1799 - Vasily Bazhenov

Vasily Bazhenov, a Russian architect, died.

Vasily Ivanovich Bazhenov (March 1 (12), 1737 [or 1738] –August 2 (13), 1799) was a Russian neoclassical architect, graphic artist, architectural theorist and educator. Bazhenov and his associates Matvey Kazakov and Ivan Starov were the leading local architects of the Russian Enlightenment, a period dominated by foreign architects (Charles Cameron, Giacomo Quarenghi, Antonio Rinaldi and others). In the 1770s Bazhenov became the first Russian architect to create a national architectural language since the 17th century tradition interrupted by Peter I of Russia.

Born into a family of a priest, Bazhenov studied in Moscow and at the Academy of Fine Arts where he earned a scholarship to continue architectural studies in Western Europe. On his return to Russia in 1765, Bazhenov was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and given the assignment of redesigning the Moscow Kremlin. He was very influential in the creation of a uniquely Russian architectural tradition.

1799 - Asada Goryu

Asada Goryu, a Japanese astronomer, died (June 25).

Asada Goryu (March 10, 1734 – June 25, 1799) was a Japanese astronomer who helped to introduce modern astronomical instruments and methods into Japan. Asada spent much of his career in the flourishing commercial city of Osaka, where he practiced medicine for a living. Because of the Japanese government's policy of seclusion, Western scientific theory was generally available only through obsolete Chinese works edited by Jesuit missionaries in China. However, Asada managed to construct sophisticated mathematical models of celestial movements and is sometimes credited with the independent discovery of Kepler's third law.

The crater Asada on the Moon is named after him.

1799 - Ewing Young

Ewing Young, an American fur trapper and trader, was born. 

Ewing Young (1799 – February 9, 1841) was an American fur trapper and trader from Tennessee who traveled Mexican southwestern North America and California before settling in the Oregon Country. As a prominent and wealthy citizen there, his death was the impetus for the early formation of government in what became the state of Oregon. Young traded along the Santa Fe Trail and in Mexican Alta California prior to that province becoming a part of the United States. He later moved north to the Willamette Valley.

Young was born in Tennessee to a farming family in 1799. In the early 1820s, he moved to Missouri where he farmed briefly on the Missouri River at Charitan.

In Missouri, Young was on the far western edge of the American frontier, not far from the border of the Spanish-controlled territories of present day Texas, New Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Under the Spanish colonial system, trade between Americans and the Spanish outpost at Santa Fe was prohibited. However, by 1821, the new Republic of Mexico had won the Mexican War of Independence from Spain, and a number of American adventurers living in Missouri were eager to test whether trade with the newly-empowered Mexican authorities in Santa Fe would be allowed. After a first small group of Americans returned successfully in December 1821 from a small trading foray, Young eagerly signed up to join a somewhat larger group going to trade in Santa Fe.

Young sold the farm he had just bought, and in May 1822, became part of the first overland wagon train to leave Missouri and head for Santa Fe, along what would become known as the Santa Fe Trail. Young and the others found that they were welcomed by the new Mexican authorities in the Santa Fe de Nuevo México province. For the next nine years, Young began traversing the Southwest, dividing his time between Santa Fe and Missouri. In particular, the Spanish and later Mexicans had not focused on trapping the beaver and other fur-bearing animals of the Southwest as demand was small within the Spanish trading system. However, there was significant demand for these pelts in the American and European markets.

Young pioneered trapping in the American Southwest, leading many of the first American expeditions into the mountains and watercourses of present day New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. He and his associates would take the newly-caught peltry to Missouri for sale, purchase trade goods there, and return to Nuevo Mexico, where the American goods were sold for gold and silver coin. It was during the trapping expedition of 1827-1828, that Young employed a teenaged Kit Carson. Despite tension that developed with Mexican authorities trying to restrict American activities, Young became a successful trapper and businessman, eventually setting up a trading post in Pueblo de Taos in northern Nuevo Mexico, in the late 1820s. He took María Josefa Tafoya, the daughter of a prominent Taos family and a Mexican citizen, as his wife in a common-law marriage.

In the late 1820s and early 1830s, the Mexican authorities were growing concerned about American settlers and their influences in Nuevo México, and began imposing increasingly severe restrictions on trade and trapping. Perhaps in part to avoid these restrictions, Young was baptized a Catholic in 1830 (perhaps he also became a Mexican citizen and formalized his marriage to Maria Tafoya - however, if he did so, no record of these two events survives).

In the Spring of 1830, Young led the first American trapping expedition to reach the Pacific Coast from the Mexican Santa Fe de Nuevo México Province. Young's journey to the west with traveling companions crossed eastern Alta California, present day Arizona, then the Colorado River and the Mojave Desert and arrived at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel near the Pueblo de Los Angeles in the settled Alta California province, present day Los Angeles in Southern California. After recuperating there, the group visited the Mission San Fernando Rey de España in the nearby San Fernando Valley, and headed further north into California's great Central Valley via its southern San Joaquin Valley section, again, the first American trapping expedition to do so.

Once there the group moved north to the Sacramento River in the Sacramento Valley where they encountered Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). The two groups jointly trapped the valley before Young’s group moved on to San Francisco Bay to trade their pelts. After this they went south to Pueblo de Los Angeles and then back to Taos before the year 1830 was up. Upon his return to Taos with the proceeds of this expedition, Young became one of the wealthiest Americans in Mexican territory.

Over the next few years Young and his group continued traveling to Alta California to trap and trade. Then in 1834 in San Diego Young encountered Hall J. Kelley, the great promoter of the Oregon Country. Kelley invited Ewing Young to accompany him north to Oregon, but Young at first declined. After re-thinking, Young agreed to travel with Kelley and they set out in July 1834.

Ewing Young, arrived in  Oregon in 1834, arriving at Fort Vancouver on October 17 with Hall J. Kelley from California. Though a trapper by trade, Young then stayed as a permanent settler in the Willamette Valley. The group received little assistance from Dr. John McLoughlin and the HBC or the Methodist Mission group because the group was accused by the Mexican government of Alta California of stealing 200 horses when they left. The group denied this charge saying some uninvited traveling companions had stolen the horses. Nonetheless, McLoughlin blacklisted Young from doing business with the HBC.

In Young and Kelley’s party that emigrated to Oregon was Webley John Hauxhurst, who subsequently built the first grist mill in the Willamette Valley. Another trapper, Joseph Gale, who would later be an important figure in Oregon history was also part of the group.

Young settled on the west bank of the Willamette River near the mouth of Chehalem Creek, opposite of Champoeg. His home is believed to be the first house built by European-Americans on that side of the river. In 1836, Young started to build a distillery to produce alcohol. Methodist Mission leader Jason Lee organized the Oregon Temperance Society and along with McLoughlin tried to get Young to stop his efforts. McLoughlin and the HBC prohibited alcohol sales to the Indigenous Americans. Late in the year, United States Navy Lieutenant William A. Slacum arrived on the ship Loriot and helped to dissuade Young from following through on the venture.

Slacum was there as an agent of the United States President, and also helped to put together a joint venture between all of them to purchase cattle. In January 1837, Young was the leader of the Willamette Cattle Company that traveled to California with the assistance of Slacum on the Loriot, and brought back 630 head of cattle along the Siskiyou Trail, as all prior cattle in the valley was owned by the HBC and rented to the settlers. Those accompanying Young on the cattle drive were Philip Leget Edwards, Calvin Tibbets, John Turner, William J. Bailey, George Gay, Lawrence Carmichael, Pierre De Puis, B. Williams, and Emert Ergnette. During the drive, Gay and Bailey murdered an Indigenous American boy in retaliation for an attack several years earlier by the Rogue River Indians. That attack had been in retaliation for murders that Young’s group had committed on their travel to Oregon in 1834.

In February 1841, Young died without any known heir and without a will. This created a need for some form of government to deal with his estate, which had many debtors and creditors among the settlers. Doctor Ira L. Babcock was selected as supreme judge with probate powers after Young's death to deal with Young's estate. The activities that followed his death eventually led to the creation of a provisional government in the Oregon Country.

The Ewing Young Historical Marker located along Oregon Route 240 notes the location of Young's farm and grave. A round-topped oak tree that is said to have grown from an acorn planted on his grave is present at that location.

Ewing Young Elementary School in Newberg, Oregon, is named in honor of Ewing Young. In 1942, the Liberty ship Ewing Young (hull #631 from Calships in Terminal Island, California) was named in his honor. The Ewing Young served in the Pacific theater during World War II and was scrapped in 1959.

1799 - Yang Lu-ch'an

Yang Lu-ch’an, a Chinese martial arts master and founder of the Yang style tai chi chuan, was born.

Yang Lu-ch'an or Yang Luchan (1799-1872), also known as Yang Fu-k'ui (Yáng Fúkuí), was born in Kuang-p'ing (Guangping).  He was an influential teacher of the soft style martial art tai chi chuan in China during the second half of the 19th century. He is known as the founder of Yang style tai chi chuan.

Yang Lu Chan’s family was a poor farming/worker class family from Hebei Province, Guangping Prefecture, Yongnian County. Yang would follow his father in planting the fields and, as a teenager, held temporary jobs. One period of temporary work was spent doing odd jobs at the Tai He Tang Chinese pharmacy located in the western part of Yongnian City, opened by Chen De Hu of the Chen Village in Henan Province, Huaiqing Prefecture, Wenxian County. As a child, Yang liked martial arts and studied Chang Chuan, gaining a certain level of skill.

One day Yang reportedly witnessed one of the partners of the pharmacy utilizing a style of martial art that he had never seen before to easily subdue a group of would-be thieves. Because of this, Yang requested to study with the pharmacy's owner, Chen De Hu. Chen referred Yang to the Chen Village to seek out his own teacher—the 14th generation of the Chen Family, Ch'en Chang-hsing.

After mastering the martial art, Yang Lu Chan was subsequently given permission by his teacher to go to Beijing and teach his own students, including Wu Yu-hsiang and his brothers, who were officials in the Imperial Qing dynasty bureaucracy.  In 1850, Yang was hired by the Imperial family to teach Taijiquan to them and several of their élite Manchu Imperial Guards Brigade units in Beijing's Forbidden City. Among this group was Yang's best known non-family student, Wu Ch'uan-yü. This was the beginning of the spread of Taijiquan from the family art of a small village in central China to an international phenomenon. Due to his influence and the number of teachers he trained, including his own descendants, Yang is directly acknowledged by 4 of the 5 Taijiquan families as having transmitted the art to them.

After emerging from Chenjiagou, Yang became famous for never losing a match and never seriously injuring his opponents. Having refined his martial skill to an extremely high level, Yang Lu Chan came to be known as Yang Wu Di (Yang the Invincible). In time, many legends sprang up around Yang's martial prowess. These legends would serve as the basis for various biographical books and movies.

When Yang Lu Chan first taught in Yung Nien, his art was referred to as Mien Quan (Cotton Fist) or Hua Quan (Neutralising Fist). Whilst teaching at the Imperial Court, Yang met many challenges, some friendly some not. But he invariably won and in so convincingly using his soft techniques that he gained a great reputation.

Many who frequented the imperial households would come to view his matches. At one such gathering in which Yang had won against several reputable opponents, the scholar Ong Tong He was present. Inspired by the way Yang moved and executed his techniques, Ong felt that Yang's movements and techniques expressed the physical manifestation of the principles of Taiji (the philosophy).  Thereafter, Yang’s art was referred to as Taijiquan and the styles that sprang from his teaching and by association with him was called Taijiquan.

1799 - Edward Stanley (Earl of Derby)

Edward Stanley (Earl of Derby), the British prime minister (1852, 1858, and 1866), was born in Knowsley Park, Lancashire, England.

Edward Stanley, 14th earl of Derby,  (b. March 29, 1799, Knowsley Park, Lancashire, England—d. October 23, 1869, London), was an English statesman, important as leader of the Conservative Party during the long period 1846–68, thrice prime minister, and one of England’s greatest parliamentary orators.

Entering Parliament as a Whig in 1820, Stanley held office under Viscount Goderich (1827–28) and became chief secretary for Ireland under Lord Grey in 1830, joining the Cabinet in 1831. In 1834, he resigned over the Irish Church question, but he served under Sir Robert Peel (1841) only to resign again (1845) over the repeal of the Corn Laws. He succeeded to the earldom in 1851 and was premier in 1852, 1858, and 1866.  Among his legislative triumphs were the removal of Jewish discrimination in Parliament membership, the transfer of India’s administration from the East India Company to the crown, and the Reform Bill of 1867.

Stanley (Derby) disliked the drudgery of office and as Conservative leader seemed weak and indolent beside Benjamin Disraeli, who nonetheless admitted, “He abolished slavery, he educated Ireland, he reformed parliament.” Stanley (Derby) is chiefly remembered as epitomizing the aristocratic amateur.  He excelled in whatever he did; as a racehorse owner, as a benevolent if autocratic landowner, and as a scholar who won the chancellor’s Latin verse prize at Oxford and published a blank verse translation of the Iliad (1864). Stanley nurtured the Conservatives and helped the protectionists survive difficult years while he educated them to accept Disraeli as his successor and to prepare for electoral victory. Though a somewhat neglected figure, Stanley (Derby) was a founder of modern Conservatism in Britain and a key figure linking the old and the new ruling classes.

1799 - Jedediah Smith

*Jedediah Smith (1799-1831): American hunter, trapper, fur trader, and explorer, was born (January 6). 

Jedediah (“Diah”) Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was a hunter, trapper, fur trader, trailblazer, author, cartographer, and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the American West Coast and the Southwest during the 19th century. Nearly forgotten by historians almost a century after his death, Smith has been rediscovered as an American hero who was the first European American man to travel overland from the Salt Lake frontier, the Colorado River, the Mojave Desert, and finally into California. Smith was the first United States citizen to explore and eastwardly cross the Sierra Nevada and the treacherous Great Basin. Smith also was the first American to travel up the California coast to reach the Oregon Country. Not only was he the first to do this, but he and Robert Stuart discovered the South Pass. This path became the main route used by pioneers to travel to the Oregon Country. Surviving three massacres and one bear mauling, Jedediah Smith's explorations and documented discoveries were highly significant in opening the American West to expansion by white settlers and cattlemen.

Smith was born in Jericho, now Bainbridge, New York on January 6, 1799. His early New England ancestors include Thomas Bascom, constable of Northampton, Massachusetts, who came to America in 1634. Thomas Bascom was of Huguenot and French Basque ancestry. Smith came from two God-fearing New England families and was personally taught by Methodist circuit preachers. Around 1810, Smith's father, who owned a general store, allegedly was caught using counterfeit currency. To protect his families reputation the elder Smith moved his family West to Erie County, Pennsylvania. While growing up, Smith's love of nature and adventure came from his mentor, Dr. Titus G. V. Simons, a pioneer physician who was on close terms with the Smith family. Simons gave the young Smith a copy of Lewis and Clark’s journal to the Pacific. By legend, Smith is claimed to have carried this journal on all of his travels throughout the American West. His family's nickname for him while growing up was "Diah". The Smith family moved westward again to Ohio and settled in Green Township or what is now called Ashland County in 1817.

While in the Green Township, the Smith family was running low on income. In 1821, Jedediah began writing his journal and traveled to Illinois in an effort to find employment. By 1822, Jedediah traveled to St. Louis and responded to an advertisement in the Missouri Gazzette placed by General William H. Ashley. General Ashley and Major Andrew Henry were partner owners of the American Fur Company. According to the advertisement, General Ashley was looking for "Enterprising Young Men" to explore the Missouri River and engage in the fur trade business in the Rocky Mountains. Jedediah, a 6 foot tall, blue eyed 23 year old with a commanding presence, impressed Ashley enough to hire him. Ashley initially led the expedition and Jedediah got his first glimpse of the frontier West coming in contact with Sioux and Arikaras tribes. Jedediah finally reached Fort Arikaras, under the control of Major Andrew Henry at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains on the Yellowstone River. On his first expedition up the Missouri, Jedediah learned to trap beaver and hunt buffalo.

In 1822, Gen. Ashley ordered Smith to come back down the Missouri to Grand River. When Jedediah returned, the Arikaras natives, who were becoming increasingly hostile, attacked and massacred thirteen (13) of Ashley's men. Jedediah fought bravely, and the surviving men, including General Ashley, took note of Jedediah's conduct during the battle. Subsequently, Ashley appointed Smith as Captain of his men.

In 1823, as a leader of Ashley's men, Jedediah took a beaver trapping party and explored the Rocky Mountains south of the Yellowstone River. The party spent the rest of 1823 Wintering in the Wind River Valley. In 1824, Smith launched an exploratory expedition to find an expedient route through the Rocky Mountains. Smith was able to retrieve information from Crow natives. When communicating with the Crow, one of Smith's men made a unique map (made of buffalo hide and sand), and the Crow were able to show Jedediah and his men the direction to the South Pass. Jedediah and his men crossed through this pass in the Rocky Mountains and were able to reach the Green River in what is now Utah.

From 1824 to 1825, Jedediah and his men explored the Rocky Mountains and trapped the Green, Bear, Snake, and Clark's Fork Rivers. On July 1, 1825 Smith became partners with William H. Ashley. Ashley's other partner Andrew Henry had retired from the fur trade. The re-discovery of the South Pass from the Crow Indians was very important since this was the fastest and most direct route to get to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains and into California.

Smith was often recognized by significant facial scarring due to a grizzly bear attack along the Cheyenne River. In 1824, while looking for the Crow tribe to obtain fresh horses and get westward directions, Jedediah was stalked and attacked by a large grizzly bear. The huge bear jumped and tackled Jedediah to the ground. Jedediah's ribs were broken and members of his party witnessed Smith fighting the bear, which ripped open his side with its claws and took his head in its mouth. The bear suddenly retreated and the men ran to help Smith. They found his scalp and ear nearly ripped off, but he convinced a friend, Jim Clyman, to sew it loosely back on, giving him directions. The trappers fetched water, bound up his broken ribs, and cleaned his wounds. After recuperating from his bloody wounds and broken ribs, Jedediah wore his hair long to cover the large scar from his eyebrow to his ear.

In 1826, William H. Ashley, retired from the fur trade and in a complicated business arrangement sold his share to the newly created firm of Jedediah Smith, David E. Jackson, and William L. Sublette. Smith and company proceeded to make two expeditions to California in 1826 and 1827, which landed him in trouble with the Mexican authorities. As with the Zebulon Pike expedition two decades earlier, the authorities saw Smith's party as a harbinger of future trouble with the United States. Unlike Pike's expedition, which was commissioned by the United States Army, the Smith party was a private commercial venture. Although five members of the 1826 party carried United States passports, the excursion deep into Mexican territory was unauthorized by the United States government and without permission from the Mexican government.

In its first trip, the Smith party followed the Colorado River deep into the west in search of new beaver hunting grounds, and ended up in harsh territory. To gather supplies for the return trip, the group chose to travel to California. After an arduous pass through the mountains into the Mojave Desert, the party was attacked by a group of Mohaves, and lost several men. Finding shelter with a friendly Mojave village, the men recuperated and met two Tongva men, who offered to guide them to San Gabriel Mission. The guides led them through the desert via a path that avoided Death Valley and which more or less follows the route of today's Interstate 15. From Soda Lake, they followed the intermittent Mojave River into the San Bernardino Mountains, which they crossed, emerging at the point where today the Community of Etiwanda is, and into a vastly different environment, the more inviting California that sailors and newspapers talked about on the East Coast. Rather than head to the nearby mission ranch, they quickly made their way west (following the path of the future Route 66), arriving at the Mission on November 27, 1826.

They were received warmly by the President of the mission, José Bernardo Sánchez, who managed to hide any misgivings he might have had. Father Sánchez gave Jedidiah and his men a lavish dinner at Mission San Gabriel. (Several of the Smith party remembered Sánchez fondly in their journals.) Sánchez advised Smith to communicate with Jefe Político (governor) José María Echeandía, who was at San Diego, about his party's status in the country. On December 8, Echeandía ordered Smith to San Diego, apparently under arrest (there was one symbolic soldier accompanying the party of mission priests and a British sea merchant escorting Smith). The rest of the party remained at the mission. Badly needing supplies, they quickly found work to do around the mission under the supervision of Joseph "José" Chapman, a former impressed sailor in crew of Hippolyte de Bouchard, who had become a naturalized citizen of Mexico. In San Diego, Smith was interviewed several times by Echeandía, who never became convinced that Smith was only looking for food and shelter. Smith asked for permission to travel north to the Columbia River, where known paths could quickly take his party back to United States territory. Smith even handed over his journals in an attempt to prove his intentions. However, Echeandía delayed a quick resolution, forwarding the issue for the authorities in Sonora to review, much to Smith's displeasure. After being hounded by Smith for a month, Echeandía released Smith and his men on the promise that they leave California by the path they entered and never return. Nevertheless, once released, the party made their way to the San Joaquín Valley, which they explored.

By early May 1827 Smith and his party had accumulated over 1500 pounds of beaver.  Getting these furs to the mountain man rendezvous near Great Salt Lake was clearly a problem. Smith had traveled 350 miles north but had seen no break in the wall of the Sierra. He turned up the rugged canyon of what would later be called the American River (named after his party). The snow was too deep. Had he completed his crossing this far north, it is possible he could have found Lake Tahoe and the Humboldt River in Nevada, the vital route across the Great Basin later used by California immigrants. But the heavy snow forced Smith into a decision: he would save his horses, and his men, by heading back west to the central valley and the Stanislaus River and re-establish camp there. Peter Skene Ogden, a year and a half later in 1828, discovered the Humbolt River basin's natural route. Smith, having taken only two men and some extra horses, began what would become his epic crossing of the Sierra Nevada somewhat further south, crossing in the vicinity of Ebbets Pass. His plan was to get to rendezvous as quickly as he could and return to his California trapping party with more men later in the year.

After crossing the Sierra Nevada, Smith likely saw Walker Lake and continued east across central Nevada. His route was straight through some of the most difficult desert in North America, known as the Great Basin. One man, Robert Evans, collapsed and could go no further. Smith and Silas Gobel briefly left Evans and pressed on to the foot of a mountain. Finding some water, Jed went back and rescued Evans. The three eventually reached the Great Salt Lake, a beautiful sight to Smith as he called it “my home of the wilderness”. Local Indians told him the whites were gathered further north at “the Little Lake” (Bear Lake). The three de facto explorers reached the rendezvous on July 3. The mountain men celebrated Smith's arrival with a cannon salute (the first wheeled vehicle ever brought this far west) for they had given up on Smith and his party for lost.

Despite Echeandía's warning, Smith returned to California the next year with eighteen men and two women following the Colorado River and Mojave Desert route he now knew well. At the Colorado River, the party was attacked by the Mojave, killing ten men and taking the two women. Smith and the other survivors were again well received in San Gabriel. The party moved north to meet with the group that had been left in the San Joaquin Valley. Unlike in San Gabriel, they were coolly received by the priests at Mission San José, who had already received warning of Smith's renewed presence in the area. Echeandía, who was at the time in Monterey attending business, once again arrested Smith, this time along with his men. However, despite the breach of trust, the governor once again released Smith on the same promise to leave the province immediately and not to return, and as before, Smith and his party remained in California hunting in the Sacramento Valley for several months, before heading north along the Pacific Coast to use the Columbia River to return to their headquarters. Jedediah became the first explorer to reach the Oregon Country overland by traveling up the California coast. However, his second run-in with the authorities, in addition to the extreme hardships his parties experienced on both trips, convinced him never to return to California, and he devoted his next years to building up his fur company.

In the Oregon Country, Smith's party fell into conflict over a stolen ax with the Umpqua people near the Umpqua River. Smith's party had threatened to execute the man they accused of stealing the ax. Later, Smith's group was attacked and fifteen of Smith's nineteen men were killed. Smith managed to reach the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) post at Fort Vancouver, where he received aid. HBC governor George Simpson happened to be at Fort Vancouver at the time, and he both sympathized with Smith and chastised him for treating the Umpqua harshly. Simpson sent Alexander McLeod south to rescue the remnants of Smith's party and their goods. McLeod returned to Fort Vancouver with 700 beaver skins and 39 horses, all in bad condition. John McLoughlin, in charge of Fort Vancouver, paid Smith $2,600 for the goods. In return, Smith assured that his American fur trade company would confine its operations to the region east of the Great Divide.

In 1829, Captain Smith personally organized a fur trade expedition into the Blackfeet territory. Smith was able to capture a good cache of beaver before being repulsed by hostile Blackfeet. A young Jim Bridger served as a riverboat pilot on the Powder River during the profitable mountain man expedition. In four years of western fur trapping, the firm of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette was able to make a substantial profit. At an 1830 rendezvous on the Wild River Smith, Jackson, and Sublette sold their fur trading company to Tom Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb, and John Baptiste Gervais. These five men formed what would become known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. In 1830, Smith retired from the fur trading business and, on October 11, returned to St. Louis with a profitable bounty.

After Smith returned to St. Louis in 1830, his partners and himself wrote a letter on October 29 to Secretary of War John H. Eaton and informed Eaton of the "military implications" in terms of the British allegedly alienating the Indigenous Peoples towards any American trappers in the Pacific Northwest. Smith's letter was an early statement of what would soon become the national interest.

Smith had not forgotten the financial struggles of his family in Ohio. After making a sizable profit from the sale of furs, over $17,000 ($408,000 2009), Smith sent $1,500 to his family in Green Township. Upon receiving this windfall, his brother Ralph bought a farm. Smith also bought a house on First Avenue in St. Louis to be shared with his brothers. Smith bought two African slaves to take care of the property in St. Louis.

Smith's busy schedule in St. Louis soon found him and Samuel Parkman making a map of Smith's cartographic discoveries in the West. Smith, in order to make his map complete, needed first hand information on the Southwest, an area he had not extensively explored. In 1831, Smith and his partners formed a supply company of 74 men, twenty-two wagons, and a "six-pounder" artillary cannon for protection. At the request of William H. Ashley, Smith received a passport from Senator Thomas Benson on March 3, 1831. Smith and company left St. Louis to trade in Santa Fe on April 10, 1831.

In 1831, Smith became involved in the supply trade known as the "commerce of the prairies". Smith was leading supply wagons for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company on the Santa Fe Trail in May, 1831 when he left the group to scout for water. He never returned to the group. The remainder of the party proceeded on to Santa Fe hoping Smith would meet them there, but he never arrived. A short time later, members of the trading party discovered a Mexican merchant at the Santa Fe market offering several of Smith's personal belongings for sale. When questioned about the items, the merchant indicated that he had acquired them from a band of Comanche hunters.

A further account in Give Your Heart to the Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men by Winifred Blevins, cites details of Smith's encounter with the Comanches in a box canyon. By their account, four braves trapped Smith in the canyon.

According to Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah Smith's biographer, Jedediah was looking for water for the 1831 expedition when he came upon an estimated 15–20 Comanches. There was a brief face to face stand off until the Comanches scared his horse and shot him in the left shoulder. After gasping from the injury, Jedediah wheeled his horse around and with one rifle shot was able to kill their chief. The Comanches then rushed on Jedediah, who did not have time to use his pistols, and stabbed him to death with lances. Austin Smith, Jedediah's brother, was able to retrieve Jedediah's rifle and pistols that the Indians had taken and traded to the Mexicans.

Jedidiah Smith was an atypical mountain man. Following Methodist practices, Smith was known to be a reserved pious man who often read the Bible, meditated, and prayed. Smith never boasted and having a stern personality only rarely was known to have any sense of humor. Smith did not practice sexual relations with Indigenous American women. Unlike contemporary mountain men, Smith never smoked, got drunk, or used profanity. Smith was known for his many systematic recorded observations on nature and topography.

While travelling overland throughout the American West, Jedediah's policy with the POTSN was to maintain friendly relations with gifts and exchanges. However, if he felt it was necessary to have a show of force against a hostile tribe, he would make a demonstration by having one or two tribe members killed. This was done to discourage any further tribal aggression against himself and his party. Also, Smith punished his men for indiscriminately shooting Indigenous Americans without justifiable cause. Smith's reluctance to kill Indigenous Americans was due to his Methodist faith and training. Smith held contemporary beliefs that Indigenous Americans were for the most part intellectually inferior to whites and liars. Smith claimed that Indians were "children of nature"; a link between animals and humans.

Jedediah Smith's explorations were the main basis for accurate Pacific-West maps. All the travels and discoveries of the trappers and fur traders since Ashley went into the map of the western United States he prepared in the winter of 1830–31. This map has been called “a landmark in mapping of the American West”. In a eulogy for Smith printed in the Illinois Magazine for June 1832 the unknown author claimed “This map is now probably the best extant, of the Rocky Mountains, and the country on both sides, from the States to the Pacific.” The original map is lost, but its content was superimposed probably by George Gibbs on a base map by John C. Frémont, which is on file at the American Geographical Society of New York.

Smith's exploration of northwestern California is commemorated in the names of the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and the Smith River.

Most of the western slope of Wyoming's famous Teton Range is named the Jedediah Smith Wilderness after him. And the Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail runs between Folsom and Sacramento, California, through the former gold-dredging fields that are now the American River Parkway.

An inscription on the Madonna of the Trail monument in Upland, California commemorates Smith's crossing of the San Bernardino Mountains in 1826. The monument is located on Route 66 on the path that Smith followed from Etiwanda to the San Gabriel Mission.

1799 - Christian Friedrich Schonbein

Christian Friedrich Schonbein, a German chemist who discovered and named ozone, was born in Metzingen, Germany (October 18).

 

Christian Friedrich Schönbein, (b. October 18, 1799, Metzingen, Swabia — d. August 29, 1868, Sauersberg, near Baden-Baden), was a German chemist who discovered and named ozone (1840) and was the first to describe guncotton (nitrocellulose). His teaching posts included one at Epsom, England, before he joined the faculty at the University of Basel, Switzerland (1828), where he was appointed professor of chemistry and physics in 1835. He remained there until his death in 1868, and was buried in Basel.

It was while doing experiments on the electrolysis of water at the University of Basel that Schönbein first began to notice a distinctive odor in his laboratory. This smell gave Schönbein the clue to the presence of a new product from his experiments. Because of the pronounced smell, Schönbein coined the term ‘ozone’ for the new gas, from the Greek word‘ozein’, meaning ‘to smell’. Schönbein described his discoveries in publications in 1840. He later found that the smell of ozone was similar to that produced by the slow oxidation of white phosphorus.

The ozone smell Schönbein detected is the same as that occurring in the vicinity of a thunderstorm, an odor that indicates the presence of ozone in the atmosphere.

Although his wife had forbidden him to do so, Schönbein occasionally experimented at home in the kitchen. One day in 1845, when his wife was away, he spilled a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid. After using his wife's cotton apron to mop it up, he hung the apron over the stove to dry, only to find that the cloth spontaneously ignited and burned so quickly that it seemed to disappear. Schönbein, in fact, had converted the cellulose of the apron, with the nitro groups (added from the nitric acid) serving as an internal source of oxygen. When heated, the cellulose was completely and suddenly oxidized.

Schönbein recognized the possibilities of the new compound. Ordinary black gunpowder, which had reigned supreme in the battlefield for the previous 500 years, exploded into thick smoke, blackening the gunners, fouling cannons and small arms, and obscuring the battlefield. Nitrocellulose was perceived as a possible "smokeless powder" and a propellant for artillery shells thus it received the name of guncotton.

Attempts to manufacture guncotton for military use failed at first because the factories were prone to explode and, above all else, the burning speed of straight guncotton was always too high. It was not until 1884 that Paul Vieille tamed guncotton into a successful progressive smokeless gunpowder called Poudre B. Later on, in 1891, James Dewar and Frederick Augustus Abel also managed to transform gelatinized guncotton into a safe mixture, called cordite because it could be extruded into long thin cords before being dried.

Schonbein also did research on the passivity of iron, the properties of hydrogen peroxide, and catalysis. In his lifetime, he produced more than 360 scientific papers.

1799 - John Brown Russwurm

John Brown Russwurm the first superintendent of schools in Liberia and Governor of the African colony of Maryland and the founder of Freedom’s Journal (the first African American owned newspaper published in the United States) was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. 

John Brown Russwurm (1799–1851) was an American abolitionist from Jamaica, known for his newspaper, Freedom's Journal. He moved from the United States to govern the Maryland section of an African American colony in Liberia, dying there in 1851.

Russwurm was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica to an English merchant father and an unknown black slave. The family stayed in Jamaica until 1807 when Russwurm was sent to Quebec. In 1812, father and son moved to Portland, Maine, where the elder Russwurm married widower Susan Blanchard in 1813. Blanchard (now Russwurm) insisted her husband grant “John Brown”, as he was then known, his full birth name. His father did so, and the now named “John Brown Russwurm” lived with his father, stepmother and her children from a previous marriage, accepted as part of the family. The elder Russwurm died in 1815 but his son stayed close to his stepmother, even after she re-married to become Susan Hawes. The John B. Russwurm House in Portland was owned by the family and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Russwurm attended Hebron Academy in Maine, focusing on his studies to finish his education and earning the nickname "Honest John". Graduating in his early twenties, he taught at an African-American school in Boston. Several years later he re-located back to Maine to live with his stepmother and her new husband, and they helped Russwurm pay for further education when he enrolled in Bowdoin College in 1824. Upon graduation in 1826, Russwurm became first African-American to graduate from Bowdoin College and third African-American to graduate from an American college.

Russwurm moved to New York City in 1827. On March 16 of that year, Russwurm, along with his co-editor, Samuel Cornish published the first edition of Freedom's Journal, an abolitionist newspaper dedicated to opposition of slavery. Freedom's Journal was the first newspaper in the United States to be owned, operated, published and edited by African Americans. Upon becoming senior editor in September 1827, Russwurm used his position to change the paper's initially negative stance on the colonialization of Africa by African-Americans to a positive advocacy for this position. These strong views forced Russwurm's resignation in March 1829, after which he immigrated to Liberia.

Upon emigrating to Liberia, Russwurm started work as the colonial secretary for the American Colonization Society between 1830 and 1834. He worked as the editor of the Liberia Herald, though he resigned his post in 1835 to protest America's colonization policies. Russwurm also served as the superintendent of education in Liberia's capital, Monrovia.

In 1833, Russwurm married Sarah McGill, the daughter of the Lieutenant-Governor of Monrovia, with whom he had a daughter and three sons. In 1836, he became the first black governor of the Maryland section of Liberia, a post he held until his death.  In this post, Russwurm encouraged the immigration of African-Americans to Maryland and supported agriculture and trade. In 1850, shortly before his death, Russwurm returned to Maine for a visit, bringing two of his sons with him. They were enrolled at North Yarmouth Academy between 1850 and 1852 where they lived with their step-grandmother, Susan Hawes.

During his time in Liberia, Russwurm learned several of the native languages, encouraged trade and diplomatic relations with neighboring countries as well as whites. There is a statue of John Russwurm at his burial site at Harper, Cape Palmas, Liberia. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed John Brown Russwurm on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

1799 - Nathaniel Palmer

Nathaniel B. Palmer, an American sea captain and Antarctic explorer, was born in Stonington, Connecticut (August 8).

Nathaniel Brown Palmer (b. August 8, 1799, Stonington, Connecticut, United States — d. June 21, 1877, San Francisco, California), was an American sea captain and explorer after whom Palmer Land, a stretch of western Antarctic coast and islands, is named.

Palmer went to sea at the age of 14. He served first as a sailor on a blockade runner in the War of 1812 He later became a sealer, and his South Sea explorations were largely stimulated by the desire to locate new seal rookeries. Becoming captain of the schooner Galina in 1818, Palmer began explorations of the Cape Horn region and western Antarctic the following year. In 1820 he reported a landfall on the coast of Antarctica, which he called Palmer Land. Whether he was the first person to view Antarctica is controversial because Russian explorer Fabien Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and English explorer Edward Bransfield also claimed to have been the first to sight it in 1820. On these and subsequent voyages, Palmer discovered the Gerlache Strait and Orleans Channel in Antarctica as well as the South Orkney Islands.

From 1822 to 1826 he engaged in trade on the Spanish Main and helped to transport troops and supplies to Simón Bolívar during the war of South American independence. Throughout much of his career Palmer displayed a keen interest in shipbuilding and helped to design packets (passenger boats), pleasure yachts, and clipper ships.

After concluding a successful sealing career, Palmer, still in the prime of life, switched his attention to the captaining of fast sailing ships for the transportation of express freight. In 1843, Captain Palmer took command of the Paul Jones on her maiden voyage from Boston to Hong Kong, arriving in 111 days. In this new role, the Connecticut captain traveled many of the world's principal sailing routes. Observing the strengths and weaknesses of the ocean-going sailing ships of his time, Palmer suggested and designed improvements to their hulls and rigging. The improvements made Palmer a co-developer of the mid-19th century clipper ship.

Palmer closed his sailing career and established himself in his hometown of Stonington as a successful owner of clipper ships sailed by others. He died in 1877, at the age of 78.

Palmer Land, part of the Antarctic Peninsula, as well as the Palmer Archipelago, were named in honor for Nathaniel Palmer.

The Antarctic science and research program operated by the United States government continues to recall Palmer's role in the exploration of the Antarctic area. Palmer Station, located in the seal islands that Palmer explored, the clipper ship N.B. Palmer (built by Jacob Aaron Westervelt) and the Antarctic icebreaker RV Nathaniel B. Palmer are named after Captain Palmer.

Hero Bay, in the South Shetland Islands, is named for Captain Palmer's sloop Hero, one of the vessels of the Pendleton sealing fleet from Stonington which visited the islands in 1820-21.

1799 - Maeda Toshiyasu

*Maeda Toshiyasu, a Japanese naturalist, was born.

Maeda Toshiyasu (March 23, 1799 - September 14, 1859) was a Japanese naturalist and entomologist.  He was a daimyo (territorial lord) of Toyama and with other daimyos and officials of the shogunate organized a society of naturalists which met each month. An account was written of the subject discussed, for instance, in September 1840 they discussed the beetle family Scarabaeidae and wrote Kyôro-shakô-zusetsu in which twenty chafer species are scientifically drawn and described.  As these studies were refined each member of the group became a specialist.  Maeda learned the Dutch language (the Japanese naturalists followed the German Philipp Franz von Siebold who was then employed by the Dutch) and translated the Dutch language Systema Naturae into Japanese.

1799 - Tanaka Hisashige

*Tanaka Hisashige, a Japanese engineer and inventor, was born.

Tanaka Hisashige (September 18, 1799 – November 7, 1881) was a Japanese engineer and inventor during the late Edo and Meiji period Japan. He is one of the founders of what later became Toshiba Corporation. He has been called the "Thomas Edison of Japan" or Karakuri Giemon.

Tanaka was born in Kurume, Chikugo province (present day Fukuoka prefecture) as the eldest son of a tortoise shell craftsman. A gifted artisan, at the age of 14, he had already invented a loom. At 20, he made karakuri dolls, with hydraulic mechanisms, capable of relatively complex movements, which were then much in demand by the aristocrats of Kyoto, the daimyo in various feudal domains, and by the Shōgun’s court in Edo. At age 21, he was performing around the country at festivals with clockwork dolls he constructed himself.

In 1834, Tanaka relocated to Osaka, where he experimented in pneumatics, hydraulics and various forms of lighting based on rapeseed oil. However, he soon moved on to Kyoto, where he studied rangaku, or western learning, and astronomy. In 1851, he built a Myriad year clock which is now designated as an Important Cultural Property by the Japanese government. With the development of the Sonnō jōi movement, the atmosphere in Kyoto became increasingly dangerous towards foreign influences and technology, and Tanaka was invited by Sano Tsunetami to the Saga Domain in Kyūshū, where he was welcomed by Nabeshima Naomasa.

While in Saga, Tanaka designed and built Japan’s first domestically made steam locomotive and steam warship. Although he had no previous experience in the field, he had access to a Dutch reference book, and had watched the demonstration of a steam engine conducted by the Russian diplomat Yevfimy Putyatin during his visit to Nagasaki in 1853.

He was also involved in the construction of a reverberatory furnace in Saga for the production of Armstrong guns. In 1864, he returned to his native Kurume Domain, where he assisted in the development of modern weaponry.

In 1873, six years after the Meiji Restoration, Tanaka, by then aged 74 and still energetic, was invited by Kubusho (the Ministry of Industries) to come to Tokyo to make telegraphs at the ministry's small factory. He relocated to the Ginza district in 1875 and rented the second floor of a temple in what is now Roppongi as a workshop which later evolved into his first company - Tanaka Seisakusho (Tanaka Engineering Works), the first manufacturer of telegraph equipment in Japan.

After his death in 1881, his son founded Tanaka Engineering Works ,(Tanaka Seizōsho). The company changed its name after Tanaka’s death to Shibaura Engineering Works (,Shibaura Seizōsho) in 1904, and after a merger in 1939 with Tokyo Denki became Tokyo Shibaura Denki, more commonly known today as Toshiba.

1799 - Hanaya Yohei

Hanaya Yohei, a Japanese culinary innovator, was born in this year.

Hanaya Yohei (1799–1858) is generally credited as the inventor of today's Tokyo-style nigiri sushi (hand-formed sushi) at the end of Japan's Edo period.

Sushi at his time was made from freshly captured fish from the nearby Tokyo Bay. This ruled out many of today's popular materials such as salmon roe (ikura). Even though Edo (Tokyo) was a coastal city, food safety was still a concern before the invention of refrigeration. To prevent spoilage, Hanaya either slightly cooked or marinated the fish in soy sauce or vinegar. It was quite reasonable for people to dislike the fatty belly meat of tuna because it would decompose very quickly. Hanaya marinated the lean red meat in soy sauce. Then he served the sliced fish on vinegared rice balls that are large by today's standard. His sushi was totally different from today's "raw fish" stereotype.

Hanaya's cookery was a departure from Japanese eating habits of the time. In the early years, a chef only made sushi part-time. Then, slowly, inexpensive sushi stands (yatai) emerged. After the government outlawed these questionable food stands, sushi restaurants (ryotei) became mainstream. Today, relatively inexpensive conveyor belt sushi (kaiten-zushi) has become popular.

1799 - Rene-Auguste Caillie

Rene Auguste Caillie (1799-1838), a French explorer, was born (November 19).

René-Auguste Caillié, (b. November 19, 1799, Mauzé, near La Rochelle, France — d. c. 1838, La Badère), was the first European to survive a journey to the West African city of Timbuktu (Tombouctou).

Before Caillié was 20 he had twice voyaged to Senegal and traveled through its interior. In 1824 he began to prepare for his journey to Timbuktu by learning Arabic and studying Islam.

Caillie traveled through part of Upper Guinea to Timbuktu in 1824-1828. His accounts of this journey, published in 1830, whetted the European appetite for further exploration.

Born in Mauze, France, Caillie traveled to Senegal at the age of 16 where, among other things, he carried supplies to the Gray-Dochard expedition in Bondu. After a stay in France and Guadeloupe, Caillie returned to Senegal, determined to get to Timbuktu. Toward this end, he spent eight months with the Brakna Maure learning Arabic and being educated as a Muslim. Dressed as a Muslim and stating that he was an Arab from Egypt who had been enslaved by Christians, he started inland from Kakundi on April 19, 1827, and traveled across Guinea to Kourousa and then to Kong with Manding trade caravans. For five months, he was delayed by illness in the village of Tieme, located near present day Odienne in the northern Ivory Coast. The illness he suffered from was probably scurvy.

In January, 1828, he traveled overland with a caravan that was heading northeastward over present day southern Mali, passing Sienso near the town of San. He arrived in Djenne in March, 1828. After a short stay, he traveled down the Niger River toward Timbuktu and reached Lake Debo on April 2, 1828. On April 20, 1828, Caillie entered Timbuktu, where he remained until May 4. Then, joining a caravan that was crossing the Sahara, he reached Fegou on August 12, 1828, went on to Tangiers and returned to France. Caillie was the first European known to reach Timbuktu and return alive. He also was the first to write a detailed description of the city.