1802 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar).

Events

• March 16 - West Point is established.
• March 25/27 - Treaty of Amiens between France and United Kingdom ends the War of the Second Coalition.
• March 28 - H. W. Olbers discovers the asteroid Pallas.
• May 19 - Napoleon Bonaparte establishes the French légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour).
• July 4 - At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opens.
• August 2 - In a plebiscite Napoleon Bonaparte is confirmed as consul for life.
• September 11 - The Italian region of Piedmont becomes a part of Napoleonic France.
• October 2 - War ends between Sweden and Tripoli. The United States also negotiates peace, but war continues over the size of compensation.
• July - Eleuthère Irénée du Pont founds E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, the modern DuPont Company.
• October - French army enters Switzerland.
• Marie Tussaud opens her famous wax museum in London, having been commissioned during the Reign of Terror to make death masks of the victims.
• Thomas Wedgwood produces the world's first photograph, but has no means of fixing the image, which quickly fades.
• William Symington builds the first successful steamship, the Charlotte Dundas.
• Ludwig van Beethoven performs the Moonlight Sonata for the first time.
• William Wordsworth publishes the poem "Westminster Bridge."

Ongoing events

• French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802)
• Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)

Births

• February 11 - Lydia Child, American abolitionist author (d. 1880)
• February 19 - Wilhelm Matthias Näff, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 1881)
• February 26 - Victor Hugo, French author (d. 1885)
• April 4 - Dorothea Dix, American social activist (d. 1887)
• July 24 - Alexandre Dumas, père, French author (d. 1870)
• July 26 - Mariano Arista, President of Mexico (d. 1855)
• August 5 - Niels Henrik Abel, Norwegian mathematician (d. 1829)
• August 22 - Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, Chicago land speculator (d. 1886)
• November 9 - Elijah P. Lovejoy, American abolitionist (d. 1837)
• December 15 - Janos Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1860)
• December 23 - Sara Coleridge, British scholar (d. 1852)

Deaths

• April 18 - Erasmus Darwin, English physician and botanist, grand-father of Charles Darwin (b. 1731)
• June 4 - Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy, king of Sardinia
• September 26 - Baron Jurij Vega, Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer (b. 1754)
• November 9 - Thomas Girtin, artist
• November 15 - George Romney, artist
• November 16 - André Michaux, French botanist (b. 1746)
• July 22 - Marie François Xavier Bichat, French anatomist and physiologist