1820

• An attempt to assassinate the cabinet ministers of England fails in what becomes known as the Cato Street conspiracy.
• Revolutions by liberals occur in Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
• Britain's George III dies at age 81, and is succeeded by George IV, who is corpulent and 57 years old. He will rule until 1830.
• George IV's official wife, Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, whom he detests, demands to be recognized as Queen. The king offers her £3000 to stay abroad, never take a royal title, and not to attempt to exercise any royal rights. In the meantime, the King tries to arrange a divorce and postpones his coronation upon its outcome. The House of Commons and House of Lords pass a bill to grant the divorce and deprive Caroline of her "Queenship", but the common people rally to her side. Due to public pressure the bill is dropped, and in celebration the cities of London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Dublin, to name a few, illuminate their cities for 3 days.
• Congress of Troppau convenes to consider the revolt in Naples.
• The Missouri Compromise comes to play, which admits several states into the Union, including the slave state of Missouri.
• The Egyptians begin the conquering of the Sudan.
• Teacher Maria Becraft, 15, opens the first black girl's boarding school in Washington, D.C.

1821

• Austria is authorized by the Congress of Laibach to put down a Neapolitan revolt.
• A Greek War of Independence is begun against Turkey.
• Peru and Mexico both claim independence.
• Persia and Turkey are at war.
• Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel dies suddenly at the age of 53 after suffering years of her husband George IV's efforts to vilify, humiliate and persecute her throughout their marriage. She leaves instructions that her epithet should read: "Here lies Caroline, the injured Queen of England." George, who is now heavily involved with his mistress, Mrs. Fitzherbert, refuses to allow homage to be paid to the late queen and swears that Caroline's funeral cortege will not be allowed to pass through the London streets, even if he has to call out troops to stop it.
• 200 working-class women in Philadelphia establish the Daughters of Africa mutual benefit society.
• Sophia Woodhouse, an inventor, is awarded a US patent to use different varieties of grass, such as redtop and spear grass which grow along riverbanks, to make bonnets.
• The Emma Willard School begins in the Troy Female Seminary at Troy, N.Y., offering to women the study equivalent of courses offered at many of the best men's high schools and some men's colleges. Ms. Willard will prove that young women can master subjects such as mathematics and philosophy without losing their charm, wit and health as had previously been thought by so-called "learned" men.
• A new British census shows that women outnumber men and live longer.

1822

• The Congress of Verona breaks down after Britain's refusal to intercede in Spain; this action causes the end of the Congress System.
• Brazil declares its independence from Portugal.
• Ecuador and Colombia are liberated as well.
• In West Africa, Liberia is founded as a colony for freed American slaves.
• A New York physician, John Stearns, writes on the use of ergot to induce labor and save the doctor's time. Even though he's been told by an immigrant German midwife there are no ill effects from its use, it is found that it produces an incessant action leaving no time to turn a child in the uterus or birth canal should problems develop. He cautions its usage only after the child is positioned for delivery. A fungus, it comes into wide use and by 1900 will be routinely employed.
• An Italian ballerina, Marie Taglione will make her debut at the age of 8 in Vienna and within a few years will be setting the standard to which all other ballerinas are judged. By the time she retires in 1847, she will become world famous not just for her dancing, but for her choreography as well.
• New York City's population is now 124,000, where a family of 14 can live comfortably on $3,000/year.
• Reformer Francis Place distributes his pamphlet, To the Married of Both Sexes of the Working People throughout London, recommending contraception in the forms of coitus interruptus or by the insertion of a soft wool or cotton sponge as large as a green walnut or small apple, tied by a bobbin or penny ribbon.

1823

• The Spanish revolution is crushed.
• US President James Monroe issues the Monroe Doctrine, which warns the European powers not to interfere in American politics.
• Anne Royall, 54 and a Virginia gentleman-farmer's wife, finds herself penniless after 16 years of marriage when her husband dies and his relatives cheat her out of his estate (she had been a servant at his estate when they had met). She petitions Congress for a widow's pension, since her husband had been a Continental Army general, but it's not enough to support her. To help earn her living, she soon travels the country, writing about her experiences and giving scathing insights into the lives of prominent people such as General Lafayette and others.
• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley publishes Valperga.

1824

• The Combination Acts are repealed in England, which stimulates the trade movement.
• Charles X becomes the new King of France.
• War develops between the British and the Ashanti in the Gold Coast, aka Ghana, West Africa.
• The first Anglo-Burmese War begins, and Britain begins annexation of Burma.
• Nicholas I is crowned Tsar of Russia.
• Hawaii's Kamehameha II and his wife both die of measles during a state visit to Britain on July 14.
• The first joint strike by men and women takes place by weavers at Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
• Fanny Wright makes a second trip to America, right behind the Marquis de Lafayette, joining him on his visits to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. She is a champion for women's rights and advocates free public schools in America.
• Robert Owen, an English reformer, advocates women's liberation, abolition of slavery and free progressive education. He purchases the town of New Harmony, Indiana from German Lutheran Rappites, with the intention of beginning communes in England, Ireland, Mexico, and the U.S. All will fail.
• Hawaii's high chieftess, Kapiolani, hikes 100 miles to the 4,000 ft. peak of Mauna Loa and descends 500 feet into the Kilauea Volcano's crater against her husband's pleas, and defies the steaming lake of red-hot lava by saying "I fear not Pele". Later in the 1840s, she will be found to have breast cancer and will undergo a mastectomy without anesthesia.
• The book, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison Who Was Taken by the Indians in the Year 1755 When Only about Twelve Years of Age and Has Continued to Reside Amongst Them to the Present, will outsell the works of Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper until the end of the century. It is written by Mary Jemison, age 81, who had married a member of the Delaware tribe during her captivity and whom she really did love. Her Indian captors had sided with the British during the Revolution, and later deeded land to her when they were removed to reservations.
• Don Juan, written by English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, is published this same year as he dies of marsh fever at Missolonghi at age 36, in the midst of trying to help the Greeks gain their independence.
• The first regional American cookbook is published: The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph, age 72. It includes recipes for turtle soup, Virginia ham, and gooseberry fool.

1825

• An uprising against the Tsar takes place in Russia.
• Greece is invaded by Egypt, under the command of Ibrahim, son of Mohammed Ali.
• Hawaii's new king is now Kamehameha III, age 12, but Kamehameha I's widow will rule as regent until she dies in 1832, when Kamehameha III will officially be crowned in the following year.
• Memoirs is written by English courtesan Harriette Wilson, who had her first lover at age 15 and included other such notables as the earl of Craven, the duke of Argyll, the marquis of Worcester, and the duke of Wellington. The duke of Wellington's comments when it was suggested he pay her off to keep the book from being published? "Publish and be damned!"
• Every Woman's Book: Or, What is Love? is the first book on birth control published in Britain. Written by physician Richard Carlile, he advocates partial or complete withdrawal or the use of a sponge, of which he says the French and Italians "wear them fastened to their waists, and always have them at hand." Also recommended: a baudruche, or "glove" for the man.

1826

• Russia and Persia are at war.
• Turkey captures Missolonghi from the Greeks.
• The British Lying-in Hospital establishes courses for "monthly nurses", which are women who will nurse mothers during their lying-in period but may not deliver their children.
• New York in the US opens its first high school for girls; however it won't stay open long.
• The first monthly children's magazine is founded by Lydia Maria Francis, called Juvenile Miscellany, but will be out of circulation by 1833.

1827

• The Treaty of London is signed by Britain, Russia, and France to guarantee the Greeks their independence.
• At the Battle of Navarino, the Egyptian fleet is destroyed by the combined efforts of the French, Russian and British forces.
• A free school for infants opens in New York under Joanne Bethune, which is supposed to free working-class parents from some of their child-care burdens. The school is open to children ages 18 months to 5 years.
• Felix Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is performed for the first time. At 18, his talents are surpassed only by his sister, Fanny, who, now 21, has been told since the age of 14 that due to her sex "music....for you it can and must be only an ornament, never the root of your being and doing...and your very joy at the praise he (Felix) earns proves that you might, in his place, have merited equal approval." She is not permitted to publish her choral and piano pieces, but Felix will publish six of her compositions under his own name.

1828

• In Portugal, regent Dom Miguel overthrows the government in the Miguelite Wars. He will not be defeated until 1834.
• Russia and Turkey engage in war.
• Scandal is abrew in the US. In a smear campaign, President-elect Andrew Jackson's wife is accused of bigamy and adultery in speeches and handbills. It seems her first husband had filed for divorce, and she had married Jackson believing herself free although she was still technically married at the the time to her first husband.
• Girls and women organize the first strike of US women wage earners in Dover, N.H. after cotton mill owners post new rules which include: "The bell to call the people to work will be rung 5 minutes and tolled 5 minutes; at the last stroke the entrance will be closed and a fee of 12 1/2 cents exacted of anyone for whom it may be reopened"; "No person can be allowed to leave work without permission of the overseer."; and "No talking can be permitted while at work, except on business." 12 1/2 cents represents 1/3 of a day's wages.
• An English physician suggests the word obstetrician from the Latin "to stand before" to be used to denote a specialist in childbirth instead of the more commonly used names of male midwife, man midwife, madman, accouter, and even androboethogynist.
• The Ladies Magazine begins publication in Boston.
• America's Shakers drop their permissive attitude toward alcohol, forbidding the use of beer, cider, wines, and all ardent liquors, on all occasions, including house-raisings, husking bees, harvestings, and all other gatherings.

1829

• The Catholic Emancipation Act is enacted in Britain, which means that Roman Catholics can now hold public office.
• Russia and Turkey come to terms under the Russo-Turkish Treaty of Adrianople.
• The country of Greater Columbia is now divided into the countries of Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and New Granada.
• British authorities abolish the practice of suttee in India, whereby Hindu women were burned on their husband's funeral pyres.
• English actress Fanny Kemble, at 19, makes her debut at London's Royal Theatre in Covent Garden, playing Juliet in the company headed by her father, Charles Kemble, and her mother, Maria Theresa De Camp Kemble. She is an immediate success and revives the failing popularity of the Royal Theatre.

1811-19  1820-29  1830-37

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