January–March •
January 1 • The Burmese Konbaung Dynasty annexes the
Mrauk U Kingdom of
Arakan. • The first issue of the
Daily Universal Register, later known as
The Times, is published in London. •
January 7 – Frenchman
Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American
John Jeffries travel from
Dover, England to
Calais, France in a hydrogen gas
balloon, becoming the first to cross the
English Channel by air. •
January 11 –
Richard Henry Lee is elected as President of the U.S. Congress of the Confederation. •
January 20 –
Battle of Rạch Gầm-Xoài Mút: Invading
Siamese forces, attempting to exploit the political chaos in
Vietnam, are ambushed and annihilated at the
Mekong River by the
Tây Sơn. •
January 27 – The
University of Georgia in the United States is chartered by the
Georgia General Assembly meeting in
Savannah. The first students are admitted in
Athens, Georgia in 1801. •
February 9 – Sir
Warren Hastings, who has been governing
India on behalf of King George III as the Governor-General of the
Presidency of Fort William (later
British India), resigns.
Sir John Macpherson administers British India until
General Charles Cornwallis arrives 19 months later. •
February 27 – The Confederation Congress votes an $80,000 expense to establish diplomatic relations with
Morocco. •
March 7 – Scottish geologist
James Hutton first presents his landmark work,
Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe to the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. • General
Henry Knox is appointed as the Confederation Congress's Secretary of War, with added duties as the Secretary of Navy, both functions later of the U.S. Department of Defense. •
Thomas Jefferson is appointed the new U.S. Minister to France, and Benjamin Franklin's request for permission to return home is accepted. •
April 28 – Astronomer
William Herschel begins his second series of surveys of the stars, published in 1789. •
May 10 – An unmanned
hot air balloon released as part of a bet crashes in
Tullamore, Ireland, causing a fire that burns down about 100 houses, making it the world's first
aviation disaster (by 36 days). The town’s
coat of arms now represents a
phoenix emerging from the ashes. •
May 20 – The
Northwest Ordinance of 1785, setting the rules for dividing the U.S.
Northwest Territory (later Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan) into townships of 36 square miles apiece, is passed by the Confederation Congress. The survey system will later be applied to the continent west of the Mississippi River. •
July 16 – The
Piper-Heidsieck Champagne house is founded by
Florens-Louis Heidsieck in
Reims, France. •
August 1 – The fleet of French explorer
Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse leaves Paris for the
circumnavigation of the globe. •
August 15 –
Cardinal de Rohan is arrested in Paris; the
Affair of the Diamond Necklace comes into the open. •
September 10 – The
United States and the Kingdom of
Prussia sign a Treaty of Amity and Commerce. •
September 13 • The
Bank of North America, central bank for the Confederation Congress government, loses its charter. •
Benjamin Franklin returns to
Philadelphia after seven years as the U.S. Ambassador to
France and prepares to take office as the new
Governor of Pennsylvania.
October–December •
October 5 –
Vincenzo Lunardi of Italy becomes the first person to pilot a balloon over
Scotland. •
October 13 • The first newspaper in British India, the English-language
Madras Courier, is published. It continues publication as a weekly until 1794. •
France mints new
Louis d'or coins, with the image of King
Louis XVI on the obverse, and one-sixth less gold than the coins with King
Louis XV's image. •
October 17 – The Commonwealth of Virginia stops the importation of new
African slaves by declaring that "No persons shall henceforth be slaves within this commonwealth, except such as were so on the seventeenth day of October, 1785, and the descendants of the females of them." •
October 18 –
Benjamin Franklin takes office as the new
President of the Supreme Council of Pennsylvania, at the time the equivalent of a republic as one of the 13 independent governments of the United States of America under the
Articles of Confederation.
Date unknown • The
University of New Brunswick is founded in
Fredericton,
New Brunswick. •
Coal gas is first used for
illumination. •
Louis XVI signs a law that a
handkerchief must be square. • The British government establishes a permanent land force in the Eastern Caribbean, based in
Barbados. •
Belfast Academy (later
Belfast Royal Academy) is founded by Rev.
James Crombie in
Belfast,
Northern Ireland. •
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi publishes
Letters on the Teachings of Spinoza, and starts the
Pantheism controversy. •
Napoleon Bonaparte becomes a
lieutenant in the French artillery. •
Cabinet des Modes, the first fashion magazine, is published in France. •
Mozart's
"Haydn" String Quartets are published, as is his collaboration with Salieri and Cornetti,
Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia. • Charles Adams, John Adams’ son and John Quincy Adams's brother, enters Harvard in August at age 15. A few months later, he starts to drink often and to get into trouble, and is almost expelled when he is caught running naked through the Campus while drunk with other boys. == Births ==