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Russia. Catherine the Great founded the city of Odessa, actually renaming the village of Khadjibey, recently wrested from the Ottoman Empire, to make it a base for exporting Russian grain to Europe.

The Ecole Polytechnique is inaugurated in Paris

Abolition of slavery in the French colonies.

Danton founds the group of Indulgents

Marie Antoinette is condemned to death and guillotined

France: given the situation both on the internal front with the Vendée rebels and on the external one towards the coalition nations, mass conscription is instituted

Chaillot, France. The tomb of Maria Beatrice d’Este (of the Duchy of Modena, former Queen of England) was desecrated by Jacobin fanatics and her ashes scattered.

Paris: Thousands of people invade prisons holding priests and people suspected of supporting the king: it’s a massacre, with over 1,100 victims (September Massacres)

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others founded the party that forty years later would become the Democratic Party, the oldest American political party. Ironically, at first, the group called itself “the Republicans” (as opposed to “the Federalists”).

The New York Stock Exchange opens

Amadeus Mozart died of inflammatory rheumatic fever at the age of 35; he was buried in a mass grave in the (almost) forgotten St. Marxer Friedhof cemetery. Despite Mozart’s modest funeral, his fame grew significantly in the aftermath. Biographies were written first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek,

France. The Constitution is enacted. It establishes the inviolability of property rights, the rights of the King of France, the right of association, and freedom of worship. Unfortunately, within two years, everything will go awry, and all four will be systematically violated: the Church’s property

Peace of Sistova between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburgs. The terms of the agreements signed over the previous 90 years were essentially reaffirmed: Karlowitz in 1699, Passarowitz in 1718, and Belgrade in 1739. Thus ended the Turkish Wars, as they were known at the

Antoine Lavoiser in his Elementary Treatise on Chemistry describes the Law of Conservation of Matter

Spain. A single vessel unloads nearly a ton and a half of platinum. The material is abundant in South American mines and is beginning to be used in Europe, sometimes in place of gold or silver.

France. The National Assembly declares it will not dissolve until France has a Constitution.

France. The Third Estate proclaims itself the National Assembly.

France. The military expenditures of France’s intervention in the American War of Independence caused a severe, chronic fiscal crisis in France, which triggered the political reaction that led to the French Revolution.

France: Parliament invites King Louis XVI to convene the Estates General for the first time since 1614, to address the serious economic crisis.

The Scotsman James Watt created the famous pendulum regulator.

In 10,000 BC, the world was home to thousands of civilizations, all but or completely isolated from one another. By 1450 AD, their numbers had declined dramatically, and more than 90% of the world’s population lived in a single macro-civilization in Afro-Eurasia. The remaining 10%

War between the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Austria. It ends in a stalemate. The Habsburg army is perhaps the best equipped and best trained to ever face the Ottomans, but thousands of soldiers die of disease before ever seeing a single Turk.

Sydney, Australia. Widespread epidemics wipe out the Aboriginal people shortly after the arrival of Europeans.

The English landed at Port Jackson (now Sydney) with a fleet of decrepit ships carrying a human cargo of a penal colony and began the colonization of Australia.

Wilhelm Grimm, brother of Jacob Grimm

James Watt begins to earn money from his (very powerful) patent on the steam engine and the production and sale of engines, but a full 15 years have passed since the patent was filed!

Immanuel Kant publishes “The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals”

Antoine-Laurent Lavoiser names Oxygen and Hydrogen and repeats Cavendish’s experiment

Laplace shows that the irregularities of Jupiter’s a are limited and have a period of 900 years.

Annus Horribilis: Gilbert White, an English naturalist, recounts the series of “bad luck” that befell humanity that year: a dry, foul-smelling fog that glows at night spreads from Sicily across Europe, accompanied by thunderstorms and natural disasters; an earthquake in Calabria kills 30,000 people; an

Modena. The perimeter walls of the Citadel are included in the promenade of the walls of Modena by Duke Ercole III. The work is entrusted to engineers Pietro Giardini and Angelo Scarabelli Pedona. Giardini is the superintendent of water and roads and the designer of

London. The opposition begins its attack in Parliament on the government’s plans to end the war effort in the former American colonies.

London. Lord George Germain resigns as head of the American Colonies for Lord North’s government. He suffers the consequences of the defeat at Yorktown, Virginia. He had held the position for almost seven years.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant distinguishes between objective truth and truth that our mind is capable of understanding.

Immanuel Kant publishes “Critique of Pure Reason.” He wants to make philosophy fully scientific.

Yorktown, Virginia. 2:00 PM. British officers in bright red uniforms appear before the French in white. When General O’Hara rides toward Rochambeau at the head of the French troops, the latter shakes his head and tells them, in French, that he is subject to the

Yorktown, Virginia. 9:00 a.m. A British drummer boy appears on the barricades and shouts, “Parlay! Parlay!” His shouts are barely heard above the roar of the cannon fire, but many see him. The guns fall silent. An officer steps out into the open with a

Yorktown, Virginia. 8:00 PM. George Washington decides the time has come to charge the besieged enemy with the bayonet.

Yorktown, Virginia. The siege artillery totals 52. The British realize their days are numbered unless Clinton and Graves’s expedition from New York arrives in time (it never does).

Yorktown, Virginia. Four more siege artillery pieces are added, bringing the total to 46.

Chesapeake, off Yorktown. 4:15 PM. The British fleet has received two contradictory orders, causing confusion in the formation. The French fleet, after an initial confusion, is now fairly aligned. The leading ships open fire. Up to thirty cannonballs, each weighing 10 kg, are hurled at

Chesapeake, off Yorktown. 10:00 a.m. The British ship Bedford sights at least 15 French ships. The guns are loaded, nets are hauled onto the upper decks, carpenters prepare to repair the leaks in the hull, and sand is spread on the decks. The British tactic,

Hood’s English war fleet sails from Yorktown back to New York

Hood’s English war fleet arrived at Yorktown from the English West Indies before de Grasse’s French fleet, thanks to the copper bottoms of British ships that protected them from leaks and worms. However, Hood, not finding the French fleet, set sail again for New York

Battle of King’s Mountain, border between South and North Carolina. British General Ferguson and his 1,100 militiamen are attacked by approximately the same number of Americans. The British have the advantage of position on the mountain but are massacred by the American rebels. The American

Sycamore, North Carolina. Frontiersmen and Over-Mountain men (from the western part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, present-day eastern Tennessee) gather at Sycamore Shoals, each with his horse and Kentucky rifle, excellent for hunting. They are mostly North Carolina rebels of Irish and Scottish descent, but

Battle of Camden, South Carolina. The Americans under Horatio Gates are heavily defeated by the British under General Cornwallis and pushed back into the interior. The Americans lose 900 men and 1,000 are captured. The British suffer 68 killed and 245 wounded.

A French contingent of 5,500 men landed at Newport, Rhode Island to aid the Americans; the British failed to intercept them.

The Massachusetts state constitution declares that “all men are born free and equal.”

Cook is assassinated on the island of Hawaii by the natives

Sir Henry Clinton and his army of 8,500 soldiers set sail from New York for Charleston. The British intended to open a new front by attacking Charleston and establishing a beachhead from which to launch a land campaign toward Virginia.

Savannah, Georgia. D’Estaing’s French fleet heavily bombards the city for six days, then attacks in an attempt to capture it. A counterattack by British marines repeles the Franco-American offensive.

Maritime communication between the British Antilles and the North American colonies became impossible due to the French domination of North America and the Caribbean by d’Estaing. The British took several steps to ease the situation, the most serious (and unfortunate) of which was the evacuation

English Channel. The French and Spanish decide to definitively abandon (that is, for the current year…) the attempt to land in England.

English Channel. 31,000 French and Spanish soldiers are ready to land in England. The two Bourbon powers (the Bourbons were then reigning on the throne of France with Louis XVI, on the throne of Spain with Charles III, on the throne of the Kingdom of

Admiral D’Estaing’s French fleet attacks the British possession of Grenada. Lord Macartney and his 159 regulars and 400 militiamen defending the island surrender shortly thereafter. The richest sugar-producing island in the British Lesser Antilles thus falls into French hands, as Dominica and St. Vincent had

The Royal Navy has 102 warships (including 6 60-gun ships) for a total of 155,000 tons, compared to 118 warships (including 29 60-gun ships) for a total of 158,000 tons twenty years earlier, in 1759. For the first time in the 18th century, the English

The German physician Franz Anton Mesmer moved to Paris, the most open and lively capital in the world at the time, encompassing within himself that old mixture so often generated by freedom: intellectual ferment at the highest level mixed with charlatanism in its most abject

By the time of the Hawaiian Islands’ “discovery” by Western civilization, the individual islands had already undergone a long and bloody process of unification within each island, maintaining their independence from one another. Upon the arrival of Western settlers, King Kamehameha I quickly purchased guns

Georgia. British Colonel Archibald Campbell, with the 71st Highlanders, occupied all of Georgia, starting from Savannah, and was the first officer to remove a star and a stripe from the newly created Stars and Stripes.

Caribbean (West Indies). The temporary French superiority at sea (led by D’Estaing) has only led to the conquest of Dominica. The English (led by Grant), however, have conquered Saint Lucia, which had long been a thorn in the side of English possessions as it cut

Caribbean (West Indies). British General Grant leads his troops off the French island of Saint Lucia. With his full ranks and all British (without mercenaries), he quickly takes possession of the island.

Caribbean (West Indies). The French governor of Martinique takes advantage of the inaction of the Englishman Barrington in Barbados due to a lack of reinforcements, to land a force of 2,000 men on Dominica, where the British resist for a short time before surrendering. The

Newport, Rhode Island. American and French troops begin landing, and Rhode Island, abandoned by the British.

The Royal Navy pursues Admiral d’Orvilliers’s French fleet in the English Channel and catches up with it off the Breton island of Ushant. The battle is fierce, as in many 18th-century sailing battles, and ultimately, as on other occasions, the outcome is inconclusive, with both

The French, now allied with the Americans against the British, besieged the British Isles in preparation for a landing. The British prepared a counterattack further inland: in Essex, Kent, and the outskirts of London. Many warships had to remain in the English Channel to defend

Maryland. General Howe’s British troops, after 25 days at sea, manage to land in Chesapeake Bay (they had departed from Delaware, on the other side of the peninsula). Their objective is Philadelphia, the capital of the United States. Now, however, the Americans facing them have

New York State. Among the British troops, German dragoon Colonel Baum, leading 800 men of His Majesty’s troops, stands out. But among the Americans, 1,500 New Hampshire volunteers have just arrived and clash with Baum’s men. The Indians flee at the first clash. The German

Battle of Oriskany, New York. Saratoga Campaign. One of the bloodiest of the American Revolutionary War and one of the few where almost all the combatants were North Americans. An American force led by Nicholas Herkimer and supported by the Oneida Indians attempted to relieve

United States. Congress authorizes the enlistment of 88 regiments of the so-called Continental Army.

Washington, with the help of a favorable wind and a sudden fog, silently withdraws his troops (9,000 men and heavy artillery) from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

George Washington arrives in front of New York (English) with 10,000 Continentals, facing 30,000 men, including 12,000 German mercenaries: at the end of the Battle of Long Island, Washington finds himself bottled up in the Brooklyn Heights

The Battle of Long Island rages off the Brooklyn Heights

During the American War of Independence, the French consul reports that 7,250 Venetian sailors were enlisted on the American and French sides. And approximately 3,000 fought for the British side.

American Declaration of Independence signed in Philadelphia

Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

New York, American Colonies of the British Empire: General Sir William Howe lands 30,000 British soldiers on the beaches of Staten Island, south of Manhattan. The British consolidate their position and will attack only a month and a half later. The American rebels then have

St. Patrick’s Day. Massachusetts, American Colonies of the British Empire: British troops, outflanked by Washington, are forced to abandon the city. They will never set foot there again.

America’s first economic and social cycle. From George Washington to John Quincy Adams. The Founding Fathers were visionary and cultured people, generally of English descent with some Scottish influence, while the pioneers were generally poor and uneducated.

Henry Cavendish in London combines hydrogen, oxygen and electricity to make water