In the presidential voting, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied, forcing the decision into the House of Representatives, which selected Jefferson on the thirty-sixth ballot

The Library of Congress in Washington, DC, was created with a $5,000 allocation

Congress convened for the first time in Washington, DC

The French regained the territory of Louisiana from Spain by secret treaty

The world’s population was believed to be 800 million people, double the population in 1500

The population of New York topped 60,000

John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed, began planting orchards across western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana

Rev. Mason Locke Weems authored the biography A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington

Alessandro Volta demonstrated an early battery known as an electricity pile

Robert Fulton tested a 20-foot model of his torpedo-armed submarine

The textile industry dramatically expanded in Belgium after Lieven Bauwens smuggled from Britain a working spinning “mule jenny” machine that could be copied

Martha Washington set all her slaves free

Thomas Jefferson became the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, DC

The North African state of Tripoli declared war on the United States in a dispute over safe passage of merchant vessels through the Mediterranean

The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress

Thomas Jefferson proposed rules for proper conduct in the Senate, including, “No one is to disturb another in his speech by hissing, coughing, spitting, speaking, or whispering to another.”

A nine-day revival at the Cane Ridge Presbyterian Church in Bourbon County, Kentucky, drew 20,000 people

Kentucky banned dueling

The New York Evening Post was first published, with Alexander Hamilton as its editor

Haitian slaves under Toussaint L’Ouverture seized power in Haiti and overthrew French control

The Union Jack became the official flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain

Rembrandt Peale painted his brother’s portrait Rubens Peale with Geranium

Thomas Bruce, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, shipped the Parthenon’s 2,500-year-old bas-reliefs to England

Napoleon Bonaparte opened the Louvre to the public

Congress repealed all taxes except for those on salt, leaving the government dependent on import tariffs

The Richmond Virginia Recorder published a story accusing President Thomas Jefferson of having a relationship with the slave Sally Hemmings

Eleuthere Irenee du Pont deNemours set up a saltpeter mill in Wilmington, Delaware that would become America’s largest black-powder plant

The United States Military Academy opened its doors at West Point, New York

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was re-established

The first non-Indian settlement in Oklahoma was created

John Dalton introduced atomic theory into chemistry

England began to regulate child labor

Great Britain declared war on Napoleon’s France; an English income tax was established to finance the war

Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed “Consul for Life” by the French Senate

President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for about $15 million to double the size of the United States territory

The government sponsored a transcontinental expedition under the leadership of Captain Merewether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark

John Dalton, British chemist and physicist, described the grouping together of atoms to form units called molecules

The French Academy of Sciences insisted that meteorites could not exist because no specimens had been found

Haiti became the first independent black republic

The Supreme Court ruled itself the final interpreter of constitutional issues in Marbury v. Madison

Ohio became the seventeenth state

Thomas Jefferson was re-elected president; George Clinton, the governor of New York, was elected vice president

Congress ordered the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi to Louisiana

The 12th Amendment was ratified, requiring electors to vote separately for the president and vice president.

John Quincy Adams published his travel book, Letters on Silesia

Fort Dearborn was erected on the Chicago River on the site of present-day downtown Chicago

Ohio legislature passed laws restricting the movement of free blacks

The French civil code, the “Code Napoleon,” was adopted

Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel

England mobilized to protect against an expected French invasion by Napoleon

Both The British Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Watercolour Society were formed.

Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon I, began a rose collection that sparked wide interest in rose culture

Alice Meynell became the first English woman jockey

U.S. Marines attacked and captured the town of Derna in Tripoli from the Barbary pirates; Tripoli concluded peace with United States

Bostonian Frederic Tudor began exporting ice from New England to the tropics

The Michigan Territory was created

Chief Justice Samuel Chase was acquitted by the Senate impeachment trial, ending the Republican campaign against the Federalist bench

Virginia required all freed slaves to leave the state or risk imprisonment or deportation

The Lewis and Clark expedition reached the Pacific Ocean

Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike paid the Sioux $2,000 for a nine-square-mile tract of land at the mouth of the Minnesota River to establish Fort Snelling, a military post

Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned king of Italy

Austria joined Britain, Russia and Sweden in the Third Coalition against Napoleonic France and Spain

A British fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar fought off Cape Trafalgar, Spain

French Revolutionary calendar law was abolished

A catalog of the plants at Elgin Botanical Garden in New York City was published

A printed reference to a mixed-drink cocktail first appeared

Shoemakers in Philadelphia formed a union

The British took control of South Africa from the Dutch

Napoleon attempted to restrict European trade with Britain

Andrew Jackson killed Charles Dickinson in a duel over a horse racing debt

Lewis and Clark began their trip home after an 8,000-mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast

During an expedition to locate the source of the Mississippi River, Zebulon Pike discovered the structure that would become known as Pike’s Peak

The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved when Emperor Francis I abdicated the throne

Carbon paper was patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgwood.

Emperor Napoleon entered Berlin

Napoleon’s army was checked by the Russians at the Battle of Pultusk

The Spanish army repelled Britain’s attempt to retake Buenos Aires, Argentina

President Jefferson imposed a trade embargo with Europe to keep American ships neutral in the Napoleonic wars

The British blockaded continental Europe

British seamen boarded the USS Chesapeake, a provocation that led to the War of 1812

President Jefferson exposed a plot by former Vice President Aaron Burr to form a new republic in the Southwest

British Parliament abolished the slave trade

Czar Alexander of Russia met with Napoleon Bonaparte to divide Europe between themselves and isolate Britain

Averaging five miles per hour, Robert Fulton’s steamboat the Clermont successfully made the round-trip journey up New York’s Hudson River to Albany

The Geological Society of London, devoted to the earth sciences, was established

Englishmen William and John Cockerill promoted the Industrial Revolution to continental Europe by developing machine shops in Liège, Belgium

James Madison was elected president

The first newspaper west of the Mississippi was founded in St. Louis by Joseph Charles and funded by Merewether Lewis, the local territorial governor, who needed to print the local laws

The United States Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional rights of the federal government, and not individual states, to determine the legality of captures on the high seas

The first American land-grant university was founded in Athens, Ohio

America abolished the importing of slaves

Elizabeth Seton established a school for girls in Baltimore, Maryland

Artist Charles Willson Peale painted the only known portrait of naturalist William Bartram

Pellegrino Turri built a crude typewriter for the blind Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizono in Italy

Sir Humphrey Davy showed that electricity could produce heat or light between two electrodes separated in space

Excavations began at Pompeii, the site of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD

The Bayonne Decree by Napoleon ordered the seizure of United States ships

The citizens of Madrid unsuccessfully rose up against Napoleon; hundreds were slaughtered in reprisal

France’s General Junot was defeated by Wellington at the first Battle of the Peninsular War at Vimiero, Spain

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe completed the first part of Faust

The political rights of Jews were suspended in Duchy of Warsaw

The first railroad track in the United States was laid at Crum Creek, Pennsylvania, by Thomas Leiper

Explorer Merewether Lewis died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds in Tennessee

The Territory of Illinois was created

President James Madison ordered the annexation of West Florida from Spain

Peregrine Williamson of Baltimore patented a steel pen

Wearing masks at balls was forbidden in Boston

Great Britain signed a treaty with Persia, forcing the French out of the country

Austrian forces entered Bavaria as Austria declared war on France

Napoleon was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate

The U.S. Census recorded the United States population at 7,239,881, 19 percent of whom were recorded as black

The Maryland legislature authorized a lottery to build a memorial to George Washington

First United States fire insurance joint-stock company was organized in Philadelphia

The British Bullion Committee condemned the practice of governments printing too much money and causing inflation

The British acquired Mauritius from France

John Jacob Astor organized the Pacific Fur Company

Wilhelm von Humboldt founded Humboldt University in Berlin to give students a broad humanist education

King Kamehameha conquered and unified all the Hawaiian islands

Argentina and Chile declared their independence and began their revolt against Napoleonic Spain

The first billiard rooms were established in London, England

The Bank of the United States, established as a central bank and a mechanism for government borrowing, was abolished

Robert Fulton’s steamboat, New Orleans, became the first steamboat in western waters when it sailed down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; passage cost $30

Jane Austen published Sense and Sensibility

Francis Cabot Lowell started the modern textile industry in New England

An uprising of over 400 slaves was put down in New Orleans, resulting in the deaths of 66 blacks

Congress made secret plans to annex Spanish eastern Florida

Mary Anning of England excavated a 17-foot-long skeleton fossil later named icthyosaurus and sold it for £23

Ned Ludd organized a group of craftsmen, known as Luddites, who violently protested industrialization in England

General William Henry Harrison routed the Shawnee Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in the Indiana Territory

The War of 1812 began as the United States declared war against Great Britain

John Jacob Astor and Stephen Girard were called upon to personally finance the war

United States forces led by General William Hull invaded Canada

The Cherokee Indians sided with the United States

Maine separated from the state of Massachusetts

George Clinton, the fourth vice president of the United States, became the first vice president to die while in office

Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting law that favored his party, giving rise to the term "gerrymandering"

Louisiana became the eighteenth state; the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first collection of Folk Tales for Children and the Home

Napoleon and his army invaded Russia

Great Britain signed the Treaty of Orebro, making peace with Russia and Sweden

Nearly broke from the cost of war, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States

Americans forces under General Zebulon Pike captured York, now Toronto

Americans captured Fort George, Canada

The U.S. Navy gained its motto as the mortally wounded commander of the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, Captain James Lawrence, was heard to say, "Don’t give up the ship!" during a losing battle with a British frigate Shannon

The U.S. invasion of Canada was halted at Stoney Creek, Ontario

The Creek Indians massacred over 500 whites at Fort Mims, Alabama

The Demologos, the first steam powered warship, was launched in New York City

American militiamen burned down the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada

The British announced a blockade of Long Island Sound, leaving only the New England coast open to shipping

The British burned Buffalo, New York

The first raw cotton-to-cloth mill was founded in Waltham, Massachusetts

The first mass production factory began making pistols

Rubber was patented

A Swiss traveler discovered the Great and Small Temples of Ramses II at Abu Simbel in Egypt

Jane Austin published Pride and Prejudice

The Russians fighting against Napoleon reached Berlin

British forces landed on the Patuxent River and routed the Americans in the Battle of Bladensburg, and then marched to Washington

The U.S. Capitol and White House were burned and sacked by the British

British forces destroyed the Library of Congress, which contained 3,000 books

An American fleet scored a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of Lake Champlain

Lawyer Francis Scott Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry, the last American defense before Baltimore, and wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Five Indian tribes in Ohio made peace with the United States and declared war on Britain

The British attacked Ft. Ontario, Oswego, New York

British and American forces fought each other to a stand-off at Lundy’s Lane, Canada

Andrew Jackson and the Creek Indians signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving the whites 23 million acres of Mississippi Creek territory

The Treaty of Fontainebleau exiled Napoleon to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean, where he retained the title of emperor and 400 volunteers to act as his guard

Lord Byron completed The Corsair

U.S. soldiers killed 700 Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, Louisiana

The Duke of Wellington led 60,000 troops against 325,000 French troops at Toulouse and defeated them, just days after Napoleon abdicated the throne

Sir Walter Scott published his novel Waverly anonymously to avoid damaging his reputation as a poet

Andrew Jackson attacked and captured Pensacola, Florida, defeating the Spanish and driving out a British force

The burned Library of Congress was re-established with Thomas Jefferson’s collection of 6,500 volumes

Congress appropriated funds for the restoration of the White House and hired James Hoban, the original designer and builder, to do the work

The United States declared war on Algiers to put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates

John Roulstone of Sterling, Massachusetts, penned the first three stanzas of the poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb" after his classmate Mary Sawyer came to school followed by her pet lamb

Milan forbade gambling in the back rooms of the opera houses

The first New England missionaries arrived in Hawaii

Switzerland became officially neutral

U.S. forces led by General Andrew Jackson and French pirate Jean Lafitte defeated 8,000 British veterans in the Battle of New Orleans, the closing engagement of the War of 1812

Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba, and with 1,200 of his men, started the 100-day reconquest of France

British and Prussian troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated the French in Waterloo, Belgium

James Monroe of Virginia was elected president of the United States after defeating Federalist Rufus King

The United States passed the first tariff laws to protect its industries

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, affirmed its right to review state court decisions

Pittsburgh was incorporated on the site of old Fort Pitt

Lord Elgin sold his Parthenon sculptures to the British government for £35,000

Dr. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec of France invented the stethoscope

Joseph Nicephore Niepce developed the first photographic negative

France decreed the Bonaparte family to be exiled from the country forever

Argentina declared independence from Spain

Louis XVIII of France dissolved the chamber of deputies, which had been challenging his authority

The first savings bank in the United States, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opened for business

Indiana became the nineteenth state

A patent for a dry dock was issued to John Adamson in Boston

Giocchino Rossini composed his opera The Barber of Seville, and introduced it to the public of Rome

The American Bible Society was established

Work began on the Erie Canal, designed to connect Lake Erie with the Hudson; workers were paid a $1 a day plus a quart of whiskey

The University of Michigan was founded

The New York Stock and Exchange Board was formalized and established its first quarters in a rented room at 40 Wall Street

Frederick Eberle was tried for trying to prevent the use of the English language in German Lutheran church services in Philadelphia

A street in Baltimore was lighted with gas from America’s first gas company

The first American school for the deaf opened in Hartford, Connecticut

Scottish naturalist John Bradbury authored Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810 and 1811

David Ricardo published Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

President and Mrs. James Monroe moved back into the restored White House

U.S. soldiers attacked a Florida Indian village and began the Seminole War

Mississippi was admitted as the twentieth state of the union

The first Hawaiian coffee was planted in Kona

Congress decided the flag of the United States would consist of seven red and six white stripes, and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the union

The United States and Britain established the 49th Parallel as the boundary between Canada and the United States

President Monroe proclaimed naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain

The American Bible Society published the Epistles of John in the language of the Delaware Indians

Brooks Brothers haberdashery was founded

Illinois became the twenty-first state

The Libbey Glass Company of Toledo, Ohio, was founded as the New England Glass Company

The Smirnoff family went into the vodka business in Russia

The first successful educational magazine, Academician, began publication in New York City

A regiment of Indians and blacks was defeated at the Battle of Suwanna in Florida, ending the first Seminole War

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein

John Keats published his poem "Endymion"

David Young began publishing the Farmers’ Almanac

The paddle-wheel steamship Savannah became the first steamship to successfully cross the Atlantic when it arrived in Liverpool, England, after a voyage lasting 27 days

The Territory of Arkansas was created

Thomas Blanchard patented the lathe

The first ship passed through the Erie Canal

Alabama was admitted as the twenty-second state, making 11 slave states and 11 free states

Washington Irving published The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, which included "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle"

The opera La Donna del Lago by Gioacchino Antonio Rossini premiered in Naples

Chief Justice John Marshall, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, described the corporation as "an artificial being, invisible, intangible"

King Kamehameha II abolished the brutal kapu system of laws in Hawaii

Spain signed a treaty with the United States ceding eastern Florida

James Monroe was elected president for a second term

The Missouri Compromise was enacted, providing for the admission of Missouri into the union as a slave state but prohibiting slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory

Congress passed the Land Act, paving the way for westward expansion

Maine became the twenty-third state

Thomas Jefferson wrote of slavery: "We have a wolf by the ears and can neither hold him, nor safely let him go"

More than a thousand ships were engaged in transporting timber from North America to the British Isles

Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted discovered that an electric current created a magnetic field around a conductor

The Greek Venus de Milo marble statue was found on Melos

Grain prices collapsed in Britain

Czar Alexander declared that Russian influence in North America extended as far south as Oregon, and attempted to close the Alaskan waters to foreigners

The Royal Astronomical Society was founded in England

George III of England died insane and was succeeded by his son George IV, who had been regent for nine years

U.S. Navy Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer discovered the frozen continent of Antarctica

Missouri imposed a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men between the ages of 21 and 50

John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, wrote: "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own"

Denmark Vessey mounted a major slave rebellion in South Carolina

The Boston English High School, the first public high school, held its opening classes

Spain sold eastern Florida to the U.S. for $5 million

Napoleon died in exile on the island of St. Helena

Peru declared its independence from Spain

Missouri became the twenty-fourth state

After 11 years of war, Spain granted Mexico independence

The first pharmacy college held its first classes in Philadelphia

Kentucky abolished debtor’s prisons

Thomas Jefferson wrote his autobiography

Owen Chase ghost-wrote the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the White-Whale Ship Essex

The Superintendent of Mails in Washington, DC, complained that the growing popularity of sending Christmas cards had become a burden for the United States Postal System

California became part of Mexico

Christian Buschmann constructed the first primitive accordion

American colonists landed in Liberia and founded Monrovia, the colony’s capital city, named in honor of President James Monroe

Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city

The first patent for false teeth was requested

Brazil declared its independence from Portugal

The first edition of the London Sunday Times was published

Eleven-year-old Franz Liszt made his debut as a pianist

J.F. Champollion published a paper on deciphering the Rosetta Stone

Thomas DeQuincey wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater

President Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, stating “that the American continents… are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers”

Mission San Francisco de Solano de Sonoma was established by Father Jose Altimira, set up to convert the native Indians and develop the local resources

Franz Schubert composed his song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin

The Reverend Hiram Bingham, leader of a group of New England Calvinist missionaries, began translating the Bible into Hawaiian

Louis Joseph Dufilho, Jr. established a pharmacy in New Orleans

Charles Macintosh of Scotland began selling raincoats

Georgia passed the first state birth registration law

The poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement C. Moore, often called "T’was the Night before Christmas,” was published in the Troy, New York Sentinel

The presidential election was decided by the U.S. House of Representatives when a deadlock developed among John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay; John Quincy Adams was declared the winner

Hens called Rhode Island Reds were first bred in Little Compton, Rhode Island

The first animal welfare group was founded in England

The Mexican governor of California offered all missions for sale under a program of secularization

The Camp Street Theatre opened as the first English-language playhouse in New Orleans

The United States War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Newfoundland became a British colony

The Saud family of Arabia established a new capital at Riyadh

Russia abandoned all claims to North America south of 54’ 40’

The Ninth Symphony by Beethoven had its premiere

Dean William Buckland of Oxford University discovered the bones of the meat-eating Megalosaurus, “huge reptile”