Events
- 4 January - William Symington demonstrates his Charlotte Dundas, the "first practical steamboat".
- 21 February - Colonel Edward Despard, a radical Anglo-Irish former British Army officer and colonial official, and six others are hanged for their part in the previous year's Despard Plot (apparently intended to assassinate King George III and seize key positions such as the Bank of England and Tower of London). This is the last time anyone has been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered in England, although prior to execution the sentence has been commuted to simple hanging and beheading, which is carried out on the gatehouse roof at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in London before a crowd of at least 20,000, one of the largest public gatherings ever up to this date.
- 2 April - The Easton Massacre, British armed forces shoot and kill three citizens of Easton, Dorset during an attempt to press male members of the village into service.
- 18 May - Napoleonic Wars: The U.K. redeclares war on France after France refuses to withdraw from Dutch territory.
- 25 May - Speaker of the British House of Commons Charles Abbot allows journalists to report the proceedings of the House of Commons.
- June - Britain captures Tobago and Saint Lucia from France.
- 9 June - Matthew Flinders completes the first known circumnavigation of Australia.
- 24 June - Abortion is made a crime by Lord Ellenborough's Act.
- 23 July - Emmet's insurrection in Ireland: United Irishman Robert Emmet stages a rising in Dublin which is quelled by the military, with approximately fifty rebels and twenty soldiers dead. The Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Lord Kilwarden, is hacked to death.
- 26 July - The Surrey Iron Railway, a wagonway between Wandsworth and Croydon, is opened, being the first public railway line in England.
- 3 August - British begin Second Anglo-Maratha War against Sindhia of Gwalior
- 6 September - John Dalton FRS composes his five main points of atomic theory, the first to do so.
- 20 September - Irish rebel Robert Emmet is hanged for high treason in Dublin.
- 23 September - The Battle of Assaye in India – British-led troops defeat Maratha forces.
- 21 October - John Dalton presents a paper to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society containing the first table of atomic weights.
Read more about this topic: 1803 In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)