1834 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January 1 - Abolition of customs charges at borders within Germany.
• January 3 - The government of Mexico imprisons Stephen F. Austin in Mexico City
• March 6 - York, Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto.
• March 18 - The Tolpuddle Martyrs, six Dorset farm labourers, are sentenced to be transported to a penal colony for forming a trade union
• March 28 - The United States Senate censures President Andrew Jackson for his actions in defunding the Second Bank of the United States
• June 14 - Isaac Fischer, Jr. patents sandpaper
• July 16 - William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne succeeds Earl Grey as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• July 24 - End of the Liberal Wars in Portugal
• August 1 - Slavery abolished in the British Empire
• August 14 - Poor Law Amendment Act states that no able-bodied British man can receive assistance unless he enters a workhouse
• August 15 - South Australia Act allows for the creation of an colony there
• October 16 - Much of the Palace of Westminster is destroyed by fire
• November 11 - The rare 1804 silver dollar coin is struck by the United States Mint
• November 24 - George Sand begins her journal to Alfred de Musset.
• December 10 - Sir Robert Peel succeeds Lord Melbourne as Prime Minister of the U.K.
• Abolition of slavery comes into effect in British Empire
• Failed pro-republic uprising in Piedmont – one of the activists is Giuseppe Garibaldi
• New Poor Law in England
• Last hanging in chains upon a gibbet in England - James Cook for murder
• Spanish Inquisition, which began in the 13th century, was suppressed.
• British East India Company monopoly on China trade ended
• Sixth Kaffir War ; severe clashes between white settlers and Bantu peoples in Cape Colony. Dutch speaking settlers colonize area north of Orange River
• The Hansom cab is patented
• Louis Braille perfects his Braille system
• The Exchequer was abolished as a revenue collecting department of the British government.

Births

• January 7 - Johann Philipp Reis, physicist, inventor (d. 1874)
• February 7 - Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, Russian chemist and inventor of the Periodic table of the chemical elements (d. 1907)
• February 9 - Felix Dahn, author (d. 1912)
• February 16 - Ernst Haeckel, German zoologist and philosopher (d. 1919)
• March 16 - James Hector, Scottish geologist (d. 1907)
• March 17 - Gottlieb Daimler, German engineer and inventor (d. 1900)
• March 20 - Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University (d. 1926)
• March 23 - Julius Reubke, composer (d. 1858).
• March 24 - William Morris, English poet and artist (d. 1896)
• March 24 - John Wesley Powell, American explorer, environmentalist (d. 1902)
• April 1 - James Fisk, entrepreneur (d. 1872)
• April 2 - Frédéric Bartholdi, sculptor (d. 1904)
• May 23 - Carl Heinrich Bloch, Danish sculptor (d. 1890)
• June 19 - Charles Spurgeon, English Baptist preacher (d. 1892)
• July 10 - James McNeill Whistler, American painter and etcher (d. 1903)
• July 19 - Edgar Degas, French painter (d. 1917)
• August 22 - Samuel Pierpont Langley, American astronomer, physicist and aeronautics pioneer (d. 1906)
• August 31 - Amilcare Ponchielli, Italian composer (d. 1886)
• October 8 - Walter Kittredge, American musician and composer during the Civil War. (d. 1905)

Deaths

• January 17 - Giovanni Aldini, physicist (b. 1762)
• February 2 - Lorenzo Dow, American minister (b. 1777)
• February 12 - Friedrich Schleiermacher, German theologian (b. 1768)
• March 2 - José Cecilo del Valle, 1st President of Central America (b. 1780)
• April 10 - John 'Merino' MacArthur, Australian farmer (b. 1767)
• April 11 - John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, philanthropist and patron of the arts and sciences (b. 1757)
• May 20 - Marquis de la Fayette, French nobleman and soldier (b. 1757)
• July 12 - David Douglas, botanist (b. 1799)
• July 14 - Edmond Charles Genêt, French ambassador to the United States during the French Revolution (b. 1763)
• July 25 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English writer (b. 1772)
• August 7 - Joseph Marie Jacquard, French inventor (b. 1752)
• September 2 - Thomas Telford, Scottish engineer (b. 1757)
• September 9 - James Weddell, Antarctic explorer (b. 1787)
• September 16 - William Blackwood, English writer (b. 1776)
• September 24 - Pedro I of Brazil (b. 1798)
• October 8 - François-Adrien Boieldieu, French composer (b. 1775)
• October 11 - William John Napier, 9th Lord Napier, British Navy officer, politician and diplomat (b. 1786)
• December 23 - Thomas Malthus, economist and political philosopher (b. 1766)
• December 27 - Charles Lamb, English essayist (b. 1775)