360The 1810s: Waterloo and the year without a summer
The Napoleonic Wars ended at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and the Congress of Vienna redrew Europe's map. That year, the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia cooled the planet, bringing a 'year without a summer' in 1816. The stethoscope and an early bicycle were also invented.
After years of war, Napoleon's army was defeated by British and Prussian forces at Waterloo, in present-day Belgium, on 18 June 1815. Napoleon was exiled to the island of Saint Helena. The Congress of Vienna, held in 1814 and 1815, settled Europe's borders and kept a balance of power that largely held for decades.
In April 1815, Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa erupted in the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history. Ash in the atmosphere cooled the global climate, and 1816 became known as the 'year without a summer', with failed harvests in Europe and North America.
Medicine gained a simple but vital tool. In 1816, the French doctor René Laennec rolled up a sheet of paper to listen to a patient's heart, then designed a wooden tube for the purpose. He called it the stethoscope.
In 1817, the German inventor Karl Drais rode his 'running machine', a two-wheeled vehicle pushed along by the rider's feet. It was the ancestor of the bicycle.
Across Latin America, movements for independence grew, and many countries became independent nations during the 1810s and 1820s.
- 1815
- Battle of Waterloo; Tambora erupts
- 1815
- Congress of Vienna ends
- 1816
- Laennec invents the stethoscope
- 1817
- Drais's running machine
Sources: Britannica · Smithsonian · Royal College of Physicians.