Events January–March January 1 – Queen Maria II of Portugal marries Prince Ferdinand Augustus Francis Anthony of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. January 5 – Davy Crockett arrives in Texas. January 12 , with Charles Darwin on board, reaches Sydney. Will County, Illinois, is formed. February 8 – London and Greenwich Railway opens its first section, the first railway in London, England. February 16 – A fire at the Lahaman Theatre in Saint Petersburg kills 126 people. February 23 – Texas Revolution: The Battle of the Alamo begins, with an American settler army surrounded by the Mexican Army, under Santa Anna. February 25 – Samuel Colt receives a United States patent for the Colt revolver, the first revolving barrel multishot firearm. March 1 – Texas Revolution – Convention of 1836: Delegates from many Texas communities gather in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas, to deliberate independence from Mexico. March 2 – Texas Revolution – Convention of 1836: The Texas Declaration of Independence is signed by 60 delegates, and the Republic of Texas is declared. March 6 – Texas Revolution: The Battle of the Alamo ends; 182 Texan settler soldiers die in a struggle with approximately 5,000 Mexican soldiers. March 11 – Sultan Mahmud II abolishes the posts of Reis ül-Küttab and Kahya Bey, and establishes the Ottoman ministries of Foreign Affairs and of the Interior in their place. March 17 – Texas Revolution – Convention of 1836: Delegates adopt the Constitution of the Republic of Texas, modeled after the United States Constitution. It allows slavery, requires free blacks to petition Congress to live in the country, but prohibits import of slaves from anywhere but the United States. March 27 Texas Revolution – Goliad massacre: 342 Texan prisoners are shot and killed, along with Texan General James Walker Fannin, by Mexican troops in Goliad, near the Presidio La Bahía. The United States Survey of the Coast is returned to the U.S. Treasury Department, and renamed the U.S. Coastal Survey. March 29 – Richard Wagner's opera Das Liebesverbot is performed for the first time, in Magdeburg. March 31 (dated April) – The first monthly part of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers ("The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club..., edited by Boz") is published in London. April–June April 20 – The Wisconsin Territory is created; the first capital is Belmont. April 21 – Texas Revolution – Battle of San Jacinto: Mexican forces under General Antonio López de Santa Anna are defeated