This Year in History:
1804
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
Two months after his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s colonial forces, Jean‑Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence of Saint‑Domingue, renaming it Haiti after its original Arawak name. In 1791, a revolt erupted…
During the First Barbary War, U.S. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur leads a military mission that famed British Admiral Horatio Nelson calls the “most daring act of the age.” In June 1801,…
Two months before Lewis and Clark begin their western expedition, Jim Bridger is born in Richmond, Virginia. Twenty years later, Bridger, heading West along the routes Lewis and Clark pioneered,…
After four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the “Napoleonic Code.” The civil code gave post‑revolutionary France its…
On March 26, 1804, President Thomas Jefferson attends a public party at the Senate and leads a diverse crowd in consuming an enormous loaf of bread dubbed the mammoth loaf.…
May 14, 1804: One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore…
On July 11, 1804, in one of the most famous duels in American history, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long‑time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and…
Sergeant Charles Floyd dies three months into the voyage of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, becoming the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during the journey. Lewis…
In Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Napoleon I, the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in a thousand years. Pope Pius VII handed Napoleon…
