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Date |
Event(s) |
1 | 1770 | |
2 | 1771 | |
3 | 1772 | |
4 | 1773 | |
5 | 1774 | |
6 | 1775 | |
7 | 1776 | - 1776: England - Common Sense published by Tom Paine
- 1776: Great Britain - Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, advanced the idea that businesses survive through successful trading in pursuit of their self-interest, and that the resulting equilibrium was not by design.
- 1776: Great Britain - Wilkes introduces bill for universal male suffrage
- 1776: Great Britain - David Bushnell invents a submarine.
- 1776: Great Britain - Edward Gibbon authors Decline and Fall of Roman Empire in period to 1788
- 4 Jul 1776: USA - The American Congress passes their Declaration of Independence from Britain.
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8 | 1777 | |
9 | 1778 | |
10 | 1779 | - 1779: Great Britain - The rise of Wyvill's Christopher Wyvill's radical Yorkshire Association Movement
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11 | 1780 | |
12 | 1781 | - 1781: Great Britain - Frederick William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus by its movement, although at the time he supposed it to be a comet
- 1781: Great Britain - Matthew Boulton and James Watt produce an improved steam engine with rotary motion achieving significant impact - it means that manufacturers are no longer restricted to site with natural power (i.e., water, wood for charcoal)
- 17 Oct 1781: USA - The Americans obtain a great victory of British troops at the Siege of Yorktown
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13 | 1782 | - 1782: Ireland - Ireland obtains short-lived parliament
- 22 Mar 1782: Great Britain - Lord North's government collapses
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14 | 1783 | |
15 | 1784 | |
16 | 1785 | |
17 | 1786 | - 1786: Great Britain - The Eden commercial treaty with France is drawn up
- 1786: Pennsylvania, USA - John Fitch invents a steamboat.
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18 | 1787 | - 1787: Windsor, Great Britain - In Windsor Great Park, King George III alights from carriage and addresses oak tree as King of Prussia, but eventually recovers from this attack of dementia; first colonies in Australia, first iron boat launched
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19 | 1788 | - 1788: Great Britain - Time to travel from London to Manchester reduced from 4.5 days to 28 hours
- 22 Jan 1788: Great Britain - Birth of Lord Byron (died 1824)
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20 | 1789 | - 1789: France - French Revolution, Louis XVI, many aristocrats and others executed, France declares war on European monarchies
- 1789: France - The guillotine is invented.
- 1789: Great Britain - The French Revolution sounded the death knoll toward elaborate and affected dress and hairdos. The powdered wig and towering women's hair styles passed from fashion. Simpler, more practical clothes emerged. Boys wore the skeleton suit, often with a comfortable open collar, and by the end of the century with plebian long trousers.
- 1789: USA - Thomas Jefferson brought a pasta making machine back with him when he returned to America after serving as ambassador to France.
- 1789: Switzerland - Dr. Pierre Ordinaire creates an absinthe elixir
- 30 Apr 1789: USA - George Washington first president of the United States 1789-1797.
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21 | 1790 | |
22 | 1791 | |
23 | 1792 | - 1792: Italy - Volta discovered he could arrange metals in a series in such a way that chemical energy is converted into electrical energy; that is, two dissimilar metals are submerged in an electrolyte and connected by an circuit and thereby exchange electrons. By 1800, he had invented the so-called voltaic cell, a pile of such metals 'consisting of pairs of silver and zinc disks separated by pieces of moist cardboard'
- 1792: Great Britain - Coal gas is used for lighting for the first time. Mary Wollstonecraft publishes her Vindication of the Rights of Women
- 1792: Great Britain - Cartwright invents steam-powered weaving loom
- 1792: Great Britain - The first ambulance.
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24 | 1793 | - 1793: Great Britain - Economic depression
- 1793: Great Britain - Speculative 'Canal Bubble' bursts
- 1793: Great Britain - Board of Agriculture formed to popularise new methods and machinery
- 1793: Great Britain - Britain becomes foremost world trader during period to 1815
- 1793: Great Britain - Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin which efficiently separates cotton fibers from the seeds, allowing one person to do a job once done by 50 people. This profoundly changes the economics of raising cotton, revitalizing slavery in the American South.
- 1 Feb 1793: Great Britain - France declares war on Britain
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25 | 1794 | - 1794: Great Britain - Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather, proposed that 'warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament...possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering those improvements by generation to its posterity.'
- 1794: Great Britain - Metric system introduced in France
- 1794: Great Britain - More lower-class radicalism, Habeas Corpus suspended again, instigators charged with treason, in Scotland found guilty and transported
- 1794: Great Britain - Welshman Philip Vaughan invents ball bearings.
- 1794: Great Britain - Total of 40,000 British troops die in West Indies in war with France over two year period
- 1 Jun 1794: Great Britain - Howe defeats French fleet at Ushant
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26 | 1795 | |
27 | 1796 | - 1796: Great Britain - Edward Jenner investigated the folk tale that milk maids were immune to small pox, the virus variola major, and in a brief series of experiments confirmed that exposure to cow pox, the virus vaccinia, rendered immunity
- 1796: Italy - General Napoleon Bonaparte appears on scene, attacks Austrian armies
- 1796: Ceylon - British conquer Ceylon
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