The Dutch Academy of Sciences offers a prize for an answer to the question:
"What does experience teach regarding the production of new species and varieties, through the artificial fertilisation of flowering of the one with the pollen of the other and what economic and ornamental plants can be produced and multiplied in this way?"
No entries are received, and the closing date is postponed until 1836 (Olby (1985), p. 24).
The first volume of Principles of Geology, Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface by Reference to Causes Now in Operation, by the geologist Charles Lyell (1795-1875), is published in London. Lyell distinguishes between three periods of geological history, which he calls the eocine ("recent"), the miocene ("less recent"), and the pliocene ("more recent").
The first edition of Birds of America, by the painter and ornithologist John James Audubon (1785-1851), appears .
The first volume of Cours de philosophie positive, by Auguste Comte (1798-1857), is published. Comte will complete the six-volume work in 1842.
On January 30, Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) paints La Libertérte guidant le peuple.
In France, in what is sometimes called the "July Revolution", Charles X is deposed on July 29th, and succeeded by Bourbon duc d'Orléans (1773-1850), who will lead as King, for 18 years, as Louis Phillippe.
On May 28, U.S. President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act into law, thus making possible the removal of Indians to areas west of the Mississippi River.
On April 6, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is founded by Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1844), in Fayette, New York. In Palmyra, New York, The Book of Mormon is published for the first time; Smith has translated it, he says, from golden tablets he found buried near Palmyra.
The poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb," by 42 year-old Sara Josepha Buell Hale, appears in the magazine Juvenile Miscellany. The poem "Woodman, Spare That Tree," by 28 year-old George Pope Morris, is published in the paper he founded in 1823, the New York Mirror .
In the United States, abortion is criminalized.
The chemist Jön Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) introduces H2O as the formula for water, while determining atomic weights.
Physicist Joseph Henry (1797-1898) demonstrates the electromagnetic telegraph, in Albany, New York, by sending signals over a mile of wire.
On March 18, the Supreme Court of the United States hands down their decision in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. The Court rules that an Indian tribe is not a foreign nation, and therefore cannot sue in federal court.
Botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858) announces the discovery of the cell nucleus. He makes the discovery while studying orchids.
Syria, which has been part of the Ottoman Empire since the beginning of the 16th century, is conquered by Egypt.
A horse-drawn machine for harvesting grain is introduced by Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809-1884). Although McCormick will receive a patent for the invention in 1834, a reaper patented by 41 year-old Obed Hussey of Cincinnati, in 1833, will be the more successful.
Turner's Rebellion takes place in Virginia. Nat Turner, a 30 year-old slave, murders has master, Joseph Travis, and his master's family on August 21. Claiming divine inspiration he leads a group of about 70 slaves in a violent rebellion that kills roughly 60 whites in two days. Turner briefly escapes; he is eventually caught, tried and is executed on November 11.
Gramercy Park, designed by Samuel Ruggles to be a private park, opens between 20th and 22nd Street, between Third and Park Avenue, in New York City.
Chemist Samuel Guthrie, and chemist Justus von Liebig, independently invent chloroform. The ether of chloroform will eventually be widely used as an anaesthetic, though today it has been replaced by less toxic anaesthetics.
Giuseppe Manzini (1805-1872) founds an organization, Giovine Italia, to achieve and promote the cause of national independence.
In November, the New York and Harlem Railroad begins service, and heralds the start of rapid mass transit in New York City. Two horse-drawn rail cars operate every 15 minutes between 14th Street and Prince Street, along the Bowery. The fare is 25 cents.
A cholera pandemic that began in India in 1826, and has ravaged Russia, killing hundreds of thousands of people, has now spread to Scotland and, in June spreads to New York (where it kills more than 4,000 people before the end of the year). Thomas Latta, a physician in Leith, Scotland, begins the use of saline injections to treat cholera patients.
A Preliminary Dissertation on the Mechanisms of the Heavens, by Mary Fairfax Somerville (1780-1872), is published. The book explains the mathematics required to understand her acclaimed popularization of Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, which was published in 1830.
In Vienna, kitchen apprentice Franz Sacher, 16, creates what comes to be known as Sachertorte, for a dinner in honor of Austria's Prince von Metternich.
An Enquiry into the Principle of Population, by Thomas Rowe Edmonds.
On March 22, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dies at the age of 82. The second part of Goethe's play, Faust, is published.
The Compromise Tariff Act, written by Henry Clay, is passed by the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Andrew Jackson. The law is meant to resolve the bitter conflict concerning "nullification", inspired by the Tariff of Abominations (1828), between industrialists in the north and cotton exporters of the South. It stipulates that by 1842, no tariff shall exceed 20 percent.
On August 23, Parliament passes a bill that calls for the abolition of slavery in all British colonies within a year. Slaveowners are to be compensated with more than 100 million pounds.
In Montevideo, Uruguay's National University of the Republic is founded. In North Carolina, Wake Forest College is founded, and in Philadelphia the Society of Friends founds Haverford College. In Oberlin, Ohio, Oberlin College opens; the first coeducational college in the United States, Oberlin admits both white and black students.
In Japan, a famine begins that will last until 1836.
The chemist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) describes the laws of "electrolysis", and produces aluminum by means of this process. He writes "On Electrical Decomposition", which will be published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1834. In letters between himself and William Whewell, the electrochemical terms electrode, anode, cathode, and electrolyte are introduced.
On August 29th, Parliament votes to forbid the employment of children under 9 in factories, and to restrict employment of children between the ages of 9 and 13 to 9 hours/day and 48 hours/week. The act also requires that all child employees under 13 be given two hours of schooling per day.
"Sartor Resartus", by the historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), is published in Fraser's magazine.
The English term "scientist" is coined by the philosopher William Whewell (1794-1866 ), during a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Friedrich Adolphe Wilde, a physician, invents the diaphragm contraceptive.
Federal troops are ordered to put down a riot by workers along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. It is the first time federal troops have been used to settle a labor battled in the United States.
Educator Louis Braille (1809-1852) invents a system of writing and printing for blind and visually impaired people. Letters and numbers are represented by a patterns of raised dots, and thus can be distinguished by sense of touch.
The idea for an "Analytical Engine" is conceived by mathematician Charles Babbage (1792-1871). Babbage's Reflections on the Decline of Science in England had appeared in 1830.
Edward Henty, a rancher, and his brothers settle the Australian colony known as Victoria, landing at Portland, on the south coast of Australia .
On the 4th of July, rioting breaks out in New York City, as unskilled workers break up an anti-slavery society meeting at the Chatham Street Chapel. In Philadelphia, anti-abolitionists destroy the homes of more than three dozen blacks. In December, at the founding convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society (also in Philadelphia), Frederick Douglass presents his "Constitution".
As slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire, 35,000 are freed in South Africa.
Mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) shows that the origin of the Earth's magnetic field must lie deep inside the Earth. He makes use of the measurements of the magnetic field made by the physicist Paul Erman in 1828.
Halley's Comet reappears. This is the second predicted return of the comet
Kabul Dost Mohammed gains control over all of Afghanistan, and takes the title of Emir. Though he will lead for only 4 years, the Barakzai dynasty will rule Afghanistan until 1929.
A fire rages through a section of New York City on December 16, in the area of Pearl Street, causing millions of dollars in damage and destroying more than 600 buildings.
The first volume of La Dèmocracie en Amèrique (Democracy in America), by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), is published in France. Tocqueville, a historian and politician and member of the French aristocracy, writes about the American people and their institutions, based on his 9 months of travels through the United States and eastern Canada in 1831-1832.
Arabeski, a collection of essays and stories by Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), is published in Russia.
Mémoire sur les équations du mouvement relatif des sytèmes de corps, by the engineer Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis (1792-1843), is published. It describes what is today called the "Coriolis force", or the "Coriolis effect".
Franz Diebl (1770-1859) publishes his two-volume textbook, Abhandlungen aus der Landwirtschaftskunde für Landwirthe, besonders aber für diejenigen, welche sich der Erlernung dieser Wissenschaft widmen. II. Von dem Pflanzenbau, in which he says that the primary method for the improvement of plants is artificial pollination. Mendel will attend Diebl's lectures on pomiculture and viticulture, at the Philosophical Institute in Brno, in 1846.
Carl Friedrich Gärtner (1772-1850) wins the prize offered by the Dutch Academy in 1830, for his investigations of hybridization and the species question. Gärtner's collection of research reports receives numerous revisions, and is first published in Dutch. The book is further revised and eventually published in German, in 1849.
In Paris, the Arc de Triomphe is completed. The arch was orderded built by Napoleon in 1806.
Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who used the pen name Boz in his writings for The Morning Chronicle, appears in London. It is Dickens' first book. In the next few years he will publish The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy's Progress (1838), and Nicholas Nickleby (1839).
On March 6, the garrison at the Alamo, in San Antonio, is defeated by a Mexican army led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, after an 11-day battle. On April 21, the Santa Anna's army is defeated at the Battle of San Jacinto; Sidney Sherman, a U.S. Army colonel, utters the the famous slogan "Remember the Alamo," as he joins Samuel Houston, the former Governor of Tennessee, in the battle.
The Republic of Texas is founded, with Samuel "Sam" Houston as president. The city of Houston is founded, and Texas claims the lands between the Rio Grande and the Neuces River. Texas will not officially join the Union until the end of 1845, when it will be annexed to the United States.
The settlement of Adelaide is founded in South Australia.
Mappa Selenographica, a map of the moon's surface, is produced by the astronomers Wilhelm Beer (1797-1850) and Johann Heinrich von Madler (1794-1874). The two will be the first to map Mars.
In what is now South Africa, Boer farmers angry at the British abolition of slavery in the colonies continue to move north and east, founding the Orange Free State, Natal, and Transvaal.
Alonzo D. Phillips, a shoemaker from Springfield, Massachusetts, patents the phosphorous match.
In the United States, an economic depression begins that will last several years. As a result, thousands of Americans will go bankrupt, and thousands more will be reduced to starvation. The depression will force the closing of nearly all textile mills in New England, and more than 500 banks before the end of the year.
Naturalist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) uses the term Eiszeit to refer to the time when all of Europe was covered by glaciers.
In Britain, King William IV dies and is succeeded by his neice, Victoria.
Mathmatician Semèon Denis Poisson (1781-1840) publishes Recherches sur la Probabilitè des Jugements. Poisson's book described what is now known as the Poisson Distribution, for the first time.
In Northern India, a famine begins that will last through 1838.
Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872) files for a U.S. patent for his magnetic telegraph, which he demonstrates at the City College of New York. But Morse code, the representation of letters by patterns of long and short pulses, is actually invented by Morse's assistant, Alfred Lewis Vail (1807-1859).
In Greece, the University of Athens is founded. In the United States, the University of Louisville is founded in Louisville, Kentucky. In Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary is founded by Mary Lyon (1897-1849); it is the first U.S. college for women.
Issac Pitman (1813-1897) invents a system of shorthand based on phonetics (i.e. a system of phonography).
Twice-told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is published and is an immediate best-seller.
The Poor Law enacted by Britain's Parliament in 1834, is applied to Ireland at a time when a famine is already killing thousands due to crop failure. (See also Britannica's entry on Poor Laws.)
Astronomer Friedrich W. Bessel (1784-1846) measures the distance to a fixed star (61 Cygni). Bessel's is the first successful measurement of this kind.
In London, Regent's Park is opened to the public.
The S.S. Sirius and the S. S. Great Western are the first ships powered entirely by steam to cross the Atlantic. Both ships are designed by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859).
In Philadelphia, an angry mob sets fire to Pennsylvania Hall in order to stop anti-slavery meetings there.
The Seraphim and Other Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Browing (1806-1861), is published.
Chemist Michael Faraday discovers the phosphorescent glow produced by electrical discharges through gases kept at low pressure.
Chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) shows that the presence of iron is what enables blood to absorb as much oxygen as it does. The physician Charles Cagniard de la Tour, at age 61, demonstrates that fermentation depends on the presence of yeast cells.
In New York City, street addresses on numbered streets are distinguished east from west according to which side of 5th Avenue they are on.
Charles Goodyear (1800-1860), who had earlier sold his father's patent for the steel-tine pitchfork to support his own experiments with raw rubber, finds a method to "vulcanize" the substance.
Charles Darwin completes his Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by HMS Beagle 1832-1836. In 1845 he will publish Voyage of the Beagle, a book presented in the form of a journal, and one that draws heavily on the Journal of researches.
The "Opium War" between England and China begins. The War will last until 1842.
In Jamaica, part of the British West Indies, sugar production begins to fall by more than 50% with the end of slavery.
In Baltimore, Pope Gregory XVI delivers the Apostolic Letter Condemning the Slave Trade.
In Leipzig, composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847) conducts the first performance of the Symphony in C Major, by Franz Shubert (1797-1828).
Mathematician Gabriel Lamé (1795-1870) proves that Fermat's last theorem is true for n=7.
The first railway in Italy begins operation. It is an 8 km route from Naples to Portici.
The first electric clock is built by physicist Carl August Steinheil (1801-1870).
Inventor Erastus Brigham Bigelow (1814-1879) introduces the power loom in Massachusetts.
In the United States, Congress appropriates money, from Patent Office fees, for the distribution of free seeds to farmers. Although this is the first time Congress has subsidized such a distribution, seeds have been distributed since at least 1836. (see the note at the U.S. Department of Agriculture)
In France, Louis Blanc (1811-1882) publishes L'Orginisation du Travail.
Although a bicycle consisting of a frame and wheels has existed for years, blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan (1813-1878), introduces the first bicycle in its modern form, with brakes and pedals. The bike has iron tires and weighs nearly 60 pounds.
http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/longfellow.html Voices of the Night, the first book of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), is published. Longfellow is a professor of language at Harvard University (this large portrait of Longfellow is courtesy of the University of Texas library).
In Aix-en-Provence, Paul Cezanne is born.
