Republican Thomas Jefferson and Federalist Aaron Burr have an identical number of Electoral College votes in the US presidential election

The US House of Representatives votes for Jefferson as president, after a dead heat between him and Burr in the Electoral College

In the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson buys from Napoleon nearly a million square miles at a knock-down price, doubling the size of the USA

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off from St Louis to explore up the Missouri river and west to the coast

Alexander Hamilton is fatally wounded by a bullet to the head in a duel with his political adversary Aaron Burr

George Rapp and his followers establish a utopian community in Pennsylvania and call it Harmony

Lewis and Clark make their way through the Rockies and reach the Pacific

Tecumseh's younger brother, Tenskwatawa, becomes known as the Shawnee Prophet

Lewis and Clark get back to St Louis with a wealth of information about the unopened west of the continent

US engineer Robert Fulton launches a steamboat, the Clermont, on New York's Hudson river

Thomas Jefferson puts an embargo on US exports, hoping to damage the economy of France and Britain

The German-born US entrepreneur John Jacob Astor establishes the American Fur Company

Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa set up a permanent base in Indiana, calling it Prophetstown

The Shakers define their Millennial laws in the Testimony of Christ's Second Appearing

Washington Irving uses the fictional Dutch scholar Diedrich Knickerbocker as the supposed author of his comic History of New York

16-year-old future millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt begins his career by establishing a ferry service to Manhattan

Work begins at Cumberland in Maryland on the construction of America's National Road

John Jacob Astor establishes Astoria, a settlement on the Pacific coast to develop his fur trade with China

An American army attacks and destroys Tecumseh's base at Prophetstown

The British capture Detroit in an early engagement of the War of 1812

The nickname Uncle Sam, supposedly based on the initials US, has its first recorded use in an issue of the Troy Post

American warships win a victory over the British on Lake Erie, strengthening the US presence in the Great Lakes

Tecumseh is killed fighting for the British against General Harrison east of Detroit in the Battle of the Thames

British forces enter Washington, burning the Capitol and the president's new house

US lawyer Francis Scott Key writes The Star-Spangled Banner after seeing the British bombard Fort McHenry