The [Common Era] Year of 1818, part of the [19th Century]

[1817] 1818 [1819]

Born in 1818:

January 24: [John Mason Neale], priest, scholar, and translator, is born in [London], [England]. (d. August 6 [1866], aged 48)
March 28: [Wade Hampton], Confederate general in the [American Civil War], is born in [Charleston], [South Carolina], [U.S.] (d. April 11 [1902], aged 84)
April 29: Aleksandr Nikolaevich, who will become [tsar] [Alexander II], is born in [Moscow], [Russia]. (d. March 13 [1881], aged 63)
April 12: [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (pseud. [Josh Billings]), humorist author, is born in [Lanesboro], [Massachusetts], [U.S.] (d. October 14 [1885], aged 67)
May 5: [Karl Marx], German philosopher and the founder of [Communism] who wrote [The Communist Manifesto] and Das Kapital, is born in [Prussia], present-day [Germany]. (d. March 14 [1883], aged 64)
May 20: [William George Fargo], the man after whom [Fargo], [North Dakota] will be named as well as co-founder of [Wells Fargo], the first express company operating west of [Buffalo], is born in [Pompey], [New York], [U.S.]. (d. August 3 [1881], aged 63)
May 25: [Jacob Christoph Burckhardt], cultural historian, is born in [Basel], [Switzerland]. (d. August 8, 1897, aged 79)
May 27: [Amelia Bloomer|Amelia Jenks Bloomer], feminist reformer, is born in [Homer], [New York], [U.S.] (d. December 30 [1894], aged 76)
May 28: [P.G.T. Beauregard], Confederate general in the [American Civil War], is born near [Louisiana], [U.S]. (d. February 20, [1893], aged 74)
June 17: [Charles Francois Gounod], composer and musician, is born in Paris. (d. October 18 [1893], aged 75)
July 30: [Emily Bronte|Emily Brontë], poet and author of [Wuthering Heights], is born in [Thornton], [England]. (d. December 19 [1848], aged 30)
August 1: [Maria Mitchell], astronomer and the first woman in the [American Philosophical Society] and the [American Academy of Arts and Sciences], is born in [Nantucket], [Massachusetts], [U.S.] (d. June 28 [1889], aged 70)
August 13: [Lucy Stone], suffragist and feminist, is born in [West Brookfield], [Massachusetts], [U.S.] (d. October 18 [1893], aged 75)
September 12: [Richard J. Gatling], inventor of the [Gatling gun], a rapid-fire precursor to the machine gun, is born in [Winton], [North Carolina], [U.S.] (d February 26 [1903], aged 84)
November 1: [James Renwick, Jr.] architect behind the [Smithsonian Institution] Building, is born in [Bloomingdale], [New York], [U.S.] (d. June 23 [1895], aged 76)
November 21: [Lewis Henry Morgan], lawyer and anthropologist, is born near [Aurora], [New York]. (d. December 17 [1881], aged 63)
November 29: [William Ellery Channing] (nephew of the Unitarian minister with the same name and cousin of another [William Channing] at the utopian Unitarian community [Brook Farm] and of minister Dr. [William H. Channing] but named after [William Ellery], signer of the [Declaration of Independence]), transcendentalist poet, is born in [Boston], [Massachusetts], [U.S.] (to a family with an obvious passion for confusing future generations). (d. December 23 [1901], aged 89)
December 13: [Mary Todd Lincoln], future wife of equally future president [Abraham Lincoln], is born in [Lexington], [Kentucky], [U.S.] (d. July 16 [1882], aged 63)
December 24:
- [Eliza Cook], poet, essayist and feminist, is born in [London], [England]. (d. September 23 [1889], aged 70)
- [James Prescott Joule], experimental physicist researching [energy], is born in [Salford], [England]. (d. October 11 [1889], aged 70)

Passed away in 1818:

March 25: [Light-Horse Harry Lee|Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee], highly regarded general in the [American Revolutionary War], dies at [Cumberland Island], [Georgia], [U.S.] (b. January 29 [1756], aged 62)
May 10: [Paul Revere], American revolutionary, dies in [Boston], [Massachusetts], [U.S.] (b. ca. January 1 [1735] (exact date unknown), aged 83)
May 14: [Monk Lewis|Matthew "Monk" Gregory Lewis], British novelist and playwright, dies at sea on the way from the [West Indies] to [England]. (b. July 9 [1775], aged 43)
October 28: [Abigail Adams|Abigail Smith Adams], wife of [U.S.] vice president and later president [John Adams] and mother of U.S. president [John Quincy Adams] dies in [Braintree], later known as [Quincy], [Massachusetts], U.S. (b. November 11 [1744], aged 73)

These (and other) things happened in 1818:

[Africa]:

[Shaka Zulu] becomes chief of the [Zulu] tribe in present-day [South Africa], and will use it for ten years to expand and strengthen the tribe until assassinated in [1828].

[Asia]:

In April, [Egypt], a practically independent part of [the Ottoman Empire], attacks the [Wahhabi] capital of [Ad-Dir'iyah], near the present-day capital [Riyadh|Ar Riyadh] of [Saudi Arabia], and on September 9, [Abd Allah] surrenders, and is beheaded in [Constantinople] (now [Istanbul]). This ends a seven-year-long war.

[Europe]:

On January 1, [Mary Wollstonecraft] Shelley's [Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus], written two years earlier by the nineteen-year-old girl as a response to a challenge by her friend [Lord Byron], is published. It is often interpreted as an attack on industrialization.
On January 2, the [Institution of Civil Engineers], [ICE], is founded in [London], [England], as the world's first professional engineering institution.
Philosopher [Arthur Schopenhauer], living in [Dresden], present-day [Germany], completes the first part of [The World as Will and Representation] in March. It is officially published in January the next year. The second part will not come until [1844].
English poet [John Keats] publishes [Endymion] in April and moves to [Hampstead], [London] in December, where he will live until [1820] and write [Hyperion] (begun the same year, published in [1820] and harshly criticized by [John Wilson Croker] in the [Quarterly Review]) as well as [The Fall of Hyperion], [The Eve of St. Agnes], and [Lamia]. It is also here that he will write his famous poems [Ode on a Grecian Urn] and [Ode to a Nightingale]. [Keats Grove] will later be turned into a Keats museum.
The Congress of [Aix-La-Chapelle], (today known as [Aachen], [Germany]) is held between October 1 and November 15 to preserve the peace established by the Congress of [Vienna] ([1814]-[1815]). Although fear of the French was strong following the [Napoleonic Wars], [Duc de Richelieu] convinced the English delegate [Arthur Wellesley], [The Duke of Wellesley|Duke of Wellesley], and the Allies to withdraw their troops from France.
On December 25, [Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht!] ([Silent Night]) is performed in the Church of [St. Nicholas] in [Oberndorf], near [Salzburg], present-day [Austria], after having been written days earlier by organist [Franz Gruber|Franz Grüber] to two-year-old lyrics by assistant pastor [Joseph Mohr], both serving at the church.
English author [Jane Austen]'s novel [Northanger Abbey] is published posthumously, twenty years after she began working on it. [Persuasion], written in [1816], one year before she passed away, is also published.
English poet [Lord Byron] lives in [Venice], [Italy], and writes Canto IV of [Childe Harold]'s Pilgrimage, and [Beppo]. He also begins working on [Don Juan].
[Prussia], present-day [Germany], has abolished all internal customs, and will form the [Prussian Customs Union] in the following year. A precursor to the 1834 all-German [Zollverein] between [Prussia], [Bavaria], [Wuerttemberg], [Hessen-Darmstadt], [Hessen-Kassel], [Saxony], and several smaller regions.
Englishman [Thomas Bowdler] becomes infamous by publishing the [Family Shakespeare], omitting words, expressions and actions deemed improper for the intended audience. This gives birth to the expression "to [bowdlerize]", meaning to "[castrate]" or censor "offensive" material.
[Ludwig van Beethoven] becomes productive again after almost ten years of creative drought composes his [Opus] 106: Hammerklavier [Sonata] No. 29 in B flat major and Opus 108: Twenty-Five Scottish Songs despite virtually complete deafness and mental illness. He also begins composing Opus 123: Mass in D major (Missa Solemnis), completed in [1822] and Opus 125: Symphony No. 9 in D minor "Choral", completed in [1823].
King [George IV] of England sets a trend by ordering a pair of boots made to fit his left and right foot respectively. Until this, all shoes have been straight, and left and right shoes have been interchangeable.
In [Königsberg|Königsberg], present-day Germany, [Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel] publishes [Fundamenta Astronomiae], a catalogue of 3,222 stars with their mean position establishing a reference system for their positions. This is the birth of modern [astronometry].
In observing individuals of African origin along with individuals of European origin and their resistance to tropical diseases, [Dr. W.C. Wells] discovers the principle of natural selection among human beings. These observations, first mentioned in lectures before [the Royal Society] in [1813], are published in [Two Essays upon Dew and Single Vision]. This will play a key role in [Charles Darwin]'s more generalized [1859] theory [On the origin of species by means of natural selection] or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle of life.
[Augustin Fresnel] receives a price from the [French Academy of Science] for his wave theory of light. Committee judge [S.D. Poisson] initially refutes Fresnel's model, deducing that a circular disk obstructing a narrow beam of light would produce a shadow with a central bright spot. Another judge, [Dominique Arago], however, shows in experiments that this did occur, and the spot is ironically called [Poisson's bright spot].
English poet [Leigh Hunt] publishes [Foliage].

[North America]:

The [Academician] is published on February 7 in [New York City] as the first successful U.S. educational magazine.
On March 18, the first service pension act provides for veterans of the [American Revolution], but is frequently used in fraudulent affairs.
On April 4, [Congress] decides that in order to keep the [American flag] from getting cluttered at the annexation of new states, the number of red and white stripes will be limited to thirteen representing the original states. Instead, for every new state, a white star on a blue background will be added to the twenty stars presently found on the flag.
On April 17, the H.& D. H. Brooks & Company (later known as [Brooks Brothers]) is founded and becomes an important supplier in the [Civil War].
On April 16, the U.S. Senate ratifies the [1817] [Rush-Bagot] agreement between the U.S. and Canada for disarmament on the [Great Lakes].
In the pursuit of the [Seminole]s, future president [Andrew Jackson] charges into the Spanish territory of [Florida], captures [Saint Marks], near [Tallahassee], and in a highly controversial act has Englishmen [Alexander Arbuthnot] and [Robert Chrystie Ambrister] hanged and shot respectively on charges of inciting the Seminoles against American settlers. His military actions brings about the end of the first of the [Seminole Wars].
On May 28, the [Walk-in-the-Water], becomes the first steam-vessel on the [Great Lakes] by departing from [Black Rock], [New York].
On September 20, [patent leather] is manufactured for the first time by [Seth Boyden], [Newark], [New Jersey].
Future president [Abraham Lincoln] is [kicked in the head] by a horse and is briefly believed to be dead. On October 5, young Abraham's mother [Nancy Hanks] Lincoln dies of [milk sickness]. On December 2, her widower [Thomas Lincoln] remarries a widow and mother of three, [Sarah Bush Johnston], of whom Abraham grows fond.
On October 20, the [Convention of 1818 between the United States and Great Britian], establishes that the line of demarcation between the [U.S.] and [Canada] shall run along the 49^th parallel of north latitude from [Lake of the Woods] to the [Rockies], at the time known as the "Stony Mountains". Thus [Minnesota], where Lake of the Woods is located, is established as the northernmost state of the Union (until [Alaska] becomes the 49^th state in [1959]). (Many erroneously believe [Maine] to be the northernmost state south of Canada - an illusion caused by map projection.) It is also decided that the [Oregon Territory] should be subject to joint occupation by the two countries.
On December 3, [Illinois] is admitted as the 21^st state of the Union.
Construction of the [Second Bank of the United States] building in [Greek] revival style as drawn by architect [William Strickland] is begun in [Philadelphia], [Pennsylvania]. It will be completed in [1824].
[Thomas Blanchard] of [Middlebury, CT|Middlebury], [Connecticut], builds a profile [lathe] that does the work of thirteen men, thus lowering the price of wood. The lathe is originally intended for gun stocks, and is patented the following year.
A Spanish royal decree opens the ports of [Cuba] for free international trade.
[David Young], poet, teacher and astronomer from [New York] begins publishing his [Farmer's Almanac].

[Oceania]:

[Australia Day] is officially celebrated for the first time on January 26, marking the thirtieth anniversary of European settlement.

[South America]:

On February 12, [Bernardo O'Higgins] officially establishes [Chile]'s absolute independence from [Spain] gained one year earlier.
On November 20, [Simon Bolivar] sees an opportunity to proclaim [Venezuela]'s independence from [Spain].

[1817] 1818 [1819]
[19th Century]

Credit to [mauler] for the tip about [Light-Horse Harry Lee|Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee].

1818 (idea)