1816 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).

Events

• Known as the "Year Without A Summer" or "Eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death" in the northern hemisphere due to global cooling caused by the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption that had occurred in 1815.
• March 25 - Friedrich Karl Ludwig, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck dies and is succeeded by the later Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, his son and founder of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
• May 2 - Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, later King of the Belgians, marries Charlotte Augusta, but she dies the next year.
• July 9 - Argentina gains independence from Spain
• July 17 - The French passenger ship Medusa runs aground off the coast of Senegal, with 140 lives lost in the botched rescue that takes weeks, leading to a scandal in the French government.
• November - James Monroe defeats Rufus King in U.S. presidential election
• December 11 - Indiana is admitted as the 19th U.S. state.

• Tsultrim Gyatso becomes the 10th Dalai Lama.
• The British found Banjul, The Gambia.
• A British expedition explores up from the mouth of the Congo River.
• The Battle of Seven Oaks is fought in the Red River Colony of Canada.
• In France, René Laennec (1781-1826) invents the stethoscope.
• First known cultivation of the cranberry.
• Francis Ellis first describes the Dravidian languages.
• The Second Bank of the United States is founded.
• E. Remington and Sons is founded.
• Buffalo, New York is incorporated.
• African Methodist Episcopal Church is founded in Philadelphia.
• Beau Brummell flees England to escape gambling debts.
• Large-scale slave insurrection in Barbados - one white and 176 slaves killed and 214 executed afterwards
• Divorce annulled in France

Births

• April 21 - Charlotte Brontë, British novelist (d. 1855)
• April 22 - Charles Denis Bourbaki, French general (d. 1897)
• May 24 - Emanuel Leutze, American painter (d. 1868)
• July 4 - Arthur de Gobineau, French diplomat and author (d. 1882)
• July 23 - Charlotte Cushman, American stage actress (d. 1876)
• July 31 - George Henry Thomas, American general (d. 1870)
• October 2 - Ángel de Iturbide y Huarte (d. 1872)
• November 17 - August Wilhelm Ambros, Austrian composer (d. 1876)
• December 8 - August Belmont, Sr., Prussian-born financier (d. 1890)
• December 13 - Werner von Siemens, German inventor and industrialist (d. 1892)
• William Marsh Rice, founder of Rice University (d. 1900)
• Charles John Vaughan, English scholar (d. 1897)

Deaths

• February 22 - Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher and historian (b. 1723)
• March 20 - Queen Maria I of Portugal (b. 1734)
• June 5 - Giovanni Paisiello, Italian composer (b. 1751)
• July 5 - Dorothy Jordan, Irish actress, mistress of King William IV of the United Kingdom (b. 1761)
• July 7 - Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish playwright (b. 1751)
• November 8 - Gouverneur Morris, American statesman (b. 1752)
• December 15 - Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, English statesman and scientist (b. 1753)