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 is now Arlington Cemetery, behind the Lincoln Monument. Of Whig (conservative) leanings, he did not believe in slavery but believed in the Union, but fate would lead him to fight against the Union itself and become its formidable enemy.

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 son participated in the political one.

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, as the Prussian army no longer existed.

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 the rest of his life charting asteroids and topographical maps for the Hanoverian and Danish governments. One of his few students, Riemann, would carry on the legacy of mathematical research.

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 be treated with leeches or with the memory of water, he would likely answer the latter. Today, however… the same thing happens. Randomized, double-blind scientific studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of homeopathy as equal to that of a placebo.

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 a tactical one for the French.

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 Admiral Horatio Nelson, defeats the Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, off the coast of Spain. At sea, Lord Horatio Nelson and the British Royal Navy had proved a major obstacle to Napoleon, who had led France to military dominance on land. After the devastating defeat at Trafalgar, Napoleon was forced to abandon his plans to invade England. At the height of the fighting, on October 21, Nelson was mortally wounded while walking on the poop of the HMS Victory. He died a few hours later and his body was returned to England with full honors. A column was erected in his memory in London, which was placed in the square renamed Trafalgar Square in his honor.

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 to church doors with their testicles in their mouths, men impaled, blinded, or mutilated in the most bizarre ways. In this gigantic slaughter, Napoleon’s armies, who had defeated every other army elsewhere, were lost. In the Spanish conflict, the French lost 250,000 men, while other estimates put the figure at 800,000, more than in the Russian Campaign. A people without an army, officers, cannons, or cavalry defeated the most powerful army in the world. It follows, for many, that when a people decides its future, no one can stop it. These considerations also inspired figures like Mazzini and Garibaldi.

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. By studying and analyzing the corrosion of copper tanks when sulfuric acid was added to the soda, iodine was isolated, thanks to Joseph-Louis Gay Lussac and Humphry Davy.

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 for staying put during the terrible yellow fever epidemic of 1794, and for all kinds of illnesses, he prescribed mercuric chloride, to be taken orally. All this mercury (which is toxic) made people foam at the mouth, and after weeks of treatment, it caused hair and teeth to fall out. The treatment undoubtedly poisoned and killed many people who would otherwise have survived. Nevertheless, his treatments were adopted by thousands of people, including Lewis and Clark. The fortunate side effect is that today, Dr. Rush’s big pill is still used. Rush helped trace the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s camp sites by following traces of mercury left in latrines. Dr. Rush’s thunder pill often caused dysentery, which left large quantities of mercury on the ground, which are still present today.

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 Mediterranean to avoid the retaliation of British, Spanish, and Dutch gunboats. The American coup was a resounding success, earning Admiral Nelson’s praise: “the most daring action of our entire age.” The episode even entered the Marines’ anthem as the first verse: “From the Halls of Montezuma, To the shores of Tripoli.” The war against the pirates continued for several decades until the establishment of an American base (the first in Europe), providing logistical support, in La Spezia in 1852. An American war cemetery (also the first in Europe) also stands at Camposanto dei Genchi (a corruption of Yankee).

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 reinvented: 10 million slaves were imported from Africa, 70% of whom worked on the sugarcane plantations.

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% of the world’s population was divided among the civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Andes, Australia, and Oceania. Over the next three centuries, the Afro-Eurasian macro-civilization engulfed the other four worlds: Mesoamerica in 1521, the Andes in 1532, Australia in 1788 (and Tasmania, the last outpost, in 1803).

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 of Islamic rule over much of India.

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, and within a few months the deal is practically concluded.

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 earlier to salicyclic acid to obtain aspirin) to morphine, resulting in heroin. Bayer promptly marketed it, deemed to have no side effects, as a cough suppressant and a remedy for headaches, emphysema, and tuberculosis. When the side effects became known, Bayer stopped advertising it and gradually withdrew it from the market.

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 be discovered in the next few years.

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 a year later.

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.

The celebrated Carl Friedrich Gauss, at just twenty-four years old, provided astronomers with the means to recover the asteroid Ceres, developing a new method for determining the orbit of a generic celestial body based on just three observations. The method was based on the use of least squares, a methodology Gauss developed specifically for astronomy, but which, given its effectiveness, would later spread to many other fields. Within weeks, Gauss predicted Ceres’s trajectory based on data previously collected by Piazzi and communicated his results to Franz Xaver, editor of the Monatliche Correspondenz. On December 31, 1801, Zach and Heinrich Olbers confirmed Ceres’s rediscovery with certainty. Johann Elert Bode thinks Ceres is the “missing planet” predicted by Johann Daniel Titius, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter at a distance, according to the Titius-Bode law, of 419 million kilometers (2.8 AU) from the Sun. Ceres is given a planetary symbol, and remains listed as a planet in astronomical tables and books for about half a century, until further asteroids are discovered. Ceres turns out to be disappointingly small, and its disk indistinguishable; thus, William Herschel coined the term “asteroid” (“starlike”) to describe it. It will be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2008.

Von Zach succeeded for the first time in observing Ceres independently of its discoverer, the Italian monk Giuseppe Piazzi, and did so based on Piazzi’s own publication and the orbital predictions made by 24-year-old Carl Friedrich Gauss. By 1807, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta had also been discovered, leading to the definition of the asteroid belt.

After announcing the possible discovery of a new planetoid, Ceres, the Italian monk Giuseppe Piazzi did not publish any further experimental measurements, partly because Ceres was hidden from the Sun for a couple of months. Then, in July, he published further data confirming the initial sightings, but further confirmation from other astronomers was still lacking, and it would not arrive until December.

In the (perennial) Franco-British war, Russia is now almost in effect allied with France. This is part of the broader global “Great Game,” which began in the Victorian era, between Great Britain (which sought maritime dominance) and Russia (which sought land dominance) for hegemony in Asia and Europe.

Mexico City Mining School. Manuel Del Rio, a Spanish-born mineralogist, identified vanadium in a previously unknown mineral he called panchromium. A couple of years later, the Frenchman Alexander von Humboldt declared it to be nothing more than simple chromium. Manuel Del Rio bowed to the judgement, but he was right. Vanadium was not rediscovered until 1831 by the Swede Nils Sefström.

Thomas Young demonstrates the wave nature of light. The corpuscular theory is (temporarily) set aside.

Thomas Young passes light through two slits and discovers that the result is interference, consistent with a wave nature of light. The corpuscular theory is (temporarily) set aside. The wave nature of light will later be confirmed by Maxwell in 1864, and it will be necessary to wait for Einstein in the 20th century to understand the dual nature of light.

The Italian monk Giuseppe Piazzi, from the telescope of Palermo, discovers Ceres, the first asteroid and gives it the name of the patron goddess of Sicily: Ceres

Thomas Jefferson is president of the United States

Wollaston and Tennant, sons of two Anglican ministers, medical graduates and passionate about natural philosophy, purchased 170 kg of platinum from the Americas. Wollaston dissolved the material in white spirit and then reacted it with ammonium salts. After several further steps, they obtained several pure elements, including iridium and osmium, and finally palladium, immediately dubbed “New Silver, a new Noble Metal.”

William Herschel discovers infrared light

Battle of Marengo. Napoleon defeats the Austrian army and reestablishes French rule over Italy, reviving the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics. 28,000 French troops capture 8,000 of the 40,000 Austrians and kill or wound 6,500.

Fort Bard, Aosta Valley, Italy. Final assault on the fort led by General Chabran, commander of the rear guard. General Andreossi, commander of the artillery, placed a 12-mm gun in the presbytery of the parish church, next to the bell tower, and from there, protected by the overhanging rock face, began shelling the fort’s entrance gate, approximately 150 meters away. The defenders were powerless against the cannon, which began its systematic demolition of the defenses at 9:00 a.m. At sunset, surrender was called for the fifth time, and the fort’s commander, then Captain Joseph Otto Stockard von Bernkopf, signed it, with honors of war, at 9:00 p.m. The fort, which had held off Napoleon’s artillery for 14 days, was completely razed to the ground at the end of hostilities, and nothing remains of it. The formidable architecture we see today was built between 1830 and 1838 and never took part in any wartime events.

Fort Bard, Aosta Valley, Italy. Napoleon inspects the new path that bypasses the fort and reaches Donnas in two and a half hours’ march, finding it impossible to advance artillery. During the night, the commander of the army’s artillery, General Marmont, orders the wagon wheels, chains, and anything else that might make noise to be wrapped in twisted hay. He spreads straw and mattresses still in the houses on the pavement. He then unties the horses and has his men fire the artillery in perfect silence. Covered by the roar of the Dora River and a thunderstorm that breaks out around midnight, they manage to get four eight-guns through. Then the alarm is raised, and under a hail of fire, two more cannons manage to get through, before the column halts. Thanks to this ruse, only six of the army’s 40 cannons make it through.

Aosta Valley, Italy. The army commander writes to Napoleon: “It is impossible to advance the artillery until we have captured Bard Castle… the infantry and cavalry can bypass the castle by taking a mule track from Arnaz to Perlo… the route around the castle is very difficult, even for infantry. However, I risk having two regiments of the vanguard mounted troops pass through it.”

Italy. The vanguard of Napoleon’s reserve army enters the Aosta Valley and stops at Etroubles after crossing the Great St. Bernard Pass.

The White House in Washington is finished

Jubilee celebrated by Pius VII in Venice (Rome was occupied by Napoleon)

The game of billiards, born in Northern Europe in the 15th century, saw cues improved with leather coverings and chalk-covered tips, allowing for greater control over the ball’s spin. This innovation was introduced to America by English sailors, which is why it’s still called “English putting on the ball.” The balls were still made of ivory, and the edges were still made of wood (they were replaced by Charles Goodyear’s rubber in the 1840s).

Nineteenth-century scientists discovered that the intermediate distillate of petroleum could be useful as fuel for oil lamps, where previously whale blubber, for example, had been used. However, they dismissed the more volatile fraction of the distillation process, what we call gasoline, as completely useless, discarded as an unfortunate and unwanted byproduct.

The Rochedale Equitable Pioneers Society is the world’s first cooperative.

Energy source: Coal (Carbon/Hydrogen ratio: 2/1)

In Europe, people began to eat tomatoes (previously considered poisonous) and potatoes (previously considered the fruit of witches because they grew underground – it was feared they would spread the plague).

Alessandro Volta uses copper and zinc electrodes to create the electric battery

Alessandro Volta creates the electric battery

Thomas Jefferson won the presidency as leader of the Democratic-Republican Party (later simply the Democratic Party), which at the time was based on the concepts of unlimited individual liberty, states’ rights, decentralization, hostility to the domination of capital, defense of small business, and defense of agriculture against big finance.

Italy has 17 million people

Thomas Young understands thats=EAnd (s it’s the effort,And the relative strain, E (Young’s modulus) has E variable with the material

The average life expectancy in Europe and the United States is 40 years. By 2000, it will be 80 years.

Average life expectancy worldwide is about 28.5 years. In 2001, it will be 66.6 years.