| 1730–1807 | UK [newspapers] | The Daily Advertiser is launched in London, England. With its dependence on advertisements, this may be regarded as the first modern newspaper. |
| 1799–1825 | [maths] | The French mathematician and physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace publishes the five-volume Traité de mécanique céleste/Celestial Mechanics, which applies calculus to the motions of celestial bodies and Isaac Newton's theories of the Solar System to show how its stability is implicit in the law of gravitation. |
| 1800–1850 | USA [consumer products] | A revolution in retail and wholesale trade occurs: specialization transforms the urban retail market, replacing the general store with individual stores for hardware, groceries, dry goods, furnishing, books, tobacco, and so on. Cash-only sales policies are instituted around 1806. |
| 1802 | Germany [orchestral music] | The German composer Ludwig van Beethoven completes his Moonlight Piano Sonata (Opus 27, no. 2); his Symphony No. 2 in D (Opus 36); and his piano work 7 Bagatelles (Opus 33). |
| 1802 | UK [photography] | English physicist Thomas Wedgwood announces to the British Royal Institution that he can create photographic images projected on paper saturated with silver nitrate. |
| 1802 | England [astronomy] | English astronomer William Herschel discovers that some stars revolve around others, forming binary pairs. He catalogues 848 of them. |
| 1802 | France [chemistry] | French chemist and physicist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac demonstrates that all gases expand by the same fraction of their volume when their temperature is increased by the same amount. |
| 1802 | France [Christianity] | The French writer François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, publishes his defence of religion Le Génie du Christianisme/The Genius of Christianity. |
| 1802 | UK [ships and shipping] | Scottish engineer William Symington launches the world's first paddlewheel steamer, the Charlotte Dundas, which acts as a tug on the Forth and Clyde Canal. The 17-m/56-ft long steam-driven vessel runs at 13 kph/8 mph and uses a piston rod connected directly to the crankshaft. |
| 1802 | England [thought and scholarship] | The English theologian and philosopher William Paley publishes his major work Natural Theology. Paley argues that the natural world shows clear evidence of design and purpose and that, therefore, a creator God exists. |
| 1802 | USA [thought and scholarship] | US mathematician and astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch publishes The New American Practical Navigator. Based on corrected tables from J H Moore's The Practical Navigator, Bowditch's book goes through 60 editions and sets the standards for maritime navigation. |
| 26 February 1802 | France [births and deaths] | Victor Hugo, French Romantic novelist, born in Besançon, France (–1885). |
| March 1802 | UK [railways] | English engineer Richard Trevithick takes out a patent for a high-pressure steam engine for ‘driving carriages’. |
| 27 March 1802 | UK, France, Europe [treaties] | The Treaty of Amiens is signed between Britain and France, based on the preliminaries agreed on 1 October 1801; it achieves (briefly) the complete pacification of Europe. |
| 24 July 1802 | France [births and deaths] | Alexandre Dumas (père), French novelist best known for The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers (both 1844), born in Villers-Cotterêts, France (–1870). |
| 15 October 1802 | France, Switzerland [wars] | Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, intervenes in the civil war in Switzerland between the towns and the forest cantons. Using his newly-won authority in the region, he styles himself ‘Mediator of the Helvetic League’ and imposes a settlement. |
| 23 October 1802 | India [political events] | At Poona in India, the maharaja Jaswant Rao Holkar of Indore defeats both Baji Rao, the peshwa of Poona, head of the Maratha confederacy and sympathetic to the British, and Madhoji Rao Sindhia of Gwalior, the most powerful figure in central India. |
