1816

This page lists news articles and events for the year 1816.

Events that happen on the specified date are listed under Events: entries. News articles that were published on the specified date are listed under News: entries. Events that only happened in fiction on the specified date are listed under Fiction: entries and are written in italics.

Centuries:	18th Century		19th Century			20th Century
Decades:	1780s	1790s	1800s	1810s	1820s	1830s	1840s
Years:	1813	1814	1815	1816	1817	1818	1819

Undated

• Super-Event: 1816 is known as The Year Without A Summer, aka The Poverty Year, aka Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death. The 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora disrupted global climate in 1816. Snow fell in summer months, especially at higher elevations. Crops failed, leading to famine and inflation. It was a hard, cold year, probably the coldest since the frigid horror of 536. It probably felt like the worst year ever to those experiencing it.
• Event: Early U.S. general James Wilkinson publishes his autobiography, "Memoirs of My Times."
• Event United States begins building a fort on Lake Champlain to defend against possible attack from Canada. Due to a surveying error, the fort is built on the Canadian side of the border and became known as Fort Blunder
• Event: Shaka Zulu becomes ruler of the Zulu Kingdom.
• Event: James Wilkinson publishes his memoirs.

January

February

March

April

May

June

• June 19:
  • Event: Battle of Seven Oaks - Rival fur-trader companies (the Hudson Bay Company and North West Company) engage in a firefight near Winnipeg, Canada, with several dozen men on each side. This is part of a larger conflict known as the Pemmican War.

July

• All Month:
  • Event: Lord Byron, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Polidori spend time together near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. They engage in a story writing competition amongst themselves that is the birth of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre. It's sort of the birth of science fiction and gothic horror.
• July 2: (to July 15)
  • Event: The French frigate Méduse is wrecked due to some idiot rolling a "1" on their navigation check. About 150 crew get aboard a raft, but only 15 of them survive the 13-day ordeal, sustained by cannibalism. (Théodore Géricault makes a famous oil painting about it in 1818.)
• July 9:
  • Event: United Provinces of South America declares independence from Spain. (This is the territory that today is comprised of Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and the southern parts of Brazil)

August

September

October

November

December

• December 11:
  • Event: Indiana becomes the 19th State of the United States of America