1809. Pope Pius VII excommunicated Bonaparte.
1811. Lord Wellington raised the siege of Badajos. The French governor, Phillipon made a brave and noble defence.
1831. Francis Abbot, the Hermit of Niagara Falls, drowned while bathing in the river. He was a native of England, of quaker parentage. He arrived at the falls in June, 1829, on foot, in a very singular costume, and after a week's residence became so fascinated with the place that he determined on fixing his abode on Goat island. He sought seclusion, and wished to erect a hut, but the proprietor not thinking proper to grant his request, he took a small room in the only house, where he was occasionally furnished with bread and milk by the family, but more generally providing, and always cooking his own food. In the second winter of his residence, the house changed tenants, at which he quitted the island and built himself a small cottage on the main shore, about thirty rods below the fall. He was a person of highly cultivated mind and manners, a master of languages, and deeply read in the arts and sciences, and performed on various musical instruments with great taste; his drawings were also very spirited. He had traveled over Europe, and parts of the East, and possessed great colloquial powers when inclined to be sociable. On entering his hut, his guitar, violin, flutes, music books and port folio were scattered round in profusion; but not a single written paper of any kind was found to throw the least light on this extraordinary character.
1831. General Diebitsch, commander of the Russian forces in Poland, died, by the official accounts of cholera; it is supposed by poison.
1836. Jean Marie Ampere, famed as a mathematician and natural philosopher, died. Near the close of his life he busied himself with a classification of the sciences, a work from which great minds before him had shrunk.
1837. The plague at Smyrna committed great ravages; about 300 died daily for some time.
1839. John Ridge, a Cherokee, murdered. He was educated at the Cornwall school in Connecticut, where he married a respectable white woman. He was a practicing attorney among the Cherokees, and a man of talents.
1851. Robert Dundas, viscount Melville, British statesman, died, aged 80. He was for many years in the ministry, especially as first lord of the admiralty.
1854. The Crystal palace at Sydenham, England, was opened by the queen, Victoria; 40,000 persons being present.