Napoleon stood about 1.69 m, average for a Frenchman of his day. The 'short' myth came from French inches being longer than English ones, and from 'the little corporal', a term of affection rather than of size.

1804 · 1821 · apart: 17 years

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The event

• 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.

19th century

More amazing facts

• 1801 · 2006 Ceres was counted as a planet for half a century.
• 1803 The land Napoleon sold the US in 1803 now lies in 15 American states and two Canadian provinces.
• 1803 Count Fyodor Tolstoy so exasperated Krusenstern on Russia's first voyage round the world that he was put ashore in Kamchatka — after teaching the ship's orangutan to pour ink over the captain's log. He came home tattooed and nicknamed 'the American'.
• 1804 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.
• 1804 · 1900 In 1804 a medical student drank yellow fever patients' vomit to prove the disease was not contagious.
• 1805 Admiral Nelson's body came home from Trafalgar in a cask of brandy.

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