1802

1802 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar).

Events

• March 16 – West Point is established.
• March 25/27 – Treaty of Amiens between France and United Kingdom ends the War of the Second Coalition.
• March 28 – H. W. Olbers discovers the asteroid Pallas.
• May 19 – Napoleon Bonaparte establishes the French légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour).
• July 4 – At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opens.
• August 2 – In a plebiscite Napoleon Bonaparte is confirmed as consul for life.
• September 11 – The Italian region of Piedmont becomes a part of Napoleonic France.
• October 2 – War ends between Sweden and Tripoli. The United States also negotiates peace, but war continues over the size of compensation.
• July – Eleuthère Irénée du Pont founds E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, the modern DuPont Company.
• October – French army enters Switzerland.
• Marie Tussaud opens her famous wax museum in London, having been commissioned during the Reign of Terror to make death masks of the victims.
• Thomas Wedgwood produces the world's first photograph, but has no means of fixing the image, which quickly fades.
• William Symington builds the first successful steamship, the Charlotte Dundas.
• Ludwig van Beethoven performs the Moonlight Sonata for the first time.
• William Wordsworth publishes the poem "Westminster Bridge."

Ongoing events

• French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802)
• Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)

Births

• February 11 – Lydia Child, American abolitionist author (d. 1880)
• February 19 – Wilhelm Matthias Näff, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 1881)
• February 26 – Victor Hugo, French author (d. 1885)
• April 4 – Dorothea Dix, American social activist (d. 1887)
• July 24 – Alexandre Dumas, père, French author (d. 1870)
• July 26 – Mariano Arista, President of Mexico (d. 1855)
• August 5 – Niels Henrik Abel, Norwegian mathematician (d. 1829)
• August 22 – Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, American land speculator (d. 1886)
• November 9 – Elijah P. Lovejoy, American abolitionist (d. 1837)
• December 15 – Janos Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1860)
• December 23 – Sara Coleridge, British scholar (d. 1852)

Deaths

• April 18 – Erasmus Darwin, English physician and botanist, grand-father of Charles Darwin (b. 1731)
• June 4 – Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy, King of Sardinia (b. 1751)
• September 26 – Baron Jurij Vega, Slovenian mathematician, physicist, and soldier (b. 1754)
• November 9 – Thomas Girtin, English artist (b. 1775)
• November 15 – George Romney, English artist (b. 1734)
• November 16 – André Michaux, French botanist (b. 1746)
• July 22 – Marie François Xavier Bichat, French anatomist and physiologist (b. 1771)