General
Population: 1.18 Billion*
- Business: Pitman publishes manual of "Stenographic soundhand"
- Entertainment: Writers include Balzac, Hawthorne, Lamartine (epic poem), William H Prescott (Isabella and Ferdinand), Bernhard Bolzano (philosophy of logic),
Thomas Carlyle (French revolution), Dickens Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers
Music includes Auber, Berlioz, Lortzing "Zar und Zimmerman" (Czar and Carpenter), Liszt,
- Science: Poisson publishes about probability
Agassiz presents ice age theory and Swiss scientists react with hostility
Andrew Crosse "created life" while trying to create crystals – disputed but supposedly repeated
Darwin formulates natural selection but delays publishing
Tiedemann publishes that brain sizes and intelligence between the races has no differences
- Technology: Wheatstone and Cooke patent electric telegraph
Telegraph invented by Bell
Morse exhibits electric telegraph at New York
Steel plow invented by John Deere
Threshing machine invented
- Deaths: William IV of England, Painter François Gerard, Artist John Constable, Composer John Field, Author Giacomo Leopardi,
Poet Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin in duel, Dramatist Georg Buchner, Satirist Ludwig Borne, Sanskrit scholar Henry T. Colebrooke,
Composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Composer JF Lesueur, Composer Nicola Zingarelli, Mrs. Hitzherbert of King George IV,
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary opens with Mary Mason Lyon as founder
Africa
- South Africa: Continuation of Great Trek of Boers - Natal founded by Afrikaners
Americas
- General: USS Caroline set on fire and sunk by Canadians across the Niagara
- Canada: Constitution revolts in lower and upper Canada - in French Canada by Louis Papineau
First Canadian railroad
Minority rebels flee across US border
- St. Thomas: Cyclone and quake
Asia
- India: Famine and migration
Yogi Hari Das puts self into suspended animation for 40 days buried
- Japan: Shogunate of Tokugawa Ieyoshi begins until 1853
US ttempt to open trade fails
Europe
- General: End of union between Britain and Hanover
- France: First French railroad links Paris with Saint-Germain
- German States: Ernst Augustus of Hanover cancels constitution of 1833 and dismiss professors who protested him
First kindergarten opens by Friedrich Frobel in Blankenburg Thuringia
Industrialist August Borsig opens iron foundry and engine-building factory in Berlin
- Great Britain: Death of William IV of England - reign of niece Victoria begins age 18
Mazzini arrives in London as exile
Records of 11-mile 220 yard Crick Run Race at Rugby School in Warwickshire
Lord Melbourne the PM of Britain and Queen Victoria have mutual fondness and she favors him politically
Benjamin Disraeli delivers maiden speech before House of Commons
England introduces birth registration
Death of morganatic Wife of King George IV Mrs. Hitzherbert
- Greece: U of Athens founded
Middle East
Pacific
- Antarctica: Frenchman Jules Dumont d’Urville attempts to chart coast of Antarctica until 1840