1816 - Definition and Overview

Events

• March 25 - Friedrich Karl Ludwig, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck dies and is succeeded by the later Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, his son and founder of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
• May 2 - Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, later King of the Belgians, marries Charlotte Augusta, but she dies the next year.
• July 9 - Argentina gains independence from Spain
• July 17 - The French passenger ship Medusa runs aground off the coast of Senegal, with 140 lives lost in the botched rescue that takes weeks, leading to a scandal in the French government.
• November - James Monroe defeats Rufus King in U.S. presidential election
• December 11 - Indiana is admitted as the 19th U.S. state.

• Tsultrim Gyatso becomes the 10th Dalai Lama.
• The British found Banjul, The Gambia.
• A British expedition explores up from the mouth of the Congo River.
• The Battle of Seven Oaks is fought in the Red River Colony of Canada.
• In France, René Laennec (1781-1826) invents the stethoscope.
• First known cultivation of the cranberry.
• Francis Ellis first describes the Dravidian languages.
• The Second Bank of the United States is founded.
• E. Remington and Sons is founded.
• Buffalo, New York is incorporated.
• African Methodist Episcopal Church is founded in Philadelphia.
• Beau Brummell flees England to escape gambling debts.
• The "Year Without A Summer", caused by the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption that had occurred in 1815.
• Large-scale slave insurrection in Barbados - one white and 176 slaves killed and 214 executed afterwards
• Divorce annulled in France

Births

• April 21 - Charlotte Brontë, British novelist
• April 22 - Charles Denis Bourbaki, French general
• May 24 - Emanuel Leutze, US painter
• July 4 - Arthur de Gobineau, French diplomat, author (+ 1882)
• July 23 - Charlotte Cushman, American stage actress (d. 1876)
• July 31 - George Henry Thomas, American general (+ 1870)
• October 2 - Ángel de Iturbide y Huarte (+ 1872)
• November 17 - August Wilhelm Ambros, Austrian composer
• December 13 - Werner von Siemens, German inventor and industrialist
• William Marsh Rice, philanthropic founder of Rice University
• Therese, daughter of Carl Friedrich Gauss
• Charles John Vaughan, English scholar

Deaths

• February 22 - Adam Ferguson Scottish philosopher, historian
• March 20 - Queen Maria I of Portugal
• July 5 - Dorothy Jordan, English mistress
• December 15 - Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope