1809. Battle near Almonacid; the Spaniards defeated by the French under Joseph Bonaparte, and compelled to retreat, after nine hours' hard fighting.
1810. Severe earthquake at St. Michaels, one of the Azores, which continued two days; 22 houses swallowed up.
1813. Henry James Pye, an English poet, died. Having ruined his fortune, he was gratified with the office of poet laureate, and left many poems, original and translated.
1818. Nikolai I. Novikov, sometimes called the Franklin of Russia, died, aged 74. Certain it is that by his activity and taste he contributed not a little to the improvement of Russian literature.
1822. Samuel Auchmuty, commander-in-chief of the British forces in Ireland, died. He was a native of New York, who took the side of the British in the revolutionary contest, and held various honorable and lucrative stations under the British government.
1831. Barbadoes destroyed by a hurricane. It commenced at 3 P. M., and continued two hours; 5,000 persons perished; the houses were mostly destroyed, and the face of the country changed to a desert; neither trees nor vegetables were left standing.
1834. The Ursuline convent at Charlestown, Mass., destroyed by a protestant mob. The house was occupied by females, who were driven to seek shelter where they could find it, in the midst of night, while their valuables to a large amount were plundered.
1849. General Görgey, to whom the Hungarian diet had confided its powers, surrendered his army to the Russian general, Rudiger, at Vilagos, and the conquest of Hungary was consumated.
1849. A proclamation was issued by the president of the United States, warning all citizens against connecting themselves with an armed expedition believed to be fitting out with the intention to invade the island of Cuba, or some of the provinces of Mexico.
1853. John Downes, an American commodore, died at Charlestown, Mass., aged 69. He entered the navy in 1802, was in active service during the war of 1812, and commanded the Potomac, which bombarded the piratical town of Quallah Battoo, in reprisal for injuries done American sailors by the Malay pirates.