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History of Denmark

1790s Denmark became the 1st country to abolish slavery.
1792 May 16, Denmark abolished slave trade.
1799 Nov 5, The Danish ship Oldenborg was wrecked on her outward passage by being beached in the roadstead at Cape Town, South Africa, during a north-westerly gale, thus becoming one of the 127 ships that have been lost on this minuscule portion of the South African coast.
1800 The Althing of Iceland was abolished by the Danish king.
1801 Apr 2, The British navy defeated the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen.
1803 Denmark became the first country to ban slave trade.
1805 Apr 2, Hans Christian Andersen (d.1875), author of 150 fairy tales, was born in Odense, Denmark.
1807 Britain attacked, stole Danish fleet
1807 Sep 2, British forces began bombarding Copenhagen for several days, until the Danes agreed to surrender their naval fleet.
1807 Sep 7, Denmark surrendered to British forces that had bombarded the city of Copenhagen for four days.
1813 May 5, Soren Kierkegaard (d.1855), Danish philosopher and theologian, was born. He founded Existentialism and believed that man's relation to God must be an agonizing experience. Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time." His books included the philosophical novel Diary of a Seducer."
1814 Jan 14, The Treaty of Kiel or Peace of Kiel was concluded between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Sweden on one side and the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway on the other side in Kiel. It ended the hostilities between the parties in the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, where the United Kingdom and Sweden were part of the anti-French camp (the Sixth Coalition) while Denmark-Norway was allied to Napoleon Bonaparte.
1814 May 17, Norway's constitution was signed, providing for a limited monarchy. Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden.
1814 The union between the crowns of Denmark and Norway was dissolved. The Treaty of Kiel severed Norway's former colonies and left them under the control of the Danish monarch. Greenland became a Danish colony, and a part of the Danish Realm in 1953 under the Constitution of Denmark.
1814 Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden
1814 Universal primary education is introduced into Denmark
1828 The Danish government decreed that all persons should have a surname which was inherited from the preceding generation.
1829 Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) published his first literary work: A Walking Tour from Holmen's Canal to the Eastern Point of Amager."
1830 August Bournonville (1805-1879) founded the Danish ballet tradition, the world's oldest living ballet heritage. At the age of 25 he became principal dancer and artistic director for the Royal Danish Ballet and continued to work there for 47 years.
1835 Apr, Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) published novel Improvisatore," an alternative version of his own life based on his travel experiences in Italy.
1843 Aug 15, The Tivoli Gardens opened in Copenhagen.
1844 Nov 23, Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were declared independent from Denmark.
1847 Carlsberg began beer production in Denmark.
1848 Mar 24, The First Schleswig War began. It was the first round of military conflict in southern Denmark and northern Germany rooted in the Schleswig-Holstein Question and contested the issue of who should control the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The 3-year war lasted from 1848 to 1851.
1848 Jul 3, Gen. Peter Von Scholten, faced with the likely destruction of towns and plantations by a slave revolt, declared the slaves of the Danish West Indies (later US Virgin Islands) to be freed.
1849 May 3, Jacob Riis (d.1914), American reporter and reformer (How the Other Half Lives), was born in Denmark.
1849 Denmark became a constitutional monarchy
1852 May 8, A war between Denmark and Prussia lasted three years (1848 to 1850) and ended only when the Great Powers pressured Prussia into accepting the London Protocol of 1852. This was the revision of an earlier protocol, which had been ratified on August 2, 1850, by the major Germanic powers of Austria and Prussia. The 1852 London Protocol confirmed that the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein should remain undivided.
1855 Nov 11, Soren A. Kierkegaard (b.1813), Danish philosopher and theologian, died. In 2005 Joakim Garff authored Søren A. Kierkegaard: A Biography."
1857 Jun 2, Karl Gjellerup, poet, novelist (Nobel 1917), was born in Denmark.
1859 Hans Christian Anderson gave his story "The Philosopher's Stone" to a family during his trip to the Jutland region. The 13-page script was sold at auction in 1999 for $75,400.
1864 May 9, Austria and Denmark held a ship battle at Helgoland.
1864 Prussia and Austria snatched Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark. The border was redrawn by plebiscite in 1920. After 1945 Germany and Denmark agreed to recognize the rights of minorities on both sides.
1864 Denmark fights Prussia and Austria
1865 May 21, C.J. Thomsen, archaeologist who named the Stone, Iron and Bronze Ages, was born in Denmark.
1865 Jun 9, Carl Nielsen, Danish composer, was born.
1866 Denmark passed a law against blasphemy.
1867 Denmark reached a deal to transfer Saint Thomas and Saint John (part of the Virgin Islands) to the United States to the US for $7.5 million, but a hurricane, earthquake, tsunami and fire, as well as domestic and int'l. political conflicts delayed the transfer for 50 years.
1868 Oct 16, Denmark ended its involvement in India by selling the rights to the Nicobar Islands to the British.