On January 3 1841, writer Herman Melville ships out on the whaler Acushnet to the South Seas.

During the First Opium War, China cedes the island of Hong Kong to the British with the signing of the Chuenpi Convention, an agreement seeking an end to the first Anglo-Chinese conflict.

On February 24, 1841, former President John Quincy Adams begins to argue the Amistad case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

At the end of a historic case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules, with only one dissent, that the enslaved Africans who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus are free under American law.

President William Henry Harrison dies after serving only 32 days in office on this day in 1841. Harrison holds the unfortunate presidential record of shortest term in office.

Edgar Allan Poe’s story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue_,"_ first appears in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. The tale is generally considered to be the first detective story.

On April 6, 1841, John Tyler is sworn in as president. Tyler was elected as William Harrison’s vice president earlier in 1841 and was suddenly thrust into the role of president when Harrison died one month into office. He was the first vice president to immediately assume the role of president after a sitting president’s untimely exit and set the precedent for succession thereafter.

On August 17, 1842, protesters burn an effigy of President John Tyler a short distance from the White House. Their actions came in response to Tyler's veto of a second attempt by Congress to re-establish the Bank of the United States. The protestors were composed primarily of members of Tyler’s own political party, the Whigs, who dominated Congress at the time.