1838

Events of 1838

January 10 - A fire destroys Lloyd's Coffee House and the Royal Exchange in London.
April 8 - Regular Atlantic steamship service begins with the SS Great Western.
April 30 - Nicaragua declares independence from the Central American Federation (See Nicaragua's early history).
May - The People's Charter is drawn up in the United Kingdom, demanding universal suffrage.
May - Lord Durham and his entourage arrive in Upper Canada to investigate the cause of the 1837 rebellion in that province. This leads to Durham submitting the Durham Report to Britain.
May 26 - USA: The Cherokee Tribe is forcibly relocated in the Trail of Tears.
September 7 - Grace Darling and her father rescue 13 survivors from the SS Forfarshire.
November 3 - The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce is founded (later renamed The Times of India in 1861).
November 5 - The Central American Civil War begins with Honduras' separation from the Central American Federation.
December - Pastry War: Mexico is invaded by French forces.

Yucatan declares independence from Mexico.
Proteins are discovered by Jöns Jakob Berzelius.
Friedrich Bessel makes the first accurate measurement of distance to a star.
Biblical criticism: Christian Hermann Weisse proposes the two-source hypothesis.
Duke University is established in North Carolina.
40,000 chests of opium are sold in China.

January 4 - General Tom Thumb, American circus performer and entertainer (d. 1883)
January 6 - Max Bruch, German composer (d. 1920)
January 16 - Franz Brentano, German philosopher and psychologist (d. 1917)
February 6 - Henry Irving, English actor (d. 1905)
February 10 - Gustav Oelwein, founder of Oelwein, Iowa (d. 1913)
February 16 - Henry Brooks Adams, American historian (d. 1918)
February 18 - Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (d. 1916)
March 3 - George William Hill, American astronomer (d. 1914)
March 11 - Ōkuma Shigenobu, Japanese politician (d. 1922)
April 3 - John Willis Menard, African-American politician (d. 1893)
April 8 - Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German inventor (d. 1917)
April 12 - John Shaw Billings, M.D., American military and medical leader (d. 1913)
April 16 - Martha McClellan Brown, American temperance movement leader (d. 1916)
April 28 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser, Dutch jurist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1913)
April 21 - John Muir, American ecologist (d. 1914)
May 10 - John Wilkes Booth, American actor and assassin (d. 1865)
May 20 - Jules Méline, French statesman (d. 1925)
June 14 - Yamagata Aritomo, Japanese Prime Minister (d. 1922).

January 3 - Prince Maximilian of Saxony (b. 1759)
January 5 - Anthony Van Egmond, rebel leader in Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 {died in jail}
February 21 - Silvestre de Sacy, linguist (b. 1758)
March 13 - Poul Martin Møller, philosopher (b. 1794)
April 6 - José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, Brazilian statesman and naturalist (b. 1763)
April 9 - Piet Uys, Voortrekker leader (in battle) (b. 1797)
May - Francisco Gómez, president of El Salvador (b. 1796)
May 17 - Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French diplomat (b. 1754)
May 19 - Richard Colt Hoare, English archaeologist (b. 1758)
June 14 - Maximilian von Montgelas, Bavarian statesman (b. 1759)