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April 1 - A proclamation, signed "By order of the Committee of Organisation for forming a Provisional Government", begins the "Radical War" in Scotland.
April 8 - The statue of the Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Milos, c.150 BC-125 BC) is discovered on the Greek island of Milos, by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas.
May 20 - John Stuart Mill sets out on his formative boyhood trip to France.
June 5 - Caroline of Brunswick, the estranged wife of King George IV of the United Kingdom, returns to England after six years abroad in Italy, where she had been carrying on an affair; since ascending the throne in January, the King has sought to receive his government's approval for a divorce.[3]
June 12 - Élie Decazes, leader of the opposition in France's Chamber of Deputies, successfully introduces the "Law of the Double Vote", a proposal to add to the 258 existing legislators by creating 172 seats that would be "selected by special electoral colleges" made up of the wealthiest 25% of voters in each of France's departments.[5]
June 12 - Delegates in St. Louis, Missouri Territory approve a proposed state constitution, proclaiming that they "do mutually agree to form and establish a free and independent republic (sic), by the name of "The State of Missouri".[6]
June 29 - The cause of action that will lead to the U.S. Supreme Court case known simply as The Antelope arises, when a U.S. Treasury cutter captures a ship of the same name, which is transporting 281 Africans who had been captured as slaves, in violation of the 1819 U.S. law prohibiting the slave trade.[7]
July 31 - A fire breaks out in the wine depot at the Bercy section of Paris. It is reported later that "In the absence of water to supply the engines, and attempt was made to extinguish the flames with wine-- of which a lake of 50 ft. square and more than a foot deep was formed; but the fire continued to rage, as well it might, being supplied by alcohol, and great destruction of property resulted.[2]
November 17 - Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica. (The Palmer Peninsula is later named after him.)
November 20 - After the sinking of the American whaleship Essex of Nantucket, by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean, the survivors are left afloat in three small whaleboats. They eventually resort, by common consent, to cannibalism to allow some to survive.
^ abJones, A. G. E. (1982). Antarctica Observed: who discovered the Antarctic Continent?. Caedmon of Whitby. ISBN0-905355-25-3.
^ ab "Fires, Great", in The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance, Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) pp69
^Christopher Hibbert, Wellington: A Personal History (Da Capo Press, 1999) p220
^T. H. Beaglehole, Thomas Munro and the Development of Administrative Policy in Madras 1792-1818 (Cambridge University Press, 22010) p121
^Munro Price, The Perilous Crown: France Between Revolutions, 1814-1848 (Pan Macmillan, 2010) p108
^ "Missouri", in Constitutional Documents of the United States of America 1776-1860", ed. by Horst Dippel (K. G. Saur, 2007) p221
^"Antelope Case", by John T. Noonan, Jr., in Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, (Greenwood, 1997) p66