1810

• Polish-French pianist and composer Frederic Chopin.
• German composer Robert Schumann.
• American showman Phineas T. Barnum.
• Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, newspaper publisher and architect of Italian unification.
• American trancendentalist philosopher, journalist, and feminist Sarah Margaret Fuller.
• French playwright Louis Charles Alfred de Musset.
• German physiologist Theodor Schwann.
• German mathematician Ernst Kummer.
• French poet and journalist Hégésippe Moreau.
• Eliza McCardle, future wife of President Andrew Johnson.
• Japanese politician Hotta Masayoshi.
• Japanese artist Shiba Kokan.
• German composer Ferdinand David.
• American painter Paul Kane, in Ireland.
• French composer Félicien César David.
• English novelist Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell.

• English chemist Henry Cavendish.
• American novelist Charles Brockden Brown.
• German physicist Johann Ritter.
• German painter and color theorist Philipp Otto Runge.
• Japanese medical educator Koan Ogata.

• The United States Census counts 6,807,786 people, including 1,130,781 slaves.
• (August 4) Shawnee chief Tecumseh and Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison have a dramatic meeting in Vincennes, Illinois. Tecumseh, claiming to be chief of all Indians, decries American atrocities and asserts that the previous year's Treaty of Fort Wayne, which had ceded quite a bit of land to Indiana Territory, was void.  Harrison stonewalls; they almost come to blows.Tecumseh warns Harrison of the consequences should he not change President Madison's mind.
• Kaumualii, the reigning chief of the island of Kaua`i, agrees to hand the island over to King Kamehameha, rather than be invaded.   Kamehameha thus becomes ruler of all Hawai`i for the first time.
• Napoleon Bonaparte is at the zenith of his power.  Now is the time for some dynasty-building, although  Arthur Wellesley, now Duke of Wellington, is proving a nuisance, in Portugal.
• (April 1) Having divorced Josephine, Napoleon marries Princess Marie-Louise of Austria.
• (June) Marshal Massena advances into Portugal.
• (July 9) Napoleon removes his brother Louis from the throne of Holland and annexes it to France.
• (August 21) Sweden elects French Marshal Bernadotte as its crown prince.
• (September 27) Massena attacks British and Portugese troops at Busaco. Wellington withdraws to his defensive line around Lisbon.  Massena advances across a moonscape to come up against well-defended earthworks, and winter is approaching.
• (October 20) Bernadotte lands in his new country, changes his name to Karl Johan and begins directing Swedish policy.
• (December 3) Britain captures the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius from the French.
• (December 13) Napoleon annexes all of the northern coast of Germany to France.
• (December 31) Tsar Alexander I withdraws from Napoleon's embargo against Great Britain.
• The turmoil in Spain means that New Spain is coming apart.
• (April 19) A junta (council) ousts the Captain-General of Venezuela. The council, one of whom is Simon Bolivar, rules in the name of King Ferdinand.  Bolivar travels to London and meets General Francisco de Miranda, who had fought in both the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
• (May 25) Creoles in Buenos Aires form an independent government for that city.
• (July 20) The citizens of Bogota, Colombia repudiate Spanish authority.
• (August 2) A massacre in Quito ends an insurrection in Ecuador.
• (September 15) Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla utters yelled El Grito de Dolores from a balcony in the town of Dolores Hidalgo, beginning the revolt that would eventually (1824) win independence for Mexico.
• (September 18) The town council of Santiago de Chile deposes the Spanish colonial governor of Chile.
• (September 23) American settlers in West Florida renounce Spanish authority, setting up a republic with its capital in Baton Rouge.
• (September 29) Padre Hidalgo and his rebels capture the city of Guanajato, after which the Creoles decide that the Peninsular spanish are not so bad after all.
• (October 27) West Florida adopts a Constitution.
• (December 5) President James Madison, in his address to Congress, states that West Florida was part of the Louisiana Purchase.
• (December 6) United States troops enter Baton Rouge.
• (December 12) Miranda arrives back in Venezuela.

1809 - 1810 - 1811

How they Were Made - 19th Century