- Jan 1 First official horse race in South Australia takes place in Adelaide
Jan 6 Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrate their telegraph machine in New Jersey
- Jan 8 Rebellion at Amherstburg, Ontario breaks out
Jan 11 First public demonstration of telegraph messages sent using dots and dashes at Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey, by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail
- Jan 26 Myall Creek Massacre: about 50 Wirrayaraay indigenous people killed by New South Wales Mounted Police (seven men later the first ever to be hanged for killing Australian Aborigines) [1]
- Jan 26 Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States
- Feb 16 Kentucky passes law permitting women to attend school under conditions
- Feb 16 Weenen Massacre: Hundreds of Voortrekkers along the Blaukraans River, Natal are killed by Zulu warriors
- Feb 25 London pedestrian walks 20 miles backward then forward in 8 hours
- Feb 28 Robert Nelson, leader of the Patriotes, proclaims the independence of Lower Canada (today Québec)
- Mar 3 Rebellion at Pelee Island, Ontario, Canada
- Mar 6 Franz Grillparzer's "Weh dem, der Lugt" premieres in Vienna
- Mar 8 US mint in New Orleans begins operation (producing dimes)
- Apr 8 Steamship "Great Western" makes her maiden voyage from Bristol, England, to New York
- Apr 9 UK National Gallery re-opens in its new dedicated building in Trafalgar Square, London
- Apr 22 English steamship "Sirius" docks in NYC after crossing the Atlantic, providing the first transatlantic steam passenger service
- Apr 23 English steamship "Great Western" crosses the Atlantic docks in NYC
- Apr 27 Fire destroys half of Charleston
- Apr 30 Nicaragua declares independence from the Federal Republic of Central America
- Jun 4 First baseball-type game in Canada played at Beachville, Upper Canada
- Jun 10 Myall Creek Massacre in Australia: 28 Aboriginal Australians are murdered
- Jun 12 Hopkins Observatory, dedicated in Williamstown, Massachusetts
- Jun 12 Iowa Territory forms with Burlington as its capital
Jun 28 Coronation of Queen Victoria, aged 19, during a five-hour ceremony at Westminster Abbey, London [1]
- Jul 4 Huskar Pit Disaster: 26 children drown while trying to escape flooding in the Silkstone Colliery in England. Leads to the 1842 Mines Act, which bans women and children from working underground. [1]
- Jul 4 Iowa Territory is organised from Wisconsin Territory, lasting until 1846
- Jul 7 Central American federation is dissolved
- Jul 8 Arabs attack Jewish community of Safed
- Aug 1 The apprenticeship system is abolished in most of the British Empire, and former slaves are no longer indentured to former owners
Aug 18 United States Exploring Expedition headed by Charles Wilkes departs for the Pacific Ocean and Antarctica
- Aug 23 Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, graduates its first class
Sep 3 Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery disguised as a sailor
- Sep 5 Central Museum opens in Utrecht, Netherlands
Sep 10 Hector Berlioz's first full-length opera, "Benvenuto Cellini," premieres at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris
- Sep 18 Anti-Corn Law League established in Great Britain by Richard Cobden
- Sep 19 Ephraim Morris granted US patent for a railroad brake
- Sep 24 Anti-Corn Law League forms to repeal English Corn Laws
- Oct 27 Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated
- Nov 3 The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English-language daily broadsheet newspaper, is founded as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce
- Nov 5 Honduras declares independence of Central American Federation
Nov 8 Victor Hugo's tragic play "Ruy Blas" premieres in Paris
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