Born in 1802:

• Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel.
• English painter Edwin Henry Landseer.
• Swiss chemist Germain Henri Hess.
• French novelist and poet Victor Hugo.
• Hungarian mathematician Janos Bolyai.
• English pioneer of sociology Harriet Martineau.
• Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston.
• English poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
• Hungarian radical politician Lajos Kossuth.
• Belgian violinist and composer Charles-Auguste de Bériot.
• Cherokee author Elias Boudinot.
• American Mental health pioneer Dorothea Dix.

• Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, widow of George Washington.
• English composer Samuel Arnold.
• English naturalist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin).
• English painter George Romney.
• Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi.
• A Yellow Fever epidemic kills:
• 800 people in Philadelphia.
• (fall) 20,000 soldiers in the French expeditionary force to Haiti,
• (October 22) French commander Charles Leclerc (November).

• William Wollaston observes dark lines in the Sun's spectrum but interprets them incorrectly.
• France renames its puppet Cisalpine Republic the Italian Republic.
• Reports about US President Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings appear in Richmond, VA newspapers.
• The Ohio Territory enacts a constitution in preparation for statehood.
• (January 26) The United States Congress founds the Library of Congress.
• (January) 25,000 French troops arrive in Haiti. Commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte's brother-in-law Charles Leclerc, they are there to reconquer it from Toussaint L'Ouverture and restore slavery.
• (March 27) The Treaty of Amiens suspends the war between GReat Britain and France, Holland, and Spain.  Malta is supposed to go back to the Knights of St. John but the British retain control.
• (April 26) An amnesty allows most of the nobility who fled the French Revolution to return.
• (May) After losing several battles, L'Ouverture begins negotiating his surrender.
• (June) L'Ouverture is arrested by Leclerc and is imprisoned in France.
• (August 2) A plebiscite overwhelmingly makes Bonaparte First Consul for life.
• (October) Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Petion fight on against the French.
• Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin sees some marble friezes on some old temple in Athens and decides they would look nice on his new house.
• Eleuthére Irénée du Pont de Nemours founds a company to make black powder in Wilmington, Delaware.
• Alexander von Humboldt reaches the summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador, the furthest point on the surface of the Earth from its center.

1801 - 1802 - 1803

How they Were Made - 19th Century