Just two weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, U.S. General Andrew Jackson achieves the greatest American victory of the War of 1812 at the Battle of New Orleans.

On April 10, the most powerful volcanic eruption in human history begins in earnest when Indonesia's Tambora volcano sends ash 20 miles into the atmosphere and boiling liquified rock starts streaming down its slopes. Its "cacophony of explosions" could be heard hundreds of miles away and, within hours, nearby villages ceased to exist, forests were incinerated and massive lava flows plowed into the sea, redrawing maps of the island.

At Waterloo in Belgium on June 18, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte suffers defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era of European history.