1804
Events
January–March
January 1 – Haiti gains independence from France, becoming the first independent Black state in the New World.
February 4 – The Sokoto Caliphate is founded in West Africa.
February 14 – The First Serbian uprising begins the Serbian Revolution . By 1817, the Principality of Serbia will have proclaimed self-rule from the Ottoman Empire , the first nation-state in Europe to do so.
February 15 – New Jersey becomes the last of the northern United States to abolish slavery .
February 16 – First Barbary War : Stephen Decatur leads a raid to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia at Tripoli to deny her further use by the captors.
February 18 – Ohio University is chartered by the Ohio General Assembly.
February 20 – Hobart is established in its permanent location in Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania) as a British penal colony .
February 21 – Cornishman Richard Trevithick 's newly built Penydarren steam locomotive operates on the Merthyr Tramroad , between Penydarren in Merthyr Tydfil and Abercynon in South Wales , following several trials since February 13, the world's first locomotive to work on rails.
February 22 –April 22 – 1804 Haiti massacre , an ethnic cleansing with the goal of eradicating the white population on Haiti.
March 4 –March 5 – The Castle Hill convict rebellion breaks out in New South Wales , led by Irish convicts in Australia .
March 7 – In Britain:
March 10 – Louisiana Purchase , Three Flags Day : In St. Louis , a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.
March 17 – Friedrich Schiller 's play Wilhelm Tell is first performed at Weimar , under the direction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe .
March 21 – The Napoleonic Code is adopted as French civil law .
October–December
October 5 – Action of 5 October 1804 : War between Spain and the United Kingdom is triggered by the battle between four British warships (Indefatigable , Medusa , Amphion and Lively ) and four Spanish frigates (Medee , Fama , Clara and Mercedes ), all carrying treasure and merchandise. Captain Graham Moore of Indefatigable informs Spanish Admiral Jose Bustamante of his orders to detain the treasure-laden ships and, "not receiving a satisfactory answer, an Action commenced"; La Mercedes is sunk and the other three ships surrender.
October 8 – Jean-Jacques Dessalines holds his coronation as Jean-Jacques I, Emperor of Haiti .
November 3 – The Treaty of St. Louis is signed by Quashquame and William Henry Harrison ; controversy surrounding the treaty eventually causes the Sauk people to ally with the British during the War of 1812 , and is the main cause of the Black Hawk War of 1832.
November 20 – Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman , starts to rule.
November 30 – The Democratic-Republican -controlled United States Senate begins an impeachment trial against Federalist -partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase , on charges of political bias (he is acquitted by the United States Senate of all charges on March 1, 1805).
December 2 – Coronation of Napoleon I : At the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris , Napoleon crowns himself as the first Emperor of the French in a thousand years. Witnessing this, Simón Bolívar dedicates himself to liberating Venezuela from Spanish rule.
December 3 – Thomas Jefferson defeats Charles C. Pinckney in the United States presidential election .
December 12 – Spain declares war on the United Kingdom.
Births
January–June
Eliza R. Snow
J. L. Runeberg
January 1 – James Fannin , Texas revolutionary (d. 1836 )
January 9
January 10 – Élie Frédéric Forey , French general, Marshal of France (d. 1872 )
January 20 – Eugène Sue , French novelist (d. 1857 )
January 21 – Eliza Roxcy Snow , American poet (d. 1887 )
February 5 – J. L. Runeberg , Finnish national poet (d. 1877 )
February 7 – John Deere , American industrialist (d. 1886 )
February 13 – Claude-Étienne Minié , French army officer and weapon inventor (d. 1879 )
February 29 – Carl von Rokitansky , Czech medical doctor and pathologist (d. 1878 )
March 8 – Alvan Clark , American telescope manufacturer (d. 1887 )
March 14 – Johann Strauss Senior , Austrian composer (d. 1849 )
March 17 – Jim Bridger , American trapper and explorer (d. 1881)
March 20 – Neal Dow , mayor of Portland, Maine and Father of Prohibition (d. 1897 )
April 3 – Lucien Baudens , French military surgeon (d. 1857 )
April 4 – Andrew Nicholl , Northern Irish painter (d. 1886 )
April 18 – Robert Davidson , Scottish locomotive pioneer (d. 1894 )
April 24 – Chō Kōran , Japanese poet, painter (d. 1879 )
April 26 – Charles Goodyear , American politician (d. 1876)
May 4 – Margaretta Riley , British botanic (d. 1899 )
May 13 – Per Gustaf Svinhufvud af Qvalstad , treasurer of Tavastia province , manor host, and paternal grandfather of President of Finland P. E. Svinhufvud (d. 1866 )
May 16 – Elizabeth Peabody , Transcendental activist, educator (d. 1894 )
June 1
June 24 – Willard Richards , American religious leader (d. 1854 )
July–December
Richard Owen
Ludwig Feuerbach
Jane Irwin Harrison
Franklin Pierce
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
Benjamin Disraeli
July 1 – George Sand , French novelist (d. 1876 )
July 4 – Nathaniel Hawthorne , American writer (d. 1864 )
July 6 – Jerónimo Carrión , 8th President of Ecuador (d. 1873 )
July 14 – Ludwig von Benedek , Austrian general (d. 1881 )
July 20 – Richard Owen , English anatomist, paleontologist, and zoologist (d. 1892 )
July 23 – Jane Irwin Harrison , de facto First Lady of the United States (d. 1846 )
July 28 – Ludwig Feuerbach , German philosopher (d. 1872 )
September 5 – William Alexander Graham , United States Senator from North Carolina (1840–1843), Confederate States Senator (1864–1865) (d. 1875 )
September 8 – Eduard Mörike , German poet (d. 1875 )
September 11 – Mercedes Marín del Solar , international Chilean poet and reform educator (d. 1866 )
September 14
September 28 – Alpheus Felch , American governor and senator from Michigan (d. 1896 )
October 18 – Mongkut , Rama IV, King of Siam (d. 1868 )
October 24 – Wilhelm Eduard Weber , German physicist (d. 1891 )
November 18 – Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora , Italian general and statesman (d. 1878 )
November 23 – Franklin Pierce , 14th President of the United States (d. 1869 )
December 7 – Noah Haynes Swayne , Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1884 )
December 10 – Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi , German mathematician (d. 1851 )
December 13 – Joseph Howe , Canadian politician (d. 1873 )
December 16 – Viktor Bunyakovsky , Ukrainian-Russian mathematician (d. 1889 )
December 21 – Benjamin Disraeli , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1868; 1874–1880) (d. 1881 )
December 23 – Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve , French literary critic (d. 1869 )
Deaths
January–June
Charlotte Lennox
Joseph Priestley
Immanuel Kant
January 4 – Charlotte Ramsey Lennox , British author and poet (b. 1727)
January 15 – Dru Drury , English entomologist (b. 1725)
February 3 – Sir Edward Blackett, 4th Baronet , English politician (b. 1719)
February 6 – Joseph Priestley , British chemist (b. 1733)
February 7 – William Bingham , American Continental congressman, senator for Pennsylvania (b. 1752)
February 12 – Immanuel Kant , German philosopher (b. 1724)
March 3 – Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo , painter (b. 1727)
March 13 – Damodar Pande , Prime Minister of Nepal (b. 1752)
March 16 – Henrik Gabriel Porthan Finnish writer and historian (b. 1739)
March 21 – Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien (executed) (b. 1772)
March 30 – Victor-François, 2nd duc de Broglie , Marshal of France (b. 1718)
April 9 – Jacques Necker , French statesman (b. 1732)
April 11 – Miklós Küzmics , Hungarian Slovenes writer, Catholic priest (b. 1737)
April 15 – Jean-Charles Pichegru , French general (strangled in prison) (b. 1761)
May 25 – Johann Joachim Spalding , German theologian (b. 1714)
July–December
July 12 – Alexander Hamilton , American statesman and Founding Father (killed in a duel) (b. 1755 or 1757)
September 4 – Richard Somers , American naval officer (killed in battle) (b. 1778)
September 20 – Pierre Méchain , French astronomer (b. 1744)
October 2 – Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot , French steam vehicle pioneer (b. 1725)
October 8 – Thomas Cochran (judge) , Canadian judge (b. 1777)
October 29 – Sarah Crosby , the first female Methodist preacher (b. 1729)
November 1 – Johann Friedrich Gmelin , German naturalist (b. 1748)
November 5 – Maria Anna Adamberger , Austrian actress (b. 1752)
November 18 – Philip Schuyler , general in the American Revolution , a United States senator from New York, father of Angelica Schuyler Church and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton , father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton (b. 1733)
November 23 – Richard Graves , English writer (b. 1715)
December 18 – Jacob ben Wolf Kranz , Lithuanian maggid (b. c. 1740)
December 25 – Contarina Barbarigo , famous Venetian noble.
References
↑ Internationale Kunstausstellung (Munich, Germany); Münchener Künstler-Genossenschaft, organizer; Verein Bildender Künstler Münchens "Secession", organizer (1883). Illustrierter Katalog der internationalen Kunstausstellung im königl. Glaspalaste in München . Getty Research Institute.
↑ MADEO. "Feb. 15, 1804 | New Jersey Passes Law Delaying End of Slavery for Decades" . calendar.eji.org . Retrieved July 12, 2025 .
↑ "Queen to Honour David Collins in Historic Unveiling" . The Mercury . Hobart. February 19, 1954. p. 8, Royal Visit Souvenir supplement. Archived from the original on January 7, 2019. Retrieved January 17, 2012 .
↑ Rattenbury, Gordon; Lewis, M. J. T. (2004). Merthyr Tydfil Tramroads and their Locomotives . Oxford: Railway and Canal Historical Society . ISBN 0-901461-52-0 .
↑ Gaffield, Julia (2015). Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 83– 84.
↑ Whitaker, Anne-Maree. "Castle Hill convict rebellion 1804" . Dictionary of Sydney . Archived from the original on March 4, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2013 .
↑ Penguin Pocket On This Day . Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0 .
↑ "Our timeline" . Bible Society. Archived from the original on December 28, 2010. Retrieved November 26, 2010 .
↑ Hough, Barry; Davis, Howard; Davis, Lydia (2010). Coleridge's Laws: A Study of Coleridge in Malta . Open Book Publishers. pp. 28–. ISBN 978-1-906924-12-6 .
↑ Howe, James Lewis (July 20, 1900). "The Eighth Group of the Periodic System and Some of its Problems". The Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science : 31.
↑ Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson (Cambridge University Press, 1846; reprinted 2011) p266
↑ John Relly Beard, The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Negro Patriot of Hayti (James Redpath Co., 1863, reprinted by University of North Carolina Press, 2012) p271
↑ Shimizu, Hiroshi (2008). Japanese Firms in Contemporary Singapore . NUS Press. p. 154. ISBN 978-9971-69-384-8 .
↑ Van Bavel, J. (2013). "The world population explosion: Causes, backgrounds and projections for the future" . Facts, Views & Vision in ObGyn . 5 (4): 281– 291. PMC 3987379 . PMID 24753956 .
↑ "Runeberg: a patriotic 19th-century rapper" . Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Finland) . February 5, 2016. Archived from the original on November 24, 2020. Retrieved December 9, 2020 .
↑ Randel, Don Michael (October 30, 2002). The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Harvard University Press. p. 866. ISBN 978-0-674-25572-2 . Archived from the original on March 26, 2023. Retrieved March 18, 2023 .
↑ Wonning, Paul R. (April 15, 2020). "Short History of Railroads: The Story of the Evolution of the Train" .
↑ Taulut: Peter Gustaf Svinhufvud af Qvalstad & Ulrica Charlotta von Kraemer Archived November 29, 2021, at the Wayback Machine (in Finnish)
↑ "Svinhufvud" . Suomen presidentit . Archived from the original on June 18, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2021 .
↑ "Luce Ben Aben School of Arab Embroidery I, Algiers, Algeria" . World Digital Library . 1899. Archived from the original on September 28, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2013 .
External links
Media related to 1804 at Wikimedia Commons