1804 (place)

"Is he, too, nothing more than human? Now he will crush the rights of man. He will become a tyrant!"

Ludwig van Beethoven

• Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka.
• American author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
• British politician Benjamin Disraeli.
• French author Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, better known as Georges Sand.
• English anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen., a strong opponent of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
• Canadian statesman and poet Joseph Howe.
• French composer Louise Farrenc.
• French writer Jules-Gabriel Janin.
• German mathematician Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi.
• German biologist Matthias Schleiden.
• Belgian mathematician Pierre François Verhulst.
• German physicist Wilhelm Weber.
• Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg.
• German poet and novelist Eduard Mörike.
• Austrian author and poet Johann Gabriel Seidl.

• German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
• English playwright John Tobin.
• French director of finance Jacques Necker.
• English chemist Joseph Priestley.
• American statesman Alexander Hamilton (see below).
• Louis Antoine Henri Bourbon, duc d'Enghien, executed, see below.

• The Federalist Party is foundering.  Several prominent Federalists approach Vice-President Aaron Burr and offer to help him be elected governor of New York.  Alexander Hamilton thinks this is a terrible idea and expresses this publicly.  Burr demands an apology, and, when refused, demands a duel, which takes place on July 11 in Weehawken, NJ. Hamilton holds his fire but Burr does not.  Hamilton is killed, and Burr loses the election.
• United States President Thomas Jefferson is easily re-elected:
• Jefferson Democratic-Republican, 162 electoral votes.
• Charles Pinckney, Federalist, 14 electoral votes.
• The United States Navy, commanded by Stephen Decatur, bombards Tripoli after the capture of the USF Philadelphia.  A party of Marines sneaks into Tripoli harbor and burns the Philadelphia at the docks.
• Hispaniola declares its independence
• (January 1) Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims the Republic of Haiti with himself as Governor-General for life.  In reality Dessalines is a despot.
• (February-April) Dessalines tours Haiti, massacring most of the remaining French inhabitants.
• (October 1) Dessalines proclaims himself Emperor Jacques I.
• Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off from St. Louis on their jouney westard. By the end of the year, they have reached what is now North Dakota and build a fort in which to spend the winter.
• The British Parliament imposes a duty on imported grain, the first of the "Corn Laws" which pitted rural English landowners against the urban working class, and were also a major contributor to the Irish potato famine of 1845-1848.
• A horse-drawn railway connects Swansea and Oystermouth in August.  Richard Trevithick tests a steam locomotive in Wales.
• The British fund French royalists to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte.  The coup attempt fails.
• (March 21) Napoleon has the Duc d'Enghien kidnapped and shot.
• (May 18) In the aftermath, Napoleon has himself made Emperor.  He also arranges for his relatives to be given royal titles.
• (December 2) At Napoleon's coronation, he takes the crown from Pope Pius VI and places it on his own head.
• When Beethoven hears of this, he angrigly crosses out the dedication to Napoleon on his Third ("Eroica") Symphony.
• France enacts a national civil code, known today as the Code Napoleon.
• Spain declares war on Great Britain.

1803 - 1804 - 1805

How they Were Made - 19th Century