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Modena. Napoleonic soldiers smashed the Belleardi marble monument with hammers. They reduced it to fine fragments so that the layer they formed on the ground would “drain the horses’ urine.” This historical testimony was later confirmed by excavations conducted during renovations in 2007, when 440

Peace of Tilsit. On a raft on the Neman River in France, the victorious Napoleon and Tsar Alexander meet. Both expert flatterers, they argue for over two hours.

Norfolk, Virginia. The British battleship HMS Leopard approaches the American USS Chesapeake, searching for deserters. It is denied boarding permission. Tensions quickly escalate. An American sailor accidentally rolls his drum and is silenced by the captain. The British ship, armed with 50 guns, fires first

Murat’s cavalry, Napoleon’s general, reaches the Niemen River, the Russian border, over 1,600 km from Paris; on a raft on the river, Napoleon meets the Tsar’s envoys who have a request for an armistice; that, Napoleon writes, will be my finest moment; but he lets

Istanbul. The Janissary barracks are attacked by cannon fire. Hundreds of men are killed. The Janissary corps is disbanded.

The Chesapeake Affair: The American ship USS Chesapeake is attacked by the British ship HMS Leopard off Norfolk, Virginia.

Battle of Friedland. Present-day Kaliningrad. Napoleon heavily defeats the Russian army and pushes it back to the borders of the Empire. Russian casualties number 20,000, and the defeat is serious, but not on the scale of Austerlitz and certainly not of Jena.

Istanbul. 20,000 Janissaries protest the reform of the system.

Istanbul. In a vast parade ground, near the Janissary barracks, 200 soldiers wearing new European-style uniforms are marched. This will trigger a reaction from the Janissaries.

Astronomer J. Huth, Olbers’s rival (who has discovered several new asteroids in recent years), claims that the bodies in the Main Asteroid Belt are remnants of planetary formation that never ended up inside a true planet, due to the gravitational disturbances of the mighty nearby

Astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers first observed the asteroid Vesta. The name was actually given to it by Gauss, who in just 10 hours calculated (by hand, of course) the orbit of the new (gigantic) asteroid. Vesta is the daughter of Saturn, sister to Jupiter,

Jean-Louis Pons discovers 30 comets.

England. It becomes illegal to trade slaves throughout the British Empire. And in 1838, it also becomes illegal to own slaves.

Sir John Duckworth’s squadron forces the Dardanelles Strait. The Turks still use ancient bombards that hurl enormous stone balls in the general direction of enemy ships. The English employ the new scientific principles of artillery, enunciated and studied by the Quaker Benjamin Robins.

Battle of Eylau. In the area of present-day Kaliningrad, the French won a narrow victory over the Russians (the Prussians were almost nonexistent). Napoleon now controlled much of Western Europe, almost unchallenged.

Robert Morrison, of the London Missionary Society, arrives in Canton as a missionary. His first move, even before setting sail, is to study Mandarin and transcribe the Bible into Chinese.

Fur trappers are the vanguard of the rush west along the Missouri

Robert Edward Lee, the future legendary Confederate commander, was born in Virginia. His father was General Harry Lee, a friend and close associate of George Washington. Lee and his wife, Mary Curtis, Washington’s niece, settled in a beautiful villa directly across from Washington, in what

United States. Robert Fulton markets his “Fulton’s Artificial Torpedo, for Destroying Ships.” It is rejected by Napoleon and the British, but is considered by American President Thomas Jefferson.

Kazan, Russia. Nikolai Lobachevsky graduated from Kazan University. He would develop non-Euclidean geometry and become the intellectual father of Ilya Ulyanov, who in turn would be the biological father of Vladimir Lenin. In a certain sense, the father participated in the mathematical revolution, while the

The Russians conquer Baku in Azerbaijan, taking control of it from the Shah of Persia.

Napoleon excluded British assets from “Fortress Europe,” and the British responded by blockading their ports. 1,000 American ships and 500 French vessels were captured. These events would be the first in a chain of provocations that would lead to the Anglo-American War of 1812.

The Prussian army, rather than defend its positions on the Rhine and await the approaching Russians, attacked the French and was defeated in the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt. For the next eight months, the Russians were virtually alone in fighting Napoleon in Poland and East Prussia,

Jean Robert Argand, independently of Caspar Wessel, John Warren and Carl Fiedrich Gauss, invented the complex plane to represent complex numbers.

When his patron, Duke Ferdinand, was assassinated by Napoleon, Gauss was forced to find another job to support his family. Despite offers from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, he decided to accept the post of director of the Göttingen Astronomical Observatory. He would spend

Earthquake magnitude 5.2 on the Richter scale in Novellara (Reggio Emilia)

Fiji. Well-documented epidemics wipe out the indigenous population shortly after a European castaway from the Argo washed ashore.

German physician Samuel Hahnemann published “The Medicine of Experience,” a book outlining the principles of homeopathy. At the time, bacteria, viruses, and antibiotics were unknown. Treatments were performed using methods such as leeches. At the time, if you asked a patient whether he preferred to

Napoleon invades Prussia

End of the Holy Roman Empire.

Immediately after Austerlitz, the Ottomans declared war on the Russians. It seemed like a great opportunity for the Ottomans, but after six years of war and the empty coffers of Constantinople, they were forced to accept peace in 1812.

Napoleon achieved the greatest of his victories: Austerlitz; with only 73,000 men and 139 cannons, he overwhelmed the Austro-Russian forces, which numbered 85,000 men and nearly 300 cannons. Austria was forced to accept peace, and the Russians were forced to retreat to their old borders.

Battle of Schongrabern, immortalized by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. The Russians were commanded by the brave and charismatic Pyotr Bagration, while the French were led by the Napoleonic Murat. Despite the terrible losses, the battle was a strategic victory for the Russians and

Off Gibraltar, the Royal Navy defeats the Spanish and French fleets: Battle of Trafalgar; the British lose no ships, but Admiral Nelson is killed, shot by a French sniper. In one of the most decisive battles in history, the British fleet, under the command of

The right weather conditions never arrive to launch the landing towards the English beaches, so Napoleon decides to head East: the Grand Armee (200,000 men) attacks Austria

Napoleon plans to invade Pitt’s England, which he awaits with bated breath.

Spain. During the Napoleonic occupation, a period of “guerrilla warfare” began, a popular monarchist and religious resistance aimed at making life impossible for foreigners without claiming defeat in battle. It was a carnage of national proportions (see Goya’s painting “The Madness of War”): prisoners nailed

Paris. Bernard Curtois succeeded his father, who had been imprisoned for debt, as head of the saltpeter (potassium or sodium nitrate) factory, used at the time to produce gunpowder for Napoleon’s army. Saltpeter was originally produced from wood ash, but Curtois later switched to seaweed.

The number of countries that have decriminalized homosexuality is 4. It will rise to 15 in 1895, and to 90 in 2015.

Modena. Napoleon’s last visit to the city.

Genoa. Giuseppe Mazzini is born.

The Italian Kingdom formed by Napoleon incorporated Veneto, then Marche and Trentino, and reached a population of 7 million.

Napoleon retook Venice by force, having been handed over to the Austrians only eight years earlier. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 handed Venice back to the Austrians, only to be liberated again in 1866 with its union with the Italian nation.

French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre discovered a simple formula that simplifies the process of identifying the line that best represents a set of points on a graph: the method of least squares. Gauss would make it a cornerstone of celestial mechanics.

Napoleon transformed the Italian Republic, formerly Cisalpine, into the Kingdom of Italy, entrusted to his adoptive son, Eugene Beauharnais.

H. Maillardet builds a mechanical doll capable of drawing

Lewis and Clark, among other things, carry with them 600 mercury laxative tablets, each four times the size of a modern aspirin (!). These are Dr. Rush’s Bile Tablets, named after Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He became famous

Laplace responds to Napoleon’s question: “And what about God in all this?” “Your Majesty, I had no need for this hypothesis.”

Lewis and Clark, on President Jefferson’s orders, follow the Missouri and then are the first to cross the Rocky Mountains and reach the Pacific on the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon.

France, Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of the French

France. Napoleon Bonaparte proclaims himself Emperor. Power passes in a few years from the King (1789) to the Committee of Public Safety, to the Directory (1795), then to the First Consul (November 1799), and finally to the Emperor (December 1804).

The US completes the acquisition of Louisiana from France: for 15 million USD it doubles the national territory by adding the Detroit – New Orleans – Idaho triangle (the overall cost is less than 5 cents per hectare)

Russia. The value of the paper ruble collapses (from three-quarters of its value in silver to less than a quarter) due to indiscriminate government money printing. Investor confidence plummets. On the eve of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, this isn’t the best outcome…

Astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding discovers the asteroid Juno. It’s a golden age for asteroid discovery: Pallas is discovered two years earlier, and Vesta three years later.

squadron of American Marines with 10 gunboats crossed the Atlantic, landed at Tripoli, and ravaged the port, burning the docked ships. The problem was that for several years, the pirates, under the protection of the Ottoman Empire, had been attacking primarily American ships in the

The new Tsar Alexander I restores relations with Great Britain, while those with France slide toward war.

Serbia. Serbs (Christian Orthodox) in revolt against the Ottoman rulers (Muslim Sunnis) look to Russia (Christian Orthodox) for help.

French-born, naturalized American Irenee Du Pont founds a gunpowder manufacturing company in Delaware.

Joseph Marie Jacquard builds a programmable loom with punched cards

The average Englishman’s annual sugar intake rose from almost zero in the 17th century to over 8 kg at the beginning of the 19th century. This was all thanks to sugarcane plantations in the Americas. Working conditions on these plantations were terrible, and slavery was

In 10,000 BC, the world was home to thousands of civilizations, all but or completely isolated from one another. By 1450 AD, their numbers had declined dramatically, and more than 90% of the world’s population lived in a single macro-civilization in Afro-Eurasia. The remaining 10%

Swede Jons Jakob Berzelius discovers cerium. The name is inspired by the recent discovery of the planetoid Ceres, thus following the precedent set years earlier with uranium.

The English pharmacist Luke Howard gave a name, still used today, to the various types of cloud formations: stratus, cumulus, cirrus, nimbus; the words can be freely combined.

The Indian subcontinent, divided between Hindu kingdoms and British colonial dominions, is declared no longer an Islamic country by the leader of the Delhi Ulama. This follows three centuries of Mongol rule, which fused Indian traditions with the Islamic religion, and the previous four centuries

Bonaparte needs money for his war machine; American ambassador Robert Livingstone visits him to buy Florida and New Orleans, Napoleon suddenly asks him how much he would be willing to pay for the whole of Louisiana, the astonished ambassador summons Monroe, the president’s special envoy,

Friedrich Sertuner, a German pharmacist, first isolated morphine from poppy seed. It contains 24 alkaloids. He named the compound he discovered morphine, in honor of Morpheus, the Roman god of sleep. In 1898, Bayer applied the acetylation process (which Felix Hofmann had applied five years

Fossil skeletons of early ichthyosaurs discovered

William Wollastone discovers spectral lines in the Sun

The Italian Republic was born with Milan as its capital

Thomas Jefferson begins negotiations with France for the acquisition of New Orleans, essential for the route to the West; Jefferson, however, suspects the existence of a natural barrier and does not believe in the existence of a waterway to the Pacific.

Following a violent epidemic of yellow fever (Aedes Aegypti) which exterminated the occupying French army in Santo Domingo, the French commander Leclerc himself died

Modena. For the first time in its history, the city saw compulsory military conscription, by order of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1815, with the Restoration, the Este dukes abolished it again, and in 1860 the House of Savoy reinstated it.

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers observes for the first time with the Pallas telescope, a celestial body that will later be discovered to belong to the asteroid belt. It is the second of its kind: the first was Ceres a few years earlier, and others will

Toussaint Louverture, a charismatic black leader of Santo Domingo who was victorious over the English after the civil war that arose following the French liberation of slaves, accepted the French peace conditions and surrendered; the French, through deception, captured him and he died in prison

Napoleon transformed the Cisalpine Republic into the Italian Republic, with himself as president and Melzi d’Eril as vice-president. In 1805, it became the Kingdom of Italy, entrusted to his adoptive son, Eugène Beauharnais.

Napoleon sends an army of 20,000 men commanded by Charles Leclerc to Santo Domingo; Napoleon threatens Spain to return the immense territory of Louisiana, granted to Spain as compensation for losses in the Seven Years’ War.

The London Stock Exchange is officially inaugurated, but its origins date back to 1700.

J. Jacquard invents the Jacquard loom, a programmable machine for weaving yarns

Carl Friedrich Gauss publishes Disquisitiones Mathematicae. This work, according to many, marks the beginning of number theory.

Humphry Davy announces the discovery of two new metals: potassium and sodium, the two most reactive metals known to science. Davy will continue his work with other alkaline earths such as lime and magnesia, eventually discovering other metals in 1808: calcium, magnesium, strontium, and barium.