1839 in the United Kingdom

1839 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1837 | 1838 | 1839 | 1840 | 1841

Sport

1839 English cricket season

Events from the year 1839 in the United Kingdom.

[edit] Incumbents

• Monarch - Victoria of the United Kingdom
• Prime Minister - William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, Whig

[edit] Events

• 19 January - British East India Company captures Aden.
• February - Report on the Affairs of British North America published.
• 26 February - First Grand National run, at Aintree.^[1]
• 9 March - Anti-Corn Law League is organised.^[2]
• 26 March - The first Henley Royal Regatta is held.^[3]
• 9 April - The world's first commercial electric telegraph line comes into operation alongside the Great Western Railway line from Paddington station to West Drayton.
• 19 April - The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.
• 7 May to 11 May - Bedchamber Crisis: Robert Peel asks that Queen Victoria dismiss her Ladies of the Bedchamber as a condition for forming a government. Victoria refuses to accept the condition, and Peel resigns.^[2]
• 13 May - First Rebecca Riots against Welsh turnpikes, at Efailwen in Carmarthenshire.^[2]
• 4 July - Chartists riot in Birmingham.^[2]
• 23 July - British forces under Sir John Keane capture the fortress city of Ghazni, Afghanistan in the Battle of Ghazni during the First Anglo-Afghan War.^[4]
• 23 August - British forces seized Hong Kong as a base, as it prepared to wage war against Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict would become known as the First Opium War.^[3]
• 30 August - the Eglinton Tournament (See also the Eglinton Tournament of 1839), a recreation of a medieval tourney takes place in Eglinton Castle, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
• 4 November - Newport Rising: several thousand coal miners march on Newport to liberate Chartist prisoners; 24 killed.^[5]
• 24 December - an enormous landslide occurs in Axmouth, Devon. A report by geologists William Daniel Conybeare and William Buckland is one of the earliest scientific descriptions of a landslide.^[6]

[edit] Undated

• Michael Faraday publishes "Experimental Researches in Electricity"^[7] clarifying the true nature of electricity.
• The first parallax measurement of the distance to Alpha Centauri is published by Thomas Henderson.
• James Clark Ross sets out on the Antarctic expedition of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror which charted much of the coastline of the continent.
• Eyre's 1839 expeditions to the interior of South Australia.

[edit] Publications

• George Bradshaw's first national railway timetable, Bradshaw's Railway Companion.

[edit] Births

• 7 January - Ouida, novelist (died 1908)
• 16 March - John Butler Yeats, artist (died 1922)
• 17 June - Arthur Tooth, Anglican clergyman prosecuted for Ritualist practices in the 1870s (died 1931)
• 19 September - George Cadbury, businessman (died 1922)

[edit] Deaths

• 16 January - Edmund Lodge, writer (born 1756)
• 28 January - William Beechey, portrait-painter (born 1753)
• 11 April - John Galt, novelist (born 1779)
• 17 May - Archibald Alison, author (born 1757)

[edit] References

[edit] See also