The United Kingdom formally adopts the gold standard for its currency, after using it on a de facto basis since 1717

Walter Scott publishes Ivanhoe, a tale of love, tournaments and sieges at the time of the crusades

J.M.W. Turner makes the first of several visits to Venice, and discovers a rich seam of inspiration

The British king George III dies after 59 years on the throne – a longer reign than any of his predecessors

On the death of his father, George III, the Prince Regent succeeds to the British throne as George IV

French physicist André Marie Ampère begins his researches into the links between electricity and magnetism

English poet John Keats publishes Ode to a Nightingale, inspired by the bird's song in his Hampstead garden

A second liberal revolution in Spain ends with Ferdinand VII a prisoner of the Cortes in Cadiz

English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Ode to the West Wind, written mainly in a wood near Florence

Russian poet Alexander Pushkin publishes his first long poem, Ruslan and Ludmilla

French painter Théodore Géricault begins a two-year visit to Britain

English painter John Constable acquires a house in Hampstead, a region of London that features frequently in his work

An uprising in Greece against Turkish rule is followed by the massacre of several thousand Muslims

English author Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

English poet John Keats dies in Rome at the age of twenty-five

English radical William Cobbett begins his journeys round England, published in 1830 as Rural Rides

French physicist Augustin Jean Fresnel publishes the theory that light is a transverse wave, thus explaining polarization effects

Carl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischutz has its premiere in Berlin

English author William Hazlitt publishes Table Talk, a two-volume collection that includes most of his best-known essays

During his coronation George IV has the doors of Westminster Abbey closed against his queen, Caroline

The Cortes in Lisbon passes a liberal constitution which they persuade the king, John VI, to accept

Egyptian hieroglyphs are deciphered by French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion, using the Rosetta stone

George IV wears a tartan kilt when visiting Edinburgh, and launches a new craze for Highland dress

French physicist Augustin Jean Fresnel develops a more efficient form of lens for use in lighthouses

Walter Scott begins to transform Abbotsford into a romantic house that he refers to as his 'conundrum castle'