1803. Gregory Fontana, a Swiss mathematician, died; distinguished as a professor and an author, during a period of thirty years, in Italy.
1811. Swiss cantons recalled their troops from the British service, and voted 6,000 additional men for the French service.
1814. Battle of Bladensburg, and capture of Washington city by the British under general Ross and admiral Cockburn. The capitol, president's house and public offices were burnt in a spirit unworthy of any nation. A dreadful retribution, however, overtook them, by the explosion of a magazine, by which one half their number was either killed or wounded. American loss, 40 killed, 60 wounded.
1829. Reuben Kelsey died at Fairfield, Vt., of voluntary starvation, after a fast of 52 days, during which he took no other nourishment than water.
1833. Adrian Hardy Haworth died of cholera in England: a distinguished botanist, entomologist and ornithologist; author of the Lepidoptera Britannica, and various other works.
1842. Benjamin Wright, a distinguished American civil engineer, died. The great Erie canal afforded him an opportunity for the exercise of his mathematical knowledge.
1844. Great outrages committed in Rensselaer county, New York, by the tenantry on Rensselaerwick.
1845. Samuel Haskell, the oldest episcopal minister of the state of New York, died at New Rochelle.
1848. The American ship Ocean Monarch burnt in the Irish channel, and more than 170 lives lost.