1816 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).
Events
- The feared Chinese New Year of the Fire Rat begins in January.
- Known as the "Year Without A Summer" or "Eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death" in the northern hemisphere due to global cooling caused by the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption that had occurred in 1815.
- January 9 - Sir Humphry Davy tested the Davy lamp for Miners at Hebburn Colliery.
- February 12 - Fire nearly destroyed the city of St. John's, Newfoundland.
- February 20 - Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville debuts at Teatro Argentina, with a fiasco.
- March 25 - Friedrich Karl Ludwig, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck dies and is succeeded by the later Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, his son and founder of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
- April 11 - In Philadelphia, the African Methodist Episcopal Church is established by Richard Allen and other African-American Methodists, the first such denomination completely independent of White churches.
- May 2 - Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, later King of the Belgians, marries Charlotte Augusta, but she dies the next year.
- June 19 - Battle of Seven Oaks between Hudson Bay and Northwest fur-trading companies, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
- July 9 - Argentina gains independence from Spain
- July 17 - The French passenger ship Medusa runs aground off the coast of Senegal, with 140 lives lost in the botched rescue that takes weeks, leading to a scandal in the French government.
- August 24 - The Treaty with the Ottawa, etc. is signed in St. Louis, Missouri.
- November - James Monroe defeats Rufus King in U.S. presidential election
- December 11 - Indiana is admitted as the 19th U.S. state.
Unknown dates
Births
- April 21 - Charlotte Brontë, British novelist (d. 1855)
- April 22 - Charles Denis Bourbaki, French general (d. 1897)
- April 25 - Eliza Daniel Stewart, American temperance movement leader (d. ?)
- May 24 - Emanuel Leutze, American painter (d. 1868)
- June 19 - William Henry Webb, American industrialist and philanthropist (d. 1899)
- July 4 - Arthur de Gobineau, French diplomat and author (d. 1882)
- July 23 - Charlotte Cushman, American stage actress (d. 1876)
- July 31 - George Henry Thomas, American general (d. 1870)
- August 4 - William Julian Albert, U.S. Congressman (d. 1879)
- November 17 - August Wilhelm Ambros, Austrian composer (d. 1876)
- December 8 - August Belmont, Sr., Prussian-born financier (d. 1890)
- December 13 - Werner von Siemens, German inventor and industrialist (d. 1892)
- William Marsh Rice, American university founder (d. 1900)
- Charles John Vaughan, English scholar (d. 1897)
- Francis Dutton, Premier of South Australia (d. 1877)
Deaths
- January 27 - Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood, British admiral (b. 1724)
- February 6 - Maria Ludwika Rzewuska, Polish szlachcianka (b. 1744)
- February 22 - Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher and historian (b. 1723)
- March 20 - Queen Maria I of Portugal (b. 1734)
- June 5 - Giovanni Paisiello, Italian composer (b. 1751)
- June 12 - Pierre François Charles Augereau, duc de Castiglione, French marshal (b. 1757)
- July 5 - Dorothy Jordan, Irish actress, mistress of King William IV of the United Kingdom (b. 1761)
- July 7 - Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish playwright (b. 1751)
- November 8 - Gouverneur Morris, American statesman (b. 1752)
- December 15 - Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, English statesman and scientist (b. 1753)
1816
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