1839

Year '1839' ('MDCCCXXXIX') was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Contents

Events of 1839

January - March

April - June

July - September

October - December

Undated

Ongoing events

Births

January - June

July - December

Deaths

January - June

July - December

Events of 1839

January - March

★ January 9 - The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.

★ January 19 - British East India Company captures Aden

★ January 20 - In the Battle of Yungay, Chile defeats a Peruvian and Bolivian alliance.

★ February 11 - The University of Missouri is established, becoming the first public university west of the Mississippi River.

★ February 24 - William Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel.

★ March 5 - Longwood University founded, Farmville, Virginia.

★ March 7 - Baltimore City College, the third public high school in the United States, is established in Baltimore, Maryland.

★ March 23 - First recorded use of "OK" oll korrect (''Boston Morning Post'').

★ March 26 - The first Henley Royal Regatta is held

★ March 29 - British naturalist Charles Darwin marries his cousin Emma Wedgwood.

April - June

★ April - Sultan Mahmud II of Turkey declares war on Mehemet Ali of Egypt in revenge.

★ April 9 - The world's first commercial electric telegraph line comes into operation alongside the Great Western Railway line from Paddington station to West Drayton.

★ April 19 - The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.

★ June 22 - Louis Daguerre receives patent for his camera (commercially available by September with the prize of 400 Francs)

July - September

★ July 1

★
★ Slave rebellion of Amistad

★
★ Change of emperor of the Ottoman Empire from Mahmud II (1808-1839) to Abd-ul-Mejid (1839-1861).

★ July 23 - British forces capture the fortress city of Ghazni, Afghanistan in the Battle of Ghazni during the First Anglo-Afghan War

★ August 8 - The Beta Theta Pi fraternity was founded in Oxford, Ohio

★ August 19 - French government gives Louis Daguerre a pension and gives the daguerreotype "for the whole world"

★ August 23 - British forces seized Hong Kong as a base, as it prepared to wage war against Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict would become known as the First Opium War.

October - December

★ October 3 - In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies a railway between Napoli and Portici (7.4km length) has been inaugurated by H.M. the King Ferdinand II of Bourbon. It is the very first railway in the Italian peninsula.

★ November 11 - The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.

★ November 17 - Giuseppe Verdi's first opera, ''Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio'' opens in Milan.

★ November 25 - Disastrous cyclone slams India with terrible winds and a giant 40 foot storm surge, wiping out the port city of Coringa. 300,000 people die.

★ November 27 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded

★ October 1839 - Joseph Smith Jr. went to ask the President of the United States for help from the mobs. The President replied saying, "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you. If I take up for you I shall lose the vote of Missouri."

Undated

★ In the United States, the first state law permitting women to own property is passed in Jackson, Mississippi.

★ The first parallax measurement of the distance to Alpha Centauri is published by Thomas Henderson.

★ Michael Faraday publishes "Experimental Researches in Electricity" clarifying the true nature of electricity.

★ Excavation on Copan begins.

★ Half of the Limburg province of Belgium was added to the Netherlands, since 1839 there is a Belgian Limburg and Dutch Limburg.

★ Abd al-Kader declares a jihad against the French.

★ Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia is founded.

★ John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones are transported to Australia for their part in a Chartist rally in Newport, Monmouthshire.

Ongoing events

★ First Opium War (1839-1842)

Births

January - June

★ January 19 - Paul Cézanne, French painter (d. 1906)

★ February 11 - Josiah Willard Gibbs American physicist and chemist (d. 1903)

★ February 22 - Francis Pharcellus Church, American editor and publisher (d. 1906)

★ March 9 - Phoebe Knapp, American hymn writer (d. 1908)

★ March 16 - John Butler Yeats, Northern Irish artist (d. 1922)

★ March 21 - Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer (d. 1881)

★ April 12 - Nikolai Przhevalsky, Russian explorer (d. 1888)

★ April 30 - Floriano Peixoto, Brazilian president (d.1895)

★ June 17 - Arthur Tooth, Anglican clergyman prosecuted for Ritualist practices in the 1870s (d. 1931)

★ June 21 - Machado de Assis, Brazilian author (d.1908)

July - December

★ July 8 - John Davison Rockefeller, American industrialist and philanthropist (d. 1937)

★ July 17 - Ephraim Shay, inventor of the Shay locomotive (d. 1916)

★ November 20 - Christian Wilberg, German painter (d. 1882)

★ December 5 - George Armstrong Custer, American cavalry officer (d. 1876)

★ December 12 - Caroline Lake Ingalls, née Quiner, mother of author Laura Ingalls Wilder (d. April 20, 1924)
: ''See also .''

Deaths

January - June

★ February 7 - Karl August Nicander, Swedish poet (b. 1799)

★ April 1 - Benjamin Pierce, U.S. politician (b. 1757)

★ April 2 - Hezekiah Niles, American editor and publisher (b. 1777)

★ April 11 - John Galt, Scottish novelist (b. 1779)

★ April 22 - Denis Davydov, Russian general and poet (b. 1784)

★ May 17 - Archibald Alison, Scottish author (b. 1757)

July - December

★ August 10 - John St Aubyn, British fossil collector (b. 1758)

★ August 22 - Benjamin Lundy, American abolitionist (b. 1789)

★ August 28 - William Smith, English geologist and cartographer (b. 1769)

★ October - William Light, British Army colonel and the first Surveyor-General of South Australia (b. 1786)

★ November 15 - William Murdoch, Scottish inventor (b. 1754)

★ December 3 - Frederick VI, King of Denmark, ex-King of Norway (b. 1768)

★ December 15 - Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, court councillor and minister to Alexander I (b. 1756)
: ''See also .''