A Regency Era Timeline 1811 in progress

Timeline

Each time I start a year, I have already compiled a list, months ago with about 6000 entered of what happened from 1788 to 1837. My first step now (It took several trials to get this down to a science) is to cut out the specific year I will work on and paste it into its own spreadsheet to work with. When I worked on the entire spreadsheet, sometimes inserting a line, with all the graphics I had begun to place, took a long time. Working on each year alone, is a lot faster.

With the year separated out, I now turn to my book sources,

The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein

Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield

What Happened When by Carruth.

, History of the World. A beautiful Dorling Kindersley book.

I now and diligently look through each of these to find entries that I did not come across on the internet, and other printed lists. It is possible that there are places that have more listings for each year. I have not found them. And when you go to the Timelines at the Regency Assembly Press page, there you will see all the graphical references as well. Something that I did not find anywhere else.

Here is the start of 1811:

Year

Month Day

Event



1811

4-Jan

Jan. 4: A heavy fall of snow rendered the northern roads almost impassable. The river Severn froze.  The River Thames froze



1811

5-Jan

Jan. 5: Two outside passengers on the Carlisle coach frozen to death.



1811

10-Jan

Jan. 10. A monster, or women hater, dangerously wounded a female in St. James’s Park



1811

13-Jan

Jan. 13: Gallant Action in which the merchant ship Cumberland, Capt. Barratt, beat off four French privateers.



1811

16-Jan

Jan. 16: A chimney sweep’s boy suffocated in a chimney in Orchard street, Westminister.



1811

22-Jan

Jan. 22: The Cosgrove Aqueduct, an iron aqueduct bridge of the Grand Junction Canal  over the river Ouse near Stratford (pictured here), opened for the passage of boats. This is a cast iron trough in which canal boats navigated from one side of the river to the other passing through several locks as it moves up hill. A tow path runs alongside the canal on one side, on the other it looks something like an infinity pool.



1811

31-Jan

Jan. 31: there was an eruption of a volcano in 80 fathoms of water, near Azores.



1811

Jan 2

US Sen Timothy Pickering (1745-1829) of Massachusetts became the 1st US senator to be censured. He had revealed confidential documents communicated by the president of the US.



1811

Jan 6

Charles Sumner (d.1874), leading anti-slavery senator and author, was born in Boston. He was active in the movement to outlaw war, opposed the Mexican War and was a founder in 1848 of the Free-Soil party. A senator from Massachusetts, Sumner was an ardent abolitionist and helped organize the Republican party. In c1867 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner popularized the name Alaska for the territory that had been known as Russian America in a famous Senate speech supporting the treaty to purchase Russian America: “There is the National flag. He must be cold, indeed, who can look upon its folds rippling in the breeze without pride of country. If in a foreign land, the flag is companionship, and country itself, with all its endearments.”



1811

Jan 8

Charles Deslondes led several hundred poorly armed slaves towards New Orleans in the largest slave rebellion in US history.



1811

Jan 9

The USS Revenge, a ship commanded by US Navy hero Oliver Hazard Perry ran aground on a reef off of Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Divers discovered the wreck in August 2005, but only made the news public in 2011.



1811

Jan 10

An uprising of over 400 slaves was put down in New Orleans. Sixty-six blacks were killed and their heads were strung up along the roads of the city.



1811

Jan 15

In a secret session, Congress planned to annex Spanish East Florida.



1811

January

January: Marshall Soult captures Olivenza.



1811

5-Feb

On February 5, with George III insane, George IV (Prinny) is declared Regent, thus officially starting the Regency period.



1811

6-Feb

Feb.6: His R.H. the Prince of Wales was sworn into office of Regent.



1811

10-Feb

Feb.10: A conflagration near Limehouse hole stairs (on the river near the southwest India dock) destroyed four warehouses and twelve dwelling houses.



1811

23-Feb

Feb.23: A decree of Bonaparte ordered prisoners of war to be employed as laborers.



1811

26-Feb

Feb.26: John Liles sentenced to seven years transportation, for bigamy.



1811

26-Feb

Feb.26: Hadje Hassan, ambassador from Algiers, had his first audience of the Prince Regent.



1811

27-Feb

Feb.27: The House of representatives in the American congress passed a bill prohibiting intercourse with Great Britain and on Feb. 28 Mr. Pinkney, the American minister in this country, had his audience of leave.



1811

Feb 1

Scotland’s Bell Rock lighthouse, at the mouth of Scotland’s Firth of Forth, began operations. Robert Stevenson (1772-1850) had begun work on the lighthouse in 1807.



1811

Feb 2

Russian settlers established Ft. Ross trading post in northern California. Fort Ross was settled by peg-legged Ivan Kuzkov (Kuskov) in Sonoma County (1912). It was designed as a base for fur hunters and a warm weather supplier for the Russian colonies in Alaska. The colonists included 25 Russians and over 80 Aleut Indians from the islands of western Alaska. Kuskov managed the settlement until 1821.



1811

Feb 3

Horace Greeley (d.1872), abolitionist newspaper editor, was born in Amherst, New Hampshire. He popularized the phrase “Go west, young man.” Greeley, who began his journalism career at The New Yorker, founded The New York Tribune in 1841 with support from powerful political friends. Under Greeley’s direction, The Tribune took a strong stand against slavery, the South and slave owners in the years leading up to the Civil War. The Tribune and Greeley also crusaded against liquor, gambling, prostitution and capital punishment. One of the founders of the Republican Party, Greeley was also an eccentric who dabbled in many of the fads of his day. The phrase was spoken to Josiah Grinell, who went west to Iowa, became a Congregational minister and founded Grinell College from which Robert Noyce, developer of the microchip and founder of Intel, graduated. “There is no bigotry like that of ‘free thought’ run to seed.”



1811

Feb 5

George, Prince of Wales, was named the Prince Regent due to the insanity of his father, Britain’s King George III. George Augustus Frederick became prince regent after his father, George III, slipped permanently into dementia. In 1999 Saul David published “The Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency.”



1811

Feb 11

Pres. Madison prohibited trade with Britain for 3rd time in 4 years.



1811

February

February: The Regency Act is passed by Parliament, authorizing the Prince of Wales to rule in his father’s place as the Prince Regent.



1811

1-Mar

Mar.1 A stone weighing fifteen pounds fell from the clouds in Russia.Oops.  I bet that was a surprise.



1811

5-Mar

Mar.5: The battle of Barossa gained by Gen. Graham, against the French under Marshal Victor. Sergeant Patrick Masterson captured the first French eagle to be taken in battle by th British from the French, in this case from the 8th of the Line



1811

11-Mar

Mar.11: Badajos surrendered to the French.



1811

11-Mar

Mar.11: The House of Commons voted a loan of six millions for the relief of merchants and manufacturers. You  will see why, later.



1811

12-Mar

Mar.12: Riots at Nottingham, in consequence of distress among workmen.



1811

20-Mar

Mar.20: Birth of Bonaparte’s son. The king of Rome. Pictured on the left as the Duke of Reichstadt, he became the Emperor of France for fifteen days, when his father abdicated in 1815, though it is doubtful he was aware of it, as he and his mother had fled to Austria. 



1811

23-Mar

Mar.23:A riot in Bristol caused by a rise in the price of butter,



1811

26-Mar

Mar.26: Sequestrated English merchandise to the amount of £100,000 sterling, burned at Swinemunde.



1811

31-Mar

Mar.31: Confiscated English manufacturer to the amount of £50,000 burned at Rugenwalde.



1811

Mar 1

In Egypt the Ottoman viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha massacred the Mameluke leaders of Egypt for plotting against him. He had invited them to a banquet at the citadel of Cairo.



1811

Mar 11

Urbain Jean Joseph le Verrier, co-discoverer (Neptune), was born.



1811

Mar 11

Ned Ludd led a group of workers in a wild protest against mechanization. Members of the organized bands of craftsmen who rioted against automation in 19th century England were known as Luddites and also “Ludds.” The movement, reputedly named after Ned Ludd, began near Nottingham as craftsman destroyed textile machinery that was eliminating their jobs. By the following year, Luddites were active in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Leicestershire. Although the Luddites opposed violence towards people (a position which allowed for a modicum of public support), government crackdowns included mass shootings, hangings and deportation to the colonies. It took 14,000 British soldiers to quell the rebellion. The movement effectively died in 1813 apart from a brief resurgence of Luddite sentiment in 1816 following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.



1811

Mar 20

George Caleb Bingham (d.1879), Missouri painter, was born in Virginia. He paintings included “Fur Traders on the Missouri.”



1811

Mar 20

Napoleon II, the Duke of Reichstadt, was born. He was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte.



1811

Mar 25

A comet, dubbed the Great Comet of 1911, was discovered by Honoré Flaugergues at 2.7 AU from the sun in the now-defunct constellation of Argo Navis. In October 1811, at its brightest, it displayed an apparent magnitude of 0, with an easily visible coma.



1811

Mar 31

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard von Bunsen, German inventor of the Bunsen burner, was born.



1811

March

March: Napoleon’s only son is born, and is designated as King of Rome.



1811

March

March: Ottoman Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha orchestrates a massacre of hundreds of Maremluke leaders when he invites them to a celebration in Cairo.



1811

March

March: Soult capture Badajoz.



1811

March

March: The Great Comet of 1811 is visible to the naked eye for 260 days.



1811

1-Apr

Apr. 1: Confiscated English manufactures to the amount of £60,000 burned at Memel.What a lot of waste and loss. This was part of the blockade.



1811

3-Apr

Apr.3: At the late Duke Queensberry’s sale, his Tokay wine sold at eighty four pounds per dozen. So to put that in perspective when you go to the liquor store, or wherever you buy your wine, that is about £2,852.64 for 12. Tokay is really Tokaji wine. It comes from Hungary and is a sweet wine and was  the subject of the world’s first appellation control, established several decades before Port wine and over 120 years before the classification of Bordeaux. Vineyard classification began in 1730 with vineyards being classified into 3 categories depending on the soil, sun exposure and potential to develop noble rot, botrytis cinerea, first class. A royal decree in 1757 established a closed production district in Tokaj. The classification system was completed by the national censuses of 1765 and 1772. Introduced to the French court, it  was also a very popular wine during the regency in England, as indicated by the price.



1811

4-Apr

Apr.4: A proclamation to the Berlin Court Gazette, forbidding any English man, or any other foreigner, to enter the Prussian territory  without a passport.



1811

8-Apr

Apr.8: several persons killed by the fall of two houses in Ironmonger Row, Old Street.



1811

10-Apr

Apr.10: a riot at Brighton between a party of the South Gloucester militia, and a party of the inhabitants,



1811

10-Apr

Apr.10: William Gibbs reprieved at the moment when about to be hanged for a robbery committed by his sweetheart of which he had taken upon  himself the guilt in order to save her life. Talk about true love. And the save sounds a bit last minute too.



1811

14-Apr

Apr,14: The French Garrison of Olivenza surrendered at discretion to the allied army.



1811

20-Apr

Apr.20: Eight persons perished in the conflagration of a house in Half Moon Alley, Bishopsgate.



1811

21-Apr

Apr.21: A Young nobleman lost £24,000 at one of the fashionable gambling houses. In today’s money, according to the British National Archives this would be worth in the order of £814,0000 or in US $1,337,238.10. Now I don’t know how you feel about that but my little flutters at the casino amount to $30 in a night.



1811

24-Apr

Apr.24:Mackerel sold at Billingsgate, at eight shillings a piece by the hundred. Not so expensive, then.



1811

24-Apr

Apr.24: A subscription set on foot at the London Tavern for the relief of the Portuguese.



1811

25-Apr

Apr.25: Thirty five men killed, and eighteen wounded, by an explosion of inflammable air in a coal mine near Liege. Interesting how they call it air rather than gas.



1811

29-Apr

Apr.29: The commissioners of Hyde Park turnpike let their tolls for £17,000 per annum.  A profit of £580,000 in today’s money. One can only imagine how much the person taking the tolls actually made.



1811

Apr 5

Robert Raikes, founder of Sunday Schools, died.



1811

Apr 12

First U.S. colonists on Pacific coast arrived at Cape Disappointment, Washington.



1811

22-May

May 22: – several people were killed by a house falling at Seven Dials.  This was in one of the poorest and most notorious regions of London in the Parish of St Giles where one also found the worst of the rookeries.  A dangerous place for any Regency buck or miss to wander at any time of the day, but even worse for those that lived there. Near to Covent Garden, it was called Seven Dials because of the way the streets and alleys come together in one intersection which originally had a sundial in the centre. The first plan in 1690  was for six  streets, but the developer Thomas Neale who planned this to be a smart end of town with large fronted shops, added a seventh in the final plans in order to increase his income from rents.  It never achieved its potential. After his death, the houses were subdivided and quickly became slums, renowned for  gin shops. At times, the area threatened to descend into the undesirable depravity of the St Giles “Rookery” to the north, but it was predominantly a working neighbourhood, with woodcarvers, straw-hat manufacturers, pork butchers, watch repairers, booksellers, pubs and breweries. At one point each of the seven apexes facing the Monument housed a pub, their cellars and vaults connected in the basement providing handy escape routes should the need arise.These days it is very different. It has boutique style shops and a new sense of community. Over 25% of its buildings are “listed” (protected) and many date back to the 1690′s. Clearly not the one that fell on these poor people.



1811

May 11

Chang and Eng Bunker, Chinese Siamese twins, were born.



1811

May

May: Beresford defeats Soult at Albuerra.



1811

May

May: British Major General Beresford begins the First Siege at Badajoz.



1811

May

May: The Duke of York is re-instated as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army.



1811

May

May: Wellington defeats Marshall Masséna at Fuentes de Onoro.



1811

14-Jun

June14: -The proceedings of the House of Commons state the number of French prisoners in England to be near 50,000.



1811

Jun 14

Harriet Beecher Stowe (d.1896), American writer and author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was born in Litchfield, Conn. The book showed the horrors of slavery and President Abraham Lincoln joked she had started the American Civil War.



1811

Jun 19

Samuel P. Chase (b.Apr 17, 1741), Supreme Court Justice (1798-1811), revolutionary, attorney, Declaration of Independence signer; died. Chase was served with 6 articles of impeachment by the House of Representatives in late 1804. Two more articles would later be added. The Jeffersonian Republican-controlled United States Senate began an impeachment trial against Justice Chase in early 1805. He was charged with political bias, but was acquitted by the Senate of all charges on March 1, 1805. To this day, he remains the only Supreme Court justice to be impeached.



1811

June

June: The Print Regent stages an elaborate fete at Carlton House, costing over £120,000, ostensibly in honor of the exiled royal family of France, but actually in celebration of his assumption of the Regency.



1811

Jul 5

Venezuela became the first South American country to declare independence from Spain.



1811

Jul 18

William Makepeace Thackeray (d.1863), English novelist and satirist, was born. His books were published as monthly serials. “Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.”



1811

Jul 31

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Mexican hero priest, was executed by Spanish.



1811

July

July: Venezuela declares independence from Spain.



1811

21-Aug

Aug. 21: – A comet made its appearance above the horizon. The Great Comet of 1811.  It is estimated that this comet comes around once every three thousand plus years, so I won’t be around to see it the next time. The drawing is by William Henry Smyth in 1811.



1811

Aug 3

Elisha Graves Otis (d.1861), inventor (safe elevator), was born. The Vermont native, was a master mechanic working at a bedstead factory in Yonkers, N.Y., when he built a hoisting machine with two sets of metal teeth at the car’s sides. If the lifting rope broke, the teeth would lock into place, preventing the car from falling. Otis ever realized the potential of his invention. His sons built the Otis Elevator Company, enabling the skylines of cities throughout the world to be transformed with skyscrapers.



1811

Aug 5

C.L. Ambroise Thomas, French composer (Mignon, Francoise de Rimini), was born.



1811

Aug 6

Judah Philip Benjamin (d.1884), Sec. War and Sec. State for the Confederacy, was born a British subject in the Virgin Islands. He went on to become the first professed Jew elected to U.S. Senate, from the state of Louisiana in 1852. He was brought to South Carolina as a child. After attending Yale (1825–7) he settled in New Orleans. He served Louisiana in the US Senate (Whig, 1853–9; Democrat, 1859–61). He was noted for his pro-slavery speeches in the Senate. Favoring secession, he served the Confederacy as attorney general (1861) and then as secretary of war (1861–2). He was blamed for the Confederate army’s lack of equipment, but Jefferson Davis promoted him to secretary of state (1862–5). Late in the war he urged the recruitment of slaves into the Confederate Army. With the collapse of the Confederacy he fled to the West Indies and then to England (1866), where he made a brilliant new career as a British barrister, especially in appeal cases. He wrote the Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property (1868), which at once became the standard in the field. In 1872, he became a counsel to the queen. Benjamin died in Paris.



1811

Aug 12

John FE Acton (77), cruel premier of Naples, died.



1811

Aug 14

Paraguay declared independence from Spain.



1811

Aug 31

Théophile Gautier, French poet, novelist and author of “Art for Art’s Sake,” was born.



1811

August

August: Paraguay decalres independence from Spain.



1811

11-Sep

Sep.11: – Discovery made at the Queen’s house that her majesty’s court dress had been stolen. Really, how bad is that?



1811

Sep 3

John Humphrey Noyes was born in Vermont. He founded the Oneida Community (Perfectionists) in 1848.



1811

September

September: A rematch between bareknuckle champion Tom Cribb and the American ex-slave Tom Molineaux, attracts 20,000 spectators to Thistleton Gap, outside London. Cribb wins easily in 19 minutes. He retires in 1822, undefeated.



1811

September

September: Java, Palembang (in Sumatra), Macassar, and Timor are ceded by the Dutch to the British at the conclusion of the Anglo-Dutch Java War.



1811

September

September: Thomas Stamford Raffles is appointed Lt-Governor of Java, which he will administer until 1816..



1811

Oct 11

The first steam-powered ferryboat, the Juliana, was put into operation between New York City and Hoboken, N.J.



1811

Oct 22

Franz Liszt, piano virtuoso, was born near Sopron, Hungary. He was the son of a steward of the Esterhazy family.



1811

Oct 27

Isaac Merrit Singer, inventor of a practical home sewing machine, was born.



1811

Oct 29

The 1st Ohio River steamboat left Pittsburgh for New Orleans.



1811

Nov 5

El Salvador fought its 1st battle against Spain for independence.



1811

Nov 7

Gen. William Henry Harrison won a battle against the Shawnee Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in the Indiana territory. Tenskwatawa, the brother of Shawnee leader Tecumseh, was engaged in the Battle of the Wabash, aka Battle of Tippecanoe, in spite of his brother’s strict admonition to avoid it. The battle near the Tippecanoe River with the regular and militia forces of Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison, took place while Tecumseh was out of the area seeking support for a united Indian movement. The battle, which was a nominal victory for Harrison’s forces, effectively put an end to Tecumseh’s dream of a pan-Indian confederation. Harrison’s leadership in the battle also provided a useful campaign slogan for his presidential bid in 1840.



1811

Nov 16

John Bright, British Victorian radical, was born. He founded the Anti-Corn Law League.



1811

Nov 16

An earthquake in Missouri caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards. [see Dec 15-16]



1811

Nov 21

Heinrich W. von Kleist (34), German playwright, died.



1811

Nov 29

Wendell Phillips, women’s suffrage, antislavery, prison reformer, was born.



1811

November

November: Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 in E flat major for Pianoforte and Orchestra (Emperor) is premiered in Leipzig.



1811

November

November: The Luddite movement (protesting the mechanization of the textile industry, often by destroying new machinery) begins in Nottingham and spreads throughout England.



1811

November

November unrest: — Bands of men appear wearing masks and armed with muskets, pistols and hatchets and break into the small hosiery workshops scattered thoughout country villages. Hammermen carrying hung heavy iron sledgehammers smashed open the doors of the workshops and beat at the wide stocking frames until they are destroyed. E.g. Nov 4 6 frames broken at the village of Bulwell on November 4, a dozen at Kimberley a few nights later. November 13 70 frames smashed in a single attack at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Claimed allegiance to “General Ludd”. Magistrates cannot police the rural jurisdictions. A military force, a squadron of dragoons, the Mansfield Volunteers, two troops of Yeomanry were ineffective.



1811

Dec 15 to Dec 16

A 7.3 earthquake struck the central US on the Mississippi River. It was centered at New Madrid, Missouri. Aftershocks continued into 1812. In 1976 James Penick Jr. authored “The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812.” [see Jan 23, Feb 7, 1812]



1811



Anne Grant, 56, writes Superstitions of the Highlander in Edinburgh and gains the support of Walter Scott.



1811



George III (now blind and becoming mad after losing his favorite daughter, Amelia) is declared insane by the Regency Act passed by Parliament on February 5 and his son, the Prince of Wales (age 49) is authorized and takes over the rule of England as regent.



1811



Jane Austen’s book, Sense and Sensibility, A Novel by a Lady is published anonymously in London. She is 36 year old spinster who will later be known as one of the world’s great novelists.



1811



Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is published.



1811



Luddite riots occur in England against mechanizing the textile industry.



1811



Mary Anning, age 12, discovers the 30-ft-long fossil of an ichthyosaur at Lume Regis, the first such fossil known.



1811



Napoleon decrees that French foundling hospitals will be given turntable devices (tours) so that parents can leave unwanted infants without being recognized. Before this, millions of babies had been drowned, smothered or abandoned, which Napoleon felt left the French army short of potential recruits. His effort works, eventually resulting in over 127,000 babies being left through such methods.



1811



Paraguay and Venezuela become independent.



1811



Prince George becomes Prince Regent.



1811



Stamford Raffles administers Batavia and Java until 1816.



1811



The Duke of Clarence (who would later reign as William IV) is named Admiral of the Fleet.



1811



The French are driven out of Portugal.



1811



The Mamelukes are massacred in Cairo by Mohammed Ali.



1811



For much of the year, the Great Comet blazes across the night sky.



1811



George, Prince of Wales begins his nine-year tenure as regent and becomes known as The Prince Regent. This sub-period of the Georgian era begins the formal Regency. The Duke of Wellington holds off the French at Fuentes d’Onoro and Albuhera in the Peninsular War. The Prince Regent holds a fete at nine p.m. June 19, 1811 at Carlton House in celebration of his assumption of the Regency. Luddite uprisings. Glasgow weavers riot.



1811-1815



Luddite riots: laborers attack factories and break up the machines they fear will replace them.



1811



Plantation slaves just outside New Orleans are aware of the successful slave revolt that freed the slaves of Haiti (1791-1804). On January 8, between 200 and 500 slaves near New Orleans, from more than one plantation, join together with stolen arms against their masters and oppressors. They kill for their freedom. There is a musket face-off in which the slaves lose. Most are executed and their heads displayed on pikes as a lesson for other slaves.



1811



The French are driven from Portugal.



1811



Independence is declared in Caracas (Venezuela), La Paz (Bolivia) and New Grenada (Colombia). Fighting erupts between those favoring independence and Spanish authority in Latin America.



1811



In Egypt, Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha exterminates Mamluk warlords. He invites them to a banquet and has them slaughtered.



1811



A 60-year-old Spanish priest, Hildago, who was influenced by the Enlightment, is executed after leading an uprising in behalf of the well being of Indians and mestizos.



1811



The book “Sense and Sensibility,” by Jane Austen (1774-1817), was published. It appeared anonymously as “written by a lady.”



1811



The Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick was begun as a bequest from James Bowdoin III, son of a college benefactor.



1811



A group of amateur naturalists formed the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.



1811



The 1st rubber factory was established.



1811



In the US politics killed the Bank of the United States established by Hamilton as a central bank and a mechanism for government borrowing.



1811



Francis Cabot Lowell, an American industrialist, moved to England and gathered information on mill details. He returned to the US and started the textile industry in New England and the Massachusetts mill town of his name.



1811



Fanny Burney (1752-1840), English writer, underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia. In 2001 Claire Harman authored the biography: “Fanny Burney.”



1811



Avogadro proposed that the ultimate particles of even elemental gases may not be atoms but instead molecules made up of combinations of atoms. He also proposed that equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of molecules.



1811



Gas hydrates were first discovered but their molecular structure was not understood until the late 20th century. They are crystals of water that look like ice but contain a molecule of free-floating gas in a pentagonally-linked cage.



1811



William Burchell, botanist for the East India Company, set off into the bush for Hottentot country after his girlfriend abandoned him just before marriage. He stayed 4 years and is listed as the man who invented the working safari.



1811



In Britain the Dulwich Picture Gallery opened at Dulwich College. It contained an art collection gathered by Noel Desenfans and Francis Bourgeois, who had put it together for the Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, king of Poland, before he was forced to abdicate.



1811



British Foreign Secretary Lord Wellesley, older brother of the Duke of Wellington, wrote that the Peninsula War diverted French resources and that the time was ripe to strike against Napoleon.



1811



In England John Williams, the Highway Hacker, murdered 2 whole families in the Docklands section of London. He committed suicide while awaiting trial. A crowd stole his body and drove a stake through his heart and buried him in a lime pit off Cannon St. The murder later inspired Thomas De Quincey’s essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.”



1811



The British began a period of sovereignty in Java (Indonesia).



1811



The Mamelukes remained a powerful influence in Egypt until they were massacred or dispersed by Mehemet Ali.



1811



The Turks dispatched Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali to overthrow the Wahabis and reinstate Ottoman sovereignty in Arabia.



1811



Napoleon Bonaparte gave to his wife, Empress Marie Louise, a tiara with 950 diamonds (700 carats). The original emeralds were later replaced with Persian turquoise. Now part of the Smithsonian Inst. and bequeathed by Marjorie Merriweather Post.



1811



Matsumura Gekkei (b.1752) also known as Goshun, Japanese painter based in Kyoto, died.



1811



Scotsman Gregor MacGregor (1786-1845), later known as His Serene Highness Gregor I, Prince of Poyais, received a commission from Simon Bolivar in Venezuela to serve in the Army of Liberation. After he returned to London in 1820, he began selling land in the fictional kingdom of Poyais. He served 8 months in jail after English and French expeditions revealed the hoax. In 1839 he returned to Venezuela. In 2004 David Sinclair authored “The Land That Never Was: Sir Gregor MacGregor and the Most Audacious Land Fraud in History.”



1811-1812



Marie Dorion, a 21-year-old Iowa Indian, was the only woman to accompany the 1811-12 overland expedition to the Pacific Northwest led by Wilson Price Hunt. Her husband, Pierre Dorion was hired as an interpreter. Marie would endure many hardships on the expedition to establish a fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River.



1811-1812



The Scott expedition to the South Pole culminated in tragedy.



1811-1812



In Mexico during the war for independence the crime rate rose to double digits for two years in a row.



1811-1816



The Luddite bands of workman destroyed manufacturing machinery in England under the belief that their use diminished employment. They were named after Ned Ludd, the 18th cent. Leicestershire worker who originated the idea. Opponents of technology harken back to the English weavers who broke textile machinery, apparently at the urging of their leader, Ned Ludd. [see May 3, 1811]



1811-1857



Jacob Whitman Bailey, teacher of chemistry, mineralogy and geology at West Point. He was a pioneer of American science and is noted for his microscopical studies.



1811-1882



Louis Blanc, French utopian socialist, proposed the social ideal of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” The nineteenth-century writer and thinker had a profound influence on radical thought.



1811-1881



Prof. Ferdinand Neselman of Koenigsburg Univ. first referred to the Aistians as the Balts in his book “The Language of the Prussians According to its Surviving Fragments.”



1811-1882



Henry James, US philosopher and author. He was the father of William and Henry.



1811-1884



Wendell Phillips, American abolitionist:  “Responsibility educates.”