1841

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	18th century 19th century 20th century
Decades:	1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s
Years:	1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844

1841 in various calendars

Gregorian calendar	1841 MDCCCXLI
Ab urbe condita	2594
Armenian calendar	1290 ԹՎ ՌՄՂ
Assyrian calendar	6591
Balinese saka calendar	1762–1763
Bengali calendar	1248
Berber calendar	2791
British Regnal year	4 Vict. 1 – 5 Vict. 1
Buddhist calendar	2385
Burmese calendar	1203
Byzantine calendar	7349–7350
Chinese calendar	庚子年 (Metal Rat) 4537 or 4477     — to — 辛丑年 (Metal Ox) 4538 or 4478
Coptic calendar	1557–1558
Discordian calendar	3007
Ethiopian calendar	1833–1834
Hebrew calendar	5601–5602
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1897–1898
- Shaka Samvat	1762–1763
- Kali Yuga	4941–4942
Holocene calendar	11841
Igbo calendar	841–842
Iranian calendar	1219–1220
Islamic calendar	1256–1257
Japanese calendar	Tenpō 12 (天保１２年)
Javanese calendar	1768–1769
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 12 days
Korean calendar	4174
Minguo calendar	71 before ROC 民前71年
Nanakshahi calendar	373
Thai solar calendar	2383–2384
Tibetan calendar	阳金鼠年 (male Iron-Rat) 1967 or 1586 or 814     — to — 阴金牛年 (female Iron-Ox) 1968 or 1587 or 815

April 4: Death of William Henry Harrison

August 26: Battle of Amoy

1840 (MDCCCXL) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1840th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 840th year of the 2nd millennium, the 40th year of the 19th century, and the 1st year of the 1840s decade. As of the start of 1840, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events

January–March

• January 20 – Charles Elliot of the United Kingdom, and Qishan of the Qing dynasty, agree to the Convention of Chuenpi.
• January 26 – Britain occupies Hong Kong. Later in the year, the first census of the island records a population of about 7,500.
• January 27 – The active volcano Mount Erebus in Antarctica is discovered, and named by James Clark Ross.
• January 28 – Ross discovers the "Victoria Barrier", later known as the Ross Ice Shelf. On the same voyage, he discovers the Ross Sea, Victoria Land and Mount Terror.
• January 30 – A fire ruins and destroys two-thirds of the villa (modern-day city) of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
• February 4 – First known reference to Groundhog Day in North America, in the diary of a James Morris.
• February 10 – The Act of Union (British North America Act, 1840) is proclaimed in Canada.
• February 11 – The two colonies of the Canadas are merged, into the United Province of Canada.
• February 18 – The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate begins, and lasts until March 11.
• February – El Salvador proclaims itself an independent republic, bringing an end to the (already de facto defunct) Federal Republic of Central America.
• March 4 – William Henry Harrison is sworn in as the ninth President of the United States.
• March 9 – United States v. The Amistad: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the case, that the Africans who seized control of the ship had been taken into slavery illegally.
• March 12 – SS President, commanded by legendary captain Richard Roberts ("I'd Go to Sea in a Bathtub"), founders in rough seas, with all passengers and crew lost.

April–June

• April 4 – President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia, aged 68, becoming the first President of the United States to die in office, and at one month, the American president with the shortest term served. He is succeeded by Vice President John Tyler, who becomes the tenth President of the United States.
• April 6 – President John Tyler is sworn in.
• May – The Sino-Sikh War begins.
• May 3 – New Zealand becomes a separate British colony, having previously been administered as part of the Colony of New South Wales.
• May 22 – The Georgian province of Guria revolts against the Russian Empire.
• June 6 – The United Kingdom Census is held, the first to record names and approximate ages of every household member, and to be administered nationally.
• June 21 – St. John's College (later Fordham University) is founded in The Bronx, by the Society of Jesus.
• June 28 – The ballet Giselle is first presented by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris, France.

July–September

July 18: Coronation of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil

• July – Scottish missionary David Livingstone arrives at Kuruman in the Northern Cape, his first posting in Africa.
• July 5 – Thomas Cook arranges his first railway excursion, in England.
• July 17 – The first edition of the humorous magazine Punch is published in London.
• July 18 (Sunday)
  • Emperor Pedro II of Brazil is crowned in Rio de Janeiro.
  • The sixth bishop of Calcutta, Daniel Wilson, and Dr. James Taylor, Civil Surgeon at Dhaka, establish the first modern educational institution on the Indian subcontinent, Dhaka College.
• July 20 – The Mercantile Agency (ancestor of Dun & Bradstreet) is founded in New York City, by Lewis Tappan.
• August 11 – Frederick Douglass speaks in front of the Anti-Slavery Convention in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
• August 16 – U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House, in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.
• August 20–October 16 – The Niger expedition of 1841 begins sailing up the Niger River by paddle steamers, under the auspices of the British Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilisation of Africa; it is largely abortive, due to the high incidence of disease among the crews.
• September 24 – Sarawak is broken away from Brunei, and James Brooke is appointed Rajah.

October–December

• October 10 – First Opium War: Battle of Chinhai – British capture a Chinese garrison.
• October 13 – First Opium War: British occupy Ningbo.
• October 16 – Queen's University is founded in Kingston, Ontario, by Rev. Thomas Liddell, who carries a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria, and becomes the school's first principal.
• October 30 – A fire at the Tower of London destroys its Grand Armoury and causes a quarter of a million pounds' worth of damage.
• November – The settlement of Dallas, Texas, is founded by John Neely Bryan.
• November 13 – Scottish surgeon James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism by Charles Lafontaine in Manchester, which leads to his study of the phenomenon that he (Braid) eventually calls hypnotism.
• December 20 – The first multilateral treaty for the suppression of the African slave trade, the Treaty for the Suppression of the African Slave Trade, signed in London by the representatives of Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and Russia.
• December 23 – First Anglo-Afghan War: At a meeting with the Afghan general Akbar Khan, British diplomat Sir William Hay Macnaghten is shot dead at close quarters.

Date unknown

• John Augustus develops the concept of probation in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ongoing

• First Opium War (1839–42)
• First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–42)

Births

January–June

Henry Morton Stanley

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

• January 8
  • Hakeem Noor-ud-Din, Muslim scholar, 1st Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Islam (d. 1914)
  • Kate Stone, American diarist (d. 1907)
• January 14 – Berthe Morisot, French painter (d. 1895)
• January 15 – Frederick Stanley, 16th Earl of Derby, English-Canadian politician, soldier (d. 1908)
• January 23 – Benoît-Constant Coquelin, French actor, Cyrano de Bergerac (d. 1909)
• January 25 – John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, British admiral (d. 1920)
• January 27 – Alexandru Candiano-Popescu, Romanian general, lawyer, journalist, and poet (d. 1901)
• January 28 – Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Welsh explorer, journalist (d. 1904)
• January 30 – Félix Faure, President of France (d. 1899)
• February 2 – François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist (d. 1912)
• February 4 – Clément Ader, French engineer, inventor, and airplane pioneer (d. 1926)
• February 10 – Alfred Heaver, English property developer (d. 1901)
• February 15 – Manuel Ferraz de Campos Sales, 4th President of Brazil (d. 1913)
• February 16 – Armand Guillaumin, French painter, lithographer (d. 1927)
• February 24 – Carl Gräbe, German chemist (d. 1927)
• February 25 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter (d. 1919)
• March 1 – Luigi Luzzatti, Italian financier, economist, philosopher, and jurist, 20th Prime Minister of Italy (d. 1927)
• March 8 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1935)
• March 15 – Pietro Bonilli, Italian Roman Catholic priest and blessed (d. 1935)
• April 3 – Hermann Carl Vogel, German astrophysicist, astronomer (d. 1907)
• April 9 – William George Aston, British consular official (d. 1911)
• April 13 – Louis-Ernest Barrias, French sculptor (d. 1905)
• May 10 – James Gordon Bennett Jr., American newspaper publisher (d. 1918)
• May 14 – Sir Squire Bancroft, English actor (d. 1926)
• May 15 – Clarence Dutton, American geologist (d. 1912)
• June 1 – Edward Lyon Buchwalter, Union captain in the American Civil War, businessman, and banker (d. 1933)

July–December

Wilfrid Laurier

Antonín Dvořák

• July 2 – Alexander Mikhaylovich Zaytsev, Russian chemist (d. 1910)
• July 5 – Mary Arthur McElroy, de facto First Lady of the United States (d. 1917)
• August 6 – Florence Baker, Hungarian-born explorer (d. 1916)
• August 14 – Joaquín Vara de Rey y Rubio, Spanish general (d. 1898)
• August 24 – Anna Hierta-Retzius, Swedish women's rights activist (d. 1924)
• August 25 – Emil Kocher, Swiss medical researcher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1917)
• August 28 – Louis Le Prince, French inventor, Father of Cinematography (d. 1890)
• September 8
  • Antonín Dvořák, Czech composer (d. 1904)
  • Charles J. Guiteau, American lawyer, assassin of James A. Garfield (d. 1882)
• September 10 – Yamaji Motoharu, Japanese general (d. 1897)
• September 28 – Georges Clemenceau, French statesman (d. 1929)
• October 4 – Prudente de Morais, 3rd President of Brazil (d. 1902)
• October 7 – King Nicholas I of Montenegro (d. 1921)
• October 16 – Prince Itō Hirobumi, 4-time prime minister of Japan (d. 1909)
• November 6
  • Nelson W. Aldrich, Senator from Rhode Island (d. 1915)
  • Armand Fallières, 9th President of France (d. 1931)
• November 9 – King Edward VII of the United Kingdom (d. 1910)
• November 13 – Edward Burd Grubb Jr., American Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General (d.1913)
• November 20 – Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 7th Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1919)
• November 25 – Ernst Schröder, German mathematician and academic (d. 1902)
• December 6 – Frédéric Bazille, French painter (d. 1870)
• December 20 – Ferdinand Buisson, French pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1932)

Date unknown

• Arousyak Papazian, Armenian actress, writer (d. 1907)

Deaths

January–June

William Henry Harrison

Saint Peter Chanel

• January 15 – Johann Jacob Friedrich Wilhelm Parrot, Baltic-German naturalist, traveller (b. 1792)
• January 20 – Jørgen Jørgensen, Danish adventurer (b. 1780)
• February 12 – Sir Astley Cooper, British surgeon and anatomist (b. 1768)
• February 17 – Ferdinando Carulli, Italian guitarist (b. 1770)
• March 1 – Claude Victor-Perrin, Duc de Belluno, French marshal (b. 1764)
• March 12 – Richard Roberts, captain of SS President (b. 1803)
• March 16 – Félix Savart, French physicist (b. 1791)
• April 4 – William Henry Harrison, American military officer and politician, 9th President of the United States (b. 1773)
• April 10 – William Lloyd, Welsh Anglican priest turned schoolteacher, Methodist preacher (b. 1771)
• April 28 – Peter Chanel, French Roman Catholic priest, missionary, and saint (martyred) (b. 1803)
• April 30 – Peter Andreas Heiberg, Danish author, philologist (b. 1758)
• May 13 – Maria Madeline Taylor, Australian stage actor (b. 1805)
• May 16 – Marie Boivin, French midwife, inventor, and obstetrics writer (b. 1773)
• May 20 – Joseph Blanco White, British theologian (b. 1775)
• May 23 – Franz Xaver von Baader, German philosopher, theologian (b. 1765)
• June 1
  • Nicolas Appert, French inventor (b. 1749)
  • David Wilkie, Scottish artist (b. 1785)

July–December

• July – Mary Rogers ("Beautiful Cigar Girl"), American murder victim (b. c. 1820)
• August 16 – Fernando Errázuriz Aldunate, Chilean politician, President of Chile (b.c 1777)
• August 24 – Theodore Edward Hook, English author (b. 1788)
• September 25 – John Chandler, American politician (b. 1762)
• October 9 – Karl Friedrich Schinkel, German architect (b. 1781)
• November 18 – Agustín Gamarra, Peruvian general and politician, 10th and 14th President of Peru (b. 1785)
• December 4 – David Daniel Davis, British physician (b. 1777)
• December 23 – William Hay Macnaghten, Anglo-Indian diplomat (b. 1793)

Further reading

• Heilprin, Louis (1885). "Chronological Table of Universal History". Historical Reference Book. New York: D. Appleton and Company. hdl:2027/wu.89097349187 – via Hathi Trust. 1841