1838
| Years: 1835 1836 1837 – 1838 – 1839 1840 1841 | |
| Decades: 1800s 1810s 1820s – 1830s – 1840s 1850s 1860s | |
| Centuries: 18th century – 19th century – 20th century 1838 in topic: Lists of leaders: | |
1838 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).
Events
- January 6 – Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates the telegraph.
- January 8 – Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code)
- January 12 – Joseph Smith, Jr. and Sidney Rigdon flee Ohio for Missouri
- March 7 – Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale" debuts at the Stockholm Opera
- April 30 – Nicaragua declares independence from the Central American Federation
- June 12 – Territory of Iowa established
- 1 August – Slavery officially abolished in Trinidad & Tobago
- 7 September – Grace Darling rescues 9 survivors from the wreck of Forfarshire off the Farne Islands
- September 3 – Dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery
- October 16 – Date in the Bill Stump's Stone
- October 27 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, ordering the expulsion of all Mormons from the state.
- November 3 The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce is founded. This paper was later renamed to The Times of India in 1861
- November 5 – Honduras separates from the Central American Federation, weakening the confederation.
- Proteins discovered by Jöns Jakob Berzelius
- the Pastry War
- Start of First British-Afghan War
- Republic of Yucatan declares independence from Mexico
- Start of Central American Civil War
- Friedrich Bessel makes the first accurate measurement of distance to a star.
- Christian Hermann Weisse proposes the two-source hypothesis of gospel origins, which is held by a majority of biblical scholars to this day.
- Regular Atlantic steamship service begins
- Augustus Siebe invents a closed diving suit with a helmet
- Louis Daguerre develops Daguerreotype
Births
- 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 16 – Henry Adams, American historian (d. 1918)
- February 18 – Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (d. 1916)
- March 3 – George William Hill, American astronomer (d. 1914)
- April 8/ July 8 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German inventor (d. 1917)
- 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)
- September 2 – Liliuokalani of Hawai'i, last Queen of Hawaii (d. 1917)
- October 25 – Georges Bizet, French composer (d. 1875)
- November 7 – Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, French writer (d. 1889)
- November 13 – Joseph Fielding Smith, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1918)
- December 20 – Edwin Abbott Abbott, theologian and author (d. 1926)
- Cleveland Abbe, American meteorologist (d. 1916)
Deaths
- May 17 – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French diplomat (b. 1754)
- July 4 – Colonel José Antonio Vidaurre, Chilean rebel (shot)
- August 21 – Adelbert von Chamisso, German writer (b. 1781)
- September 1 – William Clark, American explorer (b. 1770)
Categories: 1838