Napoleon's remains are brought to Paris for burial in Les Invalides, as the Napoleonic legend grows

Robert Schumann composes the song cycle Frauenliebe und -Leben ('Woman's Love and Life')

Rowland Hill introduces in Britain the world's first postage stamps - the Penny Black and Two Pence Blue

Victoria marries Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and soon, with nine children, they provide the very image of the ideal Victorian family

Robert Schumann marries the pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his first teacher

The Straits Convention, agreed between the European powers and Turkey, is a concerted attempt to prop up the Ottoman empire

Fox Talbot patents the 'calotype', introducing the negative-positive process that becomes standard in photography

With a teetotallers' rail trip for 570 people, Thomas Cook introduces the notion of the package tour

Lord Shaftesbury's Mines Act makes it illegal for boys under 13, and women and girls of any age, to be employed underground in Britain

The young Friedrich Engels is sent from Germany to manage the family cotton-spinning factory in Manchester

The success of the opera Nabucco, premiered in Milan, is a turning point in the fortunes of Giuseppe Verdi

Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell pioneers mass political demonstrations, which become known as 'monster meetings'

English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Austrian physicist Christian Doppler explains the acoustic effect now known by his name

The publication of the first part of the satirical novel Dead Souls, by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, proves a sensation in Russia

Honoré de Balzac begins publication of a collected edition of his fiction under the title La Comédie Humaine

English author Thomas Babington Macaulay publishes a collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome

The Flying Dutchman is the first of Richard Wagner's major operas to be staged, with its premiere in Dresden

Henry Cole commissions 1000 copies of the world's first Christmas card, designed for him by John Calcott Horsley

The statue of Nelson, by E.H. Baily, is placed on top of its column in Trafalgar Square

Isambard Kingdom Brunel launches the Great Britain, the first iron steamship designed for the transatlantic passenger trade

Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, amplified now with incidental music, is greeted as a masterpiece at a performance of the play in Potsdam

Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz completes his pioneering Poissons Fossiles ('Fossil Fish'), classifying more than 1500 categories

Daniel O'Connell is convicted of seditious conspiracy and is sentenced to prison

Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol