This Year in History:
1844
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On February 27, 1844, revolutionary fervor boiled over on the eastern side of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Finally coming into the open after years of covert planning, a group…
On February 28, 1844, President John Tyler cruises the Potomac with 400 others aboard the U.S. Navy’s new steam frigate USS Princeton, not realizing that his life will soon be…
In a demonstration witnessed by members of Congress, American inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatches a telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore,…
Fifty‑four year old widower President John Tyler marries 21‑year‑old Julia Gardiner on June 26, 1844. It was his second marriage. At the time, Julia was the youngest first lady in…
Joseph Smith, the founder and leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints (more commonly known as Mormonism), is murdered along with his brother Hyrum when a mob…
After Joseph Smith, the founder and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints, or Mormonism, and his brother, Hyrum, were murdered by an angry mob in an Illinois prison six…
On November 3, 1844, William Makepeace Thackeray completes The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century, which is published in Fraser’s Magazine. Thackeray was born in Calcutta…
