1840
1840 was a
leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar).
*
January 3 - One of the predecessor papers,
Herald Sun of
Melbourne, Australia,
The Port Phillip Herald, is founded by
George Cavanaugh.
*
January 10 - Uniform penny postage introduced in the UK.
*
January 13 - The steamship
Lexington burns and sinks four miles off the coast of
Long Island with the loss of 139 lives.
*
January 19 - Captain
Charles Wilkes circumnavigates
Antarctica, claiming what became known as
Wilkes Land for the
United States.
*
January 20 -
Dumont D'Urville discovers
Adélie Land,
Antarctica.
*
January 22 -
British colonists reach
New Zealand. Official founding date of
Wellington.
*
February 6 -
Treaty of Waitangi, document granting British sovereignty in
New Zealand, is signed.
*
February 10 - Queen
Victoria of the United Kingdom marries
Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha.
*
February 11 -
Gaetano Donizetti's opera
La Fille du Regiment premieres in
Paris.
*
March 1 -
William Hobson, first Governor of
New Zealand, suffers a stroke.
*
March 1 -
Adolphe Thiers becomes prime minister of
France.
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May 1 -
Britain issues the
Penny Black, world's first
postage stamp.
*
May 6 - The
Penny Black, world's first
postage stamp becomes valid for the pre-payment of postage.
*
May 7 - The
Great Natchez Tornado: A massive tornado strikes
Natchez, Mississippi during the early afternoon hours. Before it was over, 317 people had lost their lives and 209 were injured. It is the second deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
*
July 4 - The
Cunard Line's 700-
ton wooden paddlewheel steamer
RMS Britannia departs from
Liverpool bound for
Halifax, Nova Scotia on the first transatlantic passenger cruise.
*
July 15 –
Austria,
Britain,
Prussia, and
Russia sign a London Treaty with the
Sublime Porte, ruler of the
Ottoman Empire.
*
August 10 -
Fortsas hoax - number of book
collectors gather to
Binche,
Belgium to attend a non-existent book auction of the late "Count of Fortsas"
*
September 10 - Ottoman and British troops bombard
Beirut and land troops on the coast to pressure
Egyptian Muhammad Ali to retreat from the country.
*
September 16 -
Joseph Strutt handed over the deeds and papers concerning the
Arboretum, which was to become England's first public park.
*
October 7 -
Willem II becomes King of the
Netherlands.
*
October 14 –
Maronite leader
Bashir II surrenders to the British forces and goes into exile in
Malta.
* November -
William Henry Harrison defeats
Martin Van Buren in the
U.S. presidential election.
*
Louis Agassiz publishes his work in two volumes entitled
Etudes sur les glaciers ("Study on Glaciers"), the first major work to scientifically propose that the Earth has been subject to a past
ice age.
*
David Livingstone leaves for Africa.
*
Punch caricature magazine begins publication.
*
Pedro II is declared "of age" prematurely and begins to reassert central control in
Brazil.
*
Mount Allison University is founded in
Sackville,
New Brunswick,
Canada.
*
Washingtonian Temperance Society is founded.
*
January 3 -
Father Damien, Belgian missionary priest (d.
1888)
*
January 23 -
Ernst Abbe, German physicist (d.
1905)
*
January 26 -
John Clayton Adams, British landscape artist (d.
1906)
*
February 4 -
Hiram Stevens Maxim, American firearms inventor (d.
1916)
*
February 5 -
John Boyd Dunlop, Scottish inventor (d.
1921)
*
February 21 -
Murad V,
Ottoman Sultan (d.
1904)
*
February 22 -
August Bebel, German politician (d.
1913)
*
February 23 -
Carl Menger, Austrian economist (d.
1921)
*
February 29 -
John Philip Holland, Irish inventor (d.
1914)
*
March 28 -
Emin Pasha, German doctor and African administrator (d.
1892)
*
April 2 -
Emile Zola, French writer (d.
1902)
*
April 22 -
Odilon Redon, French painter (d.
1916)
*
April 27 -
Edward Whymper, English mountaineer (d.
1911)
*
May 7 -
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer (d.
1893)
*
May 13 -
Alphonse Daudet, French writer (d.
1897)
*
June 2 -
Thomas Hardy, English writer (d.
1928)
*
August 4 -
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, German sexologist (d.
1902)
*
October 9 -
Simeon Solomon, British artist (d.
1905)
*
October 16 -
Kuroda Kiyotaka,
Prime Minister of Japan (d.
1900)
*
November 12 -
Auguste Rodin, French sculptor (d.
1917)
*
November 14 -
Claude Monet, French painter (d.
1926)
*
November 21 -
Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom and Empress of Germany (d.
1901)
*
November 29 -
Rhoda Broughton, Welsh writer (d.
1920)
*
January 6 -
Fanny Burney, English novelist (b.
1752)
*
January 22 -
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German anthropologist (b.
1752)
*
February 13 -
Nicolas Joseph Maison, French marshal and Minister of War (b.
1770)
*
April 25 -
Siméon-Denis Poisson, French mathematician, geometer, and physicist (b.
1781)
*
May 7 -
Caspar David Friedrich, German artist (b.
1774)
*
May 26 -
Sidney Smith, British admiral (b.
1764)
*
May 27 -
Nicolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer (b.
1782)
*
June 7 - King
Frederick William III of Prussia (b.
1770)
*
September 7 -
Étienne-Jacques-Joseph-Alexandre MacDonald, French marshal (b.
1765)
*
December 11 -
Emperor Kokaku of Japan (b.
1771)
