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1 January 1800: Robert Owen takes over the running of the cotton mills at New Lanark from David Dale.
1801: The population of Scotland is 1,608,000.
1801: Thomas Telford reports on the roads in the Highlands. He goes on to build 900 miles of roads and 120 bridges, as well as the Caledonian Canal and various harbours.
1801: The first Gaelic language version of the Bible is published.
1802: William Symington's "Charlotte Dundas" becomes the world's first steam-powered tug when it pulls two 70 ton barges on the Forth and Clyde Canal.
24 August 1802: The birth in Fintry of John Macgregor, who would establish a shipbuilding yard on the River Clyde and do much to pioneer the development of iron ships.
10 October 1802: The birth in Cromarty of the geologist and writer Hugh Miller.
4 January 1803: The launch at Grangemouth of the world's first practical steamboat, the "Charlotte Dundas", designed by William Symington.
19 November 1805: Explorer Mungo Park sets sail downstream into the unknown reaches of the River Niger in a large canoe with what remains of his ill-fated expedition.
13 December 1805: The birth near Braemar of Johann von Lamont, who would become an eminent German astronomer.
21 December 1805: The birth in Glasgow of Thomas Graham, the eminent chemist remembered in the name of "Graham's Law", which relates to the diffusion of gases.
13 July 1807: Henry Benedict Stuart dies in Rome. He is the fourth and final Jacobite to publicly lay claim to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland.
29 December 1807: Orcadian Isobel Gunn gives birth to a son while posing as a man and working for The Hudson's Bay Company in Canada.
29 February 1808: The birth in Forres of Hugh Falconer, an important botanist, geologist and paleontologist particularly remembered for his work on the flora, fauna and fossils of the Indian sub-continent.
19 August 1808: The birth in Edinburgh of James Nasmyth the inventor and engineer remembered mostly for his development of the steam hammer.
19 December 1808: The birth in Edinburgh of Horatius Bonar, a clergyman and writer who would serve as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1883.
16 January 1809: The death of Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore at the Battle of Corunna.
20 April 1809: The birth in Edinburgh of James David Forbes, the physicist best known for his work on the conduction of heat, and on glaciology.
10 May 1810: The Rev Henry Duncan launches the world's first locally-based savings bank in Ruthwell, near Dumfries.
17 May 1810: The suicide in a Paisley canal of Robert Tannahill, the self-taught poet and musician widely known as the Weaver Poet.
9 January 1811: The first women's golf tournament anywhere in the world is held at Musselburgh.
1 April 1811: The birth near Kirkmichael in Ayrshire of James McCosh, the clergyman and prominent philosopher who became president of Princeton University in the USA.
28 May 1811: The death of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, the lawyer and politician who became the last person to be impeached in the United Kingdom.
7 June 1811: The birth in Bathgate of Sir James Young Simpson, the first man ever to be knighted for his services to medicine, who is principally remembered for introducing anaesthesia to childbirth.
8 August 1812: Henry Bell runs Europe's first commercial steamboat service, from Glasgow's Broomielaw to Greenock, in the steamboat Comet.
16 September 1812: The birth near Duns of Robert Fortune, a botanist and plant collector best known for breaking the Chinese tea monopoly when he smuggled large numbers of tea plants from China to India.
23 December 1812: The birth in Haddington of the author and political reformer Samuel Smiles.
19 March 1813: The birth in Blantyre of David Livingstone, one of the most famous of the European missionaries and explorers who opened up the interior of Africa during the mid 1800s.
30 September 1813: The birth at the Hall of Clestrain in Orkney of John Rae, the noted explorer of Canada's Arctic and the discoverer of the North-West Passage.
29 November 1813: A campaign is launched in Dumfries to raise public subscriptions to fund a mausoleum for the poet Robert Burns.
1814: The "year of the burning" on the 1.5 million acre estates of the Countess of Sutherland and her husband, the Marquess of Stafford (later to become the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland), from which 15,000 people were cleared between 1811 and 1821, largely by the estate factor, Patrick Sellar, in the most notorious of the Highland Clearances.
1815: The kelp industry, which provides the main source of income to many coastal communities in the Highlands, collapses as there is greater access to cheaper continental sources of alkalis at the end of the Napoleonic wars.
11 January 1815: Sir John Alexander Macdonald, the future first Prime Minister of Canada, is born in Glasgow.
18 June 1815: Ensign Charles Ewart captures the regimental eagle of the French 45th Regiment of the Line at the Battle of Waterloo.
22 February 1816: The death in St Andrews of Adam Ferguson, sometimes known as "Ferguson of Raith", the moral philosopher and historian.
25 January 1817: The Scotsman newspaper publishes its first edition in Edinburgh.
15 February 1817: The birth in Glasgow of Robert Angus Smith, the chemist and an early environmentalist who invented the term "acid rain".
9 April 1817: The birth in Balfron in Stirlingshire of Alexander "Greek" Thomson, who would become an eminent Glasgow architect.
19 September 1817: The remains of Robert Burns are moved to the Robert Burns Mausoleum in Dumfries.
4 February 1818: The Honours of Scotland, the nation's Crown Jewels, are put on display in Edinburgh Castle after their discovery there by Sir Walter Scott.
24 May 1819: The birth in London of Princess Victoria of Kent, later to become Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Empress of India.
26 May 1819: The Honours of Scotland, the crown jewels, are put on display in Edinburgh Castle after being disinterred by Sir Walter Scott from the bowels of the castle where they had been placed in 1707.
15 July 1817: The birth in Sheffield of Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet, the railway engineer best known as one of the designers of the Forth Rail Bridge.
20 July 1819: The death in Burntisland of the mathematician and geologist Professor John Playfair, FRSE.
25 August 1819: The death of James Watt, the engineer and inventor whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental in bringing about the industrial revolution.
25 August 1819: The birth in Glasgow of Allan Pinkerton, who would go on to found the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the United States.
29 January 1820: King George III dies: he is succeeded by King George IV.
12 March 1820: The death of Sir Alexander Mackenzie (Alasdair MacCoinnich), the explorer of western Canada.
2 April 1820: The Radical Rising or Radical War gets under way in west central Scotland. Its ringleaders are later executed.
5 April 1820: The "Battle of Bonnymuir", a skirmish between Radical weavers and Government troops near Bonnybridge, sees the end of the Radical War or Scottish Insurrection.
26 July 1820: The Union Chain Bridge across the River Tweed, designed by Captain Samuel Brown and at the time the longest iron suspension bridge in the world, opens to traffic.
4 October 1821: The death of John Rennie, one of the greatest engineers of his age who designed many bridges, canals, and docks.
28 January 1822: The birth near Perth of Alexander Mackenzie, who would become the second Prime minister of Canada.
25 February 1822: The birth near Carlisle of Sir Thomas Bouch, the eminent railway engineer best known as the designer of the ill-fated Tay Rail Bridge, which collapsed with the loss of 75 lives on 28 December 1879.
26 July 1822: The birth in Stonehaven of Robert William Thomson, best remembered for his invention of the pneumatic tyre.
15 August 1822: King George IV comes ashore at Leith at the start of his visit to Scotland, the first visit to the country by a reigning monarch since 1650.
9-15 August 1822: King George IV visits Edinburgh, the first visit to Scotland by a reigning monarch since Charles II.
23 October 1822: The Caledonian Canal linking Inverness to Fort William opens to traffic.
16 May 1823: The death in France of Grace Elliott, the renowned Scottish society beauty and courtesan who witnessed at first hand the French Revolution.
8 July 1823 : The death in Edinburgh of noted portrait painter Sir Henry Raeburn.
30 March 1824: HMS Unicorn is launched from the No.4 slipway in the Chatham Royal Dockyards. Today she can be visited in Dundee.
19 April 1824: The death in Greece of the leading poet of the Romantic movement and Greek liberation fighter George Byron, 6th Baron Byron.
15 November 1824: The start of the Great Fire of Edinburgh, which continues to burn for five days with the loss of thirteen lives.
10 December 1824: The birth in Huntly of George MacDonald, the church minister who became an early author of fantasy fiction.
1826: Steam trains are first used to pull coal wagons in Scottish collieries.
10 January 1826: Explorer Alexander Gordon Laing sets off from Salah to complete his journey across the Sahara Desert to Timbuktu.
26 September 1826: The murder near Timbuktu of Alexander Gordon Laing, the first European to reach the city from the north.
11 April 1827: The birth in Nairn of James Augustus Grant, later to become an army officer who helped explore eastern equatorial Africa.
15 March 1828: The birth in the Gorbals area of Glasgow of the philanthropist and supporter of women's education Isabella Elder.
28 January 1829: William Burke is executed for the murder of the 17 victims of the West Port Murders in Edinburgh. His partner in crime, Willam Hare, is released.
31 December 1830: The birth in Kilmarnock of Alexander Smith, a Scottish poet who is best remembered for some of the prose he wrote.
2 April 1831: The birth in Edinburgh of David MacGibbon, the architect and a partner in the practice of MacGibbon and Ross, best known today for their comprehensive multi-volume books about Scotland's castles and churches.
26 June 1830: King George IV dies: he is succeeded by King William IV.
14 January 1831: The death in Edinburgh of Henry Mackenzie, a novelist and a leading member of the city's literary scene in the decades either side of 1800.
13 June 1831: The birth in Edinburgh of James Clerk Maxwell, widely regarded as one of greatest scientists of any era. His work on the theory of electromagnetism makes him the father of modern physics and he also made fundamental contributions to mathematics, astronomy and engineering.
27 September 1831: The first passenger railway in Scotland, between Glasgow and Garnkirk in Lanarkshire, begins operations.
1832: The Reform Act broadens the base of voters.
23 June 1832: The death in Edinburgh of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, the geologist, geophysicist and politician.
1 July 1832: Formation of the trading company Jardine Matheson by Scots Sir James Matheson and Sir William Jardine.
16 July 1832: A storm catches the Shetland fishing fleet at sea and sinks 31 boats or "sixerns" with the loss of 105 lives.
21 September 1832: The death at at Abbotsford of literary superstar, Sir Walter Scott.
3 November 1832: The death near Largo in Fife of Sir John Leslie, the physicist and mathematician best remembered for his research into the properties of heat.
1833: The Factories Act regulates the hours of young workers and bans work by children under 9.
30 May 1833: The death of Sir John Malcolm, a soldier and diplomat during the expansion of the British Empire.
16 March 1834: The birth in Edinburgh of James Hector,the geologist who went on to pursue an eminent scientific career in New Zealand.
12 July 1834: The death in Hawaii of David Douglas, the botanist who gave his name to the Douglas Fir.
2 September 1834: The death in London of the civil engineer, road, bridge and canal builder Thomas Telford. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
7 December 1834: The death of Edward Irving, the famous preacher born in Annan.
21 November 1835: The death near Ettrick of James Hogg, a poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English and who became one of the most unlikely literary figures ever to emerge from Scotland.
25 November 1835: The birth in Dunfermline of Andrew Carnegie, who founded what became the Carnegie Steel Company in the United States. He is principally remembered for funding large numbers of libraries and educational establishments in the US, Scotland and elsewhere.
7 September 1836: The birth in Glasgow of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
17 September 1836: The first service is held in Ardchattan Kirk, on the north shore of Loch Etive in Argyll.
26 November 1836: John Loudon McAdam, inventor of a new way of building roads, dies in Moffat.
20 June 1837: The death of King William IV: he is succeeded by Queen Victoria.
2 December 1837: The birth in Edinburgh of Joseph Bell, the lecturer in medicine whose deductive approach to diagnosis inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes.
21 April 1838: The noted US naturalist, explorer, writer, and geologist John Muir is born in Dunbar.
22 April 1838: The 703 ton paddle steamer SS Sirius, built in Leith, becomes the first ship to cross the Atlantic entirely powered by steam.
6 June 1838: The birth in Fraserburgh of Thomas Blake Glover, one of the first westerners to establish a business in Japan, and widely remembered there as one of the founding fathers of modern Japan.
28 June 1838: Queen Victoria is crowned in Westminster Abbey in London.
21 January 1840: The birth of the pioneering woman doctor and champion of medical education for women, Sophia Jex-Blake.
5 February 1840: John Boyd Dunlop is born in Ayrshire. He is chiefly remembered for founding the company that bears his name, Dunlop Tyres.
10 February 1840: Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace.
10 April 1840: The death in Edinburgh of Alexander Nasmyth, the landscape and portrait painter often called the "father of Scottish landscape painting".
15 August 1840: The foundation stone is laid of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh, commemorating Sir Walter Scott.
1841: The population of Scotland is 2,620,000.
11 January 1841: Scottish inventor Alexander Bain is awarded a patent for the electric clock.
1 June 1841: The eminent artist Sir David Wilkie dies on board a ship in the Mediterranean.
1 June 1841: The death in New York of Robert Allan, a weaver who became more widely known for the songs he composed and the poetry he wrote. He had arrived in New York on 25 May, to start a new life in the new world, and died six days later.
13 November 1841: James Braid, the father of hypnotism, attends a demonstration of "mesmerism" that begins his interest in the subject.
15 February 1842: The death in London of Archibald Menzies, a surgeon and naturalist who made the first recorded ascent of Mauna Loa in Hawaii.
21 February 1842: The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway begins passenger services.
20 September 1842: The birth in Kincardine of Sir James Dewar, an eminent chemist and physicist with particular interests in low temperature chemistry, the liquefaction of gases and spectroscopy.
27 February 1843: The death of William Jardine, the ship's surgeon who went on to become one of the founders of the Hong Kong based Jardine Matheson trading company.
18 May 1843: In what becomes known as "The Disruption", 121 ministers and 73 elders walk out of the Church of Scotland General Assembly to form the Free Church of Scotland.
25 July 1843: The death near Glasgow of Charles Macintosh, the inventor of the waterproof fabric made into garments named after him.
31 March 1844: The birth in Selkirk of Andrew Lang, the prolific Scottish historian, translator, journalist, poet, writer, teacher, biographer and anthropologist.
14 November 1844: The death in Edinburgh of John Abercrombie, one of the leading doctors of his day and author of a number of works of philosophy.
23 November 1844: The death in Edinburgh of Thomas James Henderson, who became the first Astronomer Royal for Scotland.
26 October 1845: The death of collector and writer of songs and poems, Carolina Oliphant, Baroness Nairne.
1846: The Corn Law is repealed in the face of the failure of the potato crop and the widespread fear of starvation.
1846: Thomas Cook organises the first tourist trips to Scotland.
12 February 1846: The death in Ruthwell of Henry Duncan, the founder of the world's first savings bank.
10 May 1846: The birth in Glasgow of Sir Thomas Lipton, who succeeded in establishing a chain of grocery stores across Great Britain; who gave his name to Lipton teas; and who repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) challenged for yachting's America's Cup.
23 May 1846: The death in Manchester of Ensign Charles Ewart, remembered for capturing the regimental eagle of the French 45th Regiment of the Line at the Battle of Waterloo.
3 March 1847: The birth in Edinburgh of Alexander Graham Bell, who will go on to develop and patent the telephone.
5 July 1847: The last mail coach, now redundant because of the advance of the railways, runs between London and Edinburgh.
3 August 1847: The birth in Edinburgh of John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, 7th Earl of Aberdeen and (from 1916) 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair. He was a politician who served as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Governor General of Canada.
12 September 1847: The birth at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute of John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, remembered as a scholar, historian, archaeologist, romantic, mystic, and one of the greatest patrons of the arts in the Victorian era.
15 November 1847: Sir James Young Simpson gives the first public demonstration of his new anaesthetic and a few days later publishes his highly influential Account of a New Anaesthetic Agent.
27 November 1847: Presbyterian church minister Thomas Burns sets sail from Greenock with his wife, six children and 232 other settlers bound for Dunedin in New Zealand.
1848: Queen Victoria leases the Balmoral estate on Deeside. She buys it in 1853 for £31,500.
2 December 1848: The birth in Aberdeen of Mary Slessor, the Scottish missionary to Nigeria who had considerable success in promoting both Christianity and women's rights.
9 May 1849: The birth in St Andrews of scholar and historian David Hay Fleming.
27 May 1849: The birth in Glasgow of Kate Cranston, who did much to promote the popularity of tea rooms, and was an important patron of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
5 October 1849: The Ardnamurchan Lighthouse is illuminated for the first time.
Click for Timeline: 1850 to 1900
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