1836 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar).

Events

• January - Book by Maria Monk claims that she was sexually exploited in a Canadian convent
• February 3 - United States Whig Party holds its first convention in Albany, New York.
• February 23 - The siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.
• February 24 - Samuel Colt receives a patent for the Colt revolver
• March 1 - Convention of delegates from 57 Texas communities convenes in Washington-on-the-Brazos to deliberate independence from Mexico
• March 1 - Antonio García Gutiérrez's play El Trovador played for the first time
• March 2 - Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico.
• March 5 - Samuel Colt makes the first pistol (.34-caliber).
• March 6 - After a 13-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 189 Texas volunteers defending the Alamo are defeated and the fort taken.
• March 27 - Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre - Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas
• March 31 - Marshall College, named for John Marshall, opens in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. It later merges with Franklin College to become Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
• April 20 - U.S. Congress passes act creating the Wisconsin Territory
• April 21 - Texas Revolution: Battle of San Jacinto - Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. (Santa Anna and hundreds of his troops are taken prisoner along the San Jacinto River the next day.)
• May 15 - Francis Baily, during an eclipse of the sun, observes the phenomenon named after him as Baily's beads
• June 15 - Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
• July 11 - President Andrew Jackson issues the Specie Circular, beginning the failure of the land speculation economy that would lead to the Panic of 1837.
• September 1 - Narcissa Whitman , one of the first white woman to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.
• September 5 - Sam Houston is elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas.
• September 8 - Transcendental Club founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• October 2 - Naturalist Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England aboard the HMS Beagle after a 5-year journey collecting biological data he will later use to develop his theory of evolution.
• November - Martin Van Buren defeats William Henry Harrison in the U.S. presidential election
• December 10 - Emory College, the forerunner of Emory University, is chartered in Oxford, Georgia.
• December 26 - Separation of the colony of South Australia from that of New South Wales. Now celebrated in the state of South Australia as Proclamation Day.
• December 28 - Spain recognizes independence of Mexico.

unknown dates

• Chartists in Britain demand universal male suffrage.
• Boers in South Africa begin the Great Trek across the Orange River.
• Henry R. Campbell builds the first 4-4-0, a steam locomotive type that will soon become the most common on all railroads of the United States.
• First printed literature in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is produced by Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary.

Births

• January 2 - Mendele Moykher Sforim, writer (d. 1917)
• January 14 - Henri Fantin-Latour, painter (d. 1904)
• January 27 - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, writer (d. 1895)
• February 18 - Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Bengali religious leader (d. 1886)
• February 24 - Winslow Homer, artist (d. 1910)
• March 20 - Sir Edward Poynter, artist (d. 1919)
• May 27 - Jay Gould, American financier (d. 1892)
• May 28 - Alexander Mitscherlich, chemist (d. 1918)
• May 31 – Jules Chéret, printmaker (d. 1932)
• June 2 - Mily Balakirev, composer (d. 1910)
• July 8 - Joseph Chamberlain, British politician (d. 1914)
• July 9 - Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1908)
• August 13 - Ioan Dimitrovich Kasatkin, later Bishop Nikolai of Japan (d. 1912)
• August 24 - Susan Agnes Bernard, future First Lady of Canada (d. 1920)
• September 11 - Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author (d. 1870)
• October 15 - James Tissot, French artist (d. 1902)

Deaths

• January 7 - John Molson, Canadian entrepreneur
• March 6 - Davy Crockett, frontiersman, soldier (b. 1786)
• March 27 - James Fannin, Texas Revolutionary (b. 1804)
• June 28 - James Madison, Fourth President of the United States
• September 5 - Ferdinand Raimund, Austrian playwright
• September 14 - Aaron Burr, Vice President of the United States (b. 1756)
• September 17 - Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, botanist
• November 5 - Karel Hynek Mácha, poet
• November 6 - Charles X, king of France
• November 16 - Christian Hendrik Persoon, Dutch mycologist
• December 27 - Stephen F. Austin, American pioneer (b. 1793)