710 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 19th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1800 CE69 entries

  • May 15 – Napoleon and his French army (40,000 men)—not including the field artillery and baggage trains—(35,000 light artillery and infantry, 5,000 cavalry) begin crossing the Alps. He selects the shortest route through the Great St Bernard Pass, and invades after five days traversing the northern region of Italy.
  • June 14 – French general Jean-Baptiste Kléber is assassinated in Cairo by Syrian Kurdish Muslim student Suleiman al-Halabi.
  • July 10 – Fort William College is established by Lord Wellesley, British Governor-General of India, in Calcutta, to promote Bengali, Hindi and other vernaculars of the Indian subcontinent.

1801 CE66 entries

  • January 31 – John Marshall is appointed Chief Justice of the United States.
  • February 17 – An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved, when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.
  • July 7 – Toussaint Louverture promulgates a reforming constitution for Santo Domingo, declaring himself emperor for life of the entire island of Hispaniola, and nominally abolishing slavery.

1802 CE63 entries

  • June 2 – Indigenous Australian Pemulwuy, a leader of the resistance to European settlement of Australia, is shot dead by Henry Hacking.
  • July 19 – Éleuthère Irénée du Pont founds E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, the modern DuPont chemical company, as a gunpowder manufactory near Wilmington, Delaware.
  • July 22 – Gia Long captures Hanoi, completing his unification of Vietnam.

1803 CE65 entries

  • February 19 – An Act of Mediation, issued by Napoleon Bonaparte, establishes the Swiss Confederation to replace the Helvetic Republic. Under the terms of the act, Graubünden, St. Gallen, Thurgau, the Ticino and Vaud become Swiss cantons.
  • July 26 – The wagonway between Wandsworth and Croydon is opened, being the first public railway line in England.
  • November 30 – The Balmis Expedition starts in Spain, with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox in Spanish America and the Philippines.

1804 CE70 entries

  • February 14 – The First Serbian uprising begins the Serbian Revolution. By 1817, the Principality of Serbia will have proclaimed self-rule from the Ottoman Empire, the first nation-state in Europe to do so.
  • May 14 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from Camp Dubois and begins its historic journey by traveling up the Missouri River.
  • December 2 – Coronation of Napoleon I: At the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, Napoleon crowns himself as the first Emperor of the French in a thousand years. Witnessing this, Simón Bolívar dedicates himself to liberating Venezuela from Spanish rule.

1805 CE67 entries

  • March 1 – Justice Samuel Chase is acquitted of impeachment charges by the United States Senate.
  • October 21 – Napoleonic Wars: War of the Third Coalition – Battle of Trafalgar: The British fleet, led by Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain; however, Admiral Nelson is fatally shot.
  • December 2 – Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Austerlitz – French troops under Napoleon decisively defeat a joint Russo-Austrian force.

1806 CE71 entries

  • January 23 – Invasion of Naples: Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies flees to the Kingdom of Sicily under British protection.
  • May 30 – Future President of the United States Andrew Jackson fights his third duel, killing lawyer Charles Dickinson following a dispute over payment of a forfeit.
  • November 24 – The last major Prussian field force, under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, surrenders to the French near Lübeck. Frederick William III has by this time fled to Memel in East Prussia.

1807 CE72 entries

  • May 22 – A grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr for treason.
  • June 22 – Chesapeake–Leopard affair: British Royal Navy fourth rate attacks and boards United States Navy frigate USS Chesapeake off Norfolk, Virginia, seeking deserters. This act of British aggression plays a role in the run-up to the War of 1812.
  • July 20 – Nicéphore Niépce is awarded a patent by Emperor Napoleon for the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powers a boat upstream on the river Saône in France.

1808 CE78 entries

  • February 21 – Russia issues an ultimatum to Sweden, to join Napoleon's Continental System against the United Kingdom.
  • September 27 – The Congress of Erfurt, between the emperors Napoleon I of France and Alexander I of Russia, begins.
  • October 12 – Banco do Brasil, a major financial group in South America, founded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

1809 CE89 entries

  • May 17 – Napoleon I of France orders the annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire. When he announces that the Pope's secular power has ended, the Pope excommunicates him.
  • July 16 – The city of La Paz (in modern-day Bolivia) declares its independence from the Spanish Crown and forms the Junta Tuitiva, the first independent government in Spanish America, led by Pedro Domingo Murillo.
  • October 8 – Prince Klemens von Metternich becomes foreign minister of the Austrian Empire.