1785

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Years

Year 1785 (MDCCLXXXV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1785

January - June

• January 1 The first issue of the Daily Universal Register, later known as The Times, is published in London.
• January 7 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England to Calais, France in a hydrogen gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
• January 27 - The University of Georgia is founded.
• May 10 - A hot air balloon crashes in Tullamore, causing a fire that burns down about 100 houses, making it the world's first aviation disaster (by 36 days).
• 15 June - After several attempts, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and his companion, Pierre Romain, set off in a balloon from Boulogne-sur-Mer, but the balloon suddenly deflates (without the envelope catching fire) and crashes near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais, killing both men. Although more than a month after the Tullamore crash, some people consider this crash the world's first aviation disaster.

July - December

• July 6 - The dollar is unanimously chosen as the money unit for the United States. This is the first time a nation has adopted a decimal coinage system.

• August 1 - Fleet of French explorer Jean Francois de Galoup, count la Pérouse leaves Paris for circumnavigation.
• August 15 - Cardinal de Rohan is arrested in Paris - the necklace affair comes into open.

• November - Drought occurs in Haiti.
• November 28 - Treaty of Hopewell signed between United States of America and Cherokee Nation

Undated

• University of New Brunswick is founded in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
• Coal gas is first used for illumination.
• Louis XVI of France signs to a law that a handkerchief must be square.
• British government establishes a permanent land force in the Eastern Caribbean, based in Barbados.
• The North Carolina General Assembly incorporates Lincolnton, North Carolina (named for American General Benjamin Lincoln) as the new county seat for Lincoln County.
• Belfast Academy later Belfast Royal Academy is founded by Rev. Dr James Crombie in Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi publishes Letters on the Teachings of Spinoza, and starts the Pantheism controversy

Births

• January 4 - Jakob Grimm, German philologist, folklorist, and writer (d. 1863)
• January 4 - Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (d. 1831)
• February 8 - Martín Miguel de Güemes Argentine military leader (d. 1821)
• February 10 - Claude-Louis Navier, French engineer and physicist (d. 1836)
• March 27 - Louis XVII of France (d. 1795)
• April 4 - Bettina von Arnim, German poet (d. 1859)
• April 26 - John James Audubon, French-American naturalist and illustrator (d. 1851)
• May 18 - John Wilson, Scottish writer (d. 1854)
• May 20 - Marcellin Champagnat, Saint
• July 6 - William Jackson Hooker, English botanist (d. 1865)
• August 15 - Thomas de Quincey, English writer (d. 1859)
• August 23 - Oliver Hazard Perry, American naval officer (d. 1819)
• September 27 - David Walker, Abolitionist (d. 1830)
• October 18 - Thomas Love Peacock, English satirist (d. 1866)
• October 20 - George Ormerod, English historian and antiquarian (d. 1873)
• November 18 - David Wilkie, Scottish artist (d. 1841)

Unknown dates

• (none)

Deaths

• January 3 - Baldassare Galuppi, Italian composer (b. 1706)
• January 19 - Jonathan Toup, English classical scholar and critic (b. 1713)
• January 23 - Matthew Stewart, Scottish mathematician (b. 1717)
• April 14 - William Whitehead, English writer (b. 1715)
• May 8 - Etienne Francois, Duke of Choiseul, French statesman (b. 1719)
• May 8 - Pietro Longhi, Venetian painter (b. 1701)
• June 2 - Jean Paul de Gua de Malves, French mathematician (b. 1713)
• June 30 - James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia (b. 1696)

• August 17 - Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of the Colony and the state of Connecticut (b. 1710)
• August 26 - George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, British soldier and politician (b. 1716)
• August 28 - Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, French sculptor (b. 1714)
• October 4 - David Brearly, delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (b. 1703)
• November 18 - Louis Philip I, Duke of Orléans, French soldier and writer (b. 1725)
• November 19 - Bernard de Bury, French composer (b. 1720)
• November 25 - Richard Glover, English poet (b. 1712)
• December 6 - Kitty Clive, English actress and playwright (b. 1711)
• December 29 - Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian author (b. 1742)

Unknown dates

• (none)