| 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. |
| 1805 | Germany [solo and chamber music] | The German composer Ludwig van Beethoven completes his Piano Sonata No. 23 (Opus 57), the Appassionata and his overture Leonora No. 1 (Opus 138). |
| 1805 | Austria [opera] | The opera Fidelio, oder der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe/Fidelio, or the Triumph of Married Love by the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven is first performed, in Vienna, Austria. |
| 1805 | Spain [painting] | The Spanish artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes paints The Clothed Maja and The Nude Maja. He is summoned by the Inquisition and asked to explain why he has painted a nude (a rare subject in Spanish art). |
| 1805 | UK [weapons] | British artillery officer William Congreve invents the Congreve rocket. Consisting of a rocket 103 cm/40.5 in long, and a stabilizing stick 4.9 m/16 ft long, it has a range of 1.8 km/1.1 mi, and is used during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. It is immortalized in the song ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. |
| 1805 | UK [medicine] | The British navy's success at Trafalgar is partly due to the fact that sailors have a regular ration of lime or lemon juice, which eradicates scurvy. |
| 1805 | France [industrialization] | French inventor Joseph-Marie Jacquard develops a loom that uses punched cards to control the weaving of cloth. |
| 1805 | Prussia, Europe [legislation] | Internal customs duties in Prussia are abolished under the minister of trade, Baron Heinrich vom Stein, while the rest of central Europe preserves anticompetitive legislation. |
| 2 April 1805 | Denmark [births and deaths] | Hans Christian Andersen, Danish storyteller, born in Odense, Denmark (–1875). |
| 9 May 1805 | Germany [births and deaths] | Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, German dramatist and poet, dies in Weimar, Saxe-Weimar (45). |
| 22 June 1805 | Genoa [births and deaths] | Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian revolutionary and founder of Young Italy, a secret revolutionary society which strove for Italian unity, born in Genoa, Italy (–1872). |
| 9 August 1805 | Austria, UK, Russian Empire, France, Sweden [treaties] | Austria joins Britain, Russia, and Sweden as the signatories of the Treaty of St Petersburg in alliance against France and receives a £3 million subsidy. |
| 21 October 1805 | Spain [births and deaths] | Horatio Nelson, British naval commander who won decisive battles against France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, is killed at sea off Cape Trafalgar, Spain (46). |
| 21 October 1805 | UK, France, Spain, Italy [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | A Royal Navy fleet commanded by the English admiral Horatio Nelson defeats the combined Franco-Spanish fleet under Vice Admiral Pierre Villeneuve in the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson is mortally wounded in the action, but the battle confirms Britain's naval superiority and removes any possibility of a French invasion of Britain. |
| 2 December 1805 | France, Russian Empire, Austria [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | The French emperor Napoleon I entices the much larger Russo-Austrian forces ranged against him to overextend themselves before effecting a crushing defeat upon them in the Battle of Austerlitz, in Moravia. |
| 15 December 1805 | France, Prussia, Italy [treaties] | By the Treaty of Schönbrunn with France, Prussia cedes Cleves, Neuchâtel, and Ansbach, and accepts French territorial gains in Germany and Italy. In return Prussia is allowed to occupy Hanover in order to prevent it joining the coalition against the French emperor Napoleon I. |
