1819
Raffles Founds Singapore
Sir Stamford Raffles, acting largely on his own authority, signed a treaty with a local sultan and established a British trading post on a swampy island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula. He declared it a free port - no tariffs. Within five years Singapore was the busiest harbor in Southeast Asia. The empire had found its keystone.
Bolivar Wins Boyaca
After a brutal march over the Andes in rope sandals, Simon Bolivar fell on a Spanish column at a bridge called Boyaca and shattered it in an afternoon. Three days later he rode into Bogota. The liberation of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador - Gran Colombia - had just become possible.
Adams-Onis Treaty
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams bullied a decaying Spain into ceding Florida and drawing the first line across the continent to the Pacific. In exchange the United States assumed five million dollars of Spanish debts. The swampy peninsula, long a haven for runaway slaves and Seminoles, became American. The transcontinental boundary line gave the United States its first legal claim to the Oregon Country and the Pacific coast.
Peterloo Massacre
A crowd of sixty thousand had gathered on St. Peter's Field in Manchester to hear Henry Hunt speak for parliamentary reform. The magistrates sent in yeomanry with sabres. Eighteen people died, hundreds were wounded. The nickname, a sneer against Waterloo, stuck - and the road to the 1832 Reform Act began.
Victoria Born
At Kensington Palace, a daughter was born to the Duke and Duchess of Kent - fifth in line for the British throne. The baby was christened Alexandrina Victoria. By accident of royal deaths and royal childlessness, she would become queen at eighteen, and lend her name to an age, an aesthetic, and an empire.