Return to home This period saw
the admission of Vermont as the 14th state, the establishment of
a US military draft, and birth of the inventor of the telegraph.
Today's communications
are beyond the scope of what Mr. Morse could have imagined with
the birth of the internet, smartphones, and conference
calling services. Today's inventors and innovators can
change the world and a study of our history can be stepping
stone to the next great improvement in our technology.1790 Jan 4,
President Washington delivered the 1st "State of the Union" address.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1790 Jan 6, Johann Trier (73),
composer, died.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1790 Jan 21, Joseph Guillotine
proposed a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed
to cut off the condemned person's head as painlessly as possible.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1790 Jan 26, Mozart's opera
"Cosi Fan Tutte" premiered in Vienna.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cos%C3%AC_fan_tutte)
1790 Feb 1, The US Supreme
Court convened for 1st time in Royal Exchange Building, New York
City, the nations temporary capital.
(www.supremecourthistory.org)
1790 Feb 6, The last stone of
the Bastille, torn down by order of the French revolutionary
leaders, was presented to the National Assembly.
(ON, 4/01, p.3)
1790 Feb 11, The first petition
to Congress for emancipation of the slaves was made by the Society
of Friends.
(HNQ, 1/11/99)
1790 Feb 20, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II (48) died.
(AP, 2/20/98)(MC, 2/20/02)
1790 Feb 26, As a result of the
Revolution, France was divided into 83 departments.
(HN, 2/26/99)
1790 Mar 1, President
Washington signed a measure authorizing the first US Census. The
Connecticut Compromise was a proposal for two houses in the
legislature-one based on equal representation for each state, the
other for population-based representation-that resolved the dispute
between large and small states at the Constitutional Convention.
Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman's proposal led to the first
nationwide census in 1790. The population was determined to be
3,929,625, which included 697,624 slaves and 59,557 free blacks. The
most populous state was Virginia, with 747,610 people and the most
populous city was Philadelphia with 42,444 inhabitants. The average
cost of this year’s census was 1.13 cents per person.
(HNQ, 7/13/01)(AP,
3/1/08)(http://www.genealogybranches.com/censuscosts.html)
1790 Mar 8, George Washington
delivered the first State of the Union address.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1790 Mar 14, Captain Bligh
returned to England with news of the mutiny on the Bounty.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1790 Mar 21, Thomas Jefferson
(46) reported to President Washington in New York as the new US
Secretary of state.
(AP,
3/21/97)(www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/private-banks-quotation)
1790 Mar 22, Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826) became the first US Secretary of State. As Secretary of
State, he served on the first Board of Arts, the body that reviewed
patent applications and granted patents. Jefferson was one of a
triumvirate that served as both America’s first patent commissioner
and first patent examiner.
(HN,
3/22/97)(www.archipelago.org/vol10-34/matsuura.htm)
1790 Mar 24, King George
ordered the Admiralty to capture Fletcher Henderson for the mutiny
on the Bounty.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1790 Mar 26, US Congress passed
a Naturalization Act. It required a 2-year residency.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1790 Mar 27, The shoelace was
invented.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1790 Mar 29, John Tyler, the
10th president of the United States (1841-1845), was born in Charles
City County, Va. He was also the first vice-president to succeed to
office on the death of a president.
(AP, 3/29/97)(HN, 3/29/99)(MC, 3/29/02)
1790 Mar 31, In Paris, France,
Maximilien Robespierre was elected president of the Jacobin Club.
(HN, 3/31/99)
1790 Apr 3, Revenue Marine
Service (US Coast Guard) was created.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1790 Apr 10, President George
Washington signed into law the first United States Patent Act. The
Patent Board was made up of the Secretary of State, Secretary of War
and the Attorney General and was responsible for granting patents on
"useful and important" inventions. In the first three years, 47
patents were granted. Until 1888 miniature models of the device to
be patented were required. [see July 31]
(HN, 4/10/98)(HNQ, 8/6/99)(AP, 4/10/07)
1790 Apr 17, Benjamin Franklin
(born 1706), American statesman, died in Philadelphia at age 84. He
mechanized the process of making sounds from tuned glass with his
glass armonica. In 2000 H.W. Brands authored his Franklin biography:
"The First American." In 2003 Walter Isaacson authored "Benjamin
Franklin: An American Life." In 2005 Philip Dray authored “Stealing
God’s Thunder,” an account of Franklin’s work with lightning rods.
(AP, 4/17/97)(WSJ, 9/20/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 7/3/03,
p.D8)(WSJ, 8/15/05, p.D8)
1790 May 21, Paris was divided
into 48 zones.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1790 May 26, Territory South of
River Ohio was created by Congress.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1790 May 29, Rhode Island
became the last of the 13 original colonies to ratify the United
States Constitution. They held out for an amendment securing
religious freedom. The state was largely founded by Baptists fleeing
persecution in Massachusetts.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(AP, 5/29/97)(HN, 5/29/98)
1790 May 31, The US copyright
law was enacted.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1790 May, John Tanner (9) was
kidnapped from his home in northern Kentucky by Saginaw Indians. He
was taken to an area near what later became Saginaw, Michigan, where
he learned the Ojibway language. After about 2 years he was sold to
a woman named Net-no-kwa, who took him up to northern Michigan and
later to Manitoba, Canada.
(ON, 4/10,
p.4)(http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.boone.tanner.j.kidnapd.html)
1790 Jun 9, The "Philadelphia
Spelling Book" was the first US work to be copyrighted.
(WSJ, 6/14/00, p.A1)(MC, 6/9/02)
1790 Jun 9, Civil war broke out
in Martinique.
(HN 6/9/98)
1790 Jul 3, In Paris, the
Marquis of Condorcet proposed granting civil rights to women.
(HN, 7/3/98)
1790 Jul 9, The Swedish navy
captured one third of the Russian fleet at the naval battle of
Svensksund in the Baltic Sea.
(HN, 7/9/98)
1790 Jul 12, The French
Assembly approved a Civil Constitution providing for the election of
priests and bishops.
(HN, 7/12/98)
1790 Jul 16, The District of
Columbia was established as the seat of the United States
government.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1790 Jul 17, Economist Adam
Smith (b.1723), Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of
political economy, died. In 2001 Emma Rothschild authored "Economic
Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment." In 2002
Peter J. Dougherty authored "Who’s Afraid of Adam Smith." In 2010
Nicholas Phillipson authored “Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life.”
(WSJ, 6/21/01, p.A16)(WSJ, 11/13/02,
p.D10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith)(Econ, 8/7/10, p.84)
1790 Jul 26, US Congress passed
Alexander Hamilton’s Assumption plan making it responsible for state
debts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Report_on_the_Public_Credit)
1790 Jul 26, An attempt at a
counter-revolution in France was put down by the National Guard at
Lyons.
(HN, 7/26/98)
1790 Jul 31, The U.S. Patent
Office granted its first patent to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont,
developer of a new method the manufacture of pot and pearl ash,
potash. [see Apr 10]
(HN, 7/31/98)(HNQ, 8/6/99)
1790 Aug 2, The enumeration for
the first US census began. It showed that 3,929,326 people were
living in the US of which 697,681 were slaves, and that the largest
cities were New York City with 33,000 inhabitants; Philadelphia,
with 28,000; Boston, with 18,000; Charleston, South Carolina, with
16,000; and Baltimore, with 13,000. Census records for Delaware,
Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia were lost sometime between 1790
and 1830.
(AP,
8/2/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_Census)
1790 Aug 4, US Treasury
Secretary Alexander Hamilton urged that ten boats for the collection
of revenue be built. This was to stop smuggling, especially of
coffee, which was hampering trade. The Coast Guard was born as the
Revenue Cutter Service. The Coast Guard was empowered to board and
inspect any vessel in US waters and any US boat anywhere in the
world.
(Smith., 8/95, p.25)(HFA, '96, p.36)(SFC,
5/20/96, p.A-16)(AP, 8/4/00)
1790 Aug 9, The Columbia
returned to Boston Harbor after a three-year voyage, becoming the
first ship to carry the American flag around the world.
(AP, 8/9/97)
1790 Sep 4, Jacques Necker was
forced to resign as finance minister in France.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1790 Oct 3, John Ross, Chief of
the United Cherokee Nation from 1839 to 1866, was born near Lookout
Mountain, Tennessee. Although his father was Scottish and his mother
only part Cherokee, Ross was named Tsan-Usdi (Little John) and
raised in the Cherokee tradition. A settled people with successful
farms, strong schools, and a representative government, the Cherokee
resided on 43,000 square miles of land they had held for centuries.
(LCTH, 10/3/99)
1790 Oct 21, Alphonse-Marie
Louis de Lamartine, writer (Rene), was born in Macon, France.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1790 Oct 21, The Tricolor was
chosen as the official flag of France.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1790 Oct 23, Slaves revolted in
Haiti.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1790 Oct 28, NY gave up claims
to Vermont for $30,000.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1790 Nov 11, Chrysanthemums
were introduced into England from China.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1790 Nov 17, August Ferdinand
Mobius, mathematician, inventor (Mobius strip), was born.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1790 Dec 6, Congress moved from
New York City to Philadelphia, where Washington served out his two
terms. He is the only president who never resided in the White
House.
(AP, 12/6/97)(HNPD, 12/22/98)
1790 Dec 17, An Aztec calendar
stone was discovered in Mexico City.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(MC, 12/17/01)
1790 Dec 19, Sir William Parry,
England, Arctic explorer, was born.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1790 Dec 20, In Pawtucket,
Rhode Island, 23-year-old British subject Samuel Slater began
production of the first American spinning mill. The British
jealously guarded their technological superiority in the early
stages of the Industrial Revolution, making it illegal for
machinery, plans and even the men who built and repaired them to
leave the country. After serving a 7-year mill apprenticeship in
England, Slater recognized the potential offered in America. He
memorized the plans for intricate machine specifications, disguised
himself as a farm worker and in 1789 sailed to a new life across the
Atlantic. Slater entered into a partnership with Rhode Island
merchant Moses Brown and built a small spinning mill--the equivalent
of 72 spinning wheels. At first, Slater's Mill employed only a
handful of children between the ages of 7 and 12, but by 1800, he
had more than 100 employees. By the time of Slater's death in 1835,
he owned or had an interest in 13 textile mills and left an estate
of almost $700,000. From this small beginning, America's own
Industrial Revolution grew. [see Dec 21]
(AP, 12/20/97)(HNPD, 12/20/98)(WSJ, 9/23/04,
p.D10)
1790 Dec 21, Samuel Slater
opened the first cotton mill in the United States in Rhode Island.
[see Dec 20]
(HN, 12/21/98)
1790 Dec 23, Jean
François Champollion, French founder of Egyptology, was born.
He deciphered the Rosetta Stone.
(HN, 12/23/99)
c1790 Henry Fuseli painted his
famous work "The Nightmare" wherein a sleeping woman has a glowing
demon on her chest and a lantern-eyed stallion parting the curtains
behind. He also painted "Woman Standing at a Dressing Table or
Spinet" about this time.
(SFC, 10/31/96, p.E1)(WSJ, 4/1/99, p.A20)
1790 Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800),
Japanese painter, created his "Compendium of Vegetable and Insects."
(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)(SFC, 1/14/06, p.E1)
1790 Thomas Rowlandson, English
artist, painted "The Lock-Up."
(WSJ, 4/1/99, p.A20)
1790 Goethe’s "Faust: Ein
Fragment," first appeared.
(V.D.-H.K.p.239)
1790 Alexander Hamilton
published his "Report on the Public Credit."
(WSJ, 12/3/01, p.A17)
1790 Emmanuel Kant published
his "Critique of Judgement." His analysis of the nature of art and
aesthetic experience proved to be a major influence on modern ideas.
These ideas were later revisited by Murdoch in her 1998 work
"Existentialists and Mystics." [see 1781]
(WSJ, 2/17/98, p.A20)
1790 Beethoven composed his
"Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II."
(WSJ, 8/17/00, p.A20)
1790 The opera "The
Philosopher’s Stone" was composed and first performed. A 1997 score
showed that a number of composers wrote various sections. Mozart’s
name was associated with the 2nd act finale and a duet. It was a
singspiel based on fairytales with a libretto by Emanuel
Schikaneder. Other composers included Johann Baptist Henneberg,
Benedikt Schack, Franz Haver Gerl and Emanuel Schikaneder.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.C11)(WSJ, 11/4/98, p.A20)
1790 In South Carolina a
900-square-foot octagonal house was built about this time by
Scottish immigrant William McKimmy. Ruins of the structure were
found in 2009 on the banks of the May River in Blufton. The
design took off in 1848 following the publication of “A Home for
All” by Orson Fowler, a self-taught architect and phrenologist.
(SFC, 2/22/10, p.A6)(SSFC, 7/24/11, p.A2)
1790 The Episcopal Church was
founded.
(SFC, 5/16/96, p.A-11)
1790 The US government issued
$80 million in bonds to cover Revolutionary War debts and their
trade established the financial activity on Wall Street.
(WSJ, 10/9/97, p.A16)
1790 The US Trade and
Intercourse Act prohibited states from acquiring land from Indians
without federal approval.
(SFC, 1/13/99, p.A9)(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.M5)
1790 US Minister to France,
Gouverneur Morris, said that the French "have taken Genius instead
of Reason for their Guide, adopted Experiment instead of Experience,
and wander in the Dark because they prefer Lightning to Light." In
2000 Susan Dunn published "Sister Revolutions: French Lightning,
American Light."
(SFEC, 5/7/00, Par p.28)
1790 The celerifere bicycle
appeared in Paris about this time and was a two-wheeled,
un-steerable vehicle that the rider propelled by striking his feet
on the ground. This was improved upon with a bar to steer the front
wheel in 1816 by Baron von Drais of Germany, and was called a
draisine. The ordinary, which had a high front wheel, wire-spoked
wheels and solid rubber tires, was developed in the 1870s.
(HNQ, 10/29/99)
1790 The US census categorized
the population as "free white person, all other free persons except
Indians, and slaves."
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A21)
1790 The US population was 20%
African and numbered about 760,000.
(SFC, 12/18/96, p.A25)
1790 Fletcher Christian landed
at Pitcairn Island.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A14)
1790 In Australia Pemulway, an
Aboriginal warrior, speared and killed the governor’s gamekeeper at
Botany Bay and waged war against the British for 12 years. His head
was later sent to England. Eric Willmot later authored "Pemulway,
the Rainbow Warrior."
(SFEC, 9/10/00, p.T4)
1790 In the Sandwich Islands
[Hawaii] King Kamehameha built the Puukohola Heiau temple on the Big
Island near the village of Kawaihau. It was built to the war god
Ku-Ka’ili-moku. The king’s armies soon swept over all the Hawaiian
islands and united the people for the first time.
(SFEC, 9/7/97, p.T8)
1790 Pineapples were introduced
to the Sandwich Islands later called Hawaii.
(SFEC,11/9/97, Z1 p.2)
1790 The Haleakala Volcano on
Maui erupted.
(SFEC, 8/27/00, p.T8)
1790 La Fenice opera house in
Venice was designed. It burned down for the 1st time in 1836.
(WSJ, 9/24/05, p.P12)
1790 A bronze Buddha was cast
in Japan. In 1945 it was donated by the Gump family to the city of
San Francisco. It resides in the Japanese Tea Garden and was in need
of $81,000 worth of repairs.
(SFC, 12/30/96, p.A11)
1790 In Porto, Portugal, the
House of Sandeman winery was found by the Scot, George Sandeman.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, p.T8)
1790s Denmark became the 1st
country to abolish slavery.
(WSJ, 2/26/02, p.A22)
1790s Floreana Island in the
Galapagos began serving as a mail drop for whalers and seal hunters.
(SFEC, 11/19/00, p.T8)
c1790s King Kamehameha
slaughtered virtually everyone on the island of Lanai (which means
day of conquest) after being thwarted in his bid to conquer Maui.
(SSFC, 8/26/01, p.T10)
1790-1792 Sans-culottes (French for without
knee-breeches) was a term created during this period by the French
to describe the poorer members of the Third Estate, according to the
dominant theory because they usually wore pantaloons (full-length
trousers) instead of the chic knee-length culotte. The term came to
refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the
Revolutionary army during the early years of the French
Revolutionary Wars, but, above all, to the working class radicals of
the Revolution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-culottes)
1790-1799 In 2009 Marcus Daniel authored “Scandal
& Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy,” a
study of the American press during this period.
(WSJ, 3/3/09, p.A11)
1790-1799 The revolutionary tide that swept Europe
during this period was later covered by R.R. Palmer in his book “The
Age of the Democratic Revolution.”
(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.P9)
1790-1830 The “Dalton Minimum,” a period of low
solar activity and especially cold climate, began this year and
lasted to 1830.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum)
1790-1848 Nicola Vaccai, Italian composer. He
composed a version of "I Capuletti ed I Montecchi," that was also
done by Bellini.
(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)
1790-1869 Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de
Lamartine, French poet, historian and statesman.
(WUD, 1994, p.803)
1790s Tadeusz Kosciusko
returned to Poland and united the country in the battle against
Prussian and Russian domination.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, T7)
1790s The solitaire of
Rodrigues, a flightless pigeon, was last seen.
(NH, 11/96, p.24)
1791 Jan 14, Calvin Phillips,
shortest known adult male (67 cm; 2' 2"), was born.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1791 Feb 12, Peter Cooper,
industrialist, philanthropist (Cooper Union), was born.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1791 Feb 20, Carl Czerny,
pianist, composer (Schule der Virtuosen), was born in Vienna,
Austria.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1791 Feb 25, President George
Washington signed a bill creating the Bank of the United States.
(HN, 2/25/99)
1791 Mar 3, Congress
established the U.S. Mint.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1791 Mar 3, The 1st Internal
Revenue Act taxed distilled spirits and carriages.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1791 Mar 4, President
Washington called the US Senate into its 1st special session.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1791 Mar 4, Vermont was
admitted as the 14th state. It was the first addition to the
original 13 colonies.
(HN, 3/4/98)(AP, 3/4/98)
1791 Mar 4, 1st Jewish member
of US Congress, Israel Jacobs (Pennsylvania), took office.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1791 Mar 6, Anna Claypoole
Peale, painted miniatures, was born.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1791 Mar 10, John Stone of
Concord, Mass, patented a pile driver.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1791 Mar 10, Pope condemned
France's Civil Constitution of the clergy.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1791 Mar 11, Samuel Mulliken of
Philadelphia was the 1st to obtain more than 1 US patent.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1791 Mar 21, Captain Hopley
Yeaton (1740-1812) of New Hampshire became the first commissioned
officer of the US Revenue Cutter Service.
(www.uscg.mil/history/WEBCUTTERS/Scammel_1791.html)(http://tinyurl.com/goke5)
1791 Mar 23, Etta Palm, a Dutch
champion of woman's rights, set up a group of women's clubs called
the Confederation of the Friends of Truth.
(HN, 3/23/99)
1791 Mar 4, Vermont was
admitted as the 14th state. It was the first addition to the
original 13 colonies.
(HN, 3/4/98)(AP, 3/4/98)
1791 Mar 29, Pres. George
Washington and French architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant examined the
a site along the Potomac River that would become the US capital.
Maryland and Virginia had ceded land to the federal government to
form the District of Columbia. Chosen as the permanent site for the
capital of the United States by Congress in 1790, President
Washington was given the power by Congress to select the exact
site—an area ten-miles square, made up of land given by Virginia and
Maryland. Washington became the official federal capital in 1800. In
2008 Fergus Bordewich authored “Washington: The Making of the
American Capital.”
(HNQ, 8/13/00)(HN, 8/2/98)(WSJ, 8/8/08, p.A13)
1791 Apr 23, The 15th president
of the United States, James Buchanan, was born in Franklin County,
Pa.
(AP, 4/23/97)
1791 Apr 12, Francis Preston
Blair, Washington Globe newspaper editor, was born.
(HN, 4/12/98)
1791 Apr 15, Surveyor General
Andrew Ellicott consecrated the southern tip of the triangular
District of Columbia at Jones Point.
(WSJ, 7/25/00, p.A20)
1791 Apr 18, National Guardsmen
prevented Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1791 Apr 23, James Buchanan,
was born in Franklin County, Pa. He was the fifteenth U.S. president
(1857-1861) and the only president not to marry.
(AP, 4/23/97)(HN, 4/23/99)
1791 Apr 27, Samuel F.B. Morse,
inventor, was born in Boston. He created the telegraph and the code
which bears his name. Morse was a well-known painter who gained a
wide reputation as a portrait artist. He graduated from Yale in 1810
and then studied painting in England for several years. Morse
painted two notable portraits of Lafayette, was a founder of the
National Academy of Design in 1826 and became professor of painting
and sculpture at New York University in 1832-a position he held
until his death in 1872. Morse invented the first practical
recording telegraph in America and developed the Morse code,
revolutionizing communication.
(HN, 4/27/99)(HNQ, 2/26/00)
1791 Apr, William Wilberforce
again introduced a motion in British Parliament for the abolition of
the slave trade, but lost by a vote of 163 to 88.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1791 May 3, Poland adopted a
new Constitution. It was designed to redress long-standing political
defects of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and its traditional
system of "Golden Liberty." The constitution put Lithuania under
Polish domination. It is generally regarded as Europe's first and
the world's second modern codified national constitution, following
the 1788 ratification of the US Constitution.
(SFC, 4/25/09,
p.B1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_May_3,_1791)(Voruta
#27-28, 7/1996, p.13)
1791 May 8, Capt. Edward
Edwards set sail from Tahiti in the Pandora with the Bounty
mutineers abandoned by Fletcher Henderson.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1791 May 9, Francis Hopkinson
(53), US writer, music, lawyer, died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1791 May 14, In Mexico a time
capsule was placed atop a bell tower at Mexico City's Metropolitan
Cathedral when the building's topmost stone was laid, 218 years
after construction had begun. Workers restoring the church found it
in October, 2007.
(AP, 1/15/08)
1791 May 16, James Boswell’s
celebrated 2-volume work, "The Life of Samuel Johnson," was
published. In 2001 Adam Sisman authored "Boswell’s Presumptuous
Task," an account of how Boswell came to write the Johnson
biography.
(WSJ, 8/24/01, p.W8)(ON, 11/06, p.10)
1791 May 28, Joseph Schmitt
(57), composer, died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1791 May 29, Pietro Romani,
composer, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1791 Jun 9, John Howard Payne,
American playwright and actor, was born.
(HN, 6/9/01)
1791 Jun 20, King Louis XVI of
France attempted to flee the country in the so-called Flight to
Varennes, but was caught.
(AP, 6/20/97)
1791 Jun 21, King Louis XVI and
the French royal family were arrested in Varennes. In 2003 Timothy
Tackett authored "When the King Took Flight," an examination of the
political culture during this period of transformation.
(HN, 6/21/98)(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.M6)
1791 Jul 7, Benjamin Rush,
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Non-denominational
African Church.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1791 Jul 13, The bones of the
greatest French satirist, philosopher, and writer, Voltaire
(Jean-Marie Arouet) were enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1791 Jul 14-1791 Jul 17, Riots
took place in Birmingham, England. The houses of Joseph Priestley
and other political dissenters were burned to the ground. Priestley
had rejected various supernatural elements of Christianity,
criticized the Church of England, and supported the French
Revolution.
(SFC, 1/9/09,
p.E3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestley_Riots)
1791 Jul 16, Louis XVI was
suspended from office until he agreed to ratify the constitution.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1791 Jul 17, National Guard
troops opened fire in Paris on a crowd of demonstrators calling for
the deposition of the king.
(HN, 7/17/99)
1791 Jul 24, Robespierre
expelled all Jacobins opposed to the principles of the French
Revolution.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1791 Jul 25, Free African
Society (FAS) leaders drew up a plan to organize the African Church.
Richard Allen purchased a site for a church for the African-American
community in Philadelphia. It later stood as the oldest parcel of
land continuously owned by African Americans. The Richard Allen
Museum contains 19th century artifacts from the church.
(www.pbs.org)
1791 Jul 26, Franz Xavier
Wolfgang Mozart, 6th child of Austrian composer WAM, was born.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1791 Aug 1, Robert Carter III,
a Virginia plantation owner, freed all 500 of his slaves in the
largest private emancipation in U.S. history.
(HN, 8/1/98)
1791 Aug 2, Samuel Briggs and
his son patented a nail-making machine.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1791 Aug 4, The chief item in
the Peace of Sistova agreement between the Austrian Empire and
Turkey was the return of Belgrade to Turkey. The peace initiative
resulted from the terms of the Convention of Reichenbach between
Prussia and Austria. Belgrade had been taken in 1789 by the Holy
Roman emperor Joseph II.
(HNQ, 6/25/99)
1791 Aug 14, Haitian slaves,
led by voodoo priest Boukman Dutty, gathered to plan a revolution.
(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.9)( http://tinyurl.com/yun3k3)
1791 Aug 26, John Fitch and
James Rumsey, rival inventors, were both granted a US patent for a
working steamboat.
(MC, 8/26/02)(WSJ, 7/27/04, p.D10)
1791 Aug 29, The Pandora under
Capt. Edward Edwards sank in Endeavour Strait (later Torres Strait)
between Australia and New Guinea. 33 crewmen and 4 prisoners died.
They managed to use small boats and arrived in Timor on Sep 16.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1791 Sep 1, Lydia Sigourney, US
religious author (How to Be Happy), was born.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1791 Sep 3, The French National
Assembly passed a French Constitution passed.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1791 Sep 5, Giacomo Meyerbeer,
Vogelsdorf Germany, opera composer (Les Huguenots, Le Prophete), was
born.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1791 Sep 6, Mozart’s last opera
"La Clemenza di Tito," premiered in Prague. It was composed for the
coronation festivities of the King of Bohemia.
(WSJ, 4/10/00, p.A44)(MC, 9/6/01)
1791 Sep 9, French Royalists
took control of Arles and barricaded themselves inside the town.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1791 Sep 13, France's King
Louis XVI accepted a constitution.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1791 Sep 14, Louis XVI solemnly
swore his allegiance to the French constitution.
(HN, 9/14/98)
1791 Sep 22, Michael Faraday
(d.1867), English physicist, was born in London. He demonstrated
that a magnetic field induces a current in a moving conductor. He
invented the dynamo, the transformer and the electric motor.
(V.D.-H.K.p.269)(HN, 9/22/00)
1791 Sep 26, J.L.A. Theodore
Gericault, French painter, was born.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1791 Sep 27, Jews in France
were granted French citizenship. Jews were granted religious and
civic rights in 1791.
(HN, 9/27/98)(WSJ, 8/7/00, p.A13)
1791 Sep 30, Mozart's opera
"The Magic Flute" premiered in Vienna, Austria.
(AP, 9/30/97)
1791 Oct 1, In Paris, the
National Legislative Assembly held its first meeting.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1791
Nov 3, Gen. St. Clair moved his force of approximately 1,400 men to
some high ground on the upper Wabash River. St. Clair was looking
for the forces of Michikinikwa (Chief Little Turtle 1752-1812), who
had recently defeated Gen. Josiah Harmar’s (1753-1813) army. St.
Clair deployed only minimal sentry positions. [see Nov 4]
(DoW, 1999, p.168)
1791 Nov 4, General Arthur St.
Clair, governor of Northwest Territory, was badly defeated by a
large Indian army near Fort Wayne. Miami Indian Chief Little Turtle
(1752-1812) led the powerful force of Miami, Wyandot, Iroquois,
Shawnee, Delaware, Ojibwa and Potawatomi that inflicted the greatest
defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Army at the hands of North American
Indians. Some 623 regulars led by General Arthur St. Clair were
killed and 258 wounded on the banks of the Wabash River near present
day Fort Wayne, Indiana. The staggering defeat moved Congress to
authorize a larger army in 1792.
(HNQ, 8/10/98)(HN, 11/4/98)
1791 Dec 4, Britain's Observer,
oldest Sunday newspaper in world, was 1st published.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1791 Dec 5, Austrian composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna, Austria, at age 35. His
first opera was "Idomeneo." In 1920 Hermann Abert authored “W.A.
Mozart.” In 1991 Georg Knepler authored "Wolfang Amade Mozart," a
Marxist view of Mozart in his times. In 1995 Maynard Solomon
published a psychoanalytic biography of Mozart. In 1999 Peter Gay
authored a Penguin short life of Mozart and Robert W. Gutman
authored the comprehensive biography "Mozart."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, DB. p.54)(AP, 12/5/97)(WSJ,
12/2/99, p.A20)(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.W8)
1791 Dec 15, The US Bill of
Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took
effect following ratification by Virginia. The First Amendment
declared the separation of church and state and guaranteed freedom
of religion, speech, the press and assembly. In 2007 Anthony Lewis
authored “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A biography of the
Frist Amendment.”
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(AP, 12/15/97)(SFC, 1/21/04,
p.D2)(Econ, 1/12/08, p.75)
1791 Dec 17, NYC traffic
regulation created the 1st 1-way street.
(MC, 12/17/01)
1791 Dec 22, Alexander Hamilton
paid a $600 installment of $1,000 in blackmail to James Reynolds,
who threatened to expose Hamilton’s relationship with Reynolds’
wife. Hamilton had begun a relationship with Maria Reynolds during
the summer. A 2nd payment was made Jan 3.
(WSJ, 11/19/98, p.1,12)(ON, 10/05, p.5)
1791 Jose Cardero, a Spanish
artist in California, painted "Vista del Presidio de Monterey."
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.E6)
1791 Alexander Hamilton
authored his “Report on the Subject of Manufactures.”
(Econ, 9/1/07, p.74)
1791 The opera "The Beneficent
Dervish" was initially attributed to Emanuel Schikaneder but a 1997
find indicated that Mozart wrote the work. Schikaneder was a Vienna
theater impresario who had commissioned "The Magic Flute."
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.C11)
1791 The Berlin Sing-Academie
was established.
(SFC, 8/6/99, p.C13)
1791 In Berlin, Germany, the
Brandenburg Gate was completed. It stood 66 feet tall and 213 feet
wide, and was topped by the copper Quadriga, a sculpture of a
goddess riding into the city aboard a chariot. It was restored in
2002.
(AP, 10/2/02)
1791 James Madison opposed the
plans of Alexander Hamilton for a National Bank. Hamilton started
the 1st Bank of the US. It did the work of a central bank even
though private investors held most of its shares. It was dissolved
in 1811.
(WSJ, 12/20/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 11/19/04,
p.A8)(Econ, 12/24/05, p.91)
1791 Aaron Burr (1756-1836),
later US vice president (1801-1805), was elected as US Senator from
New York (1791-1797).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Burr)
1791 The US Providence Bank was
later reported to have profited from traffic in slaves to the New
World. The bank eventually became part of FleetBoston Financial
Corp.
(SFC, 3/10/00, p.D3)
1791 A document was released in
2004 from Pittsfield, Mass., that contained a 1791 bylaw to protect
the windows of a new meeting house from baseball players.
(SFC, 5/12/04, p.A2)
1791 William Sprague opened the
1st US carpet mill in Philadelphia.
(SFCM, 10/10/04, p.8)
1791 Legend says the Harel
family began making Camembert cheese before this time. The family
had given a priest refuge, who in gratitude gave them the recipe. In
2003 Pierre Boisard authored "Camembert: A National Myth."
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.M3)
1791 Frantisek Koczwara, a
Bohemian musician, died in a London brothel from auto-asphyxiation.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, DB p.49)
1791 Grigory A. Potemkin
(b.1739), Russian army officer, statesman, Catherine II's lover,
died. In 2002 Simon Sebag Montefiore authored "Prince of Princes:
The Life of Potemkin."
(MC, 9/13/01)(WSJ, 2/14/02, p.A18)
1791 John Wesley (b.1703),
English evangelist and theologian, died. He founded the Methodist
movement.
(WUD, 1994, p.1622)(WSJ, 6/13/03, p.W19)
1791 In Australia officials
granted parcels of land around Sydney to convicts who have served
their time, beginning years of dispossession of Aborigines that
continued as white settlers dispersed throughout Australia. Clashes
between Aborigines and settlers led to tens of thousands of deaths
among Aborigines and hundreds of settler deaths.
(AP, 1/30/08)
1791 Sheikh Mansur, Chechen
leader, was captured and died in the Schlusselburg Fortress.
(www.chechnyafree.ru)
1791 The United Irishmen
Society was formed. Inspired by the French Revolution many Catholics
and Protestants took up the cause of Irish nationalism during the
next decade.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, Z1 p.6)
1791 The Marquesas Islands were
officially discovered. Over a 30 year period western diseases
ravaged the populace and only about 2,000 of 100,000 people
survived.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1791 In St. Domingue Toussaint
L’Ouverture joined the slave rebellion against plantation owners and
later led a colonial revolt against France. In 1995 Madison Smart
Bell authored "All Souls Rising," a novel set in this period.
(SFEC, 1/26/97 BR, p.10)(SSFC, 4/8/01, BR
p.4)(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.10)
1791-1824 Theodore Gericault, French painter. He
painted "Mounted Officer of the Imperial Guard."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.593)
1792 Jan 17, One of the first
US Treasury bonds was issued to Pres. George Washington and bears
the earliest use of the dollar sign.
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.W9)
1792 Jan 28, Rebellious slaves
in Santo Domingo launched an attack on the city of Cap.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1792 Feb 7, Cimarosa's opera
"Il Matrimonio Segreto," premiered in Vienna.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1792 Feb 15,
Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre (42), astronomer and surveyor, was
elected to the French Academy of Sciences to help establish the
length of a proposed new unit of measurement, the meter.
(ON, 2/09, p.8)
1792 Feb 20, President
Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office. [see Feb 20,
1789, May 8, 1794]
(HN, 2/20/98)(AP, 2/20/98)
1792 Feb 21, US Congress passed
the Presidential Succession Act. [see Mar 1]
(MC, 2/21/02)
1792 Feb 23, Joseph Haydn’s
94th Symphony in G premiered.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1792 Feb 23, Humane Society of
Massachusetts was incorporated. It erected life-saving stations for
distressed mariners.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1792 Feb 23, Joshua Reynolds
(68), English portrait painter (Simplicity), died.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1792 Feb 29, The composer
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (d.1868) was born in Pesaro, Italy. His
work included the opera "La Donna del Lago," based on the Walter
Scott romance "The lady of the Lake."
(WUD, 1994, p.1246)(WSJ, 7/29/97, p.A12)(AP,
2/29/00)(HN, 2/29/00)
1792 Mar 1, US Presidential
Succession Act was passed. [see Feb 21]
(SC, 3/1/02)
1792 Mar 4, Oranges were
introduced to Hawaii.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1792 Mar 10, John Stuart (78),
3rd earl of Bute, English premier (1760-63), died.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1792 Mar 16, Sweden's King
Gustav III was shot and mortally wounded during a masquerade party
by a former member of his regiment. He was murdered by Count
Ankarstrom at an opera. It became the inspiration for Giuseppe
Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera. Gustav died 13 days later.
(AP, 3/16/06)(WSJ, 1/28/07, p.P10)
1792 Mar 20, In Paris, the
Legislative Assembly approved the use of the guillotine.
(HN, 3/20/99)
1792 Mar 23, Franz Joseph
Haydn’s "Symphony No. 94 in G Major," also known as the "Surprise
Symphony," was performed publicly for the first time, in London.
(AP, 3/23/97)
1792 Mar 29, Gustav III, King
of Sweden (1771-92), died of wounds inflicted by an assassin on
March 16.
(AP, 3/16/06)
1792 Mar/Apr, Speculator
William Duer defaulted on Hamilton’s freshly exchanged "Stock in the
Public Funds," and caused the first American stock market crash.
Hamilton injected liquidity, asked the banks not to call in loans
and allowed merchants to pay customs duties with short-term notes.
(WSJ, 3/24/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 8/14/01, p.A12)
1792 Apr 1, Gronings feminist
Etta Palm demanded women's right to divorce.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1792 Apr 2, Congress passed the
Coinage Act, which authorized establishment of the U.S. Mint. It
established the US dollar defined in fixed weights of gold and
silver. State chartered banks issued paper money convertible to gold
or silver coins to ease business transactions. U.S. authorized $10
Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins &
silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime.
(HFA, '96, p.28)(AP, 4/2/97)(WSJ, 1/13/98,
p.A1)(HN, 4/2/98)
1792 Apr 4, American
abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. Radical Republican congressional
leader, was born in Danville, Vt..
(AP, 4/4/98)(HN, 4/4/98)
1792 Apr 5, George Washington
cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure
for apportioning representatives among the states.
(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 5/5/97)
1792 Apr 14, Pres. George
Washington appointed David Rittenhouse, the foremost scientist of
America, the first director of the US Mint at a salary of $2000 per
annum. Rittenhouse was then in feeble health and lived at the
northwest corner of Seventh and Arch Streets, then one of the high
places of Old Philadelphia, where he had an observatory and where he
later died and was first buried.
(www.coinfacts.com/mint_history/mint_history_1792/mint_history_1792.htm)
1792 Apr 20, France declared
war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia, marking the start of the
French Revolutionary wars.
(AP, 4/20/97)(HN, 4/20/98)
1792 Apr 21, Jose da Silva
Xavier, Tiradentes, considered by many to be Brazil's George
Washington, was drawn and quartered by the Portuguese. He was hung
in Rio de Janeiro. His body was broken apieces. With his blood, a
document was written declaring his memory infamous. His head was
exposed in Vila Rica. Pieces of his body were exposed in the cities
between Vila Rica and Rio, in an attempt to scare the people who had
listened to the independence ideas of Tiradentes.
(AP,
4/19/03)(www.v-brazil.com/culture/historic-characters/tiradentes.html)
1792 Apr 22, President
Washington proclaimed American neutrality in the war in Europe.
(HN, 4/22/98)
1792 Apr 24, Capt. Claude
Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an officer stationed in Strasbourg, composed
"La Marseillaise," which later became the national anthem of France.
(AP, 4/24/97)(HN, 4/24/98)
1792 Apr 25, Highwayman Nicolas
Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be
executed by guillotine.
(AP, 4/25/97)(HN, 4/25/98)
1792 Apr 30, John Montague
(73), 4th Earl of Sandwich, English Naval minister, died.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1792 May 7, Capt. Robert Gray
discovered Gray's Harbor in Washington state.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1792 May 8, US established a
military draft.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1792 May 8, British Capt.
George Vancouver sighted and named Mt. Rainier, Wash.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1792 May 11, The Columbia River
was discovered and named by Captain Robert Gray.
(HN, 5/11/98)(MC, 5/11/02)
1792 May 12, A toilet that
flushed itself at regular intervals was patented.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1792 May 13, Giovanni-Maria
Mastaia-Ferretti, later Pope Pius IX, "Pio Nono" (1846-78), was born
at Sinigaglia.
(PTA, 1980, p.510)(MC, 5/13/02)
1792 May 16, Denmark abolished
slave trade.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1792 May 17, Stock traders
signed the Buttonwood Agreement in New York City at the Tontine
Coffee House Company near a Buttonwood tree, where business had been
transacted in the past. 24 merchants formed their exchange at Wall
and Water Streets where they fixed rates on commissions on stocks
and bonds. This later developed into the New York Stock Exchange. A
market crash and almost total halt in credit, trading and liquidity
prompted the Buttonwood Agreement under the influence of Alexander
Hamilton. The organization drafted its constitution on March 8th,
1817, and named itself the "New York Stock & Exchange Board."
(WSJ, 3/24/97, p.A19)(HN,
5/17/98)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/crash/timeline/)
1792 May 18, Russian troops
invaded Poland.
(HN, 5/18/98)
1792 May 19, The Russian army
entered Poland.
(DTnet 5/19/97)
1792 May 21, Gustave-Gaspard
Coriolis (d.1843), French engineer and mathematician, was born. He
became first person to describe the Coriolis force.
(SFC, 5/21/09,
p.D10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspard-Gustave_Coriolis)
1792 Jun 1, Kentucky became
the 15th state of the Union.
(AP, 6/1/97)
1792 Jun 4, Captain George
Vancouver claimed Puget Sound for Britain. Englishman George
Vancouver sailed into the SF Bay on his ship Discovery in this year
and explored the Santa Clara Valley. Vancouver sailed the Inside
Passage, the 1000-mile waterway between Puget Sound and Alaska.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W34)(HN, 6/4/98)(WSJ, 11/5/99,
p.W12)
1792 Jun 4, John Burgoyne,
soldier, playwright, died.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1792 Jul 18, American naval
hero John Paul Jones died in Paris at age 45. His body was preserved
in rum in case the American government wished him back. In 1905 his
body was transported to the US and placed in a crypt in Annapolis.
In 2003 Evan Thomas authored "John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father
of the American Navy."
(AP, 7/18/97)(SSFC, 6/22/03, p.M3)
1792 Jul 30, The French
national anthem "La Marseillaise" by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle,
was first sung in Paris.
(AP, 7/30/99)
1792 Jul 31, The
foundation-stone was laid for the US Mint by David Rittenhouse, Esq.
The property was paid for and deeded to the United States of America
for a consideration of $4266.67 on July 18, 1792. The money for the
Mint was the first money appropriated by Congress for a building to
be used for a public purpose.
(www.coinfacts.com/mint_history/mint_history_1792/mint_history_1792.htm)
1792 Aug 4, Percy Bysshe
Shelley (d.1822), English poet and author who wrote "Prometheus
Unbound," was born in Field Place, England. He married Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of "Frankenstein." He wrote the poem
"Adonais."
(WUD, 1994, p.1314)(HN, 8/4/98)
1792 Aug 5, Frederick 7th baron
Lord North (60), English premier, died. He presided over Britain's
loss of its American colonies (1770-82).
(MC, 8/5/02)
1792 Aug 10, Some 10,000
Parisians attacked the Tuileries Palace of Louis XVI at the
instigation of Georges Jacques Danton (33), after Louis ordered his
Swiss guard to stop firing on the people. The mob massacred some 600
guardsmen. The king was later arrested, put on trial for treason,
and executed the following January.
(PC, 1992, p.345)(AP, 8/10/07)(ON, 2/09, p.8)
1792 Aug 11, A revolutionary
commune was formed in Paris, France.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1792 Aug 13, Revolutionaries
imprisoned the French royal family, including King Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette. [see Aug 10]
(MC, 8/13/02)
1792 Aug 18, Lord John Russel,
Prime Minister of England from 1846 to 1852 and 1865 to 1866, was
born.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1792 Aug 29, The English
warship Royal George capsized in Spithead and 900 people were
killed.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1792 Sep 2, Verdun, France,
surrendered to the Prussian Army.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1792 Sep 2, In the "September
Massacres"- French mobs removed nobles and clergymen from jails, and
some 1,600.
(Econ, 7/18/09, p.80)
1792 Sep 3, In France Princess
de Lamballe (b.1749), the best friend of Marie Antoinette, was
killed and her body mutilated by an angry mob. Her head was
displayed under the window of Marie Antoinette, interned in Temple
Prison.
(SSFC, 4/23/06,
p.G5)(www.batguano.com/vigeeart100.html)
1792 Sep 5, Maximilien
Robespierre was elected to the National Convention in France.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1892 Sep 18, At Spithaead,
England, verdicts and sentences were announced for the 10 prisoners
from the mutiny on the Bounty. 4 men were acquitted, and 6 were
found guilty and condemned to death. 2 of the condemned were
pardoned and another was freed on a technicality. 3 were later
hanged.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1792 Sep 21, Collot D'Herbois
proposed to abolish the monarchy in France. The French National
Convention voted to abolish the monarchy. 1st French Republic formed
(AP, 9/21/97)(MC, 9/21/01)
1792 Sep 22, The first French
Republic was proclaimed.
(AP, 9/22/06)
1792 Sep 27, George Cruikshank,
London, caricaturist (Oliver Twist), was born.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1792 Oct 7, James Mason
(b.1725), American Revolutionary statesman, died at Gunston Hall
Plantation, situated on the Potomac River some 20 miles south of
Washington D.C. Mason framed the Bill of Rights for the Virginia
Convention in June 1776. This was the model for the first part of
fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and
the basis of the first 10 Amendments to the federal Constitution. In
2006 Jeff Broadwater authored “George Mason.”
(HNQ,
2/18/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason)(WSJ, 9/13/06,
p.D10)
1792 Oct 12, Columbus Day was
1st celebrated in the US.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1792 Oct 13, The "Old Farmer's
Almanac" was 1st published. [see Nov 25]
(MC, 10/13/01)
1792 Oct 13, The cornerstone of
the executive mansion, later known as the White House, was laid
during a ceremony in the District of Columbia.
(AP, 10/13/97)(HN, 10/13/98)
1792 Nov 6, Battle at Jemappes:
French army beat the Austrians.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1792 Nov 13, Edward John
Trelawney, traveler and author (Adventure of a Younger Son), friend
of Byron and Shelley, was born in England.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1792 Nov 25, The Farmer's
Almanac was 1st published. [see Oct 13]
(MC, 11/25/01)
1792 Dec 5, George Washington
was re-elected president; John Adams was re-elected vice president.
(AP, 12/5/97)
1792 Dec 8, The 1st cremation
in US: Henry Laurens.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1792 Dec 11, France's King
Louis XVI went before the Convention to face charges of treason.
Louis was convicted and executed the following month.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1792 Dec 12, In Vienna Ludwig
Van Beethoven (22) received 1st lesson in music composition from
Franz Joseph Haydn.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1792 Dec 15, Alexander
Hamilton, US Sec. of the Treasury, was accused of teaming with Mr.
James Reynolds to speculate illegally in government securities.
Hamilton then acknowledged to three lawmakers, including James
Monroe, that he had paid hush money to Mr. Reynolds to cover an
affair with Reynolds’ wife.
(WSJ, 11/19/98, p.A12)(ON, 10/05, p.5)
1792 Dec 26, Charles Babbage
(d.1871), English inventor of the calculating machine, was born.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1792 John Trumbell painted his
portrait of Alexander Hamilton.
(WSJ, 10/20/04, p.D12)
1792 Captain Bligh published "A
Voyage to the South Sea" after his return from the Mutiny on the
Bounty.
(WSJ, 7/7/98, p.A14)
1792 James Madison published an
essay in a newspaper on property and slaves. In this essay Madison
extended the idea of property from material possessions to the
property in his opinions, especially his religious beliefs.
(V.D.-H.K.p.227)
1792 Mary Wollstonecraft
(Godwin) wrote her essay "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." She
married Godwin in 1797 after learning that she was pregnant and died
in childbirth.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.28)(Econ, 2/26/05, p.84)
1792 Construction began on the
Royal Chapel at Carmel, Ca. It was dedicated in 1795.
(SSFC, 1/4/09, p.B3)
1792 An edition of the Bible
was first printed in New York.
(WSJ, 8/7/98, p.W13)
1792 A US Militia Act was
created.
(SFC, 3/2/02, p.A21)
1792 US veterans hired William
Hull to petition congress for more compensation.
(Econ, 10/4/08, p.32)
1792 The dime coin "dismes"
were first produced. Then came "half-dismes," or what we call
nickels.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, zone 3 p.4)
1792 Explorer Jose Longinos
Martinez wrote in his diary about grizzly maulings that killed 2
Indians in California.
(SFC, 8/18/96, p.A6)
1792 Archibald Menzies,
Scottish doctor/surgeon, was the naturalist aboard the Discovery
under Captain George Vancouver. He collected his first California
poppy and classified it incorrectly as Celandine, an old world
member of the same family (Papaveracae). [see 1794,1816,1825-1833]
(NBJ, 2/96, p.12)
1792 Three English sailors
wandered from Vancouver’s supply ship Daedalus, anchored in Waimea
Bay. They were captured and killed by native Hawaiians.
(SFCM, 3/11/01, p.87)
1792 Pierre Ordinaire, French
chemist, invented absinthe as a digestive or all-purpose tonic. It
quickly caught on as an apéritif. Ordinaire invented absinthe
in 1797. It was popularized by Henri-Louis Pernod, who opened his
first distillery in Switzerland before moving to Pontarlier, France,
in 1805.
(WSJ, 12/24/96, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)(SFC,
3/24/00, p.A3)
1792 Arthur Phillip, the 1st
governor of New South Wales, Australia, returned to England
accompanied by Bennelong, an Aboriginal who had earlier attacked and
wounded him. Philip later gave Bennelong a house on a point in
Sydney Cove. In 1973 it became the site of the Sydney Opera House.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.83)
1792 In England consumers began
an organized boycott against West Indian sugar. The Anti-Saccharine
Society displayed a cross-section of a slave ship with men shackled
head-to-toe like sardines.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.94)
1792 William Wilberforce
introduced a new motion in British Parliament for the gradual
abolition of the slave trade. The “gradual” wording, proposed by
home office minister Henry Dundas, led to passage of the bill in the
House of Commons 230 to 85.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1792 James Penny, Liverpool
slave trader, was presented with a magnificent silver epergne for
speaking in favor of the slave trade to a parliamentary committee.
Liverpool’s Penny Lane was named after him.
(SSFC, 7/9/06,
p.A2)(www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/slavery/liverpool.asp)
1792 The British St. George’s
Bay Company transported a 2nd group of settlers to Freetown. This
included 1,196 Blacks from Nova Scotia, 500 Jamaicans and dozens of
rebellious slaves from other colonies.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1792 Niagara-on-the-Lake became
the 1st capital of the Upper Canada (later Ontario). The Parliament
met for 5 sessions before moving to York (Toronto).
(WSJ, 7/25/02, p.D10)
1792 The Chinese poet Shih
Tao-nan, shortly before succumbing to the plague noted: "Few days
following the death of the rats, Men pass away like falling walls."
(NG, 5/88, p.678)
1792 The crown jewels of France
were stolen including the 67 carat Blue Diamond.
(THC, 12/3/97)(EB, 1993, V6 p.51)
1792 The La Felecia opera house
in Venice opened.
(SFC, 6/27/96, p.D3)
1792 In Mexico Campeche’s
northern fort, the Reducto de San Jose, was built. It later housed
the Museo de Barcas y Armas.
(SSFC, 1/25/09, p.E5)
1792 In Scotland gas lighting
was developed.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1792 Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab
(b.1703), conservative Islamic theologian, died. He founded
Wahhabism and set out his ideas in “The Book of Unity” (1736). In
2004 Natana J. Delong-Bas authored “Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and
Reform to Global Jihad.”
(www.concise.britannica.com)(WSJ, 7/20/04, p.D8)
1792-1793 Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes
(1746-1828), Spanish painter, went deaf from an unexplained illness.
(WSJ, 5/10/02, p.W8)(Econ, 10/18/03, p.81)
1792-1796 In St. Petersburg, Russia, Catherine the
Great commissioned the building of the neoclassical rococo Alexander
Palace for her eldest grandson, the future Alexander I.
(WSJ, 9/9/97, p.A16)
1792-1867 Giovanni Pacing, Italian composer. His
work included "Maria, Regina d’Inghilterra," based on Victor Hugo’s
drama "Marie Tudor."
(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)
1792-1868 Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, Italian
composer. His work included the opera "La Donna del Lago," based on
the Walter Scott romance "The Lady of the Lake."
(WUD, 1994, p.1246)(WSJ, 7/29/97, p.A12)
1793 Jan 3, Lucretia
Coffin Mott women’s rights activist, was born. She was a teacher,
minister, antislavery leader and founder of the 1st Women’s Rights
Convention.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)(HN, 1/3/02)
1793 Jan 9, The first US manned
balloon flight occurred as Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a
hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J. He
stayed airborne for 46 minutes, traveled close to 15 miles and set
down at the "old Clement farm" in Deptford, New Jersey. [see Jun 23,
1784, Mar 9, 1793]
(WSJ, 3/31/98, p.A1)(AP, 1/9/99)(ON, 6/09, p.2)
1793 Jan 19, French King Louis
XVI was sentenced to death. [see Jan 21]
(MC, 1/19/02)
1793 Jan 21, Louis XVI (38),
last of the French Bourbon dynasty, was executed on the guillotine.
The vote in the National Convention for execution for treason won by
a margin of one vote. The Great Terror followed his execution.
(WUD, 1994, p.1677)(V.D.-H.K.p.231)(NH, 6/97,
p.23)(AP, 1/21/98)
1793 Jan 23, Prussia and Russia
signed an accord on the 2nd partition of Lithuania and Poland. The
2nd partition of Poland. Polish patriots had attempted to devise a
new constitution which was recognized by Austria and Prussia, but
Russia did not recognize it and invaded. Prussia in turn invaded and
the two agreed to a partition that left only the central portion of
Poland independent.
(WUD, 1994, p.1677)(LHC, 1/23/03)
1793 Feb 1, Ralph Hodgson of
Lansingburg, NY, patented one of the world’s greatest inventions
this day: Oiled silk.
(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1793 Feb 1, France declared war
on Britain and the Netherlands.
(HN, 2/1/99)
1793 Feb 12, The US federal
government passed its first fugitive slave law. This gave slave
holders the right to reclaim their human property in free states.
(HN, 2/12/97)(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)
1793 Feb 25, The department
heads of the U.S. government met with President Washington at
his Mt. Vernon home for the first Cabinet meeting on record.
(AP, 2/25/98)(MC, 2/25/02)
1793 Mar 2, Sam Houston, the
first president of the Republic of Texas (1836-38, 1841-44), was
born near Lexington, Va. He fought for Texas' independence from
Mexico; President of Republic of Texas; U.S. Senator; Texas governor
(AP, 3/2/98)(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)(SC, 3/2/02)
1793 Mar 3, Charles Sealsfield,
writer (The Making of America), was born.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1793 Mar 4, George Washington
was inaugurated as President for the second time. His 2nd
inauguration was the shortest with just 133 words. Since George
Washington’s second term, Inauguration Day had been March 4 of the
year following the election. That custom meant that defeated
presidents and congressmen served four months after the election. In
1933, the so-called Lame Duck Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
moved the inauguration of newly elected presidents and congressmen
closer to Election Day. The 20th Amendment required the terms of the
president and vice-president to begin at noon on January 20, while
congressional terms begin on January 3.
(HN, 3/4/98)(HNPD, 3/4/99)(SC, 3/4/02)
1793 Mar 4, French troops
conquered Geertruidenberg, Netherlands.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1793 Mar 5, Austrian troops
crush the French and recapture Liege.
(HN, 3/5/99)
1793 Mar 10, In France, on a
proposal by Georges-Jacques Danton (1759-1794), the National
Convention decreed that there should be established in Paris an
extraordinary criminal tribunal. The news of the failure of the
French arms in Belgium had given rise in Paris to popular movements
on March 9 and 10, 1793. On Oct 20 the extraordinary criminal
tribunal received by decree the official name of the Revolutionary
Tribunal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Tribunal)
1793 Mar 18, The 2nd Battle at
Neerwinden: Austria army beat France.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1793 Mar 26, Pro-royalist
uprising took place in Vendée region of France.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1793 Apr 1, The volcano
Unsen on Japan erupted killing about 53,000.
(OTD)
1793 Apr 6, In France all
executive power was conferred upon a Committee of Public Safety.
Georges-Jacques Danton was one of the nine original members.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Danton)
1793 Apr 14, A royalist
rebellion in Santo Domingo was crushed by French republican troops.
(HN, 4/14/99)
1793 Apr 17, The Battle of
Warsaw was fought.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1793 Apr 22, Pres. Washington
attended the opening of Rickett's, the 1st circus in US.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1793 May 7, Pietro Nardini
(71), composer, died.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1793 May 25, Father Stephen
Theodore Badin became the 1st US Roman Catholic priest ordained.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1793 Jun 2, Maximillian
Robespierre, a member of France’s Committee on Public Safety,
initiated the "Reign of Terror," a purge of those suspected of
treason against the French Republic. Months of the Great Terror,
followed the Revolution in France as thousands died beneath the
guillotine.
(V.D.-H.K.p.231)(HN, 6/2/98)
1793 Jun 20, Eli Whitney
petitioned for a cotton gin patent in Philadelphia.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h1517t.html)
1793 Jun 24, The first
republican constitution in France was adopted.
(AP, 6/24/97)
1793 Jul 13, John Clare,
English poet, was born.
(HN, 7/13/01)
1793 Jul 13, Pierre Dupont de
Nemours was ordered arrested in Paris on charges of plotting with
rebels against the French Revolutionary National Assembly.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1793 Jul 13, French
revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his
bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later. In 1970
Marie Cher authored "Charlotte Corday, and Certain Men of the
Revolutionary Torment."
(AP, 7/13/97)(ON, SC, p.8)
1793 Jul 23, Roger Sherman
(b.1721) of Connecticut, signer of the Declaration of Independence,
died. He was only man to sign the four most important documents that
were most significant in the formation of the United States. Sherman
signed the Association (the 1774 compact to boycott British goods),
the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and
Constitution. Sherman was among the first to declare that Parliament
had no right to legislate for the colonies. He was a delegate to the
Continental Congress, served in the first U.S. House of
Representatives and was a U.S. senator.
(HN, 4/19/97)(HNQ, 7/10/99)
1793 Jul 23, The French
garrison at Mainz, Germany, fell to the Prussians.
(HN, 7/23/98)
1793 Jul 24, France passed the
1st copyright law.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1793 Jul 27, In France,
Robespierre became a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
(HN, 7/27/98)
1793 Aug 14, Republican troops
in France laid siege to the city of Lyons.
(HN, 8/14/98)
1793 Aug 22, Louis Duke de
Noailles (80), marshal of France, was guillotined.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1793 Aug 27, Maximilien
Robespierre was elected to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris,
France.
(HN, 8/27/98)
1793 Aug 28, Adam-Philippe
Custine, Duke de Lauzun (French duke, general, fought in American
Revolution, hero in both countries), was guillotined in Paris.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1793 Aug 29, Slavery was
abolished in the French colony of Santo Domingo (Haiti).
(HN, 8/29/98)(MC, 8/29/01)
1793 Sep 5, The Reign of Terror
began during the French Revolution as the National Convention
instituted harsh measures to repress counter-revolutionary
activities. One delegate, claiming that the middle class Girondist
(moderates) leaders be sentenced to death cried, "It is time for
equality to wield its scythe over all the heads. Very well,
Legislator, place Terror on the agenda!" The delegates agreed to
arrest all suspects and dissenters, try them swiftly in the kangaroo
courts known as the Revolutionary Tribunals, and sentence them
uniformly to death.
(MC, 9/5/01)(AP, 9/4/07)
1793 Sep 6, French General Jean
Houchard and his 40,000 men began a three-day battle against an
Anglo-Hanoverian army at Hondschoote, southwest Belgium, in the wars
of the French Revolution.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1793 Sep 18, President George
Washington laid the foundation stone for the U.S. Capitol on Jenkins
Hill.
(AP, 9/18/97)(SFC, 7/18/98, p.A15)(HN, 9/18/98)
1793 Oct 8, John Hancock, US
merchant and signer (Declaration of Independence), died at 56.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1793 Oct 10, The rebellious
French city of Lyons surrendered to Revolutionary troops.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1793 Oct 16, During the French
Revolution, Marie Antoinette was beheaded. Prosecutors claimed she
had sexually abused her son and financially abused the French
Monarchy. In mourning for her husband, Louis XVI, who had been
guillotined the previous January, clad in rags, her once-dazzling
locks shorn by the executioner's assistant, she even suffered the
indignity of a crude sketch by the great French painter, Jacques
Louis David. Antoinette bore herself with a regal indifference to
her martyrdom. Madame Tussaud used her severed head as a model for
her wax bust death mask. In 2001 Antonia Fraser authored "Marie
Antoinette: The Journey."
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.T5)(AP, 10/16/97)(WSJ,
10/5/01, p.W13)
1793 Oct 20, In France an
extraordinary criminal tribunal received the official name of the
Revolutionary Tribunal by a decree. The news of the failure of the
French arms in Belgium gave rise in Paris to popular movements on
March 9 and 10, 1793, and on March 10, on the proposal of Danton,
the Convention decreed that there should be established in Paris an
extraordinary criminal tribunal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Tribunal)
1793 Oct 28, Eliphalet
Remington, US gun maker, was born.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1793 Oct 28, Eli Whitney
applied for a patent on the cotton gin, a machine which cleaned the
tight-clinging seeds from short-staple cotton easily and
effectively--a job which was previously done by hand. The patent was
granted the following March. [see Mar 13, Jun 20, 1793, Mar 14,
1794]
(AP, 10/28/97)(HN, 10/28/98)
1793 Oct 31, Execution of 21
Girondins (moderates) in Paris, stepping up the Reign of Terror.
Pierre V. Vergniaud (40), French politician and elegant, impassioned
orator of Girondins, was guillotined.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1793 Nov 3, Stephen Fuller
Austin was born. He colonized Texas.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1793 Nov 8, The Louvre opened
in Paris as a museum. It was originally constructed as a fortress in
the early thirteenth century.
(HN, 11/6/98)(MC, 11/8/01)
1793 Nov 10, France outlawed
the forced worship of God.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1793 Nov 12, Jean-Sylvain
Bailley (53), French astronomer and mayor of Paris, was guillotined.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1793 Nov 19, The Jacobin Club
was formed in Paris. Robespierre (1758-1794), Jacobin leader:
"Terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe and inflexible."
(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.C5)(MC, 11/19/01)
1793 Nov 26, Republican
calendar replaced the Gregorian calendar in France.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1793 Nov, In France Philippe
Aspairt, a hospital porter, ventured alone into the limestones
quarries south of Paris, site of the new cemetery, and got lost.
Workmen found his bones 11 years later.
(Hem., 3/97, p.119)
1793 Dec 6, Marie Jeanne Becu,
Comtesse du Barry, flamboyant mistress of Louis XV, was guillotined
in Paris.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1793 Dec 9, Noah Webster
established NY's 1st daily newspaper, American Minerva.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1793 Dec 19, French troops
recaptured Toulon from the British.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1793 Dec 20, Joseph Legros
(54), composer, died.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1793 Dec 23, Thomas Jefferson
warned of slave revolts in West Indies.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1793 Antonio Canova created his
clay model for the sculpture "Penitent Magdalen." The final marble
version was completed in 1809.
(WSJ, 1/29/02, p.A18)
1793 Jacques-Louis David
painted "Death of Marat."
(SFEC, 3/21/99, BR p.5)
1793 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon
(1758-1823), French artist, painted "Cupid Laughs at the Tears He
Causes."
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1793 William Blake produced his
"Labors of the Artist, the Poet, and the Musician." He painted "Aged
Ignorance."
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.17)(NH, 4/97, p.6)
1793 Augustin Ximenez
(1726-1817), Marquis of Ximenez, a Frenchman of Spanish origin,
wrote a poem with the line “Attaquons dans ses eaux la perfide
Albion,” which means "Let us attack perfidious Albion in her
waters." The poet of perfidy later lectured French soldiers that “Il
est beau de perir,” which means “it is beautiful to perish.”
(SSFC, 1/14/07, p.M4)(http://tinyurl.com/ye6bd7)
1793 The German Reformed Church
was established in the US by Calvinist Puritans.
(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A11)
1793 Capt. George Vancouver
introduced cattle to the islands of Hawaii and wrested from King
Kamehameha the concession that women as well as men be allowed to
eat the meat. The king agreed if separate animals were used.
(SFEM, 2/8/98, p.10)
1793 The 1st US half-cent and
one cent coins were minted. For almost 6 decades the obverse side
carried an image of Lady Liberty. The first coins were related to
the silver dollar. The half-dollar contained half as much silver,
the quarter had one-fourth as much. The dime had a 10th and the half
dime has a 20th as much silver as the dollar. Only the penny was
made of copper. In 1866 the Mint decided to produce a larger
five-cent coin.
(SFC, 9/11/96, p.A4)(WSJ, 12/12/03, p.W15)(SSFC,
9/27/09, Par p.25)
1793 Cape Girardeau, Missouri,
was first founded where the present day Cape Rock Park sits, when
Don Louis Lorimier was given a land grant by the Spanish government.
The City of Cape Girardeau celebrated its 200th year in 2006.
(www.cityofcapegirardeau.org/)
1793 In Vermont Captain John
Norton founded a stoneware pottery shop in Bennington. The wares
were rarely marked until 1823. Various members of the family worked
at the pottery until it closed shop in 1894.
(SFC, 2/18/98, Z1 p.3)
1793 The Spanish Governor of
Alta California made the first official notice of the fire problem
in California. He warned military officers, missions and civil
authorities of the problem.
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.A8)
1793 There was a yellow fever
epidemic in Philadelphia. Stephen Girard risked his life and fortune
in stopping the epidemic.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.6)
1793 Alexander Mackenzie,
Scottish-born fur trader, reached the Pacific coast completing his
crossing of North America. He began the trip in 1789. He raised
Britain's claims to the pacific Northwest.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, Z1 p.7)(SFC, 1/31/04, p.D12)
1793 The British took over the
island of St. Vincent and a series of wars ensued against the black
Caribs.
(SFC, 7/25/07, p.E2)
1793 China’s Emperor Qianlong
turned away the British fleet under Lord George Macartney with the
declaration that China had all things in abundance and had no
interest in “foreign manufactures.”
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R51)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.13)
1793 The courthouse at the St.
Maarten Island Dutch capital of Philipsburg was built.
(SFEC,2/16/97, p.T7)
1793 The Minton dishware
company was established in Stoke, Staffordshire, England.
(SFC,11/5/97, Z.1 p.3)(SFC, 3/19/08, p.G6)
1793-1795 The British engaged in the ill-fated
Flanders Campaign.
(SSFM, 4/1/01, p.42)
1793-1801 In Afghanistan Zaman Shah ruled.
Constant internal revolts continued.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)
1793-1835 Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans, English
poet: "Though the past haunt me as a spirit, I do not ask to
forget."
(AP, 12/31/98)
1793-1860 Thomas Addison, English physician,
discovered Addison’s disease, a usually fatal disease caused by the
failure of the adrenal cortex to function and marked by a
bronze-like skin pigmentation, anemia, and prostration.
(AHD, 1971, p.15)
1793-1863 Sam Houston, US soldier and political
leader. He was president of the Republic of Texas from 1836-1838.
(WUD, 1994, p.689)
1794 Jan 13, President
Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to
the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky
to the union. The number of stripes was later reduced to the
original 13.
(AP, 1/13/01)
1794 Jan 14, Dr. Jessee Bennet
of Edom, Va., performed the 1st successful Cesarean section
operation on his wife.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1794 Feb 4, France’s First
Republic (Convention) voted for the abolition of slavery in all
French colonies. The abolition decree stated that "the Convention
declares the slavery of the Blacks abolished in all the colonies;
consequently, all men, irrespective of color, living in the colonies
are French citizens and will enjoy all the rights provided by the
Constitution." Slavery was restored by the Consulate in 1802, and
was definitively abolished in 1848 by the Second Republic, on Victor
Schoelcher’s initiative.
(www.ambafrance-uk.org/Slavery-Slavery-was-abolished-in.html)
1794 Feb 4, Slaves in Haiti won
emancipation.
(AP, 4/7/03)(WSJ, 3/1/04, p.A16)
1794 Feb 10, Joseph Haydn’s
99th Symphony in E, premiered.
(MC, 2/10/02)
1794 Feb 11, A session of US
Senate was 1st opened to the public.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1794 Feb 14, 1st US textile
machinery patent was granted, to James Davenport in Phila.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1794 Feb 21, Antonio Lopez de
Santa Anna, Mexican Revolutionary, was born.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1794 Mar 3, 1st performance of
Joseph Haydn’s 101st Symphony in D.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1794 Mar 3, Richard Allen
founded AME Church.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1794 Mar 14, Eli Whitney
received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that
revolutionized America's cotton industry. He paid substantial
royalties to Catherine T. Greene and this makes his claim to the
invention suspect.
(AP, 3/14/97)(SFC, 10/4/97, p.E3)
1794 Mar 22, Congress passed
laws prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries, although
slavery remained legal in the United States. Congress banned US
vessels from supplying slaves to other countries.
(HN, 3/22/01)(MC, 3/22/02)
1794 Mar 23, Josiah Pierson
patented a "cold-header" (rivet) machine.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1794 Mar 23, Lieutenant-General
Tadeusz Kosciusko returned to Poland.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1794 Mar 24, In Cracow a
revolutionary manifesto was proclaimed. The Lithuanian and Polish
nobility under the leadership of Tadas Kasciuska revolted against
Russian control.
(H of L, 1931, p. 81-82)(LHC, 3/23/03)
1794 Mar 27, The US Congress
approved "An Act to provide a Naval Armament" of six armed ships.
[see Oct 13, 1775]
(AP, 3/27/07)
1794 Mar 28, Marie-Joseph de
Condorcet (b.1743), mathematician (Theory of Comets) and
philosopher, died as a fugitive from French Revolution Terrorists.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Condorcet)
1794 Apr 5, Georges-Jacques
Danton (b.1759), French revolutionary leader, was guillotined along
with Marie Jean Herault de Sechelles, French author, politician, and
Camille Desmoullins, popular journalist. In 2009 Jonathan Cape
authored “Danton: The Gentle Giant of Terror.”
(Econ, 7/18/09,
p.80)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Danton)
1794 Apr 7, In Poland at the
battle of Raclawice the revolutionary forces of Tadeusz Kosciusko
defeated the imperial armies.
(DrEE, 9/21/96, p.5)
1794 Apr 19, Tadeusz Kosciusko
forced Russians out of Warsaw.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1794 Apr 10, Matthew Calbraith
Perry, the American Navy Commodore who opened Japan, was born.
(HN, 4/10/98)
1794 Apr 11, Edward Everett,
governor of Massachusetts, statesman and orator, was born.
(HN, 4/11/98)
1794 May 6, In Haiti Toussaint
Louverture (L’Ouverture), Haitian rebel leader, ended his alliance
with the Iberian monarchy and embraced the French Republicans. An
order followed that led to the massacre of Spaniards.
(www.travelinghaiti.com/history_of_haiti/toussaint_louverture.asp)(WSJ,
1/19/07, p.W4)
1794 May 6, Jean-Jacques
Beauvarget-Charpentier (59), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1794 May 8, Antoine-Laurent
Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry (identified oxygen), was
executed on the guillotine during France's Reign of Terror. In 2005
Madison Smartt Bell authored “Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth
of a New Science in the Age of Revolution.”
(AP, 5/8/97)(SSFC, 7/3/05, p.E1)
1794 May 10, In France
Elizabeth (30), the sister of King Louis XVI, was beheaded.
(HN, 5/10/99)(MC, 5/10/02)
1794 May 18, The 2nd battle of
Bouvines was between France and Austria.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1794 May 27, Cornelius
Vanderbilt (d.1877), owner of the B & O railroad, was born on
Staten Island. He started running steamships in 1818 and shuttled
passengers to the West coast across Nicaragua for the gold rush. At
age 70 he entered the railroad business. He was never accepted into
New York elite society and died with an estimated $105 million
fortune.
(HN, 5/27/98)(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)
1794 May, Richard Allen
purchased a blacksmith shop in Philadelphia and had it moved near
St. Thomas. There he founded an African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
church he called Bethel, "House of God." The Mother Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia was founded by Richard
Allen after he was pulled from his knees one Sunday by a white usher
while praying at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church. It later
stood as the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African
Americans. The Richard Allen Museum contains 19th century artifacts
from the church. In 1997 it was the world’s oldest AME church. The
church elected its first female bishop in 2000.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(SFC, 7/12/00,
p.A3)(www.pbs.org)
1794 Jun 1, English fleet under
Richard Earl Howe defeated the French. (MC, 6/1/02)
1794 Jun 4, Congress passed a
Neutrality Act that banned Americans from serving in armed forces of
foreign powers.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1794 Jun 4, British troops
captured Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1794 Jun 4, Robespierre was
unanimously elected president of the Convention in the French
Revolution.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1794 Jun 5, Congress passed the
Neutrality Act, which prohibited Americans from enlisting in the
service of a foreign power.
(AP, 6/5/99)(HN, 6/5/98)
1794 Jun 8, Maximilian
Robespierre, French Revolutionary leader, worried about the
influence of French atheists and philosophers, staged the "Festival
of the Supreme Being" in Paris.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1794 Jun 15, The Guillotine was
moved to outskirts of Paris.
(MC, 6/15/02)
1794 Jun 18, George Grote,
British historian, was born.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1794 Jun 23, Empress Catherine
II granted Jews permission to settle in Kiev.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1794 Jun 26, French defeated an
Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus.
(HN, 6/26/98)
1794 Jul 5, Sylvester Graham,
developed graham cracker, was born.
(MC, 7/5/02)
1794 Jul 8, French troops
captured Brussels, Belgium.
(HN, 7/8/98)
1794 Jul 12, British Admiral
Lord Nelson lost his right eye at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica.
(HN, 7/12/98)
1794 Jul 13, Robespierre
boycotted the Committee of Public Safety and the National convention
after being denounced as a dictator.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1794 Jul 17, In Philadelphia
the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, one of the first black
churches in the country, opened its doors.
(www.pbs.org)
1794 Jul 23, Chaos and anarchy
were averted temporarily when Robespierre joined conciliation talks
in Paris.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1794 Jul 26, After remaining
uncharacteristically silent for several weeks, Robespierre demanded
that the National Convention punish "traitors" without naming them.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1794 Jul 26, The French
defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus in France.
(HN, 7/26/98)
1794 Jul 27, French
revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and
placed under arrest; he was executed the following day.
(AP, 7/27/00)
1794 Jul 28, Maximilien
Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to
the guillotine. Robespierre had dominated the Committee of Public
Safety during the "Reign of Terror." He asserted the collective
dictatorship of the revolutionary National Convention and attacked
factions led by men such as Jacques-René Hébert which
he felt threatened the government‘s power. Factions opposed to
Robespierre gained momentum in the summer of 1794. Declared an
outlaw of the National Convention, Robespierre and many of his
followers were captured and he—along with 22 of his supporters—were
guillotined before cheering crowds.
(AP, 7/28/97)(HN, 7/28/98)(HNQ, 11//00)
1794 Jul 29, Seventy of
Robespierre's followers were guillotined.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1794 Aug 7, George Washington
issued a proclamation telling a group of Western Pennsylvania
farmers to stop their Whiskey Rebellion. In the US in western
Pennsylvania, angry farmers protested a new federal tax on whiskey
makers. The protest flared into the open warfare known as the
Whiskey Rebellion between US marshals and whiskey farmers.
(http://www.ttb.gov/public_info/whisky_rebellion.shtml)(A&IP,
ESM, p.16)(HNQ, 10/14/99)
1794 Aug 20, American General
"Mad Anthony" Wayne defeated the Ohio Indians at the Battle of
Fallen Timbers in the Northwest territory, ending Indian resistance
in the area.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1794 Aug 21, France surrendered
the island of Corsica to the British.
(HN, 8/21/98)
1794 Sep 10, America's first
non-denominational college, Blount College (later the University of
Tennessee), was chartered.
(AP, 9/10/97)
1794 Sep 28, The
Anglo-Russian-Austrian Alliance of St. Petersburg, which was
directed against France, was signed.
(HN, 9/28/98)
1794 Oct 10, The Russian Army
under Gen’l. Alexander Suvorov took Warsaw and captured Tadeus
Kosciusko at Maciejowice. T. Vavzeckis was became the new commander
of the revolutionary forces.
(Voruta #27-28, 7/1996, p.5)(HN, 10/10/98)
1794 Oct 15, US moneymakers
minted some 2,000 silver dollars of which 1,750 were deemed good
enough to go into circulation. The press initially used was designed
for a smaller coin and large scale production on a bigger press
began a year later.
(SFC, 7/27/05, p.C8)
1794 Nov 3, William Cullen
Bryant, poet and journalist, was born.
(HN, 11/3/00)
1794 Nov 3, Thomas Paine was
released from a Parisian jail with help from the American ambassador
James Monroe. He had been arrested in 1893 for not endorsing the
execution of Louis XVI and thus offending the Robespierre faction.
While in prison Paine began writing his "The Age of Reason"
(1794-1796).
(HN, 11/3/99)(www.ushistory.org/Paine/index.htm)
1794 Nov 11, The Treaty of
Canandaigua was signed at Canandaigua, New York, by fifty sachems
and war chiefs representing the Grand Council of the Six Nations of
the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy (including the Cayuga,
Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora tribes), and by
Timothy Pickering, official agent of President George
Washington. The Canandaigua Treaty, a Treaty Between the
United States of America and the Tribes of Indians Called the Six
Nations, was signed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Canandaigua)
1794 Nov 16, Warsaw capitulated
to the Russian Army and the revolution ended.
(Voruta #27-28, 7/1996, p.5)
1794 Nov 19, The United States
and Britain signed the Jay Treaty, which resolved some issues left
over from the Revolutionary War. This was the 1st US extradition
treaty.
(AP, 11/19/97)(MC, 11/19/01)
1794 Nov 21, Honolulu Harbor
was discovered.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1794 Nov 22, Strasbourg,
Alsace-Lorraine, prohibited circumcision and the wearing of beards.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1794 Nov 28, Friedrich WLGA von
Steuben (64), Prussian-US inspector-general of Washington’s army,
died in Oneida, NY. Baron von Steuben, a former Prussian captain,
had arrived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1777, and despite false
credentials, was hired to drill and train Washington’s Continental
Army. His manual of arms, known as the “Blue Book,” shaped basic
training for American recruits for generations to come. In 2008 Paul
Lockhart authored “The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de
Steuben and the Making of the American Army.”
(WSJ, 11/8/08, p.W9)(WSJ, 11/8/08, p.W9)
1794 William Blake painted "The
Ancient of Days." "He formed golden com-passes / And began to
explore the Abyss." From the epic "The First Book of Urizen." Urizen
is a pun and stands for "Your Reason." On display at the Whitworth
Art Gallery, Manchester, England.
(T&L, 10/1980, p.42)(WSJ, 4/2397, p.A16)
1794 "The Book of Thell" was
printed by Blake in 14+ sets of 8 different designs.
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.18)
1794 Spanish painter Goya
completed his painting “Yard With Lunatics,” the last in a series of
uncommissioned small paintings executed during his convalescence
from an illness that left him deaf.
(WSJ, 6/18/08, p.D7)
1794 French Azilum near
Towanda, Pa., was planned as an asylum for Marie-Antoinette, her
children and other loyalists of the monarchy seeking refuge from the
French Revolution. Loyalists who kept their heads did come and
settle.
(HT, 5/97, p.18)
1794 In the US Richard Allen
was pulled from his knees one Sunday by a white usher while praying
at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. He founded
the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1787.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(SFC, 7/12/00, p.A3)
1794 The St. Louis Cathedral in
New Orleans was rebuilt. Two previous structures had burned down.
(Hem., 1/97, p.63)
1794 George Washington
established the first national armory at Springfield, Mass. He also
authorized the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Md., where the Shenandoah
flows into the Potomac.
(WSJ, 9/12/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.T7)
1794 The first American silver
dollar was minted. Congress decided in 1785 that the country‘s
monetary system would be based on a silver coin called a dollar,
similar to that of the Spanish dollar.
(HNQ, 1/5/00)
1794 A French inventor mixed
ground graphite with clay and water and fired it to make strong
pencil leads. [see 1765]
(WSJ, 11/24/00, p.A1)
1794 Gov. Diego Borica took
command of Alta California and remarked on the general fecundity of
the Bay Area.
(Bay, 4/07, p.25)
1794 Archibald Menzies
introduced the California poppy to England. The seed that he brought
to Kew Gardens did not survive. [see 1792, 1816,1825-1833]
(NBJ, 2/96, p.12)
1794 British Admiral Earl Howe
defeated the French fleet.
(SFEC,10/26/97, p.T4)
1794 Ernst Chladni, German
scientist, proposed that meteorites were masses of iron-rich
extraterrestrial rock, which occasionally penetrated the earth’s
atmosphere to strike the surface.
(ON, 7/02, p.5)
1794 The Royal Bayreuth
porcelain factory was founded in Bavaria. The factory stamped this
date on dishes made after 1900.
(SFC,11/5/97, Z1 p.3)
1794 In Italy the Bourbon
monarchy created the Banca Nazionale di Napoli bringing together
eight public banks including the Banco dei Poveri, established in
1563. The Piedmontese monarchy settled on the name Banco di Napoli
in 1861.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.165)
1794 Napoleon’s occupying army
in Maastricht, Netherlands, took back to France a giant dinosaur
head that was found in a dark recess of St. Peter’s mountain in
1780. It was named the Mosasaurus and roamed the seas some 70
million years ago. The head was lugged to the home of Theodorus
Godding, a canon at the local church. The French say that he swapped
it to Napoleon for 600 bottles of wine. Records however seem to
indicate otherwise.
(NYT, 6/7/96, p.A4)
1794 Scotland, parish of
Kirkmichael, Banffshire, on the holy well of St. Michael.
(Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xii, p.464): Many a patient
have its water restored to health and many more have attested the
efficacies of their virtues. But as the presiding power is sometimes
capricious and apt to desert his charge, it now lies neglected,
choked with weeds, unhonored, and unfrequented. In better days it
was not so; for the winged guardian, under the semblance of a fly,
was never absent from his duty... Every movement of the sympathetic
fly was regarded in silent awe...
(R.M.-P.H.C.p.93)
1794 The Russian Orthodox
mission was founded in Alaska. It led to the Orthodox Church in
America with 600,000 members.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.B7)
1794 Ukraine’s port city of
Odessa was founded.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.86)
1794-1824 Matthias Schmutzer, artist, produced
over 1000 large-format watercolors of specimens from the imperial
gardens of Francis I. In 2006 H. Walter Lack authored
“Florilegium Imperiale: Botanical Illustrations for Francis I of
Austria.”
(WSJ, 5/27/06, p.P9)
1794-1815 An anthology of first hand reports on
the naval war between France and Britain was edited by Dean King and
John B. Hattendorf and published in 1997.
(SFEC,11/2/97, Par p.10)
1794-1872 Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, German
artist.
(WSJ, 7/16/98, p.A16)
1794-1925 The Kajar Dynasty ruled over Iran. The
Gulistan Palace (constructed in this era), contains the much
disputed Peacock Throne.
(NG, Sept. 1939, Baroness Ravensdale, p.326)
1795 Jan 3, The 3rd division of
the Lithuanian Polish Republic was made between Russia and Austria.
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.5)
1795 Jan 3, Josiah Wedgwood
(b.1730), British ceramics manufacturer, died. His daughter,
Susannah, was the mother of Charles Darwin. In 2004 Brian Dolan
authored “Wedgwood: The First Tycoon.”
(SSFC, 12/5/04,
p.E5)(www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk/wedgwood_chronology.htm)
1795 Jan 25, The Royal Chapel
at Carmel, Ca., was dedicated with a Mass of Thanksgiving. A major
renovation was undertaken in 1856.
(SSFC, 1/4/09, p.B3)
1795 Jan 26, Johann Christoph
Friedrich Bach (62), composer, died.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1795 Feb 2, Joseph Haydn’s
102nd Symphony in B premiered.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1795 Feb 4, France abolished
slavery in her territories and conferred slaves to citizens.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1795 Feb 7, The 11th Amendment
to US Constitution was ratified.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1795 Feb 8, China’s Emperor
Qianlong (1711-1799) abdicated in favor of his son. Despite his
voluntary abdication, from 1796 to 1799 Qianlong continued to hold
on to power and the Jiaqing Emperor (d.1820) ruled only in name.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.95)(Econ, 2/5/11,
p.95)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor)
1795 Feb 13, The University of
North Carolina became the first US state university to admit
students with the arrival of Hinton James, who was the only student
on campus for two weeks.
(AP, 2/13/04)
1795 Feb 18, George Peabody,
U.S. merchant and philanthropist, was born in South Danvers,
Mass.
(HN, 2/18/98)(MC, 2/18/02)
1795 Feb 21, Francisco Manuel
da Silva, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1795 Feb 21, Freedom of worship
was established in France under constitution.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1795 Mar 11, Battle at
Kurdla, India: Mahratten beat Moguls.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1795 Mar 22, A Lithuanian
delegation under L. Tiskevicius went to Jekaterina II in Petersburg
and declared that Lithuania’s union with Poland was ended.
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.5)
1795 Mar 29, Beethoven (24)
debuted as pianist in Vienna.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1795 Apr 7, The National
Convention of Revolutionary France put into effect a new calendar
system, similar to that of ancient Egypt. The year began with the
autumn equinox, and had 360 days divided into twelve months of
thirty days. Five extra days were placed at the end of the year. The
months were divided into three 10 day groups. The day was divided
into 10 new hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into
100 seconds.
(K.I.-365D, p.42)
1795 Apr 8, The Prince of
Wales, later England’s King George IV, married his German cousin,
Caroline, to produce an heir and increase his income. On their
wedding night the drunken bridegroom spent the night "under the
grate, where he fell, and where I left him." The story is told by
Flora Fraser in her book: "The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen
Caroline." Masterpiece Theater made a TV presentation in 1997.
(SFC, 7/14/96, DB p.3)(WSJ, 1/9/97,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_of_Brunswick)
1795 Apr 21, Vincenzo Pallotti,
Italian saint, was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1795 Apr 23, In Britain the
trial to impeach Warren Hastings, governor-general of India
(1773-1785), on 21 charges for high crimes and misdemeanors ended
after 7 years. Hastings was acquitted on all charges.
(SFEC, 11/1/98, BR p.11)(WSJ, 5/1/00, p.A24)(MC,
4/23/02)
1795 Apr 28, Charles Sturt
(d.1869), explorer of Australia, was born in India. British explorer
Charles Sturt is known as the "father of Australian exploration." He
was the first to penetrate deep into Australia's interior from 1828
to 1845 during three hazardous expeditions. In 1828 he discovered
the Darling River and in January 1830 the Murray River, which he
followed until he reached present day Goolwa. His last expedition
came to an end when his eyesight was impaired by exposure and
illness. Scotsman John McDouall Stuart was part of Stuart's final
expedition and went on to become a major explorer, crossing the
continent from Adelaide to Port Darwin in 1862.
(http://members.ozemail.com.au/~fliranre/home.htm)
(HN, 4/28/98)(HNQ, 5/26/98)
1795 Spring, Some 300 Indians
fled Mission Dolores in San Francisco following a year of food
shortages and disease that killed over 200. They sought refuge in
the East Bay hills and Napa.
(SFC, 9/26/03, p.D15)
1795 May 4, Thousands of
rioters entered jails in Lyons, France, and massacred 99 Jacobin
prisoners.
(HN, 5/4/99)
1795 May 6, Dr. Pierre-Joseph
Dessault visited the incarcerated 10-year-old dauphin, the heir to
the French throne. He found the dying child in abject misery. The
boy died June 8.
(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W9)
1795 May 10,
Jacques-Nicolas-Augustin Thierry, historian, was born.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1795 May 13, Joshua Ratoon
Sands (d.1883), Commander (Union Navy), was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1795 May 15, Napoleon entered
the Lombardian capital of Milan in triumph. After taking Milan he
released his troops on the townspeople who became victims of an orgy
of destroying, raping and killing. The events are described in the
1998 biography "Napoleon Bonaparte" by Alan Schom.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.9)(HN, 5/15/98)
1795 May 19, Johns Hopkins,
founder of Johns Hopkins University, was born.
(HN, 5/19/98)
1795 May 20, Ignac Martinovics,
Hungarian physicist, revolutionary, was beheaded.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1795 May, Mungo Park, Scottish
surgeon, sailed from England on behalf of the British African
Association to search for the Niger River.
(ON, 7/00, p.10)
1795 Jun 8, In France the
Dauphin (Louis XVII), son and sole survivor of Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette, died at age 10 after succumbing to tuberculosis in the
Temple prison. His heart was cut from his body when he died in
prison, pickled, stolen, returned, and DNA-tested two centuries
later. In 2002 Deborah Cadbury authored "The Lost King of France."
(SFC, 4/20/00, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W9)(AP,
6/3/04)
1795 Jul 7, Thomas Paine
defended the principal of universal suffrage at the Constitutional
Convention in Paris.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1795 Jul 9, James Swan paid off
the $2,024,899 US national debt.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1795 Jul 14, "La Marseillais,"
written in 1792, became the French national anthem.
(http://tinyurl.com/7a4p9)
1795 Jul 22, Spain signed the
Peace of Basel, a treaty with France ending the War of the Pyrenees.
The treaty ceded Santo Domingo to France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Basel)
1795 Aug 3, A defeated Indian
coalition met with Gen. Anthony Wayne in a treaty council at
Greenville, Ohio. The event is the subject of a painting by Howard
Chandler Christy. From a review of 500 Nations by Alvin M. Josephy
Jr., published by Knopf in 1995 to accompany an 8-hour television
documentary.
(SFE Mag., 2/12/95, p. 18)
1795 Aug 15, Franz Joseph Haydn
left England for the last time.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1795 Aug 20, Joseph Haydn
returned to Vienna from England.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1795 Aug 31, Franxois-Andre
Danican Philidor, composer, died at 68.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1795 Sep 1, James Gordon Bennet
was born. He later served as the editor of the New York Sun, the
first tabloid-sized daily newspaper.
(HN, 9/1/00)
1795 Sep 16, The Capitulation
of Rustenburg: A Dutch garrison at the Cape of Good Hope surrendered
to a British fleet under Adm. George Elphinstone.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1795 Sep 17, Giuseppi Saverio
Rafaele Mercadante, composer, was born.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1795 Sep 23, A national
plebiscite approved the new French constitution, but so many voters
sustained that the results were suspect.
(HN, 9/23/99)
1795 Sep 23, Conseil of the
Cinq-Cents (Council of 500), formed in Paris.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1795 Oct 4, General Napoleon
Bonaparte led the rout of counterrevolutionaries in the streets of
Paris, beginning his rise to power. France was in the midst of
economic disaster—a factor that aided royalist
counterrevolutionaries in their attempts to incite rebellion against
the young republican government. Bonaparte, looking for a new
command while on half pay in Paris, joined the defense of the
Convention against overwhelming odds.
(HN, 10/4/99)(HNQ, 10/26/00)
1795 Oct 5, The day after he
routed counterrevolutionaries in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte accepted
their formal surrender. Napoleon takes charge.
(HN, 10/5/99)
1795 Oct 11, In gratitude for
putting down a rebellion in the streets of Paris, France's National
Convention appointed Napoleon Bonaparte second in command of the
Army of the Interior.
(HN, 10/11/99)
1795 Oct 13, William Prescott,
American Revolutionary soldier, died.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1795 Oct 24, Russia, Austria
and Prussia held a convention in Petersburg to finalize the 3rd
division of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic. Most of Lithuania with
Vilnius went to Russia, Warsaw and the left bank of the Nemunas
River went to Prussia and Cracow went to Austria. King Stanislovas
Augustas of Poland was forced from his capital and moved to Grodno
(Gardinas).
(Voruta #27-28, 7/1996, p.5)(MC, 10/24/01)
1795 Oct 26, Napoleon
Bonaparte, second-in-command, became the army's commander when
General Paul Barras resigned his commission as head of France's Army
of the Interior to become head of the Directory.
(HN, 10/26/99)
1795 Oct 27, The United States
and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo (also known as Pinckney's
Treaty), which provided for free navigation of the Mississippi
River.
(AP, 10/27/97)
1795 Oct 31, John Keats
(d.1821), English poet, was born in London.
(WUD, 1994, p.781)(AP, 10/31/97)(HN, 10/31/98)
1795 Nov 2, James Knox Polk,
the 11th president of the United States, was born in Mecklenburg
County, N.C.
(AP, 11/2/97)(HN, 11/2/98)
1795 Nov 28, US paid $800,000
and a frigate as tribute to Algiers and Tunis.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1795 Dec 3, Rowland Hill,
introduced 1st adhesive postage stamp (1840), was born.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1795 Dec 4, Thomas Carlyle
(d.1881), English (Scot) essayist, critic and historian, friend of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born. His work included "The French
Revolution" and "Sartor Resartus." "A man doesn’t know what he
knows, until he knows what he doesn’t know." "No great man lives in
vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men."
(V.D.-H.K.p.400)(SFEC, 6/28/98, Z1 p.8)(AP,
7/2/98)(HN, 12/4/00)
1795 Dec 14, John Bloomfield
Jarvis, civil engineer, was born.
(HN, 12/14/00)
1795 William Blake painted his
"Elohim Creating Adam."
(SFC,1/21/97, p.A20)
c1795 Wilhelm von Kobell,
German artist, made his watercolor "Staff Officers Listening to the
Reading of the Day’s Orders."
(WSJ, 7/16/98, p.A16)
1795 Charles Wilson Peale
painted "The Staircase Group: Raphaelle and Titian Ramsay Peale." He
also did a portrait of Martha Washington. [see 1853]
(SFC, 1/25/97, p.E1)(SFEC, 7/27/97, DB p.35)
1795 Kitagawa Utamoro, Japanese
artist, made his woodblock print "Oiran" about this time.
(WSJ, 4/24/96, A-12)
1795 Hutton’s "Theory of the
Earth" appeared in book form, but did not impact the reading public
due to his stiff style.
(RFH-MDHP, p.70)(DD-EVTT, p.17)
1795 Beethoven had a terrible
bout of "continual diarrhea" while finishing his B-flat piano
concerto.
(WSJ, 5/29/96, p.A1)
1795 Samuel Adams and Paul
Revere laid the cornerstone for the Massachusetts State House in
Boston.
(AH, 10/07, p.73)
1795 The oldest tomato ketchup
recipe, according to Andrew F. Smith author of "Pure Ketchup: A
History of America’s National Condiment," was written in Worcester,
Mass.
(SFC, 7/3/96, zz-1,p.3)
1795 Jim Beam, US producer of
fine Bourbon whiskey was founded.
(Hem., Dec. '95, p.82)
1795 Franciscan priests first
visited the site of San Ysabel in San Diego County.
(SFE, 9/16/96, p.A15)
1795 Britain reinforced its
forces in St. Domingue. It was the largest expedition that had ever
left England.
(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.12)
1795 Lime juice was issued to
all British sailors to aid in prevention of scurvy. Captain James
Cook (d.1779) had prepared a paper detailing his groundbreaking work
against scurvy. He was awarded the gold Copley Medal-one of the
highest honors of England's Royal Society. Scurvy epidemics were
once common among sailors on long voyages. Cook was the first to
beat the problem, recognizing the need for an appropriate diet for
his sailors.
(HNQ, 7/21/98)
1795 The British won a battle
against the local Garifuna on St. Vincent’s Island.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.T11)
1795 In England the Coalport
Porcelain Works began operations about this time.
(SFC, 5/28/08,
p.G2)(www.thepotteries.org/allpotters/283.htm)
1795 In Nova Scotia, Canada,
local youths on Oak Island stumbled on an unusual depression that
appeared to lead to a shaft. For years treasure hunters dug down
into what became known as the “Money Pit.”
(WSJ, 8/31/05, p.B1)
1795 A set of remains that the
Spaniards believed to be of Christopher Columbus were dug up from
behind the main altar in the newly built cathedral of Santo Domingo
and shipped to a cathedral in Havana, where they remained until the
Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, when Spain brought them to
Seville. In 1877 workers digging inside the Santo Domingo cathedral
unearthed a leaden box containing 13 large bone fragments and 28
small ones. It was inscribed "Illustrious and distinguished male,
don Cristobal Colon." The Dominicans said these were the real
remains of Columbus and that the Spaniards must have taken the wrong
remains.
(SFC, 1/18/05, p.A8)
1795 In Paris the Place de la
Concorde, a public square designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1755,
was renamed Place de la Revolution.
(WSJ, 10/26/99,
p.A24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_de_la_Concorde)
1795 France adopted the metric
system. France had begun moving to base ten in the 16th century
after using a vigesimal, base 20, system.
(Econ, 11/5/11, p.62)
1795 Maruyama Okyo (b.1733),
Japanese painter based in Kyoto, died. His work included a 50 mile
scene in "Both Banks of the Yodo River."
(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)(SFC, 12/8/05, p.E1)
1795 The Loyal Orange
Institution was established in Portadown to proclaim Protestant
ascendancy.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, Z1 p.6)(SFC, 7/12/99, p.A19)
1795 The Persians invaded
Khurasan (province) in Afghanistan.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)
1795 Stanislaus Augustus
Poniatowski, the last king of Poland, was forced to abdicate.
(WSJ, 2/15/00, p.A24)
1795 Poland and Lithuania were
partitioned for the last time by Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
(Compuserve, Online Encyclopedia)
1795 The South African Cape was
first occupied by the British.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 563)
1795 In Tripoli Pasha Yusef
Karamanli deposed his older brother Hamet in a bloodless coup.
(ON, 10/06, p.8)
1795-1805 Elias Boudinot served as the director of
the US mint.
(WSJ, 8/7/98, p.W13)
1795-1818 The US flag had 15 stars and 15 stripes
over this period.
(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A11)
1795-1818 Carl Phillip Fohr, German artist.
(WSJ, 7/16/98, p.A16)
1795-1825 Joshua Johnson, the first professional
African-American portrait painter, plied his art in Baltimore.
(SFC, 5/26/96, T-7)
1795-1840 New York state and local governments
entered into 26 treaties and several purchase agreements with the
Oneida Indians to acquire all but 32 of 270,000 acres. Almost none
of the transactions were approved by Congress as required by a 1790
law.
(SFC, 1/13/99, p.A9)
1795-1874 Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish astronomer.
(WUD, 1994, p.644)
1795-1875 Christian Gottfried Ehlenberg, German
naturalist, known especially for his studies of infusoria, i.e.
microscopic organisms.
(OAPOC-TH, p.71)
1795-1921 The state of Poland was gobbled up by
Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Prussia.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1796 Jan 5, Samuel Huntington
(64), US judge (signed Declaration of Independence), died.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1796 Jan 8, Jean-Marie Collot
d'Herbois (46), French Revolution leader, died in exile. He was a
member of the Committee of Public Safety that ruled during The
Terror.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1796 Feb 17, Giovanni Pacini,
composer, was born.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1796 Feb 17, James Macpherson
(b.1736), Scottish poet, died. In 1761 he had announced the
discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal written by Ossian
(based on Fionn's son Oisín). He then published poems by
Ossian, the alleged blind 3rd century poet, which became very
popular and later exposed as a fraud.
(WSJ, 7/26/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Macpherson)
1796 Mar 1, The 1st National
Meeting was held in the Hague.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1796 Mar 9, Napoleon Bonaparte
(26) married Josephine Tascher de Beauharnais (32) in Paris.
(AP, 3/9/98)(HN, 3/9/98)
1796 Mar 19, Stephen Storace
(33), composer, died.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1796 Mar 31, Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe's "Egmont," premiered in Weimar.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1796 Apr 2, Haitian revolt
leader Toussaint L’Ouverture commanded French forces at Santo
Domingo.
(AP, 4/2/99)
1796 Apr 3, The 1st elephant
was shipped to the US from Bengal, India, by Broadway showman Jacob
Croninshield.
(SFC, 11/18/00, p.B3)
1796 Apr 13, The 1st elephant
arrived in US from India.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1796 Apr 13, Battle at
Millesimo, Italy: Napoleon beat the Austrians.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1796 Apr 22, Napoleon defeated
the Piedmontese at Battle of Mondovi.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1796 May 4, Horace Mann, "the
father of American Public Education" educator and author, was born.
(HN, 5/4/99)
1796 May 10, Napoleon Bonaparte
won a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in
Italy.
(HN, 5/10/99)
1796 May 14, English physician
Edward Jenner administered the first vaccination against smallpox to
his gardener's son, James Phipps (8). A single blister rose up on
the spot, but James later demonstrated immunity to smallpox. Jenner
actually used vaccinia, a close viral relation to smallpox. [see
July 21, 1721]
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.77)(AP, 5/14/08)
1796 May 19, A game protection
law was passed by Congress to restrict encroachment by whites on
Indian hunting grounds.
(DTnet 5/19/97)
1796 May 27, James S. McLean
patented his piano.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1796 Jun 1, Tennessee became
the 16th state of the Union.
(AP, 6/1/97)
1796 Jun 1, In accordance with
the Jay Treaty, all British troops were withdrawn from U.S. soil.
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1796 Jul 4, The 1st US
Independence Day celebration was held.
(Maggio)
1796 Jul 15, Thomas Bulfinch,
historian and mythologist (The Age of Fable), was born.
(HN, 7/15/01)
1796 Jul 16,
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (d.1875), French painter, was born. His
work included "Madame Corot" (1833-1835) and "Interrupted Reading"
(1870-1873). He led the way toward new forms of perspective and
composition that was later mined by impressionism and photography.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.E5)(WSJ, 10/25/96, p.A15)(WSJ,
3/25/97, p.A16)(MC, 7/16/02)
1796 Jul 21, Robert Burns
(b.1759), Scottish poet and a lyricist (Auld Lang Syne), died. In
2009 Robert Crawford authored “The Bard: Robert Burns.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns)(SSFC,
1/25/09, Books p.3)
1796 Jul 22, Cleveland, Ohio,
was founded by Gen. Moses Cleaveland. Moses Cleaveland came to where
the city of Cleveland now sits and surveyed the land. After three
months he returned to Connecticut. The city bears his name.
(SFC, 6/2/96, T10)(AP, 7/22/97)
1796 Jul 23, Franz Adolf
Berwald, Sweden, composer, was born.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1796 Jul 26, George Catlin,
American artist and author, was born.
(HN, 7/26/01)
1796 Jul, Mungo Park, Scottish
surgeon, reached the Niger River at Segou, (Mali). Mansong, the
African chief at Segou, gave Park enough money to return to the
coast. Park described his journey in his book: "Travels in the
Interior Districts of Africa."
(ON, 7/00, p.10)
1796 Sep 17, President George
Washington delivered his "Farewell Address" to Congress before
concluding his second term in office. Washington counseled the
republic in his farewell address to avoid "entangling alliances" and
involvement in the "ordinary vicissitudes, combinations, and
collision of European politics." Also "we may safely trust to
temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies."
(WSJ, 5/31/96, p.A10)(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A15)(HN,
9/17/98)
1796 Sep 19, President
Washington's farewell address was published. In it, America's first
chief executive advised, "Observe good faith and justice toward all
nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."
(AP, 9/19/97)
1796 Nov 3, John Adams was
elected president. [see Dec 7]
(MC, 11/3/01)
1796 Nov 7, Catharina II (67),
"the Great", tsarina of Russia (1762-96), died. [see Nov 17]
(MC, 11/7/01)
1796 Nov 17, Napoleon Bonaparte
defeated an Italian army near the Alpone River, Italy, in the Battle
of Arcole.
(HN, 11/17/98)(MC, 11/17/01)
1796 Nov 17, Catharine II (67),
empress of Russia known as Catharine the Great (1762-96), died. Over
her 69 years she had at least 12 lovers including Prince Potemkin.
[see Nov 7]
(MC, 11/17/01)(WSJ, 2/14/02, p.A18)
1796 Dec 7, Electors chose John
Adams to be the second president of the United States. [see Nov 3]
(AP, 12/7/97)
1796 Dec 18, The Baltimore
Monitor appeared as the 1st US Sunday newspaper.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1796 Dec 30, Jean-Baptiste
Lamoyne (45), composer, died.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1796 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon
(1758-1823), French artist, painted "Marie-Anne-Celestine Pierre de
Vellefrey," the portrait of a little girl.
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1796 Jane Austen began her
novel “Pride and Prejudice.” Its initial title was “first
Impressions.” It was finally published in 1830.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.104)(ON, 12/09, p.8)
1796 George Owen’s "History of
Pembrokeshire" was published. It was written in 1570 and sets forth
the principle of geological stratigraphy.
(RFH-MDHP, p.7)
1796 Immanuel Kant wrote his
"Perpetual Peace," advocating a world government.
(V.D.-H.K.p.317)
1796 The White House and
Congress engaged in its 1st struggle over background documents.
Pres. Washington denied a House request for documents on the Jay
Treaty. The documents had already been shared with the Senate.
(WSJ, 2/26/02, p.A24)
1796 Supporters of John Adams
in his victorious campaign against Thomas Jefferson, called
Jefferson "an atheist, anarchist, demagogue, coward, mountebank,
trickster, and Francomaniac."
(WSJ, 10/8/96, p.A22)
1796 Andrew Jackson was elected
as Tennessee’s 1st congressman.
(SSFC, 10/30/05, p.M3)
1796 In [France] Michael Thonet
was born in the Rhenish village of Boppard. He invented the classic
bent wood chair.
(WSJ, 12/4/97, p.A20)
c1796 Austrian numbered bank
accounts originated during the Hapsburg era.
(SFC, 6/13/96, p.C2)
1796 The British seized the
island of Sri Lanka, then under the name of Ceylon.
(SFC, 6/20/96, p.A8)
c1796 The Orange Order was
founded to commemorate the King William of Orange Protestant victory
over Catholic King James II.
(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A8)
1796 Mary Lamb (31) killed her
mother with a carving knife. England deemed her a lunatic and
released into the custody of her brother Charles. In 1806 they
published “Tales From Shakespeare.” In 2005 Susan Tyler Hitchcock
authored “Mad Mary Lamb.”
(WSJ, 2/18/05, p.W6)
1796 Cuba exported Havana
cigars to Britain.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
c1796 In Lithuania Elijah ben
Solomon Zalmen, the Gaon of Vilna, urged Jews to study grammar,
astronomy and other disciplines as well as the Torah. His writings
survived and in 1996 were being stored under controversy in a Roman
Catholic Church in Vilnius as property of the Lithuanian National
Library.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, p.A15)
1796 Hacienda Santa Teresa
began producing rum in Venezuela. In 1885 it was bought out by the
Vollmer family.
(WSJ, 11/10/04, p.A8)
c1796 The Tutsi Banyamulenge
arrived into Zaire.
(SFC, 10/10/96, p.A14)
1796-1797 Napoleon conquered northern Italy.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.9)
1796-1799 Brazilian Baroque sculptor Aleijadinho
(Antonio Francisco Lisboa), completed his greatest work: the
sculptures of Congonhas do Campo, 66 wooden images that include the
12 prophets.
(USA Today, OW, 4/22/96, p.10)
1796-1865 Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Canadian
jurist and humorist: "When a man is wrong and won't admit it, he
always gets angry."
(AP, 6/14/99)
1797 Jan 1, Albany became the
capital of New York state, replacing New York City.
(AP, 1/1/98)
1797 Jan 11, Francis Lightfoot
Lee (62), US farmer and signer Declaration of Independence, died.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1797 Jan 14, Napoleon Bonaparte
defeated Austrians at Rivoli in northern Italy.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1797 Jan 31, Franz
Schubert, Austrian composer, was born in Lichtenthal, Austria. His
works included the C Major Symphony and The Unfinished Symphony.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.B11)(AP, 1/31/98)(HN,
1/31/99)(MC, 1/31/02)
1797 Feb 4, Earthquake in
Quito, Ecuador, some killed 40,000 people. Riobamba was destroyed.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/13061c.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/btbdc)
1797 Feb 9, John Quincy Adams’
(Sr.) emerged victorious from America's first contested presidential
election.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1797 Feb 12, Haydn’s song "Gott
erhalte Franz den Kaiser," (popularized years later as "Deutschland
Uber Alles," by Nazis), premiered in Vienna.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1797 Feb 14, The Spanish fleet
was destroyed by the British under Admiral Jervis (with Nelson in
support) at the battle of Cape St. Vincent, off Portugal.
(HN, 2/14/99)
1797 Feb 15, Henry Steinway
(d.1871), German-American piano maker, was born in Germany as
Heinrich Steinweg. He move to the US in 1851. The name was
anglicized in 1864.
(WSJ, 7/15/06, p.P8)(http://tinyurl.com/qn6dy)
1797 Feb 19, Pope Pius VI ceded
papal territory to France in the Treaty of Tolentino.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.353)
1797 Feb 21, Trinidad, West
Indies surrendered to the British.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1797 Feb 23, Antoine d'Auvergne
(83), French opera composer (Coquette), died.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1797 Feb 26, Bank of England
issued 1st £1-note.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1797 Mar 2, The Directory of
Great Britain authorized vessels of war to board and seize neutral
vessels, particularly if the ships were American.
(HN, 3/2/99)
1797 Mar 2, Horace [Horatio]
Walpole (79), British horror writer, died.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1797 Mar 4, Vice-President John
Adams, elected President on December 7, to replace George
Washington, was sworn in. Adams soon selected Timothy Pickering as
his secretary of state. Pickering extended aid to Haitian slaves in
their ongoing revolt against French colonists. This policy was
reversed under Jefferson.
(HN, 3/4/99)(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.M6)
1797 Mar 13, Cherubini's opera
"Medee," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1797 Mar 22, Kaiser Wilhelm I,
German Emperor (1871-88), was born.
(HN, 3/22/97)
1797 Mar 25, John Winebrenner,
U.S. clergyman who founded the Church of God, was born.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1797 Mar 26, James Hutton,
geologist, died.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1797 Mar 28, Nathaniel Briggs
of New Hampshire patented a washing machine.
(AP, 3/28/97)
1797 Apr 14, Adolphe Thiers,
1st president of 3rd French Republic (1871-77), was born. [see Apr
18]
(MC, 4/14/02)
1797 Apr 18, Louis-Adolphe
Thiers, president of France, was born. [see Apr 14]
(MC, 4/18/02)
1797 Apr 18, France and Austria
signed a cease fire.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1797 Apr, A British armada of
68 vessels and 7,000 men under Scotsman Sir Ralph Abercromby
attacked San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Spanish defenses held. A
procession of women made up to look like soldiers caused the siege
to be called off. An annual parade later commemorated this event.
(HT, 4/97, p.34)(SFEC, 2/13/00, p.T1)
1797 May 2, A mutiny in the
British navy spread from Spithead to the rest of the fleet.
(HN, 5/2/99)
1797 May 10, The 1st American
Navy ship, the "United States," was launched.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1797 May 12, Johann Hermann
Kufferath, composer, was born.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1797 May 12, George Washington
addressed the Delaware chiefs and stated: "It is the duty of all
nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his
will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his
protection and favor."
(WSJ, 6/26/01, p.A23)
1797 May 18, Frederik Augustus
II, King of Saxon (1836-54), was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1797 Jun 2, 1st ascent of
"Great Mountain" (4,622') in Adirondack, NY, was by C. Broadhead.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1797 Jun 11, Padre Fermin
Francisco de Lasuen and a few Spanish soldiers established Mission
San Jose on a little creek and grove of trees that they called
Alameda. It was the 14th of 21 California missions. It was the end
of a way of life for the local Ohlone Indians.
(SFC, 6/12/97, p.A17)
1797 Jun 17, Aga Mohammed Khan,
cruel ruler of Persia, was castrated and killed.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1797 Jun 24, Mission San Juan
Bautista, the 15th in California, was founded in the lands of the
Mutsun Indians. Father Fermin de Lasuen blessed the future site of
Mission San Juan Bautista in California.
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A16)(SJSVB, 6/24/96, p.41)(SFC,
9/3/97, p.A17)
1797 Jun, In London, England,
Hatchards bookstore on Piccadilly was founded.
(Hem., 5/97, p.99)
1797 Jul 7, The US House of
Representatives exercised its constitutional power of impeachment,
and voted to charge Senator William Blount of Tennessee with "a high
misdemeanor, entirely inconsistent with his public duty and trust as
a Senator." Blount had financial problems which led him to enter
into a conspiracy with British officers to enlist frontiersmen and
Cherokee Indians to assist the British in conquering parts of
Spanish Florida and Louisiana.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1797 Jul 9, Edmund Burke
(b.1729), Irish-born British statesman, parliament leader, died. His
writing included “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” 1790.
(WUD, 1994
p.198)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke)
1797 Jul 10, 1st US frigate,
the "United States," was launched in Philadelphia.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1797 Jul 25, Presidente Fermin
Francisco de Lasuen founded Mission San Miguel Archangel, the 16th
California mission. He took possession of the land on behalf of
Viceroy Branciforte. The mission facilitated travel between Mission
San Luis Obispo and Mission San Antonio.
(SB, 3/28/02)
1797 Aug 30, Mary
Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley (d.1851), the creator of
"Frankenstein," or the Modern Prometheus, was born in London. Her
mother died in childbirth.
(AHD, p.1193)(AP, 8/30/97)(HN, 8/30/98)(Econ,
2/26/05, p.84)
1797 Sep 6, William "Extra
Billy" Smith, Confederacy (Confederate Army), was born.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1797 Sep 20, The US frigate
Constitution (Old Ironsides) was launched in Boston. [see Oct 21]
(MC, 9/20/01)
1797 Oct 9, In Lithuania
Elijahu ben Solomon Zalman (b.1720), the Great Gaon of Vilnius,
died. He was one of the most influential Rabbinic authorities since
the Middle Ages.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_Gaon)
1797 Oct 16, Lord Cardigan,
leader of the famed Light Brigade which was decimated in the Crimean
War, who eventually had a jacket named after him, was born.
(HN, 10/16/98)
1797 Oct 21, The 44-gun
204-foot U.S. Navy frigate USS Constitution, also known as Old
Ironsides, was launched in Boston's harbor. It was never defeated in
42 battles. 216 crew members set sail again in 1997 for its 200th
birthday. [see Sep 20]
(AP, 10/21/97)(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A1)(SFC,10/22/97,
p.A6)
1797 Oct 22, French balloonist
Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first parachute descent, landing
safely from a height of about 3,000 feet; at some 2,200 feet over
Paris.
(AP, 10/22/97)(HN, 10/22/98)
1797 Nov 19, Sojourner Truth
(d.1883), abolitionist and women's rights advocate, was born.
"Religion without humanity is a poor human stuff."
(HN, 11/19/98)(AP, 10/29/00)
1797 Nov 29, Domenico Gaetano
Maria Donizetti, composer (Lucia di Lamermoor, l'Elisir d'Amore),
was born.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1797 Dec 13, Heinrich Heine
(d.1856), German lyric poet, critic, satirist and journalist, was
born. His works included "Trip to the Hartz Mountains" and "Germany,
a Winter Tale." "In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers
are our fortresses."
(AHD, p.611)(AP, 7/18/97)(HN, 12/13/99)
1797 Dec 17, Joseph Henry, US
scientist, inventor, pioneer of electromagnetism, was born. [see Dec
18]
(MC, 12/17/01)
1797 Dec 18, Joseph Henry,
inventor, scientist and the first director of the Smithsonian Inst.,
was born. [see Dec 17]
(WSJ, 12/17/97, p.A20)
1797 Dec 29, John Wilkes
(b.1725), British journalist and politician, died. He opposed King
George’s policies in Massachusetts.
(WSJ, 8/31/05,
p.B1)(www.eastlondonhistory.com/wilkes.htm)
1797 Franz Kruger (d.1857),
German Biedermeier artist of cityscapes and rural genre scenes, was
born.
(SSFC, 1/27/02, p.C7)
1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
authored his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
(CW, Winter 04, p.17)
1797 John Frere published his
paper "The Beginnings of Paleolithic Archaeology." It described his
finding in 1790 Acheulean hand axes associated with the large bones
of unknown animals (actually elephants).
(RFH-MDHP, p.81)
1797 Mrs. Gannett of Mass.
(1760-1827), born as Deborah Sampson, authored her memoir. She had
fought in the American Revolution as a man under the alias Robert
Shurtleff. In 2004 Alfred F. Young authored "Masquerade: The Life
and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier.”
(www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/sampson.html)(SSFC, 4/11/04,
p.M4)
1797 The first recorded
performance of an English-language drama, the tragedy Douglas, west
of the Alleghenies took place here at Washington, Kentucky.
(HNQ, 8/8/99)
1797 In San Jose the first
Juzgado (courthouse) was constructed. The Spanish Commandante Lt.
Jose Moraga built a 1-story, 3-room adobe structure to house the
jail, assembly hall and seat of government for the Pueblo de San
Jose de Guadalupe that served until 1850.
(SFC, 7/14/97, p.A15,16)
1797 Father Juan Norberto de
Santiago arrived in the area of Temecula in Riverside County, Ca.,
to build a mission and convert the Pechanga Indians (renamed Luiseno
Indians by the Spanish).
(SSFC, 5/23/04, p.D5)
1797 James T. Callender,
journalist, published charges concerning the alleged financial
misdeeds of Alexander Hamilton. The information came from letters
that Hamilton provided to interrogators around 1792 concerning funds
paid to James Reynolds to keep quiet an affair with Reynold’s wife.
The letters were passed from James Monroe to Thomas Jefferson, who
passed them to Callender. Hamilton published a 28,000-word defense,
Observations on Certain Documents, that revealed his relationship
with Maria Reynolds and his payment of hush money.
(WSJ, 11/19/98, p.A12)(ON, 10/05, p.6)
1797 Thomas Jefferson (53)
began serving as US Vice President. He was also elected president of
the American Philosophical Society and continued to 1815.
(www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/private-banks-quotation)
1797 John Anderson, a Scottish
farm manager, convinced George Washington that distilling whiskey
would make money. In a six-week season each spring, Washington’s men
netted about a million shad and herring from the Potomac River. The
catch was then salted, packed in barrels, and exported. His
diversified farming was less successful, largely because of his long
absences from Mount Vernon.
(AM, 9/01, p.80)(HNQ, 8/30/02)
1797 A major fire in Savannah,
Georgia destroyed two-thirds of the wood buildings from the pioneer
period.
(SFC, 6/25/95, p.T-7)
1797 Australia’s first coal
mining began at Newcastle.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.39)
1797 The Bank of England
suspended the convertibility of its notes to gold in order to better
finance Britain’s war with France. This continued to 1821.
(Econ, 11/5/11, p.92)
1797 Some 5,000 black Carib
Indians, also known as Garifuna or Garinagu, were exiled from St.
Vincent Island to Roatan Island off of Honduras. The Garifuna
defined themselves not by country or territory but by language and
culture.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.T11)(SFC, 4/27/98, p.A6)
1797 French forces attacked
Britain at the port of Fishguard. The event was depicted in the
tapestry "The Last Invasion of Brittain."
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T5)
1797 In France Henry-Louis
Pernod began to manufacture absinthe. The drink was made with fennel
and aniseed and the oil of wormwood which contained thujone, a
poisonous ketone.
(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)
1797 The wine bottles of
Chateau Lafite that date back to this year are recorked every 25
years to safeguard the wine and prevent deterioration caused by
oxidation through decayed corks.
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.A12)
1797 Gammarelli was founded
under Pope Pius VI as tailors to the clergy.
(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.I4)
1797 Venice, the city-state
that liked to call itself La Serenissima, lost its independence and
its empire. Ludovico Manin, the 120th doge of Venice, surrendered to
Napoleon. A few months later Napoleon traded Venice to Austria which
ruled it until 1866.
(WSJ, 1/9/97, p.A8)(SFEC, 8/24/97, p.T1)(WSJ,
9/19/97, p.A13)
1797 The Jewish ghetto in
Venice was destroyed following the Napoleon’s invasion of Italy.
This began the gradual liberation of the country’s ghettos.
(SFC, 12/2/08, p.E1)
1797 There was a naval battle
at Cape St. Vincent off the SW tip of Portugal.
(WUD, 1994, p.1412)
1797-1801 John Adams, 2nd president of the US was
in office. It was during his term that France and Britain, engaged
in war with each other, insisted on the right to seize American
ships. When the US protested French diplomats demanded bribes and a
loan of $10 mil to stop the acts of piracy. Adams published the
letters of the diplomats with the letters X,Y,Z (hence the X,Y,Z
Affair) for the names of the diplomats. This enraged the populace
and the country braced for war and called Washington in from Mt.
Vernon to lead the army against France. Captain Thomas Truxtom
captured a French frigate and defeated another French frigate in a
sea battle and the French backed down. It was under Adams that the
Alien and Sedition Acts were passed. These acts allowed the
President sole discretion to banish aliens from the country and jail
editors for writing against the President or Congress. This was
vehemently opposed by Jefferson who led the Southern Republicans to
adopt a resolution declaring that a state had the right to nullify a
law believed to be unconstitutional.
(AHD, 1971, p.14)(A&IP, Miers, p.21)
1797-1815 Thomas Jefferson, the third president of
the United States, served as president of the American Philosophical
Society. A philosopher-statesman of the Enlightenment, Jefferson
drafted the Declaration of Independence, was George Washington’s
first Secretary of State and vice-president under John Adams. He was
born in Virginia on April 13, 1743, and died on July 4, 1826.
(HNQ, 9/24/99)
1797-1849 Mary Lyon, American educator: "There is
nothing in the universe that I fear but that I shall not know all my
duty, or shall fail to do it."
(AP, 4/27/98)
1797-1851 Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
(d.1851), English novelist, author of Frankenstein. Her mother, also
Mary Wollstonecraft, died in childbirth of puerperal fever. Her
death prompted Godwin to publish her memoirs.
(AHD, p.1193)(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.29)
1797-1856 Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, a pioneer
collector of North American spiders. He was a skilled painter and
has left some 90 intricately executed watercolors of spiders. He
published descriptions in the Journal of the Boston Society of
Natural History from 1842-1850.
(NH, 7/96, p.74,75)
1797-1858 Utagawa Hiroshige, Japanese artist, made
numerous color woodblock prints.
(SFC, 12/26/98, p.C1)
1797-1863 Theophile Bra, French academic sculptor.
(SFC, 12/19/98, p.C18)
1797-1875 Sir Charles Lyell, British geologist. He
wrote the "Principles of Geology" (1830-33) and had a profound
influence upon the thinking of Charles Darwin.
(OAPOC-TH, p.71)
1798 Jan 1, Joseph Lancaster
(19) opened his 1st low cost school in London, England, aimed at
educating the children of poor. In 1803 he published the booklet
“Improvements in Education, As It Respects The Industrious Classes
Of the Community…”
(ON, 3/06, p.9)
1798 Jan 8, The 11th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution was declared in effect by President John
Adams nearly three years after its ratification by the states; it
prohibited a citizen of one state from suing another state in
federal court.
(AP, 1/8/08)
1798 Jan 22, Lewis Morris (71),
US farmer (signed Declaration of Independence), died.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1798 Jan 30, A brawl broke out
in the House of Representatives in Philadelphia. Matthew Lyon of
Vermont spat in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut, who
responded by attacking him with a hickory walking stick. Lyon was
re-elected congressman while serving a jail sentence for violating
the Sedition Acts of 1798.
(AP, 1/30/98)(SFC, 4/27/00, p.A5)(WSJ, 10/29/04,
p.W10)
1798 Feb 15, The first serious
fist fight occurred in Congress.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1798 Feb 20, Pope Pius VI fled
Rome to Siena. He was later arrested and deported 1st to Florence
and then to France.
(PTA, 1980,
p.500)(www.zum.de/whkmla/region/italy/papalstate17891799.html)
1798 Mar 4, Catholic women were
force to do penance for kindling a Sabbath fire for Jews.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1798 Mar 9, Dr. George Balfour
became 1st naval surgeon in the US Navy.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1798 Mar 13, Abigail Powers
Fillmore, First Lady, was born.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1798 Mar 26, Tunis, under the
rule of Bey Hamuda Pasha, signed a treaty of peace and friendship
with the US following negotiations with William Eaton. The American
Revolutionary War veteran had been recently appointed consul to the
North African kingdom.
(ON, 10/06, p.7)
1798 Mar 29, Republic of
Switzerland formed.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1798 Apr 3, Charles B. Wilkes
(d.1877), American rear admiral and explorer, was born. In Jan,
1840, Wilkes coasted along part of the Antarctic barrier from about
150 degrees east to 108 degrees east, the areas that was
subsequently named Wilkes Land.
(WUD, 1994, p.1634)(HNQ, 1/12/99)
1798 Apr 7, Territory of
Mississippi was organized.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1798 Apr 19, Franz Joseph
Glaser, composer, was born.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1798 Apr 26, Ferdinand Eugene
Delacroix, French painter, lithograph, etcher (Journal), was born.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1798 Apr 28, Joseph Haydn's
oratorio "The Creation" was rehearsed in Vienna, Austria, before an
invited audience.
(AP, 4/29/07)
1798 Apr 30, US Department of
Navy formed.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1798 May 2, The black General
Toussaint L'ouverture forced British troops to agree to evacuate the
port of Santo Domingo. After 5 years of fighting over 60% of 20,000
British troops were buried on St. Domingue.
(HN, 5/2/99)(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.12)(AP, 5/30/04)
1798 May 10, George Vancouver
(40), British explorer, (Voyage of Discovery), died.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1798 May 19, A French armada of
335 ships carrying nearly 40,000 men set sail for Alexandria, Egypt,
which Napoleon planned to conquer. In 2008 Paul Strathern authored
“Napoleon in Egypt.”
(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1798 May 24, Believing that a
French invasion of Ireland was imminent, Irish nationalists rose up
against the British occupation. It was put down by the Orange
yeomanry who were enlisted by the government to restore peace. The
slogan "Croppies lie down" originated here after some of the rebel
Catholics had their hair cropped in the French revolutionary manner.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, p.A15)(HN, 5/24/99)
1798 May 26, British killed
about 500 Irish insurgents at the Battle of Tara.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1798 Jun 4, Giovanni Jacopo
Casanova (b.1725), fabled Italian seducer, adventurer, spy,
librarian, died of prostate cancer in Dux, Bohemia. While at Dux he
authored his memoirs: “History of My Life.” The standard English
edition runs over 3,600 pages. In 2008 Ian Kelly authored “Casanova:
Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy.”
(www.1911encyclopedia.org/Giovanni_Jacopo_Casanova_de_Seingalt)(WSJ,
10/24/08, p.W5)
1798 Jun 11, Napoleon Bonaparte
took the island of Malta.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1798 Jun 13, Mission San Luis
Rey [in California] was founded.
(HFA, '96, p.32)
1798 Jul 1, Napoleon Bonaparte
took Alexandria, Egypt. In 1962 J.C. Herold authored "Bonaparte in
Egypt." A corps of 150 civilian artists and scientists traveled with
Napoleon’s troops to Egypt. In 2007 Nina Burleigh authored “Mirage:
Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.”
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.E3)(HN, 7/1/98)(ON, 12/99,
p.4)(SFC, 12/14/07, p.E3)
1798 Jul 2, John Fitch,
American inventor, clockmaker, died.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1798 Jul 7, Napoleon
Bonaparte's army began its march towards Cairo, Egypt, from
Alexandria.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1798 Jul 11, The US Marine
Corps was formally re-established by a congressional act. US Pres.
John Adams signed legislation that established the US Marine Band,
composed of 32 drummers and fifers. Continental marines had existed
during the Revolutionary War, but had since been discontinued.
(SFC, 5/20/96, p.A-3)(HNQ, 8/1/99)(AP, 7/11/08)
1798 Jul 13, English poet
William Wordsworth visited the ruins of Tintern Abbey.
(HN, 7/13/01)
1798 Jul 14, The Sedition Act,
the last of four pieces of legislation known as the Alien and
Sedition Acts, was passed by Congress, making it unlawful to write,
publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S.
president and the U.S. government, among other things. Violations
were made punishable by up to 2 years in jail and a fine of $2,000.
(AP, 7/14/97)(HN, 7/14/98)(WSJ, 10/29/04, p.W10)
1798 Jul 14, 1st direct federal
tax in US states took effect on dwellings, land and slaves.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1798 Jul 16, The Marine
Hospital Service was established in the Department of the Treasury
under provisions of an act (1 Stat. 605) authorizing marine
hospitals for the care of American merchant seamen. In 1902 it was
redesignated the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service by an act
of July 1, 1902 (32 Stat. 712),
(www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/090.html)
1798 Jul 16, US Public Health
Service formed and a US Marine Hospital was authorized.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1798 Jul 21, Napoleon Bonaparte
defeated Murad Bey and his Arab Mameluke warriors on the outskirts
of Cairo at the Battle of the Pyramids, thus becoming the master of
Egypt.
(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1798 Jul 22, Napoleon captured
Cairo, Egypt.
(PC, 1992, p.354)
1798 Aug 1, Admiral Horatio
Nelson routed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile at Aboukir
Bay, Egypt. Nelson's fleet of 14 ships led the attack on Napoleon's
fleet in Abu Qir Bay, capturing six and destroying seven of the 17
French vessels. The flagship of Napoleon's fleet, L'Orient, sank in
the battle. It was uncovered by a French team in 1998. More than
1,500 Frenchmen and 200 British soldiers reportedly died in the sea
battle.
(AP, 4/19/05)
1798 Aug 21, Jules Michelet,
French historian who wrote the 24-volume "Historie de France," was
born.
(HN, 8/21/98)
1798 Sep 2, The Maltese people
revolted against the French occupation, forcing the French troops to
take refuge in the citadel of Valetta in Malta.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1798 Sep 11, Franz E Neumann,
German mineralogist, mathematician and physicist, was born.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1798 Oct 12, The play
"Wallenstein's Camp" by Friedrich von Schiller premiered in Weimar.
It was set in 3 parts during the 30 Years War as Gen. Albrecht von
Wallenstein fought for Catholic Emp. Ferdinand II.
(www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_02-06/2005/051-2_Schiller_friends.html)(Econ,
8/25/07, p.78)
1798 Nov 1, Benjamin Lee
Guinness, Irish brewer and Dublin mayor, was born.
(HN, 11/1/00)(MC, 11/1/01)
1798 Nov 4, Congress agreed to
pay a yearly tribute to Tripoli, considering it the only way to
protect U.S. shipping.
(HN, 11/4/98)
1798 Nov 16, Kentucky became
the 1st state to nullify an act of Congress.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1798 Nov 16, The British
boarded the U.S. frigate Baltimore and impressed a number of crewmen
as alleged deserters, a practice which contributed to the War of
1812.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1798 Nov 30, Friedrich
Fleischmann (32), composer, died.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1798 Dec 4, Luigi Galvani (61),
Italian anatomist and physicist, died.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1798 Dec 14, David Wilkinson of
Rhode Island patented a nut and bolt machine.
(MC, 12/14/01)
1798 Dec 17, The 1st
impeachment trial against a US senator, William Blount of Ten.,
began.
(MC, 12/17/01)
1798 Dec 24, Russia and England
signed a Second anti-French Coalition.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1798 Eugene Delacroix (d.1863),
French artist, was born. His work included the "Baron Schwiter."
(WUD, 1994, p.381)(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A11)
1798 Thomas Robert Malthus
authored his “An Essay on the Principle of Population As it affects
the future improvement of society with remarks on the speculations
of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers.” His forecast for a
population crash was based on the calculation that it was impossible
to improve wheat yields as fast as people make babies. His 2nd
edition in 1803 introduced the idea of moral restraint.
(www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Malthus/essay2.htm)(Econ,
12/24/05, p.29)(Econ, 5/17/08, p.94)
1798 Samuel Solomon published
“Guide to Health or, advice to both sexes with an essay on a certain
disease, seminal weakness, and a destructive habit of private
nature. Also an address to parents, tutors, and guardians of youth.
To which one added, observations on the use and abuse of cold
bathing” gave advice on topics including abortion, onanism, asthma,
barrenness and bleeding. The main remedy for all ailments was Dr
Solomon’s "Cordial Balm of Gilead."
(http://tinyurl.com/2rrttq)(www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2001/v/n23/005993ar.html)
1798 Judith Sargent Murray
wrote "The Gleaner," a collection of essays pleading for changes in
women’s education and alternatives to marriage.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.29)
1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and William Wordsworth published "Lyrical Ballads."
(WSJ, 4/15/99, p.A20)
1798 Beethoven completed his
piano sonata, Op. 10, No 3, begun in 1796.
(WSJ, 8/17/00, p.A20)
1798 Pres. John Adams stated:
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It
is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(WSJ, 6/26/01, p.A23)
1798 US Vice President
Thomas Jefferson and Virginia Congressman James Madison secretly
wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Jefferson became the
active head of Republican Party. The Virginia Senate agreed to the
Virginia Resolution on Dec 24.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_and_Virginia_Resolutions)
1798 In the Kentucky
Resolutions Thomas Jefferson protested the Alien and Sedition Acts
and maintained that "free government is founded in jealousy, not in
confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes
limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to
trust with power."
(WSJ, 5/18/95, p.A-14)
1798 America’s first national
survey of the housing stock was completed by the federal government
in order to set property values for taxation.
(AH, 4/07, p.48)
1798 The US Supreme Court ruled
in the Calder vs. Bull case that Congress and the states could not
pass any "ex post facto law."
(SFC, 5/2/00, p.A3)
1798 Vermont Congressman
Matthew Lyon (1749-1822), Irish-born former indentured servant,
became the 1st person indicted under the Sedition Act of 1918. Lyon
was convicted of sedition after he printed his honest opinion of
Pres. John Adams. Vermont re-elected Lyon to Congress while he
served his jail time. He later represented Kentucky (1803-1811) in
the US House of Representatives.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.B3)(WSJ, 10/29/04, p.W10)
1798 American seamen began
paying 20 cents a month for a pension and hospitalization fund. US
Navy service records date back to this time.
(AH, 2/06,
p.12)(www.archives.gov/research/order/vets-records.html)
1798 The first big US bank
robbery was at the Philadelphia Carpenter's Hall, which was leased
to the Bank of Philadelphia.
(SFEC, 2/20/00, Z1 p.2)
c1798 The Peabody Essex Museum
was founded in Marblehead, Mass., by 22 sea captains to preserve the
exotic treasures they brought back from their voyages. It is the
oldest museum in the US.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T9)
1798 Henry Cavendish, English
chemist, came up with a reliable measure of the gravitational
constant, G. His value was 0.000000000067 cubic meters per kilogram
per second squared.
(NH, 11/1/04, p.20)
1798 Benjamin Thompson
disproved the caloric theory of heat proposed by Antoine Lavoisier.
Thompson went on to marry Lavoisier's widow.
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W12)
1798 Edmund Fanning, an
American explorer, 1st charted Tabuaeran coral atoll (part of the
Gilbert Islands, Kiribati). Fanning Island Plantations Ltd. owned
the island through the 1800s and exported coconuts.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.C22)
c1798 In Germany Aloys Hirt,
founder of the Berlin Academy of Art, laid plans for an art museum
to present art in a systematic fashion. This led to the 1830 Altes
Museum.
(WSJ, 7/29/98, p.A13)
1798 Napoleon annexed Egypt.
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.E3)
1798 Ferdinand IV, King of
Naples, fled in front of advancing French troops. He took with him
some 20 art works from the Farnese collection, which included
“Antea” by Parmigianino.
(Econ, 1/26/08, p.82)
1798 Napoleon expelled the
Knights of Malta from their base in Malta. The Sovereign Military
Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem (SMOM), without citizens
or territory, became a permanent observer at the UN in 1994.
(WSJ, 6/28/01, p.A1)
1798 Henri Jomini (d.1869),
began his military career volunteering his services to the French
Army. With the peace of Amiens, he left the army and wrote his
"Treatise of Grand Military Operations." The book impressed Napoleon
enough to have Jomini appointed a staff colonel in 1805, Jomini
having volunteered again in 1804. Jomini rose to become chief of
staff under Marshall Ney, but left the French army to fight for
Russia in 1813 as a general and aide-de-camp of Alexander I.
(HNQ, 9/1/00)
1798 Oct, In Saint-Domingue
(later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture negotiated a secret peace
agreement in which the British renounced all claim to the colony’s
lands in exchange for the right to trade freely on an equal basis
with France.
(ON, 2/10, p.7)
1798 Lord Edward Fitzgerald, an
Irish rebel, was killed. He had fathered a daughter with Elizabeth
Linley (d.1792), the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
(WSJ, 11/20/98, p.W6)
1798-1857 Auguste Comte, the French founder of the
philosophical system of Positivism.
(WUD, 1994, p.303)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)
1798-1868 Jacques Boucher Crevecoeur de Perthes,
French customs official, collected bones and chipped implements at
Abbeville and Amiens that he recognized as the remains of man’s
handiwork.
(RFH-MDHP, p.95)
1798-1993 Instances of use of US forces abroad, a
report of 234 instances over this period other than peace time use.
http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm
1779 Jan 5, Stephen Decatur,
U.S. naval hero during actions against the Barbary pirates and the
War of 1812, was born.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1799 Feb 9, The USS
Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente off the coast
of Wisconsin.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1799 Feb 10, Napoleon Bonaparte
left Cairo, Egypt, for Syria, at the head of 13,000 men.
(AP, 2/10/99)
1799 Jan 14, Eli Whitney
received a government contract for 10,000 muskets.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1799 Jan 25, Eliakim Spooner of
Vermont received the 1st US patent for a seeding machine.
(MC, 1/25/02)
1799 Feb 7, China’s Emperor
Qianlong (b.1711) died. He was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led
Qing Dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China
(1735-1796).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor)
1799 Feb 15, The 1st US printed
ballots were authorized in Pennsylvania.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1799 Mar 2, Congress
standardized US weights and measures.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1799 Mar 6, Napoleon captured
Jaffa, Palestine.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1799 Mar 7, In Palestine,
Napoleon captured the Turkish citadel at Jaffa and his men massacred
more than 2,000 Albanian prisoners. [see Mar 26] The prisoners were
massacred because Napoleon claimed that he could not feed them.
About this time bubonic plague broke out among his troops.
(HN, 3/7/99)(ON, 12/99, p.2)
1799 Mar 8, Simon Cameron,
political boss, was born.
(HN, 3/8/01)
1799 Mar 12, Austria declared
war on France.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1799 Mar 17, Napoleon Bonaparte
and his army reached the Mediterranean seaport of St. Jean d'Acra,
only to find British warships ready to break his siege of the town.
(HN, 3/17/00)
1799 Mar 19, Joseph Haydn’s
"Die Schopfung," premiered in Vienna.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1799 Mar 19, Napoleon Bonaparte
began the siege of Acre ( later Akko, Israel), which was defended by
Turks.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1799 Mar 26, Napoleon Bonaparte
captured Jaffa, Palestine. [see Mar 7]
(HN, 3/26/99)
1799 Mar 28, NY state abolished
slavery.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1799 Mar, Napoleon moved on to
the Turkish fortress at Acre. His 2 month siege was unsuccessful. In
1999 N. Schur authored Napoleon in the Holy Land."
(ON, 12/99, p.2,4)
1799 Apr 14, Napoleon called
for establishing Jerusalem for Jews.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1799 Apr 20, Friedrich von
Schiller's "Wallensteins Tod," premiered in Weimar.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1799 Apr 27, In Saint-Domingue
(later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture signed a treaty of
friendship with the US under Pres. John Adams.
(ON, 2/10, p.8)
1799 May 4, In India Tipu
Sultan was killed in a battle against 5,000 British soldiers who
stormed and razed his capital, Seringapatanam. British forces
defeated the sultan of Mysore at the Battle of Seringapatam.
(www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080048779)(SSFM,
4/1/01, p.42)
1799 May 17, Napoleon's army
began its overland retreat from Acre. The march to Jaffa took one
week.
(ON, 12/99, p.4)
1799 May 18, Pierre de
Beaumarchais (b.1732), French inventor and dramatist, died. In 2007
Hugh Thomas authored “Beaumarchais in Seville.” In 2009 Susan
Emanuel translated to English “Beaumarchais: A Biography” by
Maurice Lever (d.2006).
(www.theatrehistory.com/french/beaumarchais001.html)(SFC, 5/30/09,
p.E2)
1799 May 23, Thomas Hood
(d.1845), English poet, composer (Song of the Shirt), was born. "I
saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence,
listening To silence."
(AP, 9/23/98)(MC, 5/23/02)
1799 May 28, Napoleon ordered
the retreat of all troops back to Egypt from Jaffa. The march lasted
17 days with one week to cross the Sinai.
(ON, 12/99, p.4)
1799 May 20, Honore de Balzac,
French novelist, was born in Tours, France. He is considered the
founder of the realistic school and wrote "The Human Comedy" and
"Lost Illusions."
(AP, 5/20/99)(HN, 5/20/99)
1799 May 20, Napoleon Bonaparte
ordered a withdrawal from his siege of St. Jean d'Acre in Egypt.
Plague had run through his besieging French forces, forcing a
retreat. Napoleon, in pursuance of his scheme for raising a Syrian
rebellion against Turkish domination, appeared before Acre, but
after a siege of two months (March–May) was repulsed by the Turks.
(HN,
5/20/00)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre,_Israel)
1799 May 26, Alexander Pushkin,
Russian poet (d.1837), was born (OC). His bicentennial in Russia was
celebrated Jun 6,1999. [see Jun 6]
(HFA, '96, p.30)(AHD, p.1062)(SFC, 6/3/99, p.C2)
1799 May, In Saint-Domingue
(later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture signed a trade agreement
with Britain. Certain elements were kept secret in order not to
alienate France.
(ON, 2/10, p.8)
1799 Jun 6, Patrick Henry,
American orator, died at Red Hill Plantation, Va. Henry urged the
restoration of the property and rights of Loyalists after the
Revolutionary War. He believed that Loyalists would make good
citizens of the new republic. Henry also bitterly opposed the
Constitution as a threat to the liberties of the people and rights
of the states. He believed that once the war had been won, a central
authority was no longer needed. In 1998 Henry Mayer (d.2000)
authored a biography of Patrick Henry.
(SFC, 7/28/00, p.D5)(HN, 7/12/02)(AP, 6/6/08)
1799 Jun 6, Alexander Pushkin
(d.1837), Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature,
was born (NC). He was the descendant of an Abyssinian slave of royal
blood who was given to Peter the Great as a gift. His works included
"Boris Godunov," "Eugene Onegin," and "The Queen of Spades." [see
May 26]
(HFA, '96, p.30)(AHD, p.1062)(SFC, 6/3/99,
p.C2)(HN, 6/6/99)(WSJ, 7/15/99, p.A16)
1799 Jun 17, Napoleon Bonaparte
incorporated Italy into his empire.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1799 Jun 22, In France a
scientific congress adopted the length of the meter as one
ten-millionth of the distance along the surface of the Earth from
its equator to its pole, in a curved line of latitude passing
through the center of Paris. The congress used data gathered by
astronomers, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and
Pierre-François-André Mechain. The established meter
proved to be .2 millimeters too short, due to incorrect latitude
data gathered by Mechain.
(http://etherwave.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/hump-day-history-the-length-of-the-meter/)(ON,
2/09, p.9)
1799 Jul 3, In Saint-Domingue
(later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture formally declared Gen.
Andre Rigaud, the leader of a revolutionary army in the south and
west of Saint-Domingue, a rebel.
(ON, 2/10, p.8)
1799 Jul 11, An Anglo-Turkish
armada bombarded Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops in Alexandria Egypt.
The attack was ineffective.
(HN, 7/11/00)
1799 Jul 17, Ottoman forces,
supported by the British, captured Aboukir, Egypt from the French.
(HN, 7/17/99)
1799 Jul 25, On his way back
from Syria, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Ottomans at Aboukir,
Egypt.
(HN, 7/25/98)
1800 Jul 29, In Saint-Domingue
(later Haiti) Gen. Andre Rigaud, defeated by Gen. Dessalines, set
sail for France.
(ON, 2/10, p.9)
1799 Jul 30, The French
garrison at Mantua, Italy surrendered to the Austrians.
(HN, 7/30/98)
1799 Aug 2, Jacques-Etienne
Montgolfier (54), balloonist, died.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1779 Aug 10, Louis XVI of
France freed the last remaining serfs on royal land.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1799 Aug 16, Vincenzo
Manfredini (b.1737), Italian composer, died.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1799 Aug 22, Napoleon slipped
through the British blockade of the Egyptian coast and returned to
France.
(ON, 12/99, p.4)
1799
Aug 29, Pope Pius VI (b.1717) died in Valence, France.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/12131a.htm)
1799 Sep 1, Bank of Manhattan
Company opened in NYC. It was the forerunner to Chase Manhattan.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1799 Oct 7, Napoleon landed at
Saint Raphael, 50 miles east of Toulon.
(ON, 1/02, p.11)
1799 Oct 16, Napoleon arrived
in Paris and met with government leaders.
(ON, 1/02, p.11)
1799 Oct 24, Carl Ditters von
Dittersdorf (59), Austrian composer, died.
(MC, 10/24/01)
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.
(www.milhist.dk/weapons/oldenbur/oldenbur.htm)
1799 Nov 9, Napoleon Bonaparte
participated in a coup and declared himself dictator, 1st consul, of
France.
(HN, 11/9/98)(MC, 11/9/01)
1799 Nov 22, Baroness van
Dorth, organist, was executed.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1799 Nov 29, Amos Bronson
Alcott, US educator and poet (Concord Days), was born.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1799 Dec 10, The metric system
was established in France.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1799 Dec 12, Two days
before his death, George Washington composed his last letter, to
Alexander Hamilton, his aide-de-camp during the Revolution and later
his Secretary of the Treasury. In the letter he urged Hamilton to
work for the establishment of a nationally military academy.
Washington wrote that letter at the end of a long, cold day of snow,
sleet and rain that he had spent out-of-doors. He remained outside
for more than five hours, according to his secretary Tobias Lear,
did not change out of his wet clothes or dry his hair when he
returned home.
(HNQ, 10/25/02)
1799 Dec 13, Washington awoke
the following morning with a sore throat.
(HNQ, 10/25/02)
1799 Dec 14, George Washington
(b.1732), the first president of the United States, died at his
Mount Vernon, Va., home. Richard Brookhiser authored "Founding
Father: Rediscovering George Washington." The Washingtons at this
time had 317 slaves. His 5 stills in Virginia turned out some 12,000
gallons of corn whiskey a year. In 1993 Richard Norton Smith
authored "George Washington and the New American Nation." In 2010
Ron Chernow authored “Washington: A Life.”
(A&IP, ESM, p.16)(AP, 12/14/97)(WSJ, 11/6/98,
p.W15)(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 12/11/99, p.B6)(WSJ, 2/22/00,
p.A40)(Econ, 10/23/10, p.102)
1799 Dec 18, George
Washington's body was interred at Mount Vernon.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1799 Dec, 21, William
Wordsworth (29) and his sister, Dorothy, returned from a year in
Germany to Grasmere in the Lake District. His Lyrical Ballads
written jointly with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (27) had just been
published. The ballads launched the Great Romantic Period in English
literature.
(Hem, Dec. 94, p.71)
1799 Dec 24, A Jacobin plot
against Napoleon was uncovered.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1799 Dec 25, Napoleon’s new
constitution went into effect. It gave him, as First Consul, powers
to promulgate laws, nominate senior officials, control finances and
conduct negotiations with foreign powers.
(ON, 1/02, p.12)
1799 Dec 25, Chevalier De Saint
Georges (b.1739), violinist and composer, died in Paris, France.
http://ChevalierDeSaintGeorges.Homestead.com/Page1.html
1799 Dec 26, The late George
Washington was eulogized by Col. Henry Lee as "first in war, first
in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
(AP, 12/26/97)
1799 Honore de Balzac
(d..1850), French novelist, was born.
(WUD, 1994, p.115)
1799 Jacques-Louis David
created his painting “Rape of the Sabines.”
(WSJ, 4/6/05, p.D11)
1799 Goya (1746-1828) made his
famous etching "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," in which
fluttering bats hover darkly above a man dozing at his desk.
(WSJ, 11/3/95, p.A-12)
1799 In England Richard
Sheridan wrote his play "Pizzaro." It implied an equivalence between
persecuted Indians and the Irish.
(WSJ, 11/20/98, p.W6)
1799 Antonio Salieri
(1750-1825), Italian composer, wrote his opera "Falstaff."
(WSJ, 1/14/04, p.D10)
1799 The Musun Indians built a
chapel at the California Mission San Juan Bautista.
(SFC, 9/3/97, p.A17)
1799 Sitka, Alaska, was founded
by Alexander Baranof of the Russian American Company.
(AH, 6/07,
p.69)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitka,_Alaska)
1799 The first printed ballot
in the US appeared in Pennsylvania.
(BD emp. letter, 9/27/96)
1799 Lord Elgin was appointed
British ambassador to Constantinople. He was responsible for taking
down the Metopes, sculptured by Phidias, from the Parthenon, and
transporting them to England.
(RFH-MDHP, p.218)
1799 Pierre Bouchard
[Boussart], an officer in Napoleon‘s army, discovered the Rosetta
Stone in the city of Rosetta [Rashid], Egypt. The Rosetta Stone is a
tablet with hieroglyphic translations into Greek. The stone is black
basalt... and bears three texts: the uppermost is in early Egyptian
hieroglyphic; the middle one in the Neo-Egyptian demotic script
often used in writing papyri; and the lowermost text is Greek.
Deciphering the stone, the work of English physicist Thomas Young
and then French archaeologist Jean-Francois Champollion, led to an
understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Champollion
published memoirs on the decipherment in 1822.
(NG, May 1985, R. Caputo, p.584)(RFH-MDHP,
p.182)(HN, 7/19/98)(HNQ, 7/7/00)
1799 A South African hunter
shot the last blaauwboch, the blue antelope (Hippotragus
leucophaeus). Its numbers had been severely reduced by the
introduction of domestic sheep by native Africans as early as 400AD.
(NH, 11/96, p.24)
1799 Jean Baptiste Simeon
Chardin (b.1699), French painter, died.
(WSJ, 7/6/00, p.A24)
c1799 In China at the close of
the 18th century the White Lotus Movement led a violent uprising in
northeastern China.
(WSJ, 4/26/99, p.A6)
1799 In Jaipur, India, the Hawa
Mahal (the palace of wind) a five-storied sandstone building, was
built by a Hindu king for his queen.
(Reuters, 5/14/08)
1799 The Dutch East India
Company liquidated and the Dutch government took control over the
islands of Indonesia.
(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)
1799 In Naples, Italy, a
massacre of innocents occurred that was blamed on British Admiral
Horatio Nelson.
(WSJ, 11/5/99, p.W12)
1799 Nagasawa Rosetsu (b.1754),
Japanese painter based in Kyoto, died. His work included “Monkey on
a Rock.”
(SFC, 12/8/05, p.E1)(SFC, 1/14/06, p.E10)
1799 The Russian-American Co.
was chartered by Tsar Paul I. It expanded into Spanish California
(see 1812) when sea otter populations declined in Alaska.
(SFC, 6/15/01, WBb p.7)
1799 Some 70 ships were lost in
the Scottish Firth of Tay.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, BR p.3)
1799 Pope Pius VI died.
(WSJ, 4/28/00, p.W8)
1799-1804 Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859),
German explorer, and Aime Bonpland, botanist, led an expedition to
South America. They collected over 60,000 plants.
(CW, Spring ‘99,
p.49)(http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa020298.htm)
1799-1914 This period in France was covered by
Robert Gildea in his 2008 book: Children of the Revolution: The
French 1799-1914.”
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.87)