This Year in History:
1831
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 15, 1831, Victor Hugo finishes writing Notre Dame de Paris, also known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Distracted by other projects, Hugo had continually postponed his deadlines…
Jedediah Smith, one of the nation’s most important trapper‑explorers, is killed by Comanche tribesman on the Santa Fe Trail. Smith’s role in exploring the Far West was not fully realized…
Believing himself chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery, Nat Turner launches the largest‑ever insurrection by enslaved people in the United States. Turner, an enslaved man and educated…
Nat Turner, the leader of a bloody revolt of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, is hanged in Jerusalem, the county seat, on November 11, 1831. Turner, an enslaved man…
British naturalist Charles Darwin sets out from Plymouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle on a five‑year surveying expedition of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Visiting such diverse places as…
