| 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. |
| 1810–1859 | USA [agriculture] | US cotton production, the vast majority of which is grown in the southern states, rises from 171,000 bales in 1810 to just under 5.4 million in 1859. |
| 1812 | England [fiction] | The English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, publishes the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Further cantos appear in 1816 and 1818. Based on the wanderings of a typical ‘Byronic hero’, it becomes an immediate success. |
| 1812 | Germany [fiction] | The German folklorists and philologists Jakob Ludwig Carl Grimm and his brother Wilhelm Carl Grimm publish the first volume of their famous Kinder and Hausmärchen/Fairy Tales. A second volume appears in 1815 and a third in 1822. |
| 1812 | France [literature and language] | French zoologist Georges Cuvier, publishes Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes/Research on the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds, and establishes comparative vertebrate palaeontology. He theorizes that the extinction of species has been caused by great catastrophes such as sudden land upheavals and floods. |
| 1812 | UK [tools] | The world's first steam threshing machine is powered by one of Richard Trevithick's high-pressure steam engines. |
| c. 1812 | USA [newspapers] | During the War of 1812, the term ‘Uncle Sam’ is first used to refer to the US federal government. First printed in the Troy, New York, Post on September 3, 1813, the term may have originated from Samuel Wilson, a US Army supply inspector known as Uncle Sam. |
| 1812 | Austria [orchestral music] | The Austrian composer Franz Schubert completes his Salve Regina for voice and orchestra (D 27); his Kyrie in D minor (D 31); and his String Quartets No. 1 (D 18) and No. 2 (D 32). |
| c. 1812 | England [painting] | The English artist J M W Turner paints Snowstorm: Hannibal Crossing the Alps. |
| 1812 | Germany [philosophy] | The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel publishes the first part of his Wissenschaft der Logic/The Science of Logic. In this work he sets out his famous three-part ‘dialectic’ of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The second part appears in 1816. |
| 7 February 1812 | England [births and deaths] | Charles Dickens, English novelist of the Victorian era, born in Portsmouth, England (–1870). |
| 11 May 1812 | England [political events] | Following the assassination of the British prime minister, Spencer Perceval, in the lobby of the House of Commons, the Tory politician Lord Liverpool agrees to form an administration. |
| 28 May 1812 | Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire [treaties] | The Treaty of Bucharest ends the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Russia obtains Bessarabia, (an area of southeast Europe bordered by the rivers Dniester and Prut) and withdraws its demand for the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. The peace enables Tsar Alexander I to act against the French emperor Napoleon I. |
| 22 July 1812 | UK, France, Spain, Portugal [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | British forces, under Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, decisively defeat the French, under Marshal Auguste Marmont, on the Spanish–Portuguese border at Salamanca, and subsequently advance into Spain. |
| 7 September 1812 | Russian Empire, France [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | The Russian army, now under the command of Marshal Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov are defeated by the French Grande Armée at the Battle of Borodino, and are obliged to retreat and abandon the Russian capital, Moscow. Emperor Napoleon I makes a significant mistake in failing to mobilize his reserves and destroy the retreating army. |
| 11 November 1812 | USA [elections] | James Madison defeats De Witt Clinton in the US presidential election with 128 electoral votes against Clinton's 89 votes. |
| 5 December 1812 | France, Russian Empire [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | Hearing news of the coup against him, the French emperor Napoleon I leaves his troops under the command of Marshal Joachim Murat in Russia and sets out for Paris (where he arrives on 18 December). The remnants of his Grande Armée struggle back to France, a bare 10,000 effective troops remaining from the 500,000 who set out for Moscow. |
