1823

Events

January–March

• January 22 – By secret treaty signed at the Congress of Verona, the Quintuple Alliance gives France a mandate to invade Spain for the purpose of restoring Ferdinand VII (who has been captured by armed revolutionary liberals) as absolute monarch of the country.
• January 23 – In Paviland Cave on the Gower Peninsula of Wales, William Buckland inspects the "Red Lady of Paviland", the first identification of a prehistoric (male) human burial.^[1]
• February 3
  • Jackson Male Academy, precursor of Union University, opens in Tennessee.
  • Gioachino Rossini's opera Semiramide is first performed, at La Fenice in Venice.
• February 10 – The first worldwide carnival parade takes place in Cologne, Prussia.
• February 11 – Carnival tragedy of 1823: About 110 boys are killed during a stampede at the Convent of the Minori Osservanti in Valletta, Malta.
• February 15 (approx.) – The first officially recognised gold is found in Australia, by surveyor James McBrien at Fish River, near Bathurst, New South Wales, predating the Australian gold rushes.
• February 20 – Explorer James Weddell's expedition to Antarctica reaches latitude 74°15' S and longitude 34°16'45" W: the southernmost position any ship has reached at this time, a record that will hold for more than 80 years.
• March 19 – Emperor Agustín de Iturbide of Mexico abdicates, thus ending the short-lived First Mexican Empire.

April–June

• April 7 – French forces, the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis", cross the Spanish border.
• April 13 – Franz Liszt, 11, gives a concert in Vienna, after which he is personally congratulated by Ludwig van Beethoven.^[2]
• May 5 – Emperor Pedro I of Brazil inaugurates Brazil's first Assembleia Geral, with 50 Senators and 102 Deputies.^[3]
• May 7 – Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov in appointed as Governor-General of Novorossiya (New Russia), the portion of Russia bordering the Black Sea and in the territory later occupied by Ukraine.^[4]
• May 9 – Russian author Alexander Pushkin begins work on his verse novel Eugene Onegin.^[5]
• May 23 – The rebel Spanish government withdraws from Madrid to Seville following French attacks.
• May 25 – The Catholic Association begins in Ireland at a meeting of 13 people at a bookseller's house on Capel Street in Dublin.^[6]
• June 5 – Raffles Institution is established (as the Singapore Institution) by the founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles.

July–September

• July 1 – The Congress of Central America declares absolute independence from Spain, Mexico and any other foreign nation, including North America, and a republican system of government is established.
• July – Robert Peel ensures the passage of five Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom, effectively abolishing the death penalty for over one hundred offences;^[7] in particular, the Judgement of Death Act allows judges to commute sentences for capital offences (other than murder or treason) to imprisonment or transportation.^[8] The Transportation Act of July 4 allows convicts transported to the colonies to be employed on public works.^[7]
• July 10 – The Gaols Act is passed by Parliament of the United Kingdom, based on the prison reform campaign of Elizabeth Fry.^[7]
• July 15 – The Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome is almost completely destroyed by fire.^[9]
• August 1 – William Pitt Amherst arrives in Calcutta with Lady Amherst, to become the new Governor-General of India.^[10]
• August 4 – Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, the Mexican government administrator in charge of Anglo-American immigration into Mexico's state of Coahuila y Tejas, allows Stephen F. Austin to put together an 11-man police force, that will later be expanded to become the Texas Ranger Division.^[11]
• August 5 – The Royal Hibernian Academy is founded in Dublin.^[12]
• August 16 – Tsar Alexander I of Russia draws up a secret "manifesto", designating his second younger brother Nikolai to succeed him, bypassing Nikolai's older brother, Grand Duke Konstantin. The existence of the manifesto is revealed on Alexander's death in 1825.^[13]
• August 18 – Demerara rebellion of 1823: In British Guiana (South America), an insurrection of 10,000 black slaves begins; it is suppressed after three days, but hundreds of suspects are executed in the reprisals that follow.^[14]
• August 20 – Pope Pius VII dies after a reign of more than 23 years that began on March 14, 1800; he is remembered for crowning Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor of France.^[15]
• August 24 – Hugh Glass gets mauled by a sow grizzly while on a fur trapping expedition in the Missouri Territory.^[16]
• August 31 – Battle of Trocadero: French infantry of the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis" capture the fort of Trocadero and turn its guns on Cádiz.
• September 10 – Simón Bolívar is named President of Peru.
• September 22 – Joseph Smith first goes to the place near Manchester, New York, where the golden plates are stored, having been directed there by God through an angel (according to what he writes in 1838).
• September 23 – First Anglo-Burmese War: Burmese forces attack the British on Shapura, an island close to Chittagong.
• September 28 – Roman Catholic Cardinal Annibale della Genga is elected Pope Leo XII.^[15]
• September 30 – Cádiz surrenders to the French and Ferdinand VII of Spain is restored to his throne, immediately repealing the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812.

October–December

• October 5 – Medical journal The Lancet is founded by Thomas Wakley in London.
• November 3 – An explosion at the Rainton Colliery Company's Plain Pit mine at Chilton Moor in the north of England, kills 57 coal miners.^[17]
• November – According to tradition, William Webb Ellis invents the sport of rugby football at Rugby School in England.^[7]
• December 2 – James Monroe first introduces the Monroe Doctrine in the State of the Union address, declaring that any European attempts to recolonize the Americas would be considered a hostile act towards the United States.

Date unknown

• The first Anglo-Ashanti War begins.
• Olbers' paradox is described by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers.
• Work begins on the British Museum in London, designed by Robert Smirke, and the Altes Museum in Berlin, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
• The Oxford Union is founded as a student debating society in England.