1843

Events

January–March

• January 3 – The Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms compiled by Wei Yuan and others, the first significant Chinese work on the West, is published in China.
• January 6 – Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross discovers Snow Hill Island.
• January 20 – Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná is appointed by the Emperor, Dom Pedro, as the leader of the Brazilian Council of Ministers, although the office of Prime Minister of Brazil will not be officially created until 1847.
• January
• * Serial publication of Charles Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit begins in London; in the July chapters, he lands his hero in the United States.
• * Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is published in The Pioneer, a Boston magazine.
• * The Quaker magazine The Friend is first published in London.
• February 3 – Uruguayan Civil War: Argentina supports Oribe of Uruguay, and begins a siege of Montevideo.
• February 6 – The Virginia Minstrels perform the first minstrel show, at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City.
• February 8 – The 1843 Guadeloupe Earthquake hits the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, killing 1,500–5,000 people.
• February 11 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera I Lombardi alla prima crociata premieres at La Scala in Milan.
• February 14 – The event that will inspire The Beatles' 1967 song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" is held in England.
• February 25 – Paulet Affair: Lord George Paulet occupies the Kingdom of Hawaii in the name of Great Britain.
• February – Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa captures the fort and town of Riffa after the rival branch of the family fails to gain control of the Riffa Fort and flees to Manama. Shaikh Mohamed bin Ahmed is killed at the battle, called the Battle of Hunayniya.
• March 8 – The Danish government re-establishes the Althing in Iceland as an advisory body, by royal decree.
• March 11–14 – Eta Carinae flares, to become the second-brightest star.
• March 13 – Catawba County, North Carolina is created, and its first court is held in Mathias Barringer Jr.'s house.
• March 15 – Victoria, British Columbia, is founded by the Hudson's Bay Company as a trading post and fort.
• March 16 – The city of Petrópolis is founded by the government of Brazil.
• March 21 – The world does not end, contrary to the first prediction by American preacher William Miller.
• March 24 – Battle of Hyderabad: The Bombay Army, led by Major General Sir Charles Napier, defeats the Talpur Mirs, securing Sindh as a province of British India.
• March 25 – Marc Isambard Brunel's Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel under the River Thames and the world's first bored underwater tunnel, is opened in London for pedestrians.

  April–June

• April 7 – The Indian Slavery Act, 1843 removes legal support for slavery within the territories of the East India Company
• April 16 or 17 – A group of 24 West Indian Moravians from Jamaica and Antigua, recruited by the Danish minister and Basel missionary, Andreas Riis, arrive in Christiansborg, Gold Coast, now Ghana, to set up schools and Presbyterian churches in the country.
• May 4 – Natal is proclaimed a British colony.
• May 18 – In Edinburgh, the Free Church of Scotland is disrupted from the Church of Scotland.
• May 22 – The first major wagon train headed for the American Northwest sets out with 1,000 pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.
• May 23 – Chile takes possession of the Strait of Magellan.
• June 6 – In Barbados, Samuel Jackman Prescod is the first non-white person elected to the House of Assembly.
• June 17 – In New Zealand, a posse of British settlers sent to arrest Māori chief Te Rauparaha clash with members of his Ngāti Toa tribe, resulting in 26 deaths.
• June 21 – Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Gold-Bug" begins serialization in American newspapers.

  July–September

• July – Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women" appears in The Dial magazine in the United States.
• July 19 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel's is launched from Bristol; it will be the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
• July 25 – Père Antoine Désiré Mégret, a Capuchin missionary, purchases the land that will become Abbeville, Louisiana for $900, a town founded by descendants of Acadians from Nova Scotia.
• August 1 – Brazil becomes the second country, after Great Britain, to issue nationally valid postage stamps, with the release of its Bull's Eye series.
• August 19 – Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat" is first published in The Saturday Evening Post.

• August 15 – Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world still intact, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• September – Ada Lovelace translates and expands Menabrea's notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, including an algorithm for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, regarded as the world's first computer program.
• September 2 – The Economist newspaper is first published in London.
• September 4 – Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil marries Dona Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies, in a state ceremony in Rio de Janeiro Cathedral.
• September 15 – A Popular uprising in Athens, Greece, including citizens and military captains, demands from King Otto a liberal Constitution from the state, which has been governed since independence by various domestic and foreign business interests.
• September 21 – The crew of schooner Ancud, including John Williams Wilson, takes possession of the Strait of Magellan on behalf of the Chilean government.

  October–December

• October 3 – Elling Eielsen is ordained as the first Norwegian Lutheran minister in the United States.
• October 16
• * Søren Kierkegaard's philosophical book Fear and Trembling is first published, in Denmark.
• * Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton discovers the calculus of quaternions and deduces that they are non-commutative.
• October 30 – Fuerte Bulnes, the first Chilean settlement in the strait of Magellan, is founded.
• November 17 – The city of Shanghai opens for trade with foreigners for the first time, welcoming a party of traders from the United Kingdom.
• November 25 – Mount Etna erupts in Italy, and kills 69 people in the village of Bronte.
• November 28 – Hawaii is recognized as an independent nation by the United Kingdom and France. The holiday is celebrated annually as La Ku'oko'a.
• December 9 – Bishop's University is founded as Bishop's College by Bishop George Jehoshaphat Mountain in Lennoxville, Quebec, for the education of members of the Church of England.
• December 13 – Basutoland becomes a British protectorate.
• December 19 – Charles Dickens's novella A Christmas Carol is first published in London, England. Released on December 19, it sells out by Christmas Eve.
• December 21 – The first total solar eclipse of Saros 139 occurs over southern Asia.
• December – The world's first Christmas cards, commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London from the artist John Callcott Horsley, are sent.

  Date unknown

• In Asia, the House of Jamalullail is established in the state of Perlis Darul Sunnah after separation from the state of Kedah.
• James Joule experimentally finds the mechanical equivalent of heat.
• The steam powered rotary printing press is invented, by Richard March Hoe in the United States.
• Saint Louis University School of Law becomes the first law school west of the Mississippi River.
• Kurdish leader Bedir Khan Beg launched an expedition against the Assyrians in the Hakkari region.Thousands of Assyrians were massacred during the campaign.

  Births

January

• January 1 – Nikolai Lodyzhensky, Russian composer
• January 3 – Elzéar Abeille de Perrin, French entomologist
• January 5 – Victor Brooke, Anglo-Irish naturalist and baronet
• January 8
• * Frederick Abberline, Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police, investigator in the Jack the Ripper murders
• * John H. Moffitt, American politician
• * Karl Eduard Heusner, Vice-Admiral of the German Imperial Navy
• January 9 – Darius D. Hare, U.S. representative from Ohio
• January 10
• * Frank James, American outlaw
• * Carroll S. Page, American lawyer, businessman and politician
• January 11 – Adolf Eberle, German painter
• January 13 – David Ferrier, Scottish neurologist
• January 17 – Anton Thraen, German astronomer
• January 18 – Fernand Pelez, French painter
• January 20 – Paul Cambon, French diplomat
• January 21 – Émile Levassor, French engineer
• January 22 – Friedrich Blass, German scholar
• January 25 – Hermann Schwarz, German mathematician
• January 26 – Erdmann Encke, German sculptor
• January 28 – Mihkel Veske, Estonian poet
• January 29
• * William McKinley, 25th President of the United States
• * Henry Carrington Bolton, American chemist and bibliographer

  February

• February 1 – John Isaac Thornycroft, English shipbuilder
• February 3 – William Cornelius Van Horne, American entrepreneur
• February 9
• * William Taylor Thornton, governor of New Mexico
• * Nathan Goff Jr., U.S. representative from West Virginia
• February 10 – Philippe Alexandre Jules Künckel d'Herculais, French entomologist and zoologist
• February 13 – Georg von Rosen, Swedish painter
• February 14 – Louis Diémer, French pianist
• February 16 – Henry M. Leland, American machinist, inventor, engineer and automotive entrepreneur
• February 17 – Aaron Montgomery Ward, American department store founder
• February 19 – Adelina Patti, Spanish opera singer
• February 20 – Theodor Höijer, Finnish architect
• February 22 – Rudolf Montecuccoli, Austro-Hungarian admiral
• February 24 – Teófilo Braga, Portuguese writer, playwright and politician
• February 25 – Karl Gussow, German painter
• February 28 – Đorđe Simić, Serbian politician