1817 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

• March 4 - James Monroe succeeds James Madison as the President of the United States of America
• April – Earthquake in Palermo, Italy
• April 3 – Princess Caraboo appears in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, England
• May - The General Convention of the Episcopal Church founded General Theological Seminary while meeting in New York City.
• July 4 - At Rome, New York, construction on the Erie Canal begins.
• June 5 - First Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac , is launched.
• June 25 - Large prison riot in Copenhagen prison - army is sent for to quell it
• August 22 - City of Araraquara, Brazil founded.
• August 23 - Earthquake near the site of the ancient Greek city of Helike. 65 deaths.
• December 10 - Mississippi is admitted as the 20th U.S. state.

Unknown dates

• Elgin Marbles displayed in British Museum
• Emperor Ninko ascends to the throne of Japan
• Battle of Maipü
• John Kidd extracts naphthalene from coal tar

Births

• February 19 - King William III of the Netherlands (d. 1890)
• February 22 - Carl Wilhelm Borchardt, German mathematician
• March 6 - Clémentine of Orléans, daughter of King Louis-Philippe of France and mother of Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria (d. 1907)
• March 22 - Braxton Bragg, Confederate general (d. 1876)
• May 15 - Debendranath Tagore, Indian philosopher
• June 30 - Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist (d. 1911)
• July 12 - Henry David Thoreau, American philosopher (d. 1862)
• July 24 - Grand Duke Adolf of Luxembourg
• August 3 - Archduke Albert, Austrian general
• August 24 - Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Russian novelist, poet, and dramatist
• November 3 - Leonard Jerome, American entrepreneur, grandfather of Sir Winston Churchill (d. 1891)
• November 12 - Mírzá Husayn-'Alí (Bahá'u'lláh), founder of the Bahá'í Faith
• November 30 - Theodor Mommsen, German classical scholar and historian

Deaths

• January 12 - Juan Andres, Spanish Jesuit (b. 1740)
• July 14 - Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, French writer (b. 1766)
• July 18 - Jane Austen, English novelist (b. 1775)

Literature

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes Biographia Literaria