Lazare Carnot was among those in the National Convention who declared the fatal vote to guillotine the King of France. Lazare was a friend of Robespierre. Perhaps a deep root of Science is the Revolution: refusing to accept the order of things.

Britain provides France’s continental enemies with £65.8 million in funding.

Massive volcanic eruption in Shimabara, Japan, causes 15,000 deaths

A bout of dysentery weakens the Prussian forces invading France, thus saving the French Revolution.

France, the “one and indivisible” Republic is born and the monarchy is abolished; two political factions soon form: the Girondins on the right and the Montagnards on the left

The unrivaled Prussian army, the most powerful component of the European coalition against the French Revolution, marches from the Rhine to reverse the events of 1789. Verdun and Longwy, border fortresses, quickly surrender. But at Valmy, the rapid and well-aimed fire of the French artillery shatters the Prussians’ cadence and halts their advance: the Duke of Brunswick is forced to retreat. The French Revolution is saved, and the foundations are laid for Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power. Napoleon’s transformations in Europe, among other things, will lead to the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.

Brazil: Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Paula Freire de Andrade (known as Tiradentes) is hanged as part of the so-called Inconfidencia Mineira (Mining Conspiracy) for Brazil’s independence from Portugal. His body is dismembered and sent to Vila Rica, the Minas Gerais captaincy, to be displayed in the places where he had spread his ideas. The anniversary of his death is celebrated as a national holiday in Brazil. The nation will achieve independence from Portugal thirty years later.

The project by Irish-born architect James Hoban for the White House in Washington is approved.

Duke Sandwich invents the famous “sandwich” as a way of eating without leaving the gaming table.

Carl Gauss, just fourteen years old, roughly predicts the frequency with which prime numbers become sparser in the series of natural numbers

The French royal family attempts to escape, the King is recognized in Varennes and brought back to Paris

The French National Constituent Assembly, at Taylorand’s proposal, defines a unified system of weights and measures. The commission includes Lavoiser, Lagrange, and Laplace. The standard length is chosen as the forty-millionth part of the Earth’s meridian: the meter.

London. In a hospital in a slum area, a doctor discovers strontium, naming it after the mineral it contains, Strontianite, itself named after the Scottish town of Strontian, where it was first discovered.

At the Cordeliers’ Conference, the “Society of Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” was founded; the figures of Danton and Marat emerged.

Paris. Lavoisier publishes “Elementary Treatise on Chemistry,” in which he divides substances into four categories: the first includes gases (hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen), light, and heat; the second includes nonmetallic substances that form acids (carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, and the still-unknown bases muriatic, hydrochloric, fluoric, and boric acids); the third lists 17 oxidizable metals; and the fourth adds five salifying terrestrial substances. This is the eve of the French Revolution, which will lead Lavoisier to the scaffold. He will be guillotined on May 5, 1794, for his pro-crown sympathies.

France. In one century the percentage of men able to read went from 29% to 47% (1780) and in Paris to 90% (1789), for women, it went from 14% to 27% (1780) and in Paris to 80% (1789).

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France. It uses language and recalls concepts common to those already used and signed a few years earlier in the newly formed (with crucial French support) United States of America.

England. Jeremy Bentham publishes “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” which will become the founding charter of the Utilitarian school of thought.

France: The Revolution spreads to the countryside

The element Uranium is named after the planet Uranus, discovered the previous year.

new vision of the Self, Man is free! Abolition of slavery.And also London Stock Exchange, Industrial Revolution, Railways, Waterloo, Greatest Expansion of the British Empire, South Africa, East India Company, Egypt

France. Annual revenues amount to 19 million pounds today: despite the great financial crisis, they are double those of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, but only slightly lower than those of England.

The American Constitutional Convention proposed abolishing the slave trade throughout the Union but encountered opposition from the Northern states that profited from the business. It was eventually abolished in 1808, and then declared a piracy in 1820. By that time, however, the slave population in the South was already enormous.

The Northwest Ordinance opened the territories north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi to American settlers. Article 6 stated that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in these territories.

England. The slavery abolitionist movement is born from a meeting of 12 people in a bookshop and printing press. In 1807, they succeed in making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire. And in 1838, owning slaves also becomes illegal.

Amadeus Mozart gives lessons to 17-year-old Beethoven

Louis XVI established a royal commission to scientifically evaluate the theories of the famous and highly popular German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who claimed that the universe is pervaded by a subtle fluid that unites all bodies and attributed all illnesses to alterations in this fluid. The commission produced the Report of the Commissioners of Charges by the King on the Examination of Animal Magnetism, which remains a key document in the history of human reason and rationality. In it, figures of the caliber of Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier dismantled Mesmer’s theories with crystalline clarity and rigorous experimental scientific method, demonstrating the placebo effect through months of experiments. The Mesmerists never recovered from the blow they suffered.

Paris. Lavoisier repeats Cavendish’s experiments in London on a demonstration scale, using hydrogen and oxygen to create flames and explosions that generate water, thus confirming that water is not an element but a compound. This time, everything is done in a more rigorous and scientific manner, weighing the gases and using an electric spark in a glass flask. The concept will be immediately put to use that same summer by the Mongolfier brothers.

India. William Jones publishes his notes on Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language used in Hindu rituals, which connects it with Ancient Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, Old Persian, German, French, and English. He thus establishes comparative linguistics. For example, in Sanskrit, “mother” is “matar,” in Latin “mater,” in Old Celtic “mathir.” He thus realizes that all these languages must have a single common origin. These languages will be called Indo-European.