1809

Decades: 1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s - 1800s - 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s

Years: 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 - 1809 - 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814

Events

• First running of the Two Thousand Guineas Stakes horse race in England.
• January 16 - Peninsular War: The British defeat the French at the Battle of Corunna.
• February 3 - Illinois Territory was created.
• February 11 - Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.
• February 20 - A decision by the Supreme Court of the United States states that the power of the federal government is greater than any individual state.
• March 4 - James Madison succeeds Thomas Jefferson as the President of the United States
• May - Napoleon captures Vienna, is excommunicated, imprisons pope Pius VII
• May 5 - Mary Kies is the first woman to be awarded a patent
• May 5 - The Swiss canton of Aargau denies Jews citizenship.
• May 17 - Napoleon I of France orders the annexation of the Papal States to the French empire.
• June 6 - A New Constitution for Sweden, again a Constitutional Monarchy after an unbloody revolution March 22: Charles XIII succeeds Gustav IV Adolf.
• June 7 - Shah Shuja of Afghanistan signs a treaty with the British. Only weeks later, he is succeeded by Mahmud Shah
• September 17 - Peace between Russia and Sweden in the Finnish War. The territory to become Finland is ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Fredrikshamn.
• October 11 - Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder's Stand.

• USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) is recommissioned as flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron.
• Louis Poinsot describes the two remaining Kepler solids.
• Lamarck publishes Philosophie Zoologique, outlining the concept of evolution.

Year in topics

• 1809 in art
• 1809 in science

Births

• January 4 - Louis Braille, teacher, developed writing system for the blind (+ 1852).
• January 19 - Edgar Allan Poe, US writer
• February 3 - Felix Mendelssohn Bartoldy, composer (+ 1847)
• February 12 - Abraham Lincoln, US president
• February 12 - Charles Darwin, British naturalist
• March 31 - Nikolai Gogol, writer
• June 8 - Richard Wigginton Thompson, congressman
• August 6 - Alfred Lord Tennyson, British poet
• August 8 - Heinrich Abeken, German theologian
• August 27 - Hannibal Hamlin, US politician
• December 24 - Christopher Houston, American frontiersman
• William Ewart Gladstone, British liberal politician
• Hermann Gunter Grassmann, Prussian mathematician

Deaths

• June 8 - Thomas Paine, writer of Common Sense
• August 18 - Matthew Boulton, pioneering industrialist and member of the Lunar Society
• Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard, Danish painter
• Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer

Heads of states

• Denmark - Frederick VI King of Denmark (1808-1839), and King of Norway (1808-1814)
• France - Napoléon I Emperor of France (1804-1814)
• Ottoman Empire - Mahmud II Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1808-1839)
• Prussia - Frederick William III King of Prussia (1797-1840)
• Spain - Joseph Bonaparte King of Spain (1808-1813)
• Russia - Alexander I Tsar of Russia (1801-1825)
• United States - Thomas Jefferson third President of the United States (1801-1809)

Referenced By