• January 10 - DePauw University founded in Greencastle, Indiana
• January 26 - Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. State.
• February 8 - Richard Johnson becomes the first Vice President of the United States chosen by the United States Senate
• February 11 - American Physiological Society[?] organizes in Boston
• March 4 - Martin Van Buren succeeds Andrew Jackson as the President of the United States of America.
• March 4 - Chicago, Illinois is granted a city charter by Illinois.
• May 10 - Panic of 1837: New York City banks fail, and unemployment reaches record levels.
• June 20 - Queen Victoria,monarch of the United Kingdom ascends to the throne .
• August 16 - Dutch sack of the fortress of Bonjol[?], ending the Padri War[?]

• Samuel Morse invents the telegraph
• In the Canadas, William Lyon Mackenzie leads the Upper Canada Rebellion and Louis-Joseph Papineau leads the Patriotes Rebellion.
• Panic of 1837 (Global economic crisis)

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1837 in literature:

Births:

• February 5 - Dwight L. Moody, evangelist
• March 1 - William Dean Howells, writer, historian, editor, politician.
• March 18 - Grover Cleveland, President of the United States (+ 1908)
• May 9 - Adam Opel[?], German engineer and industrialist
• June 22 - Paul Morphy, American chess player (+ 1884).
• November 14 - Lucas Barrett, English naturalist

Deaths:

• Saint Herman of Alaska
• January 23 - John Field, composer
• February 7 - Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden
• February 10 - Alexander Pushkin, author
• March 31 - John Constable, painter
• June 20 - King William IV of the United Kingdom
• October 5 - Hortense de Beauharnais Queen of Holland and mother of the Emperor Napoleon III of France