1836

• The Texas Revolution reaches its climax. Mexican Generalissimo Antonio López de Santa Anna crushes the Texans at the lopsided Battle of the Alamo, only to be defeated in the Battle of San Jacinto by a Texan force led by Sam Houston. Santa Anna is captured in the second battle, and is forced to reliquish Texas to the American settlers, who establish the Republic of Texas and elect Houston its first president.
• Martin Van Buren defeats William Henry Harrison to win the 1836 United States presidential election.
• Arkansas becomes the 25th state admitted to the United States of America.
• The city of Houston, Texas is founded by two entrepreneurs from New York, Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen, who name it after the recently victorious Texas revolutionary general Sam Houston.
• In the Fort Parker Massacre, Native Americans attack a settlement at Fort Parker, Texas, killing five men and capturing two women and three children. One of the captives, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker will later end up marrying Comanche chief Peta Nocona and giving birth to Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanche.
• Charles Darwin returns to England aboard the HMS Beagle after a five-year journey across the Southern Hemisphere, carrying with him the scientific data that will, years later, lead him to propound the theory of evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.
• The first numbered United States patent, US Patent No. 1, is granted to John Ruggles for improvements to railroad steam locomotives (9,957 unnumbered patents had previously been granted).

These people were born in 1836:

• Bengali mystic and sage Ramakrishna, whose teachings would become the basis of the Ramakrishna Mission and the Vedanta Society.
• Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose name would become the basis for the term masochism.
• British playwright and librettist W.S. Gilbert, best known for his collaborations with composer Arthur Sullivan.
• American painter Winslow Homer.
• American writer Bret Harte.
• English sanitation engineer Thomas Crapper.
• Japanese educator, statesman, and political theorist Kato Hiroyuki, the first president of Tokyo University.

These people died in 1836:

• James Madison, fourth President of the United States
• Legendary American frontiersman Davy Crockett, killed in the Battle of the Alamo.
• Legendary American frontiersman Jim Bowie, inventor of the Bowie kinfe, killed in the Battle of the Alamo.
• Texas patriot William Barret Travis, killed commanding the Texas forces in the Battle of the Alamo.
• American statesman and traitor Aaron Burr, former Vice President of the United States and killer of Alexander Hamilton.
• Korean philosopher Chŏng Yagyong.
• Scottish Utilitarian philosopher James Mill.
• Former king of France, Charles X.
• French physicist André-Marie Ampère, for whom the SI measurment of electrical current, the ampere, is named.
• Canadian brewer John Molson.
• Betsy Ross, purported maker of the first American flag.

1835 - 1836 - 1837

19th century

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