Events of 1802

January–March

• March 16 – United States Military Academy of West Point is established.

• March 25/27 – The Treaty of Amiens between France and the United Kingdom ends the War of the Second Coalition.

• March 28 – H. W. Olbers discovers the asteroid Pallas.

April–June

• April 26 – A general amnesty signed by Napoleon Bonaparte allows all but about 1,000 of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture to make peace with the various factions of the Ancien Regime that ultimately consolidates his own rule.

• May 19 – Napoleon Bonaparte establishes the French légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour).

• May 20 – By the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution.

• June 2 – Indigenous Australian Pemulwuy, a leader of the resistance to European settlement of Australia, is shot dead by Henry Hacking.

• June 8 – Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture is seized by French troops and sent to Fort de Joux for prison.

July–September

• July – Eleuthère Irénée du Pont founds E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, the modern DuPont Company.

• July 4 – At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opens.

• August 2 – In a plebiscite, Napoleon Bonaparte is confirmed as the First Consul.

• 5 July to 28 August – A general election in the United Kingdom brings victory for the Tories, led by Henry Addington.

• September 3 – William Wordsworth publishes the poem Westminster Bridge.

• September 11 – The Italian region of Piedmont becomes a part of the French First Republic.

October–December

• October 2 – War ends between Sweden and Tripoli. The United States also negotiates peace, but war continues over the size of compensation.

• October – The French army enters Switzerland.

Undated

• Treviranus uses the term biology for the first time.

• Thomas Wedgwood publishes an account of his experiments in photography, along with Humphry Davy. Since they had no means of fixing the image, their photographs quickly faded.

• William Symington builds the first successful steamship, the Charlotte Dundas.

• Ludwig van Beethoven performs his Moonlight Sonata for the first time.

• The English Parliament forbids pauper apprentices.

• Nguyen Dynasty starts to rule in Vietnam.

Ongoing events

• French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802)

• Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815)

Births

January–June

• January 3 – Charles Pelham Villiers, British politician (d. 1898)

• February 11 – Lydia Maria Child, American abolitionist author (d. 1880)

• February 19 – Wilhelm Matthias Naeff, Swiss Federal Councillor (d. 1881)

• February 26 – Victor Hugo, French author (d. 1885)

• March 7 – Edwin Henry Landseer, British painter (d. 1873)

• April 4 – Dorothea Dix, American activist (d. 1887)

• May 2 – Heinrich Gustav Magnus, German chemist and physicist (d. 1870)

• June 23 – Pavel Nakhimov, Russian admiral (d. 1855)

July–December

• 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)

• September 19 – Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian politician (d. 1894)

• October 31 – Benoît Fourneyron, French engineer (d. 1867)

• November 9 – Elijah P. Lovejoy, American abolitionist (d. 1837)

• November 19 – Solomon Foot, American politician (d. 1866)

• December 15 – Janos Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1860)

• December 23 – Sara Coleridge, British scholar (d. 1852)

Deaths

January–June

• February 2 – Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip, British statesman (b. 1713)

• February 3 – Pedro Rodríguez, Conde de Campomanes, Spanish statesman and writer (b. 1723)

• February 26 – Esek Hopkins, American Revolutionary War admiral (b. 1718)

• April 18 – Erasmus Darwin, English physician and botanist (b. 1731)

• June 4 – Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy, King of Sardinia (b. 1751)

July–December

• August 10 – Franz Aepinus, German philosopher (b. 1724)

• September 26 – Jurij Vega, Slovenian mathematician, physicist, and soldier (b. 1754)

• November 9 – Thomas Girtin, English artist (b. 1775)

• November 15 – George Romney, English artist (b. 1734)

• November 16 – André Michaux, French botanist (b. 1746)

• December 5 – Lemuel Francis Abbot, English portrait painter (b. 1716)

• July 22 – Marie François Xavier Bichat, French anatomist and physiologist (b. 1771)