January–March • January 5 –
Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, begins removal of the
Elgin Marbles from the
Parthenon in Athens, claiming they are at risk of destruction during the
Ottoman occupation of Greece; the first shipment departs
Piraeus on board Elgin's ship, the
Mentor, "with many boxes of moulds and sculptures", including three marble torsos from the Parthenon. • January 15 – Canonsburg Academy (modern-day
Washington & Jefferson College) is chartered by the
Pennsylvania General Assembly. • January 29 – The French
Saint-Domingue expedition (40,000 troops) led by General
Charles Leclerc (Bonaparte's brother-in-law) lands in
Saint-Domingue (modern
Haiti) in an attempt to restore colonial rule following the
Haitian Revolution in which
Toussaint Louverture (a black former
slave) has proclaimed himself
Governor-General for Life and established control over
Hispaniola. • February 3 – Leclerc and the first 5,000 of 20,000 troops arrive at Cap-François (modern
Cap-Haïtien). • February 17 – The remains of
Pope Pius VI are returned to the Vatican by France; the Pope had died in captivity at
Valence, on August 29, 1799. • February – The
Rosetta Stone is brought to England by Colonel
Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who arrives at
Portsmouth on the captured French frigate ''L'Egyptiane''. • March 3 –
Ludwig van Beethoven publishes his
Piano Sonata No. 14, commonly known as the "Moonlight Sonata" (
Mondschein), in Vienna; the availability of the sheet music is announced by Giovanni Cappi in the newspaper
Wiener Zeitung. • March 11 – The Rosetta Stone is presented to the
Society of Antiquaries of London, which in turn presents it to the
British Museum.
April–June • April 10 – The
Great Trigonometrical Survey of India begins with the measurement of a baseline near
Madras. • April 12 — Beethoven leaves
Vienna for a small nearby Austrian village named
Heiligenstadt where he would cope with his declining mental and physical health including his growing deafness. He would stay until October and there he would write an unsent letter to his brothers called the
Heiligenstadt Testament. In the letter, Beethoven contemplates suicide but it was his passion for the art of music that prevented him so. • April 21 – About 12,000 Wahhabi Sunnis under the command of
Abdul-Aziz bin Muhammad, the second ruler of the First Saudi State attack and
sack Karbala, kill between 2,000 and 5,000 inhabitants and plunder the tomb of
Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of
Muhammad and son of
Ali ibn Abi Talib. • April 26 – A general amnesty signed by
Napoleon allows all but about 1,000 of the most notorious
émigrés of the
French Revolution to return to France as part of a conciliatory gesture to make peace with the various factions of the
Ancien Régime that ultimately consolidates his own rule. • May 19 – Napoleon establishes the French
Legion of Honour (''Légion d'honneur''). • May 20 – By the
Law of 20 May 1802,
Napoleon reinstates slavery in the
French colonies, revoking its abolition in the
French Revolution. • May – Madame
Marie Tussaud first exhibits her
wax sculptures in London, having been commissioned, during the
Reign of Terror in France, to make death masks of the victims. • June – The first account of
Thomas Wedgwood's experiments in photography is published by
Humphry Davy in the
Journal of the Royal Institution in London. Since a fixative for the image has not yet been developed, the early photographs quickly fade. • June 1 • The
United States Patent and Trademark Office is established within the
Department of State. • At
Huế, shortly before his conquest of Tonkin, Nguyen Anh is crowned as the Emperor
Gia Long, the first ruler of the
Nguyễn dynasty in Vietnam. • June 2 –
Indigenous Australian Pemulwuy, a leader of the resistance to European settlement of Australia, is shot dead by
Henry Hacking. • June 8 – Haitian revolutionary
Toussaint Louverture is seized by French troops and imprisoned at the
Fort de Joux.
July–September • July 5 –
Parliamentary elections begin in the United Kingdom, with voting continuing until August 28; the
Tories, led by
Henry Addington, win control of the House of Commons. • 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. • July 31 –
William Wordsworth, leaving London for
Dover and
Calais with his sister
Dorothy, witnesses the early morning scene which he captures in his
sonnet "
Composed upon Westminster Bridge". • August 2 – In a
plebiscite,
Napoleon Bonaparte is confirmed as the
First Consul of France. • September 11 – The Italian region of
Piedmont becomes a part of the
French First Republic.
October–December • October 2 – War ends between Sweden and
Tripoli. The United States also negotiates peace, but war continues over the size of compensation. • October 15 – French Army General
Michel Ney enters
Switzerland with 40,000 troops, on orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. • October 16 – The port of
New Orleans and the lower
Mississippi River are closed to American traffic by order of the city's Spanish administrator, Juan Ventura Morales, threatening the economy in the western United States, and prompting the need for the
Louisiana Purchase. • October 26 – A powerful
7.9 earthquake shakes the Romanian district of
Vrancea destroying hundreds of buildings, triggering landslides and killing 4 people. This earthquake is considered one of the strongest to have shaken Europe. • November 16 – The newly elected British Parliament is inaugurated by King George III, who tells the members, "In my intercourse with foreign powers, I have been actuated by a sincere disposition of the maintenance of peace," but adds that "My conduct will be invariably regulated by a due consideration of the actual situation of Europe, and by a watchful solicitude for the permanent welfare of my people." • November 23 –
East Indiaman Vryheid, in the service of the
Batavian Republic, is shipwrecked in a gale off
Hythe, Kent, in the south of England; only 18 of 472 on board survive. • December 2 – The
Health and Morals of Apprentices Act in the United Kingdom comes into effect, regulating conditions for
child labour in factories. Although poorly enforced, it pioneers a series of
Factory Acts. == Births ==