Events of 1839

January–March

• January 9 – The French Academy of Sciences announces the Daguerreotype photography process.

• January 19 – The British East India Company captures Aden.

• January 20 – Battle of Yungay: Chile defeats a Peruvian-Bolivian alliance.

• February 11 – The University of Missouri is established, becoming the first public university west of the Mississippi River.

• February 24 – William Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel.

• March 5 – Longwood University is founded in Farmville, Virginia.

• March 7 – Baltimore City College, the third public high school in the United States, is established in Baltimore, Maryland.

• March 23 – The Boston Morning Post first records the use of "OK" (oll korrect).

• March 26 – The first Henley Royal Regatta is held.

• March 29 – British naturalist Charles Darwin marries his cousin Emma Wedgwood.

April–June

• April – Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire dies.

• April 9 – The world's first commercial electric telegraph line comes into operation alongside the Great Western Railway line, from Paddington Station to West Drayton.

• April 19 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.

• June 22 – Louis Daguerre receives a patent for his camera (commercially available by September at the price of 400 francs).

July–September

• July 1 – Slaves aboard the Amistad rebel and capture the ship.

• July 1 – Abd-ul-Mejid (1839–1861) succeeds Mahmud II (1808–1839) as Ottoman Emperor.

• July 23 – First Anglo-Afghan War – Battle of Ghazni: British forces capture the fortress city of Ghazni, Afghanistan.

• August 8 – The Beta Theta Pi fraternity is founded in Oxford, Ohio.

• August 19 – The French government gives Louis Daguerre a pension and gives the daguerreotype "for the whole world".

• August 23 – British forces seize Hong Kong as a base, as it prepares to wage war against Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict becomes known as the First Opium War.

• 31 August- The First Carlist war (Spain) ends with the Convenio de Vergara, also known as the Abrazo de Vergara ("the embrace in Vergara"; Bergara in Basque), between liberal general Baldomero Espartero, Count of Luchana and Carlist General Rafael Maroto.

• September 9 – In the Great Fire of Mobile, Alabama hundreds of buildings are burned.

October–December

• October 3 – In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a railway between Naples and Portici (7.4 km length) is inaugurated by H.M. King Ferdinand II of Bourbon (the first railway in the Italian peninsula).

• October 15 – Abd al-Kader declares a jihad against the French.

• November 4 – The Newport Rising is the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.

• November 11 – The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.

• November 17 – Giuseppe Verdi's first opera, Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio, opens in Milan.

• November 25 – A disastrous cyclone slams India with terrible winds and a giant 40-foot storm surge, wiping out the port city of Coringa; 300,000 people die.

• November 27 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.

Undated

• In the United States, the first state law permitting women to own property is passed in Jackson, Mississippi.

• The first parallax measurement of the distance to Alpha Centauri is published by Thomas Henderson.

• Michael Faraday publishes clarifying the true nature of electricity.

• An archaeological excavation on Copan begins.

• Half of the Limburg province of Belgium is added to the Netherlands (since 1839 there is a Belgian Limburg and Dutch Limburg).

• Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia is founded.

• Charles Goodyear vulcanizes rubber.

• The Anti-Corn Law League is founded in Manchester.

• The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, backed by the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire, compels July Monarchy France to abandon Muhammad Ali of Egypt, and it forces him to return Syria and Arabia to the Ottoman Empire.

• Tanzimat starts in the Ottoman Empire.

• The Chinese government dispatches Lin Zexu to Guangzhou.

Ongoing events

• First Opium War (1839–1842)

Births

January–June

• January 19 – Paul Cézanne, French painter (d. 1906)

• February 11 – Josiah Willard Gibbs, American physicist and chemist (d. 1903)

• February 22 – Francis Pharcellus Church, American editor and publisher (d. 1906)

• March 9 – Phoebe Knapp, American hymn writer (d. 1908)

• March 15 – Daniel Ridgway Knight, American artist (d. 1924)

• March 16 – John Butler Yeats, Irish artist (d. 1922)

• March 21 – Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer (d. 1881)

• April 12 – Nikolai Przhevalsky, Russian explorer (d. 1888)

• April 30 – Floriano Peixoto, Brazilian president (d.1895)

• June 17 – Arthur Tooth, Anglican clergyman prosecuted for Ritualist practices in the 1870s (d. 1931)

• June 21 – Machado de Assis, Brazilian author (d. 1908)

July–December

• July 8 – John Davison Rockefeller, American industrialist and philanthropist (d. 1937)

• July 17 – Ephraim Shay, inventor of the Shay locomotive (d. 1916)

• November 20 – Christian Wilberg, German painter (d. 1882)

• December 5 – George Armstrong Custer, American cavalry officer (d. 1876)

• December 12 – Caroline Lake Ingalls, née Quiner, mother of author Laura Ingalls Wilder (d. 1924)

Deaths

January–June

• February 7 – Karl August Nicander, Swedish poet (b. 1799)

• March 2 – Charlotte Napoléone Bonaparte, niece of Napoleon I of France (b. 1802)

• April 1 – Benjamin Pierce, U.S. politician (b. 1757)

• April 2 – Hezekiah Niles, American editor and publisher (b. 1777)

• April 4 – Kaahumanu II, queen of Hawaii

• April 11 – John Galt, Scottish novelist (b. 1779)

• April 22 – Denis Davydov, Russian general and poet (b. 1784)

• May 17 – Archibald Alison, Scottish author (b. 1757)

July–December

• July 1 – Mahmud II, Ottoman sultan

• July 8 – Fernando Sor, Spanish guitarist and composer (b. 1778)

• July 15 – Winthrop Mackworth Praed, English politician and poet (b. 1802)

• August 10 – John St. Aubyn, British fossil collector (b. 1758)

• August 22 – Benjamin Lundy, American abolitionist (b. 1789)

• August 28 – William Smith, English geologist and cartographer (b. 1769)

• October – William Light, British Army colonel and the first Surveyor-General of South Australia (b. 1786)

• November 15 – William Murdoch, Scottish inventor (b. 1754)

• December 3 – Frederick VI, King of Denmark, ex-King of Norway (b. 1768)

• December 15 – Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, court councillor and minister to Alexander I (b. 1756)