19th century

• The Little Ice Age ended.
• Napoleon, who conquers much of Europe, is ultimately defeated in 1815; some old European regimes are restored, others not.
• The modern city of Singapore is established when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company acquires land on the island from the Sultan of Johore in 1819.
• The Libertadores lead most of Latin America to independence.
• Industrial Revolution continues and spreads, developments include the Rail Transport, telegraph, and telephone.
• Belgium becomes independent in 1830 after a massive uprising against the Dutch. Leopold becomes the first king of Belgium.
• Belgium will be the second industrial power in the world by the middle of the 19th century.
• Leopold II, son of Leopold, becomes the second king of Belgium. He buys the gigantic territory of Congo in Africa with his own fortune and will later (1908) offer it to Belgium.
• Discovery of the relationships between magnetism and electricity and light by Hans Christian Řrsted and James Clerk Maxwell. (See:electromagnetism)
• Mass migration from Europe to the United States.
• During the reign of Queen Victoria, the United Kingdom experiences the Victorian Age, which is the age in which the United Kingdom is the leading economic power in the world.
• Political revolution and constitutional reform across Europe severely limits powers of monarchs, advances democracy.
• The religious revival of the Second Great Awakening in the eastern United States and Canada gives rise to unique, American, Christian religions during the era of Restorationism
• Gold discovered in Australia and throughout the west of the United States, leading to huge increases in national wealth and encouraging mass migration of free settlers there.
• Slavery ended in British colonies and in America. See American Civil War. End of global slave trade enforced by British navy.
• Charles Darwin revolutionizes biology with his theories of evolution, 1858.
• Europeans conquer and colonize most of Africa and parts of Asia.
• Karl Marx writes the Communist Manifesto, encouraging workers to revolt against owners.
• Meiji Restoration in 1868 opens Japan to modern influences and returns the emperor to power.
• Germany and Italy are formed as nations.
• Railroads make fast mass transit available to many. Transcontinental railroads built, including the Panama Railway in 1855, the US Transcontinental Railroad finished in 1869 linking to west in the United States, and the Canadian National Railway in 1885.
• The Suez Canal is opened, connecting Europe and the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and Asia in 1869.
• The British begin their so-called "forward movement" to extend control over the Malay States with the signing of the Pangkor Treaty in 1874.
• The electric telegraph and undersea cables make instant global communication possible for the first time.
• Postage Stamps introduced in Great Britain and soon thereafter, in many other countries.
• Manufactured goods become widely available by mail order

• Alexander II of Russia, Tsar
• Otto von Bismarck, German politician
• Simón Bolívar South American Liberator
• Empress Dowager Cixi of China
• Abraham Lincoln, US president
• Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor
• Napoleon III, French Emperor
• José de San Martín, South American Liberator
• Queen Victoria, monarch of the British Empire
• Giuseppe Garibaldi, unifier of Italy

• Gregor Mendel, biologist
• Charles Darwin, biologist
• Thomas Alva Edison, inventor
• Gottlob Frege, mathematician, logician and philosopher
• Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, physicist, astronomer
• Louis Pasteur, biologist
• Dr. John Snow, the founder of epidemiology

• Ludwig van Beethoven, composer
• Antonio de La Gandara, painter
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author, thinker
• Giuseppe Verdi, composer
• Richard Wagner, composer
• Antonin Dvorak, composer

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, thinker
• Charles Dickens, author
• Benjamin Disraeli, novelist and politician
• Victor Hugo, author
• Edgar Allan Poe, author
• Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), author

• Joseph Smith, Jr., religious leader, founder of Mormonism
• Brigham Young, Mormon religious leader
• Nikolai of Japan, religious leader who introduced the Eastern Orthodox into Japan.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher

• Karl Marx, political philosopher and economist
• William Morris, social reformer

• Automobile
• Electric light
• Motion pictures
• Phonograph
• Photography
• Repetition rifle
• Railroad Locomotive
• Steamship
• Telegraph
• Telephone