1839

Year 1839 (MDCCCXXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1839

January - March

* January 9 - The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.
* January 19 - The British East India Company captures Aden.
* January 20 - Battle of Yungay: Chile defeats a Peruvian-Bolivian alliance.
* February 11 - The University of Missouri is established, becoming the first public university west of the Mississippi River.
* February 24 - William Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel.
* March 5 - Longwood University is founded in Farmville, Virginia.
* March 7 - Baltimore City College, the third public high school in the United States, is established in Baltimore, Maryland.
* March 23 - The "Boston Morning Post" first records the use of "OK" (oll korrect).
* March 26 - The first Henley Royal Regatta is held.
* March 29 - British naturalist Charles Darwin marries his cousin Emma Wedgwood.

April - June

* April - Sultan Mahmud II of Turkey declared death.
* April 9 - The world's first commercial electric telegraph line comes into operation alongside the Great Western Railway line, from Paddington Station to West Drayton.
* April 19 - The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.
* June 22 - Louis Daguerre receives a patent for his camera (commercially available by September at the price of 400 francs).

July - September

* July 1 - Slaves aboard the "Amistad" rebel and capture the ship.
* July 1 - Abd-ul-Mejid (1839-1861) succeeds Mahmud II (1808-1839) as Ottoman Emperor.
* July 23 - First Anglo-Afghan War - Battle of Ghazni: British forces capture the fortress city of Ghazni, Afghanistan.
* August 8 - The Beta Theta Pi fraternity is founded in Oxford, Ohio.
* August 19 - The French government gives Louis Daguerre a pension and gives the daguerreotype "for the whole world".
* August 23 - British forces seize Hong Kong as a base, as it prepares to wage war against Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict becomes known as the First Opium War.
* September 9 - In the Great Fire of Mobile, Alabama hundreds of buildings are burned.

October - December

* October 3 - In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a railway between Napoli and Portici (7.4km length) is inaugurated by H.M. King Ferdinand II of Bourbon (the first railway in the Italian peninsula).
* October 15 - Abd al-Kader declares a jihad against the French.
* November 4 - The Newport Rising is the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.
* November 11 - The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.
* November 17 - Giuseppe Verdi's first opera, "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio", opens in Milan.
* November 25 - A disastrous cyclone slams India with terrible winds and a giant 40-foot storm surge, wiping out the port city of Coringa; 300,000 people die.
* November 27 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.

Undated

* In the United States, the first state law permitting women to own property is passed in Jackson, Mississippi.
* The first parallax measurement of the distance to Alpha Centauri is published by Thomas Henderson.
* Michael Faraday publishes [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14986/14986-8.txt "Experimental Researches in Electricity"] clarifying the true nature of electricity.
* An archaeological excavation on Copan begins.
* Half of the Limburg province of Belgium is added to the Netherlands (since 1839 there is a Belgian Limburg and Dutch Limburg).
* Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia is founded.
* Charles Goodyear vulcanizes rubber.
* The Anti-Corn Law League is founded in Manchester.
* Britain, backed by Russia and Austria, compels France to abandon Muhammad Ali of Egypt, and it forces him to return Syria and Arabia to the Ottomans.
* Tanzimat starts in the Ottoman Empire.
* The Chinese government dispatches Lin Zexu to Guangzhou.

Ongoing events

* First Opium War (1839-1842)

Births

January - June

* January 19 - Paul Cézanne, French painter (d. 1906)
* February 11 - Josiah Willard Gibbs, American physicist and chemist (d. 1903)
* February 22 - Francis Pharcellus Church, American editor and publisher (d. 1906)
* March 9 - Phoebe Knapp, American hymn writer (d. 1908)
* March 16 - John Butler Yeats, Northern Irish artist (d. 1922)
* March 21 - Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer (d. 1881)
* April 12 - Nikolai Przhevalsky, Russian explorer (d. 1888)
* April 30 - Floriano Peixoto, Brazilian president (d.1895)
* June 17 - Arthur Tooth, Anglican clergyman prosecuted for Ritualist practices in the 1870s (d. 1931)
* June 21 - Machado de Assis, Brazilian author (d. 1908)

July - December

* July 8 - John Davison Rockefeller, American industrialist and philanthropist (d. 1937)
* July 17 - Ephraim Shay, inventor of the Shay locomotive (d. 1916)
* November 20 - Christian Wilberg, German painter (d. 1882)
* December 5 - George Armstrong Custer, American cavalry officer (d. 1876)
* December 12 - Caroline Lake Ingalls, née Quiner, mother of author Laura Ingalls Wilder (d. 1924)

Deaths

January - June

* February 7 - Karl August Nicander, Swedish poet (b. 1799)
* March 2 - Charlotte Napoléone Bonaparte, niece of Napoleon I of France (b. 1802)
* April 1 - Benjamin Pierce, U.S. politician (b. 1757)
* April 2 - Hezekiah Niles, American editor and publisher (b. 1777)
* April 4 - Kaahumanu II, queen of Hawaii
* April 11 - John Galt, Scottish novelist (b. 1779)
* April 22 - Denis Davydov, Russian general and poet (b. 1784)
* May 17 - Archibald Alison, Scottish author (b. 1757)

July - December

* July 1 - Mahmud II, Ottoman sultan
* July 8 - Fernando Sor, Spanish composer (b. 1778)
* July 15 - Winthrop Mackworth Praed, English politician and poet (b. 1802)
* August 10 - John St. Aubyn, British fossil collector (b. 1758)
* August 22 - Benjamin Lundy, American abolitionist (b. 1789)
* August 28 - William Smith, English geologist and cartographer (b. 1769)
* October - William Light, British Army colonel and the first Surveyor-General of South Australia (b. 1786)
* November 15 - William Murdoch, Scottish inventor (b. 1754)
* December 3 - Frederick VI, King of Denmark, ex-King of Norway (b. 1768)
* December 15 - Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, court councillor and minister to Alexander I (b. 1756)