Events January–March January 15 – The French newspaper Le Figaro begins publication in Paris, initially as a weekly. January 30 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, built by engineer Thomas Telford, is opened between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales. February 8 – Unitarian Bernardino Rivadavia becomes the first President of Argentina. February 11 University College London is founded, under the name University of London. Swaminarayan writes the Shikshapatri, an important text within Swaminarayan Hinduism. February 13 – The American Temperance Society is founded. February 23 – Russian Mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky develops non-Euclidian geometry (independently of Janos Bolyai). February 24 – The Treaty of Yandabo ends the First Anglo-Burmese War; Britain gains Assam, Manipur, Rakhine and Tanintharyi. March 1 – Chunee the elephant is put to death in London. After arsenic and shooting fail, he is killed with a sword. March 10 – João VI, King of Portugal and the former Emperor of Brazil, dies after a short illness that had started six days earlier, after he had been served dinner while visiting Jerónimos Monastery. An investigative autopsy 174 years later will discover that he had been killed by arsenic poisoning. King João's son, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil, sails back to Portugal and briefly reigns as King Pedro IV, before turning over the Portuguese throne to his daughter, Maria. April–June April 1 – Samuel Morey patents an internal combustion engine in the United States. April 10 – The Third Siege of Missolonghi ends, with the massacre of thousands of Greek defenders by the Ottoman besiegers. May 28 – Pedro I of Brazil abdicates as King of Portugal. June – Photography: Nicéphore Niépce makes a true photograph. June 14–15 – The Auspicious Incident: Mahmud II, sultan of Ottoman Empire, crushes the last mutiny of janissaries in Istanbul. June 21 – Greek War of Independence: The attempted Ottoman–Egyptian invasion of Mani begins. June 22 – The Pan-American Congress of Panama tries (unsuccessfully) to unify the republics of the Americas. July–September July – Ludwig van Beethoven puts the finishing touches on the String Quartet in C sharp Minor, Opus 131, the jewel in the crown of his late string quartets. July 4 – Former U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both die on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence. July 26 – Cayetano Ripoll becomes the last person to be executed