1818 - Definition and Overview

1818 is a common year starting on Thursday.

Events

• January 3 - Venus occulted Jupiter. It was the last occultation of a planet by an other planet since November 22nd, 2065. Unfortunately no observation reports from this event visible in the Pacific area are known.
• February 12 - Chile gains its independence from Spain
• March 11 - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is published
• March 22 - Easter Sunday falls on its earliest possible date. The next time Easter will fall this early: 2285.
• April 4 - The U.S. Congress adopts the flag of the United States as having 13 red and white stripes and one star for each state (20 stars) with additional stars to be added whenever a new state is added to the Union.
• October 20 - A convention between the U.S. and the United Kingdom establishes the northern boundary as the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, also creating the Northwest Angle
• November 11 Establishment of Anglo-Chinese College
• December 3 - Illinois is admitted as the 21st U.S. state.
• December 24 - "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber and vicar Joseph Mohn when the church organs fail
• December 25 - The first performance of "Silent Night" (Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria).

• Karl XIV Johan becomes King of Sweden.
• Anglo-Chinese College founded by Robert Morrison in Malacca.
• Lord Hastings, governor-general of India, gives approval to Sir Stamford Raffles to establish trading station at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula (modern-day Singapore)
• The Savannah is the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean

Births

• April 8 - King Christian IX of Denmark
• April 29 - Emperor Alexander II of Russia
• May 5 - Karl Marx, German political philosopher
• July 30 - Emily Brontë, British novelist
• September 27 - Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe, chemist
• October 8 - John Henninger Reagan, American and Confederate politician (d. 1905)
• October 18 - Edward Ord, US army officer
• December 13 - Mary Todd Lincoln, future First Lady of the United States
• Frederick Douglass
• Angelo Secchi - pioneer of astronomical spectroscopy

Deaths

• May 10 - Paul Revere, engraver, American patriot
• October 28 - Abigail Adams, first lady
• Johann David Wyss, author of Swiss Family Robinson