1804: Napoleon crowned himself emperor, while the former slaves of Haiti, having beaten his army, declared independence — the first nation founded by a slave revolt.
The events
- Independence of Haiti1804 · Gonaïves. On 1 January 1804 Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the former French colony of Saint-Domingue independent. Haiti became the first state born of a successful slave revolt and the second independent nation in the Americas.
- Coronation of Napoleon1804 · Notre-Dame de Paris. In the presence of Pope Pius VII, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor and then crowned Josephine. The French Republic became an empire, and over the next decade Napoleon redrew the map of Europe.
More amazing facts
- 1775 · 1776 In January 1775 Pugachev was executed in Moscow; in April the first shots of the American War of Independence were fired.
- 1776 The Bolshoi Theatre and the United States are the same age: the theatre dates from March 1776, the Declaration of Independence from July of that year.
- 1809 · 1859 · 1861 Darwin and Lincoln were born on the same day: 12 February 1809.
- 1815 Two months before Waterloo, in April 1815, Indonesia's Tambora erupted — its ash brought the 'Year Without a Summer' to Europe and North America.
- 1825 1825: the first public steam railway opened in England, and in St Petersburg the Decembrists marched onto Senate Square.
- 1835 · 1859 Darwin spent five weeks on the Galápagos in 1835, but did not publish On the Origin of Species until 24 years later.