1806 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 8 - Cape Colony becomes a British colony
• January 10 - Dutch in Cape Town surrender to the British
• January 19 - The United Kingdom occupies the Cape of Good Hope
• February 6 - Royal Navy victory off Santo Domingo - see:Action of 6 February 1806
• March 23 - After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" begin their journey home.
• March 29 - Construction authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway.
• April 8 - Marriage of Stephanie de Beauharnais to Prince Karl Ludwig Friedrich .
• July 4 - Battle of Maida between England and France in Calabria
• July 15 - Pike expedition: Near St. Louis, Missouri, United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike leads an expedition from Fort Belle Fountaine to explore the west.
• August 6 - Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicates, thus ending the Holy Roman Empire.
• October 14 - Battle of Jena-Auerstädt
• November - Napoleon declares a Continental Blockade against the British
• November 15 - Pike expedition: During his second exploratory expedition, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains (it was later named Pikes Peak in his honor).
• Noah Webster publishes his first American English dictionary.

Ongoing events

• Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)-Fourth Coalition

Births

• January 27 - Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga, Spanish composer (d. 1826)
• March 6 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (d. 1861)
• March 12 - Jane Pierce, First Lady of the United States (d. 1863)
• March 21 - Benito Juárez, Mexican statesman and folk hero (d. 1872)
• April 9 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer (d. 1859)
• May 20 - John Stuart Mill, British philosopher (d. 1873)
• June 28 - Napoleon Coste, French guitarist and composer (d. 1883)
• October 3 - Oliver Cowdery, American religious leader (d. 1850)
• December 11 - Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich, German geologist (d. 1886)

Deaths

• January 23 - William Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1759)
• February 2 - Rétif de la Bretonne, French writer (b. 1734)
• February 11 - Vicente Martin y Soler , Spanish composer
• April 9 - William V of Orange (b. 1748)
• July 10 - George Stubbs, English painter (b. 1724)
• August 22 - Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter (b. 1742)
• August 23 - Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, French physicist (b. 1736)
• October 9 - Benjamin Banneker, American astronomer and surveyor of Washington DC (b. 1731)
• Mungo Park, Scottish explorer (b. 1771)