1841 is a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

• January 1 - Start Date of MUMPS computer programming language, honoring the first use of Ether in Massachusetts General Hospital.
• January 26 - The United Kingdom occupies Hong Kong. Later during the year, the first census of the island recorded a population of about 7,500.
• February 18 - The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate begins and lasts until March 11.
• March 4 - Martin Van Buren, President of the United States is succeeded by William Henry Harrison.
• March 9 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Amistad case that the Africans who seized control of the ship had been taken into slavery illegally.
• April 4 - President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia becoming the first President of the United States to die in office and at one month, the elected president with the shortest term served. He is succeeded by Vice President John Tyler.
• August 16 - U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.

• The two colonies of the Canadas are merged into the Province of Canada.
• Scroll and Key secret society of Yale University established.
• With the help of industrial espionage, August Borsig builds the first German locomotives.

Births

• January 14 - Berthe Morisot, impressionist painter (d. 1895)
• January 25 - Jackie Fisher, First Sea Lord (d. 1920)
• January 28 - Henry Morton Stanley, explorer, journalist (d. 1904)
• February 2 - François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist (d. 1912)
• February 4 - Clément Ader, French engineer and inventor, airplane pioneer (d. 1926)
• February 25 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter (d. 1919)
• March 8 - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court justice (d. 1935)
• May 10 - James Gordon Bennett, Jr., newspaper publisher (d. 1918)
• August 25 - Emil Kocher, medical researcher (d. 1917)
• September - Annie Chapman, second confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper (d. 1888)
• September 28 - Georges Clemenceau, French statesman
• October 7 - King Nicholas I of Montenegro (d. 1921)
• November 6 - Nelson W. Aldrich, Senator from Rhode Island (d. 1915)
• November 9 - King Edward VII of the United Kingdom (d. 1910)
• November 20 - Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1919)
• December 6 - Frédéric Bazille, French impressionist painter (d. 1870)

Deaths

• February 11 - J.H. Ferdinand Olivier , German painter
• April 4 - William Henry Harrison, 9th President of the United States (b. 1773)
• May 20 - Joseph Blanco White, British theologian (b. 1775)
• May 23 - Franz Xaver von Baader, German philosopher and theologian (b. 1765)
• August 24 - Theodore Edward Hook, English author (b. 1788)