La Bataille d’ Austerlitz 1805© Marshal Enterprises

Just a few weeks later, on May 26, Napoleon himself was crowned as the first King of Italy in Milan. In the United Kingdom, William Pitt the Younger was the Prime Minister, but more importantly, the first cricket match between Eton College and Harrow school is played on August 3. Lord Byron played for Harrow. The winner of the match is still being determined. The United States fought in its first struggle against Islamic power. Americans, not wanting to pay tribute to the Barbary Pirates, attack the Tripolitan city of Derna (“the Shores of Tripoli) on April 27. The war officially ends on June 4. In the United States, the Michigan Territory is created on January 11, but in a harbinger of what was to come in the future, the city of Detroit burns down on June 4. President Thomas Jefferson had sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark from St. Louis the previous year to find the headwaters of the Missouri River. After many trials, including being attacked by a Grizzly bear and running out of whiskey on the Fourth of July, the expedition not only finds the headwaters of the Missouri on August 12, but is able to travel to the Pacific Ocean in November. In literature, both Hans Christian Anderson and Alexis de Tocqueville are born and rumor has it that both started planning future works. The late philosophe Denis Diderot had his book Rameau’s Nephew, translated into German by Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe. Ludwig van Beethoven had a particularly busy year. On April 7, Symphony #3 (Eroica) had its public premiere in Vienna. It was to be named after Napoleon, but Beethoven changed his mind when Napoleon crowned himself emperor. Later that year, on November 20, in front of many French soldiers in occupied Vienna, Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio , is performed for the first time.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, "Thus far and no farther." Van Beethoven

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