1809

Events in 1809 14

• 1732 – 1809 Joseph Haydn Father of the Symphony Austrian composer who essentially invented the symphony and string quartet as we know them. He mentored Mozart and taught Beethoven.
• 1809 – 1892 Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) Died 6 October 1892, aged 83 Alfred, Lord Tennyson served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom for over four decades and was one of the most popular poets of the Victorian era. Works such as "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "In Memoriam A.H.H." remain widely read today.
• 1809 – 1880 Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880) Died 6 October 1880, aged 71 Benjamin Peirce was an American mathematician and astronomer who taught at Harvard for decades and helped establish the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's early work in celestial mechanics. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 6 October 1880. His son Charles Sanders Peirce became a noted philosopher and logician.
• 1809 – 1884 Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884) Died 13 May 1884, aged 75 Cyrus McCormick was an American inventor and businessman who developed a commercially successful mechanical reaper, transforming agricultural harvesting. The company he founded later became the core of International Harvester. He died in Chicago.
• 1809 Diet of Porvoo Birth of the Grand Duchy The legislative assembly where Tsar Alexander I pledged to respect Finnish laws, making Finland an autonomous Grand Duchy.
• 1809 – 1868 Kit Carson (1809-1868) Died 23 May 1868, aged 58 Carson was an American frontiersman, trapper, and soldier famed for guiding western expeditions and later for military campaigns against Native American tribes including the Navajo. He served as a Union brigadier general during the Civil War. He died at Fort Lyon, Colorado, of an aortic aneurysm.
• 1809 Loss of Finland National Trauma Sweden was forced to cede the eastern third of its territory to Russia, ending a 600-year shared history.
• 1809 – 1852 Louis Braille (1809-1852) Died 6 January 1852, aged 43 Louis Braille, blinded in a childhood accident, had in the 1820s developed a system of raised dots that let blind readers read and write by touch. He died of tuberculosis in Paris; his Braille system was adopted worldwide after his death.
• 1809 – 1852 Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) Died 4 March 1852, aged 42 Nikolai Gogol was a Russian novelist and playwright whose works, including Dead Souls and The Government Inspector, shaped Russian realist literature. He died in Moscow shortly after burning the manuscript of the unfinished second part of Dead Souls.
• 1809 – 1898 William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) Died 19 May 1898, aged 88 William Ewart Gladstone served four terms as British Prime Minister and was a dominant figure in Victorian politics. He championed Irish Home Rule and liberal reform throughout his career. He died at Hawarden Castle on 19 May 1898.
• 1809 – 1849 Edgar Allan Poe American writer and poet Poe pioneered horror and detective fiction, creating psychologically intense and Gothic narratives.
• 1809 – 1847 Felix Mendelssohn Romantic composer & conductor German Romantic composer who rediscovered Bach, wrote the famous Wedding March and composed the Violin Concerto and Italian Symphony.
• 1809 – 1865 Abraham Lincoln 16th President — saved the Union, abolished slavery Abraham Lincoln (Feb 12, 1809 – Apr 15, 1865) was the 16th President 1861-1865. He led the Union through the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and was assassinated at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865.
• 1809 – 1882 Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species Naturalist who proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection.