1842

Years: 1839 1840 1841 - 1842 - 1843 1844 1845
Decades: 1810s 1820s 1830s - 1840s - 1850s 1860s 1870s
Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century Template:C19YearInTopic

1842 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar).

Events

February 7 - Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia defeats warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien in the Battle of Debre Tabor
February 21 - John J. Greenough patents the sewing machine.
March 5 - Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invade Texas briefly occupy San Antonio and then head back to the Rio Grande. This is the first such invasion since the Texas Revolution.
March 30 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation (Dr. Crawford Long performed the operation using ether).
March 31 - Middleton Junction and Oldham Branch Railway line opened up to Werneth in North West England.
May 8 - Two trains collide in Paris and catch fire - 59 dead
May 19 - Dorr Rebellion - militiamen supporting Thomas Wilson Dorr attack arsenal in Providence, Rhode Island but are repulsed
June 4 - In South Africa, hunter Dick King rides into British military base in Grahamstown to warn that Boers have besieged Durban. He had left 11 days earlier. British army dispatches a relief force.

August 4 - Armed Occupation Act is signed, providing for the armed occupation and settlement of the unsettled part of the Peninsula of East Florida.

Massacre of Elphinstone's British army on the road from Kabul to Jallalabad, Afghanistan, by Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammed Khan
British Empire annexes Hong Kong
Pentonville Prison built.
New Zealand seat of government moves from Russell to Auckland
Ohio's Wesleyan University is established.
University of Notre Dame is founded by Father Edward Sorin, CSC of the Congregation of Holy Cross.
Scroll and Key secret society of Yale University established.
Commonwealth v. Hunt makes strikes and unions legal in the United States.
First pils beer brewed in the Chech city of Pilsen. The Pilz is the original lager beer of which all modern lagers are copies.

February 3 - Sidney Lanier, American writer (d. 1881)
February 4 - Arrigo Boito, Italian poet and composer (d. 1918)
February 25 - Karl May, German writer (d. 1912)
March 10 - Mykola Lysenko, Ukrainian composer (d. 1912)
March 18 - Stéphane Mallarmé, French poet (d. 1898)
May 8 - Emil Christian Hansen, Danish fermentation physiologist (d. 1909)
May 13 - Arthur Sullivan, English composer (d. 1900)
June 12 - Rikard Nordraak, Norwegian composer (d. 1866)
August 23 - Osborne Reynolds, Irish engineer and physicist (d. 1912)
September 13 - John H. Bankhead, U.S. Senator (d. 1920)
September 21 - Abd-ul-Hamid II, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1918)
October 14 - Joe Start, baseball player (d. 1927)
November 12 - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919)
December 2 - C. W. Alcock, English footballer and football official (d. 1907)
December 9 - Peter Kropotkin, Russian anarchist (d. 1921)
Anna Elizabeth Dickenson, American orator (d. 1932)