January–March is formed. •
January 1 • The legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland is completed under the
Act of Union 1800, bringing about the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the abolition of the
Parliament of Ireland. •
Giuseppe Piazzi discovers the asteroid and
dwarf planet Ceres. •
January 3 –
Toussaint Louverture triumphantly enters
Santo Domingo, the capital of the former Spanish
colony of Santo Domingo, which has become a colony of
Napoleonic France. •
January 31 –
John Marshall is appointed
Chief Justice of the United States. •
February 4 –
William Pitt the Younger resigns as
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. •
February 9 – The
Treaty of Lunéville ends the
War of the Second Coalition between France and Austria. Under the terms of the treaty, all German territories left of the Rhine are officially annexed by France while Austria also has to recognize the Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics. •
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. •
February 27 – Washington, D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the
United States Congress. •
March 10 – The
first census is held in Great Britain. The population of
England and Wales is determined to be 8.9 million, with London revealed to have 860,035 residents. 1.5 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales, accounting for 17% of the total English population. •
March 14 –
Henry Addington becomes
First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer, effectively
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. •
March 21 –
Battle of Alexandria in Egypt: British troops defeat the French, but the British commander, Sir
Ralph Abercromby, dies later of a wound received in the action. •
March 23 – Tsar
Paul I of Russia is murdered; he is succeeded by his son
Alexander I.
April–June •
April 2 –
War of the Second Coalition: First
Battle of Copenhagen – The British
Royal Navy, under
Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, forces the
Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy to accept an
armistice. Vice-Admiral
Horatio Nelson leads the main attack, deliberately disregarding his commander's signal to withdraw. He is created a
Viscount on May 19; Denmark-Norway is forced to withdraw from the
Second League of Armed Neutrality. •
April 21 –
Ranjit Singh is invested as Maharaja of Punjab. •
May 6 –
French Revolutionary Wars:
Action of 6 May 1801 off
Barcelona – British Royal Navy brig
HMS Speedy, although outmanned and outgunned, captures the 32-gun
Spanish frigate El Gamo. •
May 10 – The pascha of
Tripoli declares
war on the United States, by having the flagpole on the consulate chopped down. •
June 7 –
War of the Oranges ends: Portugal and Spain sign the
Treaty of Badajoz; Portugal loses the city of
Olivenza. •
June 15 – A bull breaks through barriers at a
bullfight in Madrid, killing two people (including the mayor of
Torrejón de Ardoz) and injuring a number of other spectators. •
June 27 –
Siege of Cairo ends:
Cairo falls to British troops.
July–September •
July 6 –
First Battle of Algeciras: The French fleet defeats the British fleet. •
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. •
July 12 –
Second Battle of Algeciras: The British fleet defeats the French and Spanish fleets. •
July 18 –
Napoleon signs a
Concordat with
Pope Pius VII. •
August 1 –
First Barbary War:
Action of 1 August 1801 –
United States Navy schooner captures the 14-gun
Tripolitan corsair
polacca Tripoli off the north African coast, in a single-ship action. •
September 2 -
Siege of Alexandria: French troops (some 10,000 men) under General
Jacques-François Menou surrender to the British after a siege of 17 days. According to the terms, the French are allowed to keep their personal weapons and baggage. •
September 9 –
Alexander I of Russia confirms the privileges of the
Baltic provinces. •
September 24 –
Joseph Marie Jacquard exhibits his new invention, a
loom where the pattern being woven is controlled by
punched cards, at the National Exposition in Paris. •
September 30 – The Treaty of London is signed for preliminary peace between the
French First Republic and the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
October–December •
October 17 – A coup d'état is staged in the
Batavian Republic. •
November 16 – The first edition of the
New-York Evening Post is printed. •
December 15 –
Hadži Mustafa Pasha, Ottoman commander and politician, is assassinated in
Belgrade,
Sanjak of Smederevo, by
Kučuk-Alija. •
December 19 – South Carolina College, a precursor to The
University of South Carolina, is established in
Columbia, South Carolina. •
December 24 –
Cornish engineers
Richard Trevithick and
Andrew Vivian demonstrate "Puffing Devil", their steam-powered road locomotive, in
Camborne. The trial is successful but Trevithick realizes the limitations of steam power in a road-running vehicle and turns his attention to rail, introducing the world's first steam railway locomotive in 1804.
Date unknown are removed from the
Parthenon. • The first of a continuous series of censuses is held in France. •
Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, British ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire, begins removal of the
Elgin Marbles from the
Parthenon in Athens. •
Philippe Pinel publishes ''Traité médico-philosophique sur l'aliénation mentale; ou la manie
, presenting his enlightened humane psychological approach to the management of psychiatric hospitals. Translated into English by D. D. Davis as Treatise on Insanity'' in 1806, it is influential on both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth century. •
Ultraviolet radiation is discovered by
Johann Wilhelm Ritter. • The magnum opus
Disquisitiones Arithmeticae of
Carl Friedrich Gauss is published. • The
Supreme Council, Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction, USA) is founded within Freemasonry. == Births ==