1843

Events 
 February 6 – The Virginia Minstrels perform the first minstrel show (Bowery Amphitheatre, New York City).
 February 8 – Earthquakes in Guadeloupe magnitude 8.5, 5000 people reported killed.
 February 11 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera I Lombardi premieres in Milan.
 May 18 – The Disruption of the Church of Scotland took place in Edinburgh.
 May 22 – The first major wagon train headed for the northwest sets out with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.
 July 19 – The SS Great Britain is launched from Bristol.
 August 15  – Tivoli Gardens,  one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opened in Copenhagen, Denmark.
 October 13 – In New York City, Henry Jones and 11 others found B'nai B'rith (the oldest Jewish service organization in the world).
 November 28 – Ka La Ku'oko'a: Hawaiian Independence Day.  The Kingdom of Hawai`i was officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.
 The world's first commercial Christmas cards are printed by Sir Henry Cole in London.
 December 17 – First publication of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
 James Joule quantifies the conversion of work into heat.
 In Barbados, the first black man, Samuel Jackson Prescod, is elected to the House of Assembly.
 The Danish government re-establishes the althing in Iceland as an advisory body.
 The first tunnel under the Thames is finished.
 Argentina supports Rosas of Uruguay and begins a siege of Montevideo.
 Quaternions are discovered by William Rowan Hamilton. 
 The Economist is first published.
 Bishop's University is founded.
 Abbeville is founded by descendants of Acadians from Nova Scotia.

January 29 - William McKinley, twenty-fifth President of the United States (d. 1901)
 January 1 – Francis Scott Key, American lawyer and lyricist (b. 1779)