1838 (original) (raw)

Events

January 6 - Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates the telegraph.
January 8 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code)
January 12 - Joseph Smith and one of his followers flee Ohio for Missouri
June 12 - Territory of Iowa established.
September 3 - Dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery.
November 5 - Honduras separates from the Central American Federation, weakening the confederation.
Proteins discovered by Jons Jacob Berzelius
the Pastry War
Start of First British-Afghan War
Republic of Yucatan declares independence from Mexico
Start of Central American Civil War
Friedrich Bessel makes the first accurate measurement of distance to a star.
Christian Hermann Weisse proposes the two-source hypothesis of gospel origins, which is held by a majority of biblical scholars to this day.

May 17 - Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French diplomat (* 1754)
July 4 - Colonel Jos� Antonio Vidaurre and his accomplices, authors of The Riot of Quillota, Chile were shot.