1770s

The 1770s (pronounced "seventeen-seventies") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1770, and ended on December 31, 1779. A period full of discoveries, breakthroughs happened in all walks of life, as what emerged at this period brought life to most innovations we know today. From nations such as the United States of America, birthed through hardships such as the American Revolutionary War and altercations akin to the Boston Tea Party, spheres of influence such as Russia from its victorious Crimean claims at the Russo-Turkish War, the Industrial Revolution, and populism, their influence remains omnipresent to this day. New lands south of the Equator were discovered and settled by Europeans like James Cook, expanding the horizons of a New World to new reaches such as Australia and French Polynesia, as studies on chemistry and politics deepen to forge the Age of Reason for centuries to come.

From top left, clockwise: Englishmen and sailor James Cook concludes his inaugural and embarks on his second voyage, leaving a trail of significant milestones along its way such as the discovery of New Caledonia, Australia, Tahiti, the Antarctic Circle, and becoming the first humans to witness Antarctic waters as pictured; The United States Declaration of Independence was unanimously signed and adopted by the Second Continental Congress, announcing the colonies' intention to separate from Great Britain; Company rule in India establishes governance over India for the first time at Calcutta, giving way for British colonialism over the Indian subcontinent, and eventually Western imperialism in Asia; Nitrogen gas was isolated from air by Scottish scientist Daniel Rutherford; Amazing Grace was sung for the first time as a hymn in Buckinghamshire, England at 1773; Chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele made several breakthroughs in chemistry by discovering five chemical elements, namely oxygen (1771), barium (1772), chlorine (1774), manganese (1774), and molybdenum (1778); The Boston Tea Party protest precipitates anti-British sentiment in the Thirteen Colonies, and subsequently the American Revolutionary War; A Russo-Turkish War lead to now-Russia's first occupation of Crimea; initiating Russia's influence over Crimea that has since persisted today.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	17th century 18th century 19th century
Decades:	1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s
Years:	1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779
Categories:	Births Deaths By country By topic Establishments Disestablishments

Events

1770

January– March

• January 1 – The foundation of Fort George, Bombay is laid by Colonel Keating, principal engineer, on the site of the former Dongri Fort.
• February 1 – Thomas Jefferson's home at Shadwell, Virginia is destroyed by fire, along with most of his books.[1]
• February 14 – Scottish explorer James Bruce arrives at Gondar, capital of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and is received by the Emperor Tekle Haymanot II and Ras Mikael Sehul.[2]
• February 22 – Christopher Seider, an 11-year-old boy in Boston at the British Province of Massachusetts Bay, is shot and killed by a colonial official, Ebenezer Richardson. The funeral sets off anti-British protests that lead to the massacre days later.[3]
• March 5 – Boston Massacre: Eleven American men are shot (five fatally) by British troops, in an event that helps start the American Revolutionary War five years later.
• March 21 – King Prithvi Narayan Shah shifts to the newly constructed Basantapur Palace in the capital Kathmandu as the first King of Unified Kingdom of Nepal
• March 26 – First voyage of James Cook: English explorer Captain James Cook and his crew aboard HMS Endeavour complete the circumnavigation of New Zealand.

April–June

• April 12 – The Townshend Acts were repealed by Britain's Parliament by the efforts of Prime Minister Frederick North, with the exception of the increased duties on imported tea. The American colonists, in turn, stopped their embargo on British imports.[4]
• April 18 (April 19 by Cook's log)[5] 18:00 – First voyage of James Cook: English explorer Captain James Cook and his crew become the first recorded Europeans to encounter the eastern coastline of the Australian continent.
• April 20 – Battle of Aspindza: Georgian king Erekle II defeats the Ottoman forces, despite being abandoned by an ally, Russian General Totleben.
• April 29 – First voyage of James Cook: Captain Cook drops anchor on HMS Endeavour in a wide bay, about 16 km (10 mi) south of the present city of Sydney, Australia. Because the young botanist on board the ship, Joseph Banks, discovers 30,000 specimens of plant life in the area, 1,600 of them unknown to European science, Cook names the place Botany Bay on May 7.
• May 7 – Fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette arrives at the French court.
• May 16 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis-Auguste (who later becomes King Louis XVI of France).
• May 20 – A stampede, at a celebration of the newly wedded Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste in Paris, kills more than a hundred people.[6]
• June 3 –
  • Gaspar de Portolà and Father Junípero Serra establish Monterey, the presidio of Alta California territory for Spain from 1777–1822, United Mexican States 1824–1846, until the California Republic.
  • The 7.5 M_w Port-au-Prince earthquake affects the French colony of Saint-Domingue with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 250 or more.
• June 9 – Falklands Crisis (1770): Some 1,600 Spanish marines, sent by the Spanish governor of Buenos Aires in five frigates, seize Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands. The small British force present promptly surrenders.[7]
• June 11 – First voyage of James Cook: HMS Endeavour grounds on the Great Barrier Reef.

July– September

• July 1 – Lexell's Comet (D/1770 L1) passes the Earth at a distance of 2184129 km, the closest approach by a comet in recorded history.[8]
• July 5 – Battle of Chesma and Battle of Larga: The Russian Empire defeats the Ottoman Empire in both battles. When the news of the defeat reaches the Ottoman city of Smyrna (July 8), the crowd attack the Greek community of the city (perceived as favourable to the Russian cause) and kills an estimated 200 Greeks and three Western Europeans (although some reports estimate the number of victims at 3,000 or even 5,000 including "3 or 4 thousands who die due to the fright").[9][10]
• August 1 (July 21 O.S.) – Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) – Battle of Kagul: Russian commander Pyotr Rumyantsev routs 150,000 Turks.
• August 22 (August 23 by Cook's log) – First voyage of James Cook: Captain Cook determines that New Holland (Australia) is not contiguous with New Guinea, and claims the whole of its eastern coast for Great Britain, later naming it all New South Wales.
• September 24 – In the Hillsborough, North Carolina, the Regulator Movement riots against local authorities.[11]

October–December

• October 11 – Phillis Wheatley becomes the first African American woman to have her work published, after having written a poetic elegy to the late Reverend George Whitefield.[12]
• November 14 – James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile.
• December 7 – King Louis XV of France issues the "Edict of December", dismissing the rebellious magistrates of the Parlements of Paris and the other 13 provinces.[13][14]
• December 24 – France's Secretary of the Navy, César Gabriel de Choiseul, is fired from his position by the King.[15]

Date unknown

• Johann Gottfried Herder meets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Strasbourg.
• Joseph Priestley, British chemist, recommends the use of a rubber to remove pencil marks.
• Joseph-Louis Lagrange proves Bachet's Conjecture.
• The Baron d'Holbach's (anonymous) materialist work Le Système de la Nature ou Des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral is produced in Neuchâtel.
• The last Cuman who speaks the Cumanian language (István Varró) dies in Hungary.

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References

1. Allen Jayne, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy, and Theology (University Press of Kentucky, 2015) p41
2. "Bruce, James", in Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume IV (Cambridge University Press, 1911) p676
3. James Marten, Children in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2007) p173
4. Gordon Carruth, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates 3rd Edition (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1962) pp78-79
5. Hinks, Arthur R. (1935). "Nautical time and civil date". The Geographical Journal. 86 (2): 153–157. doi:10.2307/1786590. JSTOR 1786590.
6. Helene Delalex; Alexandre Maral; Nicolas Milovanovic (2016). Marie-Antoinette. Getty Publications. p. 25. ISBN 9781606064832.
7. "Nationalism and the Falkland Islands War". Retrieved 2007-08-19.
8. "D/1770 L1 (Lexell)". Gary W. Kronk's Cometography. Retrieved 2012-07-02.
9. Rear, Marjorie (2015). "William Barker. Member of the Right Worshipful Levant Company 1731-1825. A Life in Smyrna" (PDF): 30. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
10. Blondy, Alain; Labat Saint Vincent, Xavier (2014). Malte et Marseille au XVIIIème siècle. La Fondation de Malte. p. 161. ISBN 9781291435467.
11. Charles D. Rodenbough, Governor Alexander Martin: Biography of a North Carolina Revolutionary War Statesman (McFarland, 2004) p28
12. Vincent Carretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (University of Georgia Press, 2014) p78
13. Leonore Loft, Passion, Politics, and Philosophie: Rediscovering J.-P. Brissot (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002) p55
14. Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791 (Yale University Press, 1996) p249
15. Antony Strugnell, Diderot’s Politics: A Study of the Evolution of Diderot’s Political Thought after the Encyclopedie (Martinus Nijhoff, 2012) p123