General
Population: 1.14 Billion*
- Culture: End of "Romantic Age" and start of "Victorian Age"
- Entertainment: de Balzac invents novel grouping, GPR James Richelieu, Victor Hugo Hernani performed, Lamartine, Jeremy Bentham Constitution Code for All Nations,
Jean Baptiste, Stendhal Le Rouge et le Noir, Tennyson (poems)
Art includes Camille Corot "Chartres Cathedral", Honore Daumier associates with writer Charles Philson, Delacroix "Liberty Guiding the People"
End of Nazarene Brotherhood – antiacademic society of German painters in Rome
Music includes Auber (opera), Bellini, Donizetti
- Fashion: Ladies' skirts shorten and sleeves poof – hats increase and are ornamented
Stiff collars become part of men's dress
- Finance: Blue Diamond sold to Henry Hope at 44.5 carats – may have been the Blue Diamond of the Crown from France
- Religion: Death of Pope Pius VIII
- Science: Brown discovers cell nucleus in plants
Discussion between Cuiver and St Hilaire on unity of plan in organic composition
Hessel proves crystals have 37 types of symmetry
Lyell divides geological system into three groups – Eocene Miocene and Pliocene
Charles Lyell begins geological studies - publishes Principles of Geology
- Technology: James Perry obtains a patent for steel slit pen
Karl von Reichenbach discovers paraffin
Charles Babbage designs analytical engine this decade
French tailor Barthelemy Thimmonier devises a machine for utilitarian stitching – eventually sewing machine forerunner
- Deaths: George IV of England, Mathematician Jean baptiste Fourier, Painter Thomas Lawrence, Author William Hazlitt, Statesman Simon Bolivar,
Liberator Antonio Jose de Sucre, Writer Comtesse de Genlis, General Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg, Native American Red Jacket, Pope Pius VIII,
Anatomist Samuel Thomas von Sommering, Parliament member William Huskisson becomes early train fatality - crushed at opening of first mechanically powered railway
Africa
- Algeria: French invade
- South Africa: Drought
Americas
- General: Anglo-American illicit supply of opium increases
This decade the Liga Federal forms in Uruguay and Argentina – soon dissolves
- Chile: Exportation of nitrated begins
- Ecuador: Secedes from Gran Colombia and becomes independent republic
- Gran Colombia: Dissolution of Gran Colombia to Colombia Venezuela Ecuador and Panama
- Mexico: Congress bans Anglo immigration
Asia
- India: Mysore added to Britain's possessions
- Java: End of revolt against Dutch
Europe
- Belgium: Kingdom founded - independence from Netherlands
Distrubances in Brussels after a performance of Auber's "La Mutte de Portici"
- Denmark: Liberals move against king, resulting in repression
- France: Revolution against Bourbon Charles X for repealing civil liberties
Charles X King abdicates – Louis Philippe named "The Citizen King"
Talleyrand becomes Louis Philippe's ambassador to London
- Great Britain: Depression
Death of George IV by over-consumption of everything - brother William IV reigns (odd pineapple-shaped head)
William IV restrains finances
William allows Charles X of France to stay in Edinburgh
Tory government falls and Whigs gain power - congressional reforms
Liverpool-Manchester railroad opened
Founding of Royal Geographic Society in London
Charles the 2nd Earl Gray becomes Prime Minister
26 steam cars drive the streets of London
- Greece: Greece recognized an independent nation, separate from Ottoman Turks
- Montenegro: Peter II last of the Vladikas dynasty and statesman warrior and poet ascends the throne
- Netherlands: United Kingdom of the Netherlands dissolves to Belgium, Luxembourg, and Netherlands
- Poland: Russians repress Polish revolt
- Serbia: Becomes fully autonomous states with Milos Obrenovic as "Supreme Chief"
- Switzerland: Carriage road across St. Gotthard (Switzerland) finished
Start unification os Swiss states
Middle East
- Ottoman Empire: Turkey gives up imperial powers
Pacific
- Australia: Charles Stuart follows Murray River length to present-day Adelaide
Charles Freemantle lands on sw coast of Australia and claims it for Britain
- Fiji: Tahitian Protestant missionaries arrive in Fiji
- Samoa: Malietoa Vaiinupo of Savai'I becomes king of Samoa