Year 1842 (MDCCCXLII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1842

January - March

• January - Massacre of Elphinstone's army on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, by Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammed Khan.
• February 7 - Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia defeats warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien in the Battle of Debre Tabor.
• March - Commonwealth v. Hunt makes strikes and unions legal in the United States.
• March 2 - Gaylad, ridden by Tom Olliver, wins the Grand National at Aintree racecourse.
• March 5 - Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invade Texas briefly occupy San Antonio and then head back to the Rio Grande. This is the first such invasion since the Texas Revolution.
• March 9 - Giuseppe Verdi's third opera Nabucco premieres in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera writers.
• March 30 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation (Dr. Crawford Long performed the operation using ether).
• March 31 - Middleton Junction and Oldham Branch Railway line opened up to Werneth in North West England.

April - June

• May 8 - Versailles train crash: Two trains collide near Paris and catch fire - 59 dead
• May 19 - Dorr Rebellion - militiamen supporting Thomas Wilson Dorr attack arsenal in Providence, Rhode Island but are repulsed
• June 4 - In South Africa, hunter Dick King rides into British military base in Grahamstown to warn that Boers have besieged Durban. He had left 11 days earlier. British army dispatches a relief force.

July - December

• August 4 - Armed Occupation Act is signed, providing for the armed occupation and settlement of the unsettled part of the Peninsula of East Florida.
• August 9 - Webster-Ashburton Treaty is signed, establishing the United States-Canada border east of the Rocky Mountains.
• August 10 - Mines Act 1842 becomes law, prohibiting underground work for all women and boys under 10 years old in England.
• August 29 - Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War and establishes Hong Kong as a British colony.
• October 29 - The Iberian Peninsula was struck by a category 2 hurricane.
• December 20 - The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina is established.

Undated

• Sons of Temperance founded in New York City.
• Income Tax Act 1842 passed in the United Kingdom; 7 pence on the pound sterling, for incomes over 150 pounds.
• Pentonville Prison built.
• New Zealand seat of government moves from Russell to Auckland
• Scroll and Key secret society of Yale University established.
• First pils beer brewed in the Czech city of Pilsen. The Pils is the original lager beer of which all modern lagers are copies.
• Founding of:
  • Wesleyan University
  • University of Notre Dame (by Father Edward Sorin, CSC of the Congregation of Holy Cross)
  • Hollins University (in Roanoke, Virginia by Charles Cocke)
  • Villanova University (in Villanova, Pennsylvania by the Augustinian order)
  • Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

Ongoing events

• First Opium War (1839-1842)

Births

January - June

• January 11 - William James, American psychologist and philosopher (d. 1910)
• February 3 - Sidney Lanier, American writer (d. 1881)
• February 4 - Arrigo Boito, Italian poet and composer (d. 1918)
• February 25 - Karl May, German writer (d. 1912)
• March 2 - Carl Jacobsen, Danish brewer and patron of the arts after whom the Carlsberg brewery was named (d. 1914)
• March 10 - Mykola Lysenko, Ukrainian composer (d. 1912)
• March 18 - Stéphane Mallarmé, French poet (d. 1898)
• May 8 - Emil Christian Hansen, Danish fermentation physiologist (d. 1909)
• May 13 - Arthur Sullivan, English composer (d. 1900)
• June 12 - Rikard Nordraak, Norwegian composer (d. 1866)

July - December

• July 4 - Hermann Cohen, German-Jewish philosopher (d. 1918)
• August 23 - Osborne Reynolds, Irish engineer and physicist (d. 1912)
• September 13 - John H. Bankhead, U.S. Senator (d. 1920)
• September 21 - Abd-ul-Hamid II, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1918)
• October 14 - Joe Start, baseball player (d. 1927)
• October 28 - Anna Elizabeth Dickenson, American orator (d. 1932)
• November 12 - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919)
• December 2 - C. W. Alcock, English footballer and football official (d. 1907)
• December 9 - Peter Kropotkin, Russian anarchist (d. 1921)

Deaths

January - June

• February 15 - Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, politician and diplomat (b. 1764)
• March 6 - Constanze Mozart, wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (b.1762)
• March 13
  • Samuel Eells, Founder of Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity (b. 1810)
  • Henry Shrapnel, English soldier and inventor (b. 1761)
• March 15 - Luigi Cherubini, Italian composer (b. 1760)
• March 23 - Stendhal, French writer (b. 1783)
• May 8 - Jules Dumont d'Urville, French explorer (b. 1790)

July - December

• July 13 - Prince Ferdinand-Philippe d'Orléans, French prince (b. 1810)
• July 25 - Dominique Jean Larrey, French surgeon (b. 1766)
• July 28 - Clemens Brentano, German poet (b. 1778)
• September 15 - Francisco Morazán, President of Central America (b. 1792)
• October 20 - Grace Darling, heroine (b. 1815)
• October 24 - Bernardo O'Higgins, first Chilean head of state after independence (b.1778)
• December 12 - Robert Haldane, theologian (b. 1764)

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