Warren Hastings Impeachment (1788-1795) part II

Warren Hastings’ Impeachment

Part II-The Road of Politics has a lot of Potholes and certainly no true friends

Hastings trial began on February 13th 1788. It took place in Westminster Hall Members of the House of Commons were seated to Hastings right, the Lords to his left and a large audience of spectators, including royals in boxes and public galleries.

Edmund Burke began the proceedings with a long public address. He took four days and treated it all seriously. However most thought the trial resembled a social event.

Westminster Hall in the Palace of Westminster, London, November 1808

The Coronation Banquet of King George IV in Westminster Hall, 1821 (A very Regency Era representation of the site that was used to try Warren Hastings)

Hastings was granted bail, despite Burke arguing that he would flee the country with the wealth he had allegedly stolen from India. Other leading Whigs made speeches over the coming weeks against Hastings. Proving that the trial was not about wrongdoing so much as political maneuvering. Charles James Fox spoke against the man as well as Richard Brinsley Sheridan was a playwright and a poet. Sheridan served as Treasurer of the Navy 1806-1807 and also was the owner of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He is known for his plays such as The Rivals, The School for Scandal and A Trip to Scarborough.

Interior of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Circa 1808. Plate 32 of Microcosm of London (1808) The play is Coriolanuis.

In total nineteen spoke against Hastings as part of the Impeachment Committee. With Sheridan and so many gathered to witness, it does sound like a theatrical production. While at first, the Whigs had gotten public sympathy on their side over the issue, Sir Phillip Francis having worked so hard to vilify Hastings. But the trial dragged on for months, then years.

When the French Revolution began in 1789, Sheridan, obviously attuned to his audience as a member of the theater community said that he was “heartily tired of the Hastings trial” despite being one of its instigators. Doubt now had permeated into society about Hasting’s guilt. James Gilray the cartoonist depicted Hastings as the “Saviour of India” and he was being assaulted by Burke and Fox.

Then on April 9th, 1794 Lord Cornwallis who was the second Governor General of India gave testimony in defense of Hastings. He reported that the natives of India respected Hastings. When asked if he had “found any just cause to impeach the character of Mr Hastings?” he replied “never”.

William Larkins the former Accountant General of Bengal then testified that there were no irregularities with Hasting’s administration. The Whigs had hoped that they would have had a lot of testimony showing corruption but many came forward as character witnesses for Hastings.

For the trial of Warren Ha(stings)’ (includes Edmund Burke; Charles James Fox; Sir Philip Francis; Warren Hastings), by James Sayers (died 1823)

23 April 1795 the Lord Chancellor Lord Loughborough presided over the delivery of the verdict. A third of the lords who had attended the opening of the trial seven years before were now dead. Only 29 had sat through enough evidence to pronounce judgement. Most of the charges, there were 16, Hastings was found not guilty unanimously. On three questions only did five or six peers say he was guilty, but 6 of 29 meant that 23 at least found him not guilty of those charges. It was an overwhelming verdict and had been expected for some time.

Edmund Burke died 2 years later and believed in Hasting’s guilt to his dying day. He believed that the Lords acquitting Hastings would lead “to the perpetual infamy of the House of Lords.”

If Hastings had been super wealthy, the impeachment broke him and left him with debts of £70,000. The government and the East India Company did come to his aid in the end and helped to pay for it. The Lawyer made out like a true Nabob of India, though. Richard Shaw(e) had his mansion Casino House in Herne Hill built from his fees. He had John Nash and Humphrey Repton as the architect and Landscaper.

In 1812 Hastings was asked by Parliament to speak as an expert on India. After which, all the members rose in acknowledgement. Something that they only did for members of the Royal family.

As more came out, the role of Pitt abandoning the support of Hastings, and allowing the impeachment to go forth was seen as a Political power play. Pitt feared that he was to be tarred by the same brush wielded by those trying to ruin Hastings. And in the end, the total exoneration of Hastings proves he had never been guilty but helped to begin the transition of rule in India by the East India Company, to the British Government.

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A Regency Timeline 1795

The Regency Timeline

My previous posts I’ve explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788 thru 1794. Now I have the entrees for 1795 and have uploaded all these years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture. I especially like how the Duchess of Alba by Goya looks a lot like Cher.

My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne. I have also just found a third book I own with timelines in it, very USA centric though. What Happened When by Carruth. I also have added a Dorling Kindersley book , History of the World.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.

Regency Assembly Press 1795 Tineline

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A Regency Timeline 1794

The Regency Timeline

My previous posts I’ve explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788 thru 1793. Now I have the entrees for 1794 and have uploaded all these years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture. (It also seems that some of our regular followers may have missed my putting up 1792 when the post for the first part of the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, went up)

My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne. I have also just found a third book I own with timelines in it, very USA centric though. What Happened When by Carruth. I also have added a Dorling Kindersley book , History of the World.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.

Regency Assembly Press 1794 Tineline

The Writing LIfe

I am now 180+ pages (close to 60,000 words) on A Magician Murder Mystery. A had a good idea for a mystery, with a twist. What if the sleuth is a magician. I am looking for readers for this. Thirty years ago I wrote a mystery. And this is now my second. The first I know needs help. This though is working well. But then, a mystery needs a little more care I think then my regencies, etc. I could use other eyes if anyone is interested to be sure that I am hiding the clues well enough. That, the plot flows, and that the reader can put the entire thing together by the end.

I enclose a few more paragraphs from the first draft and first chapter for perusal.

Chapter 1 continue

Lance said, “Yeah I know. Take the notebook. Go ahead. Don’t be shy because Jenny is here. I’ve let Eric borrow my notebooks before. He’s sharper at details then I am. I would probably build a shadow box, and then forget to brace it, or oil the hinges, and then the marks, I mean audience would see things, hear things, or the bottom would fall out as soon as someone climbed in it.”

Eric quickly said, “Lance’s not that bad. He’s just got a better stage presence, and I do details alot.”

Jenny smiled, “Oh, I know about Lance and his acting. All about his acting.” Jenny said. She had been looking straight at Lance and then turned to smile at Eric. Eric saw Lance cringe though.

Lance said, “Enough. Just take the notebook and I’ll call you later. Here, let me get the check,” Betsy had cleared their plates and now brought her coffee to refill their cups. She also had her little pad and had pulled out the check.

“You should say thank you, you.” Betsy looked at Eric. Then to Jenny she said, “This one here always gets the check, and he tips decent too.” Just what Lance needed. A woman telling another woman that he was a catch. Lance was looking to be caught by any girl. And the way he dated the men that he did date, he wasn’t looking to settle down with any man either. From what Eric knew, Lance liked the chase. If he had finally made love to his bartender at the Palace, then he would go out a half dozen times, before some new young man caught his eye. Then it would be time to break up.

“Thank you. Betsy, you know I would leave you a great tip, but Lance always beats me to the check.”

“Hunh!” she snorted her derision. Taking Lance’s visa card, she walked to the register.

“Now tell me about your thing? Is it about your performance yesterday? What was it, a wedding?”

“Bar mitzvah and it was pretty strange. Ah, sorry, Jenny. I think you would think this is pretty boring. The mechanics of the chinese rings. Palming dollars. A few card tricks. But pretty important to me, though unless you want to do the magic, it could be pretty boring.” Eric knew if he said anything about the rings, really breaking through, Jenny would think him a nutcase. Lance probably would too. Except Eric knew that some of the old timers talked about this as well. Pulling legs of the young ones no dount.

Jenny looked at him, “Really? The scram, you’re too young to hang with the parents? How old do you think I am, Eric? Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow night at work Lance. Thank’s for breakfast.” Jenny slid out and looked at Eric as if he was an alien from Mars, or further.

Lance waited for a minute and Jenny to leave the restaurant before laughing, “God, that was funny. I want to keep her at arms length and you couldn’t have helped more. Now she’ll think I have some sort of super geek for a friend. Perfect. And then I told her you are going to be number two if we take these tricks out in public. What’s the line in the commercial, priceless.” Lance laughed again.

Eric didn’t know what to think. The girl was pretty, but then he probably would never really see her again. Lance kept girls for about a year before they moved on. Jenny was in her fourth month. By the time the routine that Lance was thinking of was ready, it would be a year.

And if Lance really needed another magician to help him, he would get someone else. He always did. Eric had to accept the terms of their friendship for what it was.

“Look, I need to tell this to someone. I think I really did magic last night.” Eric said

Lance looked at him for a second.

“What, like Hocus Pocus?” Betsy was there with the credit card receipt papers to be signed. She laughed. Did you put something in your coffee? We aren’t allowed to serve anything but beer and wine here.”

Eric let out a deep sigh and turned to look at the waitress. “I haven’t had anything to drink since late yesterday afternoon. Can we get some privacy?”

She laughed again and took the paperwork that Lance had signed. A moment later they were alone again. “She’s right you know. That sounds crazy? I should have said more about your drinking. I know you hate working at Wal-Mart, but you can’t find something better in a bottle. You will get a real gig. I’ll talk to Ephron again. I’ll make him give you a stage show. Hell, I’ll make him let you open for me.” That Eric knew Lance would never do. If Eric blew it, like he had blown the one show he had at the Palace, it could set the mood for the following act. Lance wouldn’t ever chance that.

“I know it sounds crazy. Why do you think I didn’t want to say anything in front of anyone else? It’s like the old timers say, but I’ve always thought they were just telling a tall tale.” Eric said.

“They were!” Lance said. Then he closed his eyes and nodded. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped. I can see you aren’t drunk now, and you really think this happened. Better tell me. I know I can’t leave until you do.”

Eric hadn’t planned to stop Lance, but then, Lance was right. Eric needed to tell someone and the only person he trusted was Lance. He would have tried to force Lance to listen. Eric went into the story about having drinks before he got started, and then more before they asked him to do an encore act. That he knew by the second performance he was drunk but that it was going good. Real good.

And then he did the Chinese Rings. That he was missing the broken ring and still the trick worked. That he passed out eighty dollars instead of the fifty that he had to start with. That he forced a card trick with the five of hearts. No one forced the five of hearts. His force deck didn’t have the five of hearts.

“You said it yourself. You were drunk when you started the performance. You were seeing things and your memory is all cloudy from it. You probably thought quarters were dollars and you just can’t remember the ring, because you have done it hundreds of times. It is like second nature to you.”

“Yeah hot-shot. Explain this then?” Eric pulled up on the table the eight connected rings that he had from the previous day. The ring trick didn’t have eight rings joined together. Not in the joins he had then. He was still missing the ninth ring with the break. For a minute Lance looked at the rings and then at Eric.

He grabbed the rings and looked for a break, and then he started to laugh. “That’s good. Oh, that was good. You had me believing you for a second. You got someone to sell you this. Love it. I will have to use that story when I meet up with some of the acts at the Palace over drinks.” Lance rose. “Hey, take a look at the notes on my act, and I’ll call you in the next couple days. You said this Doctor paid you three hundred for the encore performance over your usual. I’ll let you buy lunch at that deli you like.” Lance chuckled again and waved, then walked away.

Eric hadn’t set it up as a joke. It had happened. He was sure Lance would have believed him and had some idea what happened. Now what?

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A Regency Timeline 1793 (And 1792 also in case you missed it a few days ago)

The Regency Timeline

My previous posts I’ve explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788 thru 1792. Now I have the entrees for 1793 and have uploaded all these years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture. (It also seems that some of our regular followers may have missed my putting up 1792 when the post for the first part of the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, went up)

My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne. I have also just found a third book I own with timelines in it, very USA centric though. What Happened When by Carruth.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.

Regency Assembly Press 1793 Tineline

The Writing LIfe

I am now 160+ pages (over 50,000 words) on A Magician Murder Mystery. A had a good idea for a mystery, with a twist. What if the sleuth is a magician. I am looking for readers for this. Thirty years ago I wrote a mystery. And this is now my second. The first I know needs help. This though is working well. But then, a mystery needs a little more care I think then my regencies, etc. I could use other eyes if anyone is interested to be sure that I am hiding the clues well enough. That, the plot flows, and that the reader can put the entire thing together by the end.

I enclose a few more paragraphs from the first draft and first chapter for perusal.

Chapter 1 continue

Eric spoke before Lance could say anymore about his new trick. “I have something important to discuss as well.” That was all he could say before Lance added to his own story.

“That’s great, but let me tell you about these new gimmicks. It is going to change everything, and there’s even work for you in all this. I need someone who can handle the tricky stuff backstage. Not just some klutz of a stage manager. I need actually six people and myself to pull this off. Jenny of course, and Sheila.”

“Ohhh.” Jenny said. “Sorry. But she just is so…” She quickly added but then did not finish her thought.

Lance did, “Dumb? But under the wig, and from twenty feet away, no one can tell the difference between the two of you, and she can do your voice pretty well. That is important also. Come on Jenny, You know I looked at over five hundred girls to find Sheila. Anyway we need her.”

Eric knew that Jenny had no reason to be jealous. Lance didn’t look at another woman in a way that would get a woman jealous. Lance didn’t care. Lance liked men. Jenny though may not have known that. Another trait that Lance looked for when hiring his assistants. If they had a little heat with him in the performance, that spark carried out into the audience.

“Look, Eric boy, this is great news. I’m going to get four, maybe five gigs in Vegas out of this. I figure your cut is going to be twenty each time. That’s eighty to a hundred, and sorry Jenny, but I got to pay Eric more, because he’s going to be helping on the illusion and will do all the tough bits.” Lance turned his attention to Eric, ignoring Jenny as if she was not even there in the booth with them, “The talent makes bug bucks, but you know, the girls are there to look pretty and support you.”

Eric didn’t roll his eyes, or kick Lance. He just didn’t know when Lance was so crude that he could still be friends with him. Then he remembered that the thousands of dollars Lance had lent him throughout the years made up for that. Eric patted Jenny on the arm.

“Lance, as good as a trick is, you can’t sell it without help, and a talented woman makes the sale. Especially in a place like Las Vegas. Jenny and your other girl, will be helping to make the trick work and they will be working hard to do so. They’ll earn every dime, I’m sure.”

Lance shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah sure. Course. You know me Jenny didn’t mean anything. And we need four girls. I need to find two more Jenny’s because I have this duplication thing going on. It is so slick. Here let me show you…” Lance went to pull a pen from his jacket pocket.

Jenny chose that moment to stand up. “I’m going to the little girls room. I’ll be right back.” She said. She didn’t sound broken up, by Lance treating her the way he did. But she also sounded just a little bit different than when she had arrived. She looked at Lance as if he should say something, but Lance was busy opening a notebook to share. It was labelled ‘Ideas May 2011 to’. When Jenny did not get any response she looked at Eric.

He raised his head, nodded quick and smiled. A classic go on, we’ll be hear when you get back, with a what are you going to do, that’s the way this guy is. Jenny actually smiled back, teeth and all. Very white. From stage it would be dazzling, under the lights. It caused Eric to respond showing his own teeth, the grin getting wider.

She walked away and a Eric turned to follow her with his eyes. “Hey, kiddo, over here. She’ll be back. And you just broke up with someone, remember.” Lance said.

“That was more than a year ago, Lance. And I wasn’t thinking like that. Why are you treating her so hard?”

Lance said, “Like the others, she’s got a thing for me. And she’s too good for me to lose if she finds out, you know.”

“That you’re gay? This is the twenty-first century. She’s in showbiz. Half of the men are gay, and the other half are dirty dogs cheating on their girlfriends. Any girl here for two years knows that. Besides, if I can tell you got lucky last night, and I bet it was with that bartender you’ve been dreaming over, don’t you think Jenny can tell you scored as well. Wouldn’t you rather she know it was with a man, then think you are cheating on her with another woman?” Eric said.

“I really can’t figure how you always know when I’ve been sleeping with someone. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to fool you. And Jenny, well I don’t know how she’ll react, so I try and treat her the way I’ve done since the day I met her. At least that way her responses should be the same.”

Eric snorted in his smile. “I can tell when you’ve been with a guy from my great powers of observation. I think you should let Jenny know about your being gay. From what I can tell she wants to be a friend, not just a pawn in the Lance Silverton climb to the top.”

Lance looked like Eric had struck him, his head flinging back a bit. “Hey. And speaking of the climb to the top, look at this will you. I think this is going to get us there, or almost there. And I’m taking you with me, like I’ve always said.” Lance pushed the notebook over to Eric, and starting pointing with his pen.

Eric had carried a notebook like the one Lance had at one time. He still had a few in his apartment, collecting dust somewhere in the bookcase that held the forty or so books on magic he had. The ideas that a magician thought up could make or break him. If they were good illusions, looking complex and able to be done quickly and simply, all the better. The more illusions you fit into your show, the better you were going to do.

Four complex illusions that took an hour to perform might make an audience ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ but then they would remember, they had spent an hour to see just 4 tricks. In that same hour, 20 illusions, all seemingly complex, a few audience participations, and they would talk about you for days. And a shorter illusion would fit in between commercials on Lettermen or Conan.

Lance had trusted Eric with his notebooks before. He even had Eric take them and study them until the next breakfast meeting, or their hooking up at the Palace of Magic when Eric got one of the rare gigs there in the lounge. Eric was the one who would tell Lance whether the trick had all the elements to make it great. Theatrics, drama, disbelief, and suspense. Those seemed to be what a great trick needed, and though A lot of what Lance had thought of was great, sometimes they just could not be done. Not by people. Maybe by Hollywood where you could fake the laws of physics. You could use the camera to cut away so that time was not linear. So that the impossible was made possible. A man really could not turn invisible, or transport from the front of the theater to the back in a second.

Jenny returned and he and Lance were still looking over the notes. Eric then closed the book and Lance gave him a crossed look. “We can talk about it after breakfast. It’s rude.”

Eric didn’t need to say more and now Jenny gave him a tentative smile as she sat down. It had been over a year since he had dated. Anna had been nice at first. She didn’t mind that as he neared the end of his twenties, there was a slight paunch forming, or that he worked at Wal-Mart and didn’t make all that much. She worked at Wal-Mart also. Thank god that after they broke up she only worked there for another two months.

Running into Anna during his shifts was never great. At the end she thought magic was all a joke and that he was a fool for still pursuing it. Now, if Lance pulled off getting them gigs in Vegas and other things, he might be able to make real money. And he would be working alongside Jenny. Much prettier than Anna. Not that pretty was the best thing about a girl. It was nice. But talking to someone and laughing at each other’s jokes was pretty important. Being able to watch the same things on television so you didn’t have to fight for the remote. That actually might be true happiness.

“Thanks,” Jenny said. Betsy was right behind Jenny with her tray and the breakfasts. Eric had thought earlier, because of the hangover that he was going to have to force the food down, but he seemed to be able to eat. They started talking about things other than their own business. Eric asked Jenny to tell him about the funniest commercial shoot she had ever made. It was a humorous story, and she actually could spin a tale. Something that not everyone could do.

Some people were like the guy on Dragnet, “Just the facts man.” Sergeant Friday. Others were like Garrison Keillor, who spun out a tale and mesmerized you right into it. Didn’t everyone feel like they lived in Lake Woebegone when they heard Keillor talk about the men being good-looking and the women all strong. Jenny threw her voice and changed her accent, like one did when reading a children’s book. Eric did not have to force his laughter at the funny parts.

Lance though looked annoyed since the attention was not on him. But he too laughed at the most humorous parts of the story. He obviously had never heard it. He may not ever of heard his assistant tell a story. Sometimes Eric had to think if Lance really was human under all the walls he had been building around himself.

After she was finished, Jenny actually asked, “What about you, Mr. Wise, what’s your most funny show business moment?”

“Hey, what is this? A date? Are you two just going to talk about each other all day? Eric, let me show you this trick.” Lance said.

“In a bit. I have something I want to talk to you about as well.” Eric remembered he had to talk to Lance about his performance of the day before. His hangover and drinking might have been playing tricks with him. The hangover though, that seemed to have faded a great deal. The aspirin must have been helping as well.

“Okay, okay. So talk already. Sheesh, all morning all you want to do is talk about something but you haven’t said one word. You see Jenny what I put up with every couple weeks. It’s why I needed you here to today.” Lance said. He didn’t have the malicious tone of voice that he sometimes got, so Eric knew it was all joking.

Jenny though, didn’t quite, “That’s not true. I’m sorry Mr. Wise. I sort of invited myself. Lance said he wanted to talk to you about the new routine and that I should learn about it too soon. I kind of said we could kill two birds…” she made a face. Eric supposed she was thinking of the visual of that cliche.

“I need to study your notes Lance, before I can tell you what you want to know.” Eric wasn’t going to embarrass Lance and say how he checked with Eric on all the routines he started that were not standard.

A new routine, a trick had to be worked at a great deal. First you had to structure the trick. An opening, draw the audience in to whatever baloney story you were going to spin. That of course was just words. The mechanics was going to be the middle of the trick, and the close was more folderol.

The mechanics started with an idea, that then had parts often designed for the trick to work. Cutting the girl in half with the two boxes separating. That needed a space built into it that the girl could lie fold herself up in. One girl in one half, another in the second half. The audience, with an optical illusion thought the bottom was an inch think. No one could fit in that. So you would drop the sides and show that there was no one in the box.

The illusion was that the box wasn’t an inch thick. It was a lot thicker and the girl in the lower half box was very thin. Even just out of high school, so not developed. Jennifer, Eric mused, had too large a chest for most of the boxes that a girl supplying the feet for the act would fit in.

When the mechanics were worked out, then props had to be built. Crude at first. Mockups that would work. Timing and refinement would come later. First the trick had to be proved and shown that they could do it without hurting someone. The old days, sawing someone in half wasn’t so bad. You would show the audience one real blade, that actually cut a piece of wood, but used only fake ones that the blade disappeared, or when a sharp blade was pushed through the top of the box, again, trick blade, or enough room for the girl to squirm aside. Either would convince the Marks that the blade actually proved no one was in the bottom of the box.

With time, you worked out the trick and safety. Then, you sped it up. Practiced the gab. That part Lance was good at. He wasn’t good at making props, or the mechanics. That was what Eric was good at. Every trick Lance was doing that was one of ‘his’, not some other famous trick, Eric had helped Lance polish the mechanics. Perhaps that was why all the loans. Why Lance was sure Eric had a bone or two each year.

The yin and yang of their existence. They needed each other.

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Warren Hastings Impeachment (1788-1795) and the Writing Life

Warren Hastings’ Impeachment

Part 1-The Road of Politics has a lot of Potholes and certainly no true friends

As mentioned a couple posts ago Warren Hastings, who was the first Governor of India, is a fascinating Regency Era study since many believe him to be the natural father of Eliza de Feuillide, who married Henry Thomas Austen, the brother of Jane Austen.

That connection, provides many of those who love novels of the Regency, and Jane Austen, a connection. Real history, interacting with our literary giantess.

As with the OJ Simpson trial, a few years ago, this trial between 1788 and 1795 was the big court case of the times.

What we see is that the door to a greater discussion of what was happening in India and what the East India Company was doing came about.

Hastings became Governor General of India in 1773, after 23 years with “The Company”. Appointed by Prime Minister North whose government was also those party in charge when the British lost the American colonies.

A great deal of the foundation of the impeachment trial was based on the governing Calcutta Council that Hastings led as Governor General. He had one man who was in opposition to nearly all that he did. Sir Phillip Francis and he disagreed so much that they even fought a duel, which Francis was wounded in. Francis then returned to England and began to raise questions about Hastings conduct. He found support in the Whigs who were in opposition to Lord North’s government.

After this, the Second Mysore War came, when Mysore thought to take on the British while they were heavily involved in the American colonies. The war ended with the status quo from when it started. However, back in England much was made of the company’s mismanagement, and thus Hasting’s position.

The many wealthy nabobs who returned to England were quite unpopular, and Francis’ attacks did not make Hastings any better received. Then after the Fox government fell, Charles James Fox attacked Hastings as well. Pitt made no mention of Hastings in introducing a new India Act in 1784 and this was seen as the government not supporting the Governor General.

Hastings returned to England in June of 1785. On the return journey, he wrote The State of Bengal the defense of his conduct. He expected to be attacked by Parliament and the press when he returned but it to be short lived.. King George III gave him an audience and he received a unanimous vote of thanks by the East India Company when he returned. He even thought he might get an Irish peerage. Edmund Burke who is regarded as the father of Anglo-Conservatism, supporter of American Independence and opposed to allowing the French such rights, though, had other plans for Hastings.

In reviewing the material of what the politicians were up to, it seems that Hastings was a nice little scapegoat for the opposition party to embarrass Prime Minister Pitt’s government. Francis (and one can only surmise that he hated that he lost to Hastings in India, and then was wounded by him as well in their duel) made eleven specific charges against Hastings.

William Pitt finally said, after defending Hastings against all charges, that perhaps one action, the punishment of the Rajah of Benares, was excessive. Hastings was arrested on May 21, 1787 and taken to the House of Lords to hear the charges against him. Not often had the house of Lords had an Impeachment trial.

The Regency Timeline

My previous posts I’ve explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788 thru 1791. Now I have the entrees for 1792 and have uploaded all these years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture.

My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne. I have also just found a third book I own with timelines in it, very USA centric though. What Happened When by Carruth.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.

Regency Assembly Press 1792 Tineline

The Writing LIfe

I am now 130+ pages (over 40,000 words) on A Magician Murder Mystery. A had a good idea for a mystery, with a twist. What if the sleuth is a magician. I am looking for readers for this. Thirty years ago I wrote a mystery. And this is now my second. The first I know needs help. This though is working well. But then, a mystery needs a little more care I think then my regencies, etc. I could use other eyes if anyone is interested to be sure that I am hiding the clues well enough. That, the plot flows, and that the reader can put the entire thing together by the end.

I enclose a few more paragraphs from the first draft and first chapter for perusal.

Chapter 1 continued

He then started his coin tricks. He went amongst the kids and palmed and hid coins about them all. Bertlestein had gotten him fifty coin dollars. That was just the number for the kids that the Bar Mitzvah boy had invited. Bertlestein forgot that he had nephews and nieces, kids of friends. There were closer to eighty, then fifty. Yet as Eric went about placing dollars about, he did not seem to rub out. He put coins in pockets, in little handbags. He performed card tricks and found that he had decks of cards with all 52 cards, rather than the select few he would need to force the hand.

Shame that the alcohol infused memory was not for a crowd of adult women. Then he could have slipped some of those dollars into bras, down dresses. With thirteen year old girls, he had to be creative with the placement of the dollars. Nothing that would make their parents think he was some kind of pervert. He loved playing for fraternities where he could palm a coin provocatively, and he got college gigs twice a year or so. There were a lot of colleges in Los Angeles, and they all wanted the woman sawn in half.

That old standby was a trick he couldn’t do, but when one frat had hired him, he told the brother in charge of entertainment that such a trick would add a two thousand to his fee. He had to hire the assistants. That they couldn’t be sorority girls from the crowd. And the marks didn’t know that there had to be two of them, and that they had to be short, thin and bendable. If he let the man boy who was in charge of entertainment know that, then it was like giving away the secret. Eric had always kept the price beyond the budget for the event.

Only once had anyone ever taken him up on it, and three days after he had booked that gig, he made up an excuse and cancelled so he did not have to perform the trick. He knew how. He had done it twice. But he had the habit of getting flustered with the big tricks. At least he had gotten so once.

That was why he and Lance were friends. They both had their shot at the Palace of Magic on the same day. Lance’s show had done great. Eric had ended up tongue tied.

A surprise that with what he had drank at the Bertlestein party, he hadn’t ended up tongue tied. He went on to do other tricks, but they were expected, and he had all his props and gimmicks for them. They came out correct. They came out the way he was sure they would.

He switched to coffee for the rest of the afternoon and night. He had to be sober enough to drive. A DUI and his car and driving privileges would be gone, and in Los Angeles, getting around without a car was not easily done. A DUI also would not look good at Wal-Mart. He pretty much believed that if he was booked for that, he would be let go. The big corporate giant didn’t seen to have much patience for screw-ups, and what Eric did at Wal-Mart wasn’t something that ten thousand other people couldn’t do with ten minutes of training.

Playing with the deck of cards, Eric stopped thinking about the Bar Mitzvah and focused on his practice. Or rather, doing his best to manipulate the cards without watching them. His peripheral vision coming into play. Not that he could concentrate on his surroundings while working the trick.

He felt the presence of Lance sliding into the seat across from him in the diner’s booth, rather than saw it. When Eric looked up, he saw that Lance looked harried.

“What, bad night?”

“Sort of. You know, Sunday night.” The Palace of Magic was dark on Monday, so Lance had the night off. Then he worked Tuesday, off Wednesday, and Thursday thru Sunday. Two performances on Saturday, two on Sunday, when he was in town. But Sunday was brunch and early birds. Never packed out.

Eric knew that even though he had only performed there once, for a Sunday brunch performance. That was when the new acts were tried out. The marks always seemed to appreciate it. Almost always. You had to be a truly bad act to be booed. Something Eric had remembered well.

“Yeah, I know that feeling.” Eric said, thinking that maybe he sounded successful.

Lance looked at him, sweeping a hand up to try and straighten out his hair. That was different since his hair was generally perfected, as if he had seen his own stylist before coming to breakfast.

“Look, Jenny’s coming. She still doesn’t get it so be cool, will ya. Nothing dirty.” Lance said. He then pointed at Eric and motioned for him to move over. “Make some room, okay?”

Eric looked at his coffee for a second. Lance did that sometimes. Invited others to come to breakfast. Jenny, if Eric remembered, was the new assistant. One of them, because you always needed two, if you were going to do some of the big illusions.

“Jenny! Over hear!” Lance looked up and called. Eric glanced at his watch. 9:30.

“What did you tell here, be here at 10?” He asked.

“Yeah, now scoot over.” Lance ran his hands through his hair again. Then let out a smile. Mussed hair, a girl who was there early.

Eric shoved his buttocks over, and then mouthed, “You scored.” Lance must have had sex the night before. He probably came from leaving his lover to breakfast.

Lance smiled wider and nodded, then motioned with his hands that Jenny was to sit down next to Eric. “Yeah. Hey there Jenny, you remember me telling you about my best friend in LA, Eric? This is the man. I was just telling him how shitty things were at yesterday’s performances.”

Eric said, “Hi Jenny. Nice to meet you. Lance said you were the star of last month’s Vegas show. Told me that you had the audience eating out of your hand.” They had been friends seven years and change. He owed Lance. He owed Lance alot. More than once he had been short in the rent, and somehow Lance knew and covered him until he could repay a loan.

No interest, no questions, and no pressure. Lance even had brought Ephron Calman to breakfast twice, trying to get the man to give Eric another chance at the Palace of Magic. Ephron knew he had to play nice with Lance, his star attraction. Eric did get a yearly gig at the Palace. Two weeks during the christmas season he had a table doing sleight of hand in the downstairs lounge. The watering hole for the cheap marks.

But it was a gig, and it was professional. That counted for something.

It was at the Palace of Magic.

That counted for a great deal more than something.

Eric owed Lance. And he wasn’t trying to keep score. When he was younger, when he had hope and ambition he might have been a score keeper. He might have known how many favors he was ahead of Lance, or actually how many favors Lance might have been ahead of him. But he gave up trying to keep track of that. Maybe when he started drinking more, he gave up keeping track.

“You’re the magician Lance is always talking about. His ‘inspiration.’ ” She was pretty. Blonde, and natural since she was out in the day. Eric had done a study of magicians assistants from when he first started to training and kept his tally on this subject. On stage, 4 out of 5, like the toothpaste commercial, were blondes. Or the wigs they wore made them blondes. To use the second assistant in the act, the one the marks didn’t know about, there were a lot of women who wore blonde wigs in the business. Something then didn’t have to do when not performing.

It was all part of the illusion.

“I don’t know if I inspire Lance all that much,” she said. Soft voice, Eric noted. That helped with the assistant the audience saw for most of the show. You could give them speaking lines. Some of the girls could speak two words together and not sound like cutting glass. They were the ones who might also have careers with the number signs at boxing matches. Great bodies in skintight clothes.

Not a lot of clothing, though in the Magic game, they often had sequins and trains on their dresses, depending on the trick. Lance, Eric knew, had his girls do four changes in an hour’s act.

“Hey buddy, you are a great inspiration to me. I got lucky, thats what the TV and Vegas deals are all about. You are in the trenches working hard and honest for every dollar you make. Ask anyone at the Palace and they’ll tell you there is more nobility in the money you earn than in what Calman pays us.” Lance said.

Eric knew that was a lot of smoke. Lance worked hard for his money too. They all started with the same repertoire. The floating man, the rabbit in the hat, the sawing a girl in two. It was how they put the act together, what they said, how they looked for a magician had to be pleasant to an audience as well as the girls. Then, to make your act break out, that was where a magician shown. New illusions. If you could come up with good ones, and not just the Houdini escape pieces, you could headline at the Palace, or get gigs on the late night shows. Get weeks in Vegas.

Siegfried and Roy like wealth and fame. Copperfield, Henning, Burton, Penn and Teller. Not that they were idols for Eric. They were good mostly. Well Penn and Teller made him laugh, and it was Henning’s act when he was younger that gave him the bug.

“Some days I would trade being an inspiration for some more cash.” Eric said with a lopsided grin.

Jenny turned and looked at him, probably seeing if he was joking like friends did with each other. “You shouldn’t say that. Either of you. I think magicians are some of the hardest working performers in the business. I was doing commercials before this. This is much harder.”

Eric did not have a comeback for that. He would have thought commercials were hard. She was a pretty young woman. Eric knew he was cynical from the hard years out in the cold that he endured. For a young woman like Jenny, not having caught a big break, she could be doing everything and anything to pay the bills. Working conventions and trade shows, which so many girls did. A booth babe. She had the looks that would make her some money doing that.

“You are such a dear,” Lance said. “You see Eric, didn’t I tell you. Jennifer is earnest about all this. Not jaded like you and me. Shhh. I am teasing. Well a bit. I guess I am a little jaded, but have I got something to tell you! I’ve thought up some new ideas for not just one trick, but a series of connected tricks.” Betsy came just then with a little serving tray. It had the carafe of coffee and two cups.

“Mr. Silverton, what can we get you today. Eric’s already ordered his usual. And the lady, would you like coffee too?” She took one of the cups and placed it before Lance. Betsy had been their waitress for two years or so. She knew they both drank coffee, and those other times that there was someone else, coffee was the safe bet.

“Oh, yes. A coffee and just some toast, please.” Jenny said. Still sounded pretty. Like soft syrup. Assistants came from the many girls trying to break into show biz. Jenny may have been the best thing at whatever high school she had come from. Then, perhaps going to one of the theater and stage programs at the local universities. Could she sing with that voice? Did she not get any nibbles from agents and representations? Eric bet she must have gotten something. Commercials and then someone hooked her up with Lance for his Vegas gig. She must have known someone somewhere. Lance hired out of Los Angeles so he could train with the girls before taking them to Sin City. Eric had no true knowledge of the life of pretty girls in Vegas, but he expected that they worked the shows for as long as they could, then had to resort to the life of the escort, which the yellow pages of Vegas was filled with ads for.

Lance egged Jenny to order more than toast, and she relented. She ordered a fruit bowl as well. Not nearly as much food as Lance had tried to get her to eat. But sensing no way to get her to order more, he placed his own order and Betsy left.

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A Regency Timeline 1791 & the Writing Life (New Novel in the works)

The Regency Timeline

My previous posts I’ve explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788 thru 1790. Now I have the entrees for 1791 and have uploaded all these years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture.

My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne. I have also just found a third book I own with timelines in it, very USA centric though. What Happened When by Carruth.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.

Regency Assembly Press 1791 Tineline

The Writing LIfe

I am now 75+ pages (over 22,000 words) on A Magician Murder Mystery. A had a good idea for a mystery, with a twist. What if the sleuth is a magician.

I enclose a few paragraphs from the first draft and first chapter for perusal.

Chapter 1

Eric stared at the coffee mug in front of him. He kept adding one part of a spoon of sugar at a time hoping that he could get it to be the balance between sweet and charcoal that he liked. He had taken the milk, probably non-fat since it would last longer before it spoiled, and had poured out two little dollops.

He could not stare at a cup of joe unless it had a little brown to it. The mug, thank god, was that. Not some piece of cardboard with a slip of paper around it to keep his hands from getting burnt. No, he wanted to put his hands, both of them around the ceramic and inhale the musk the cup gave off.

Eric had a hangover. He could say again, but since they came most mornings, rather than awaking without one most mornings, it would be dumb to think that this problem was one that was intermittent. It was persistent. Something he had to make non-existent. He had to stop drinking so much. He had already taken four aspirin and hoped they would make a dent in the nauseousness he held onto so tightly.

Damn Bertlestein bar mitzvah and an open bar. He liked that it was open and only had two drinks before he started his act. Well to be honest with himself, something that he knew he could still control, it was two doubles, and he had more between the first act, and then the second one the kids asked for before the evening ended.

Bertlestein offered him another three large to do that, and he always, always could use the money. With the money for the gig, he made his rent for the month, and there wasn’t a bar mitzvah, wedding, or some other party that he worked each week. He had a shifts at Wal-Mart twice a week to help with his costs. He used to work at one of the card clubs, but the manager and he had a falling out and he had to find new work.

As long as he kept his hands from strain, he could still do the sleight of hand that brought in the real money he needed for things like drugs. Not the king to make him happy. The kind to keep everything working inside like it should. The 4 dollar a month program that the company had started for prescription filling didn’t hurt either.

But that was an entirely different topic. The company was stingy about everything else, but if you cheered enough and kissed the right backsides, you could get more hours, work yourself to death and not see your family, though Eric had no family. Eventually a smart guy with an education, like Eric, who wasn’t a smart mouth, which Eric was, might get into management. Where the real money was made at Wal-Mart.

Now he sat in Du-pars waiting for Lance.

Lance Silverton was really plain old Michael Smith, before coming to the big city and trying to make his way. He struggled to choose a stage name and played on Copperfield with Silverton, and the Lance came from Lance Burton.

Even though it was going to make a little nauseous, he had ordered the blue plate complete breakfast special. Every first and third Monday at nine they met for breakfast, and Lance would pick up the check. Lance made real money. He was in demand, and was not stingy. Lead act at the Palace. The top of the profession for those who thought where the best performed.

Betsy came by, “It’s a quarter after, you want I should bring your breakfast now? Want me to freshen you coffee?”

“He’ll be here.” Eric said.

She said, pushing out the carafe of coffee at him, “He’s never late. You’re the one who is late more times than not. So want your breakfast now or what.”

He put his hand over the top of his mug, “Give it some time. What’s it take to make some eggs and pancakes. If he wasn’t coming he would have called.”

“Maybe he’s in Vegas again. He headlined there last month.”

Eric grimaced. He knew that. Lance often told him of his successes and encouraged him to get back on the horse. One day Lance was going to notice that he had too much love of liquor and that might never go away. Though the wooly head he had at that moment wasn’t as terrible as it sometimes was. He had gotten out of bed and showered without too many clenchings of his head. And had arrived on time, as Betsy had noted.

“Just go.” He looked at the cellphone on the table, and the pack of cards. He was a magician. He always had a pack of cards to hand. This one though was a full deck. Betsy shrugged her shoulders and went to the next table, another set of her regulars.

Eric looked up to the door to see if his friend had arrived. Still no sign of Lance, Lance Silverton. Lance was dark, or at least tanned well, and had thought to give his act a latin twist. That may have paid off for him, but his skill was what got him the big shows. Four times on Leno, and once on Conan. It was the big acts that were hard to do quickly. The Houdini like acts.

And the new twists that no one had done before got the stints in Vegas, for real money. Six figure money. Eric shuffled the deck and began to practice. Everyday, his hands had to move. Had to feel the cards, had to hide the cards, had to force the cards.

Yesterday though. What had happened. He had his two drinks, that didn’t effect the first performance. He could handle that kind of booze. And since he had gone from the bar to the stage quickly, it wasn’t even going to hit him until he was done with his act, when he would get some of the rubber chicken and that would start to absorb what had gone before. It was beef instead of chicken as well.

He didn’t want to go back on, but Bertlestein insisted and then there was the money. It would take him a long time at Wal-Mart to earn three hundred dollars.

At first he was sure his speech was fine, but then his hands, something was wrong. They felt like boxers mitts. Not that he had ever worn those gloves, but he did not feel as if he had fingers.

He pulled the handkerchiefs out of his coat pocket. The ones with the stupid flags that the kids seemed to like. Especially the pirate one. That worked well in LA. The Pirates of the Caribbean were so close at Disneyland that most kids around here new about them before the movies had started to come out.

He had done the rings once, but did them again. That was when things became different.

The secret of the ring trick was that one was split. The one that you kept in your hand at all times, the split part. The sleight of hand kept your audience from ever knowing that they hadn’t had a chance to examine the ring with the break.

Except he had nine rings. Eight good ones and one with a split.

Eric had to have been drunk. He started the trick and couldn’t find the split in his ring. He started to stall and was running out of words. He then told everyone that he had nine rings and to count with him. They all came up with eight and he could not find the ninth. Eight rings there was no way to make the trick work without the broken ring.

Eric knew that musicians were told to keep playing if they missed a note, and not go back. Singers to sing through where they forget a word. Actors to ad-lib when they forgot their lines on stage. And he was acting then.

“It has been a long day, and this has been a great party. Dylan did such a great job yesterday, and now here you all are celebrating, but I think I may have run out of my magic. We can’t find my ninth ring, and you remember we had it earlier.” Eric had said to the children and those adults who watched also. A few his age, and some seniors, but most of the parents and others were sitting at their own tables not paying attention.

Eric knew he could make the trick a joke. “Well, without my magic we may not be able to get the rings to converge, but I will try. Just one more time. Abercadbra, Hocus Pocus, Shala Khazam, and Igfonotus!” He then struck the joining ring lightly once against the catching ring, twice, and they with a heavy clang that he was sure would cause the ring to bounce, a third time.

That was when what should not have happened, did. The joiner passed through the solid steel of the catcher and went inside completing the trick.

It was a trick. There was no way that could have happened. The audience though loved it and applauded his efforts.

Knowing a thing, and seeing a thing though are two different pieces of life. He had learned that from when he began his quest. Old timers would pull your leg that you would have performances like this. Especially if you liked the juice too much. And Eric now did like to drink more than he should.

He gingerly tried another joiner, and it too passed into the catcher. Two on the main ring.

He took those two and then adding one to them, instead of the catcher, a trick that usually needed two broken rings. It worked just fine. He made another join and another. He used all eight rings, then took two out. He had six all connected.

He made them form a cube, saying his words agains, “Abercadbra, Hocus Pocus, Shala Khazam, and Igfonotus!” It worked. It worked and he lightly tugged at it, and it stayed a cube. He passed it to Dylan and told the kid to pass it around.

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A Regency Timeline 1790, The East India Company and The writing life-Crown Imposter

The East India Company, Part 1

The Opium Trade

Fans of Becky Sharpe in Makepeace Thackery’s Vanity Fair will know a little of the East India Company, or The Company . The company was granted its charter from 1600 by Queen Elizabeth I and survived until 1874. By the time of the Regency it was a powerhouse and its actions had much to do with Regency Life. So it is a good backdrop for our Regency novels.

One officer of the company, Warren Hastings (1732-1818) who became the first Governor General of India from 1773 -1785 is reported to be the father of Eliza de Feuillide, cousin to Jane Austen and later her sister by marriage when she married Jane’s brother Henry . Hastings of course was fabulously rich, and was even famously accused of corruption and impeached in 1787 but acquitted in 1795. He later would serve as a privy councillor in 1814.

What is fascinating though is that as the riches from India, made our members of the Ton exceedingly wealthy, becoming perhaps the richest men on the planet, some of this trade was founded on the sale of opium to China. The money then from that sale would buy tea for Britain. Which would then pay for more opium purchased in Bengal, India for sale to China. Though China had prohibited the trade of opium since 1729, reaffirmed in 1799 by the Jaiqing Emperor, its use kept growing.

Britain had during the Georgian era the same problem the US has now with China. China had more sterling owed it, then they wished to spend. So Britain saw that trading opium back to China was one way of reducing the trade imbalance. In India, only The Company controlled the planting, harvesting and manufacturing of opium. It was a monopoly.

This was such a problem for China that it would lead to two wars, the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1842 and the loss of Hong Kong to the English. (Which is of course the Victorian Era.)

Opium would be smuggled into China from Calcutta by respectable British trading houses. The company had a factory in Canton where the opium was off loaded. From 1826 the trade through the Straits of Malacca needed to be protected and the company set up Settlements there to do so. They also became penal colonies for Indian Civilian and Military prisoners. One of these was Singapore.

If America had its Rum-Molasses and Slave trade, it would seem that England has its Opium-Silver and Tea trade. Neither a thing to be particularly proud about in today’s sensibilities, but necessary to have taken us to where we are today.

The Regency Timeline

My last post I explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788 & 1789. Now I have the entrees for 1790 and have uploaded both years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture.

My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne. I have also just found a third book I own with timelines in it, very USA centric though. What Happened When by Carruth.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.

Regency Assembly Press 1790 Timeline

The Writing LIfe

I am now over 400+ pages (over 130000 words) on The Crown Imposter. just finished. A fantasy that has had two different ideas about for the last few years. Neither was working by when I decided to combine them, all of sudden it worked and I wanted to write.

I enclose a few paragraphs from the first draft and first chapter for perusal.

Chapter 1–the next part

Damien shook his head, “I worry that he shall not last this winter. Do you remember when we used to visit him? He is a good man. He truly hoped that when he was elevated and became King of Altan that he would bring our two kingdoms together. He wrote father when he became heir and then King that he wished his ascension would lead to great things.”

Middlin had remembered when the old Baron had received that letter. He had been in a rotten mood for days after. Muttering that nothing good was going to come of it. And he had been right it appeared. Nothing good was coming of it. Not only did it appear that King Henry’s illness was suspicious but it was the common talk of just about everyone Middlin knew. He had been in the Baronial retinue long enough that he had seen the Duke a handful of times before the man became a King.

Middlin had good memories of the man as well, though it had been Damien who had spent time with the man, as well as the man’s family. Middlin remembered that the King’s daughters were actually quite beautiful. One, the eldest, the sergeant heard, had been promised in marriage to some haughty Altan noble. A man who had no ties to the people of Centrion and would complete the takeover of the Duchy as soon as the wedding occurred.

“You, my lord, have to deal with the realities, not the wishes.”

Damien nodded. “Aye, I know that. Why else do you think I went out in this storm? Too soon, I fear, those of Altan will cross our borders and raid our lands in strength that we will be hard pressed to meet. King Frederick would have us meet those forays with steel though he gives little direction and thought on how best to do that and survive. He, I think, waits for us to be quite carved up before he will send any to aid us.”

Middlin smiled with what many called the looks of a wolf. “That is true enough, but Prince Brion, he I think would rush to your aid in a moment. He is said to be quite the armsman.”

Now Damien laughed, as Middlin knew he would. “Ha, was it not you who told me long ago that Princes and Kings are always known as great warriors? Even the ones whose wrists would snap should they try and draw steel?”

Middlin nodded. Damien did not have that problem. The dozen years he had trained the young man from when he was a boy had built muscles that could hold a sword and shield in battle for hours. “True enough, but I had it from Sir Bartholomew when he came riding through two years gone that the Prince was quite accomplished. At least on the practice yard.”

“I talked to Bartholomew then as well. He also said that a knight he respects was asked to spar with the Prince then and Prince Brion beat the knight soundly. A knight he thinks you or I would have a difficult time besting.” Middlin had heard that as well.

Middlin knew that a few years ago, he was a better fighter than he was now. He was slowing down. Damien though, and he when younger, would have been able to best most in the Barony. They had bested most in the Barony.

“I did not believe that Sir Bartholomew truly believed that those who faced his highness would give less than they should.”

Damien shook his head, “And when you and I would spar, as well as those you had to train me, did some not lessen their skills certain days? Did they not hold back?”

Grudgingly Middlin nodded his agreement. “Not on the days that it counted.”

“No, not then, and none do so now, I am sure of it. But Bartholomew felt the need to relate this to me. He was skeptical that his highness is as good as is his reputation. Though should I need to hide my skill for fear my enemies would exploit all they knew of me, I too might arrange such rumors to flit about.” Damien had gotten a depth that Middlin did not remember teaching him. That was subtle, and perhaps wise as well. Though many knew Damien to be very accomplished as a swordsman, and with most arms, except the bow, few knew that he was much better than he even admitted to.

Middlin knew they talked around the and about what was on their minds. They often did so, having many topics that were always needing to be discussed and continued from one talk to the next. This night was really no exception for them. They had many things that they were trying to resolve and never did seem to come to a conclusion. Were the Altans sure to attack them once King Henry died, or to test that his grip was no longer strong enough to stop them, was a matter that they had no control over.

They would react to such an action.

Those of Spragfalls could not stop such an attack before it came.

There were many such things that Damien was now charged with reacting too. Things that he surely wished he had more control over and had none. And Middlin had even less. He followed the orders that the young man gave him.

But Middlin had been one of the few who had trained Baron Damien to command him so.

“Let us hope that those of Altan who have not paid heed to their king, or his wishes, when they do cross our borders in anger, will underestimate us as well.” Middlin said.

“They shall. Oh they shall. One thing about those of Altan is that they can be relied on to be arrogant. Even now after many of our old neighbors went and became their citizens, those born of Altan foolishly cling to old prejudices about us. It is why I expect that their shall be trouble soon.”

Middlin nodded. He knew that there would be trouble as well.

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A Regency Timeline 1789

My last post I explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. I posted my entries for 1788. Now I have the entrees for 1789 and have uploaded both years to the Regency Assembly Press website. You can see a little preview of this below in the picture.

My sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

Click on the link below or the picture to go to the entry. More years coming. The list is now over 5000 event entries long and growing.

Regency Assembly Press 1789 Timeline

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A Regency Timeline 1788

My last post I explained that I was working on the Regency timeline. Here are 108 entries, a few duplicates I think, and my sources which include the Internet and The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein as well as the Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield should cover a lot of events. There are now over 5000 listed for the period between 1788 and 1837 when Victoria comes to the Throne.

I may post a year at time every so often in between scanning through all these to find something that will be a good article for this blog and the blog at English Historical Fiction Authors. I will also have the full listing up shortly at Regency Assembly Press.

Those who have feedback, it is appreciated or if someone would like a specific year in a future post. The very first entry is to show who was Prime Minister of Great Britain, later it was the United Kingdom, during the period of the chronology. In choosing our dates, 1788 is the first sign of madness in George the III, it is the beginning of the end of the French Monarchy with the riots in Paris, it is the time when the mama’s of the girls during the true Regency would be girls going to London for their own season, and when our heroes are young lads or babes as well.

We need to know of the events that occurred when they were children, as well as what happens when they are on stage in our stories.

1783	19-Dec	Prime Minister of Great Britain: William Pitt “TheYounger”
1788	Jan 1	London’s Daily Universal Register began publishing as The Times.
1788	Jan 1	Quakers in Pennsylvania emancipated their slaves.
1788	Jan 2	Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Jan 9	Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Jan 18	The first English settlers arrived in Australia’s Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. They found the location unsuitable and Capt. Arthur Philip moved on to Sydney Cove. England sent the first sheep along with convicts to Australia.
1788	Jan 20	The pioneer African Baptist church was organized in Savannah, Ga.
1788	Jan 22	George Gordon (d.1824), (6th Baron Byron) aka Lord Byron, English poet, was born with a deformed foot. His work included “Lara,” “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and “Don Juan.” He died in Greece at Missolonghi on the gulf of Patras preparing to fight for Greek independence. In 1997 the biography: “Byron: The flawed Angel” by Phyllis Grosskurth was published.
1788	Jan 26	The 1st fleet of ships carrying 736 convicts from England landed at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia. The first European settlers in Australia, led by Capt. Arthur Phillip, landed in present-day Sydney. The day is since known as Australia’s national day. In 2006 Thomas Keneally authored “The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Founding of Australia.”
1788	Jan 31	Charles Edward Stuart (67), The Young Pretender, “Bonnie Prince Charlie” Stuart dies in Rome Born in 1720
1788	January	January: The first edition of The Times of London is published.
1788	Feb 1	Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat on this day.
1788	Feb 5	Sir Robert Peel (d.1850), British prime minister through the early 1800s, was born. He founded the Conservative Party and the London Police Force whose officers were called “bobbies.”
1788	Feb 6	Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Feb 22	Arthur Schopenhauer (d.1860), German philosopher (Great Pessimist), was born: “Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.”
1788	Mar 7	Alexander Hamilton published his Federalist Paper 65 in the New York Packet. It discussed the subject of impeachment.
1788	Mar 21	Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, was destroyed by fire. 856 buildings were burned.
1788	Mar 29	Charles Wesley, hymn writer and brother of John Wesley, died.
1788	Apr 4	Last of the Federalist essays was published. The series of 85 letters were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay urging ratification of the US Constitution. Defects in the Articles of Confederation became apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce and the inability of Congress to levy taxes, leading Congress to endorse a plan to draft a new constitution.
1788	Apr 5	Franz Pforr, German painter, cartoonist (Lukasbund), was born.
1788	Apr 12	Carlo Antonio Campioni (67), composer, died.
1788	Apr 15	Mary Delany (b.1700), English artist and writer, died. She became known for her “Flora Delanica,” a collection of 985 botanically accurate portraits of flowers in bloom. In 2011 Molly Peacock authored “”The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s work at 72.”
1788	Apr 28	Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the US constitution, but on condition that a Bill of Rights be added.
1788	May 10	Augustin-Jean Fresnel, optics pioneer, physicist, was born.
1788	May 18	Hugh Clapperton, African explorer, was born in Annan, Scotland.
1788	May 23	South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U. S. Constitution.
1788	May 29	Jacques Aliamet (61), French etcher, engraver, died.
1788	May	May: The last volumes of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire are published.
1788	Jun 11	The 1st British ship to be built on Pacific coast was begun at Nootka Sound, BC.
1788	Jun 21	The U.S. Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
1788	Jun 25	Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Jul 6	Ten thousand troops were called out in Paris as unrest mounted in the poorer districts over poverty and lack of food.
1788	Jul 15	Louis XVI jailed 12 deputies who protest new judicial reforms.
1788	Jul 19	Prices plunged on the Paris stock market.
1788	Jul 20	The governor of the French colony of Pondicherry, Vietnam, abandoned plans to place King Nhuyen Anh back on the throne.
1788	Jul 26	New York became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution.
1788	Aug 2	Thomas Gainsborough (61), English painter, died. His work included the 1771 portraits of the Viscount and Viscountess Ligonier and “Blue Boy.”
1788	Aug 8	King Louis XVI called the French States and Generals together.
1788	Aug 8	Louis FAD Duke de Richelieu (92), French marshal, died.
1788	Aug 27	Jacques Neeker was named French minister of Finance.
1788	August	August: Louis XVI of France agrees to convene the Estates-General for the first time since 1614.
1788	August	August: Mozart composes the “Jupiter Symphony” (Symphony No. 41).
1788	Sep 13	The Congress of the Confederation authorized the first national election, and declared New York City the temporary national capital. The Constitutional Convention authorized the first federal election resolving that electors (electoral college) in all the states will be appointed on January 7, 1789. The Convention decreed that the first federal election would be held on the first Wednesday in February of the following year.
1788	Sep 15	An alliance between Britain, Prussia and the Netherlands was ratified at the Hague.
1788	Sep 19	Charles de Barentin became lord chancellor of France.
1788	Sep 22	Theodore Hook, English novelist best known for “Impromptu at Fulham,” was born.
1788	Sep 23	Louis XVI of France declared the Parliament restored.
1788	Sep 24	After having been dissolved, the French Parliament of Paris reassembled in triumph.
1788	Oct 6	The Polish Diet decided to hold a four year session.
1788	Oct 24	Sarah Josepha Hale, magazine editor and poet whose book Poems for Our Children included “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (the first words to be recorded in sound), was born.
1788	November	November: The first Regency Crisis is brought about by George’s III’s first bout of madness.
1788	Dec 18	Camille Pleyel, Austrian piano builder and composer, was born.
1788	Dec 23	Maryland voted to cede a 100-square-mile area for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area became the District of Columbia.
1788	Dec 30	Francesco Zuccarelli (86), Italian rococo painter and etcher, died.
1788	December	December: King Charles III of Spain dies and is succeeded by his son Charles IV of Spain.
1788		Actor John Philip Kemble becomes manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
1788		Botany Bay Colonet established
1788		Sir John Soane begins his re-design of the Bank of England building, the first Greek revival building in England.
1788		The Marylebone Cricket Club codifies the rules of cricket in its Code of Laws, which are universally adopted by the game. (MCC remains the custodian and arbiter of Laws relating to cricket around the world.)
1788		William Playfair, Scottish draughtsman for James Watt, produced an “atlas” of Britain using 44 charts and no maps.
1788		The Marquis de Lafayette wrote the original version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He was appalled by the excesses of the revolution and fled to Austria where he was imprisoned for 5 years.
1788		Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823), French artist, painted “Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure Entraps, and Remorse Follows.”
1788		John Adams published “A Defense of the Constitutions.”
1788		“The Narrative of John Blanchford” was published. Blanchford (15), a Massachusetts cabin-boy, had been captured by the British and sent to prison in Halifax and later to Sumatra from where he escaped after a 6 year ordeal.
1788		“The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy” by Hannah Glasse was published in London.
1788		Mozart’s Don Giovanni was performed in conservative Vienna but was not a success.
1788		Mozart composed his 41st symphony titled by his publisher as the Jupiter.
1788		Rules were set for the game of cricket.
1788		“Buffalo clover… nearly knee-high… afforded a rich pasture.” An image of the fertile frontier penned by historian S.P. Hildreth. After 1907 the clover was unseen until 1989 when it emerged in some topsoil delivered to a botanist’s backyard.
1788		As British settlers arrived in Australia the native Aborigines are believed to have numbered about 750,000, and to have inhabited Australia for up to 70,000 years.
1788		A botanical garden opened in Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife Island (Canary Islands).
1788		A great fire destroyed much of the wooden city of Kyoto, Japan.
1788		A salon from Paris of this time was later transferred [c1993] to the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, Ca.
1788		Louis XVI creates more dissatisfaction by abolishing the power of parliament to review royal edicts. There has been insufficient government planning and storage of grain for emergency shortages. A hailstorm destroys crops. France has its worst harvests in forty years. Winter food riots occur.
1788		Britain’s prisons have been overcrowded, and having lost its thirteen colonies in the Americas it can no longer send convicts there. Instead it sends eleven ships with 1,372 people, including 732 of its more unruly convicts, to a place in Australia named after Lord Sydney, secretary of state for Britain’s colonies.
1788		Parlement of Paris presents list of grievances; Louis XVI decides to call States-General for May 1789 and recalls Jacques Necker as Minister of Finance
1788		Austria declares war on Turkey
1788		British parliamentary motion for abolition of slave trade
1788		Trial of Warren Hastings for maladministration of India
1788		Goethe: “Egmont,” Tragedy
1788		Friendship between Goethe and Schiller
1788		Friedrich Ruckert, german author born
1788		Jospeh von Eichendorff, german romantic poet born
1788		John C Spencer, US Lawyer born
1788		Hannah More: “Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society”
1788		John Lempriere:”Classical Dictionary”
1788		Kant: “Critque of Practical Reason,” the “Categorical Imperative
1788		Georg Johann Hamann, German religious philosopher died. (born 1730)
1788		Mozart wrote his las three symphonies in 6 weeks, in E Flat, G Minor and C (Jupiter)
1788		Etelka by Andras Dugonics (1740-1818), playwright, novelist and mathematician. He deplored foreign influences and tried to preserve the native traditions, especially dialects. This was the first popular novel in Hungarian.
1788		First volume of The Scots Musical Museum published by James Johnson (1750-1811) Scottish music engraver who for nearly 40 years had a monopoly of music engraving in Scotland
1788		The Botanicum Uppsala by Jean Louis Desprez (1743-1804) is neo-classicism by a French trained architect
1788		William Savery died (born 1721) Cabinet-maker and carver of the Philadelphia school noted for his elaborate ornament
1788		Humphrey Repton (1752-1818) began to practice as a landscape gardener. His work was on lines developed by Lancelot Brown but on a smaller scale with more details added to Brown’s broad sweeps. In later life he returned to the formal terraces and beds of the French style for the area immediately surrounding the house. Repton is the designer of the grounds of Aspley House.
1788		Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) made a new departure in Ukiyo-E colour prints with his insects, which exploited the accurate observation of Japanese naturalistic painting; he anticipated the work of Hokusai and Kiroshige in this respect, but was chiefly famous for depicting the world of women.
1788		Bread riots in France
1788		First hortensia and fuchsia imported to Europe from Peru
1788		First German Cigar factory opened in Hamburg
1788		James Hutton: “New Theory of the Earth”
1788		Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace: “Laws of the Planetary System”
1788		KPE Bach died (b 1714)
1788		Brandenburger Tor, Berlin built by CG Langhaus
1788		David: “Love of Paris and Helena”
1788		Maurice Quentin de Latour, French painter died (b 1704)
1788-1789		King George III suffered a mental breakdown.
1788-1792		Koray’s Letters Written from Paris by Adamantios Loraes (1748-1833) man of letters. Greek Scholars and writers were at this time trying to find a language that could be used by all Greeks for all purposes. The choice was between classical (Church) and spoken (demotic) Greek. Koraes attempted a compromise between Church language and spoken Greek, but the result was too artificial.
1788-1800		In 2007 Jay Winik authored “The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800.”
1788-1865		C.J. Thomson, Danish museum curator, contributed to the Three Age System classification of early man from stone to bronze to iron.

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A Regency Timeline

For several months now, since November, we have had weekly posts about several historical aspects of the Regency Period.

This has shown me that while I know a lot of what has occurred in the Regency, there is a great deal that I still can learn.

In order to increase my awareness of what took place, I started to look at timelines that I own, and that are on the internet. Thinking that they are quite incomplete. I then began to combine a few as a project and that soon I will have a fairly complete one, perhaps by next weeks posting. The Regency I have always said is a period from 1795 to 1830 but that needs to be codified a bit. 1795 is when Geor

ge IV gets married so he can increase his income, so we have a reason for its start. The end of 1830 is when George passes, but his brother takes over. If we extend this to 1837 when William passes and Victoria begins her rule, perhaps that is the true length of the Regency Era.

For good measure the events of a few years prior, for these will be the events the mama’s of Regency heroines experience in their youth.

There are some duplicates. I am cleaning it up. Your comments about this project are appreciated.

Year	Month Day	Event
1788	Jan 1	London’s Daily Universal Register began publishing as The Times.
1788	Jan 1	Quakers in Pennsylvania emancipated their slaves.
1788	Jan 2	Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Jan 9	Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Jan 18	The first English settlers arrived in Australia’s Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. They found the location unsuitable and Capt. Arthur Philip moved on to Sydney Cove. England sent the first sheep along with convicts to Australia.
1788	Jan 20	The pioneer African Baptist church was organized in Savannah, Ga.
1788	Jan 22	George Gordon (d.1824), (6th Baron Byron) aka Lord Byron, English poet, was born with a deformed foot. His work included “Lara,” “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and “Don Juan.” He died in Greece at Missolonghi on the gulf of Patras preparing to fight for Greek independence. In 1997 the biography: “Byron: The flawed Angel” by Phyllis Grosskurth was published.
1788	Jan 26	The 1st fleet of ships carrying 736 convicts from England landed at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia. The first European settlers in Australia, led by Capt. Arthur Phillip, landed in present-day Sydney. The day is since known as Australia’s national day. In 2006 Thomas Keneally authored “The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Founding of Australia.”
1788	Jan 31	Charles Edward Stuart (67), The Young Pretender, died.
1788	January	January: The first edition of The Times of London is published.
1788	January	January: The Young Pretender Charles Edward “Bonnie Prince Charlie” Stuart dies in Rome at age 67.
1788	Feb 1	Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat on this day.
1788	Feb 5	Sir Robert Peel (d.1850), British prime minister through the early 1800s, was born. He founded the Conservative Party and the London Police Force whose officers were called “bobbies.”
1788	Feb 6	Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Feb 22	Arthur Schopenhauer (d.1860), German philosopher (Great Pessimist), was born: “Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.”
1788	Mar 7	Alexander Hamilton published his Federalist Paper 65 in the New York Packet. It discussed the subject of impeachment.
1788	Mar 21	Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, was destroyed by fire. 856 buildings were burned.
1788	Mar 29	Charles Wesley, hymn writer and brother of John Wesley, died.
1788	Apr 4	Last of the Federalist essays was published. The series of 85 letters were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay urging ratification of the US Constitution. Defects in the Articles of Confederation became apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce and the inability of Congress to levy taxes, leading Congress to endorse a plan to draft a new constitution.
1788	Apr 5	Franz Pforr, German painter, cartoonist (Lukasbund), was born.
1788	Apr 12	Carlo Antonio Campioni (67), composer, died.
1788	Apr 15	Mary Delany (b.1700), English artist and writer, died. She became known for her “Flora Delanica,” a collection of 985 botanically accurate portraits of flowers in bloom. In 2011 Molly Peacock authored “”The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s work at 72.”
1788	Apr 28	Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the US constitution, but on condition that a Bill of Rights be added.
1788	May 10	Augustin-Jean Fresnel, optics pioneer, physicist, was born.
1788	May 18	Hugh Clapperton, African explorer, was born in Annan, Scotland.
1788	May 23	South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U. S. Constitution.
1788	May 29	Jacques Aliamet (61), French etcher, engraver, died.
1788	May	May: The last volumes of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire are published.
1788	Jun 11	The 1st British ship to be built on Pacific coast was begun at Nootka Sound, BC.
1788	Jun 21	The U.S. Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
1788	Jun 25	Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.
1788	Jul 6	Ten thousand troops were called out in Paris as unrest mounted in the poorer districts over poverty and lack of food.
1788	Jul 15	Louis XVI jailed 12 deputies who protest new judicial reforms.
1788	Jul 19	Prices plunged on the Paris stock market.
1788	Jul 20	The governor of the French colony of Pondicherry, Vietnam, abandoned plans to place King Nhuyen Anh back on the throne.
1788	Jul 26	New York became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution.
1788	Aug 2	Thomas Gainsborough (61), English painter, died. His work included the 1771 portraits of the Viscount and Viscountess Ligonier and “Blue Boy.”
1788	Aug 8	King Louis XVI called the French States and Generals together.
1788	Aug 8	Louis FAD Duke de Richelieu (92), French marshal, died.
1788	Aug 27	Jacques Neeker was named French minister of Finance.
1788	August	August: Louis XVI of France agrees to convene the Estates-General for the first time since 1614.
1788	August	August: Mozart composes the “Jupiter Symphony” (Symphony No. 41).
1788	August	August: Painter Thomas Gainsborough dies at age 61.
1788	Sep 13	The Congress of the Confederation authorized the first national election, and declared New York City the temporary national capital. The Constitutional Convention authorized the first federal election resolving that electors (electoral college) in all the states will be appointed on January 7, 1789. The Convention decreed that the first federal election would be held on the first Wednesday in February of the following year.
1788	Sep 15	An alliance between Britain, Prussia and the Netherlands was ratified at the Hague.
1788	Sep 19	Charles de Barentin became lord chancellor of France.
1788	Sep 22	Theodore Hook, English novelist best known for “Impromptu at Fulham,” was born.
1788	Sep 23	Louis XVI of France declared the Parliament restored.
1788	Sep 24	After having been dissolved, the French Parliament of Paris reassembled in triumph.
1788	Oct 6	The Polish Diet decided to hold a four year session.
1788	Oct 24	Sarah Josepha Hale, magazine editor and poet whose book Poems for Our Children included “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (the first words to be recorded in sound), was born.
1788	November	November: The first Regency Crisis is brought about by George’s III’s first bout of madness.
1788	Dec 18	Camille Pleyel, Austrian piano builder and composer, was born.
1788	Dec 23	Maryland voted to cede a 100-square-mile area for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area became the District of Columbia.
1788	Dec 30	Francesco Zuccarelli (86), Italian rococo painter and etcher, died.
1788	December	December: King Charles III of Spain dies and is succeeded by his son Charles IV of Spain.
1788	Actor John Philip Kemble becomes manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
1788	Botany Bay Colonet established
1788	Sir John Soane begins his re-design of the Bank of England building, the first Greek revival building in England.
1788	The Marylebone Cricket Club codifies the rules of cricket in its Code of Laws, which are universally adopted by the game. (MCC remains the custodian and arbiter of Laws relating to cricket around the world.)
1788	William Playfair, Scottish draughtsman for James Watt, produced an “atlas” of Britain using 44 charts and no maps.
1788	The Marquis de Lafayette wrote the original version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He was appalled by the excesses of the revolution and fled to Austria where he was imprisoned for 5 years.
1788	Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823), French artist, painted “Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure Entraps, and Remorse Follows.”
1788	John Adams published “A Defense of the Constitutions.”
1788	“The Narrative of John Blanchford” was published. Blanchford (15), a Massachusetts cabin-boy, had been captured by the British and sent to prison in Halifax and later to Sumatra from where he escaped after a 6 year ordeal.
1788	“The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy” by Hannah Glasse was published in London.
1788	Mozart’s Don Giovanni was performed in conservative Vienna but was not a success.
1788	Mozart composed his 41st symphony titled by his publisher as the Jupiter.
1788	Rules were set for the game of cricket.
1788	“Buffalo clover… nearly knee-high… afforded a rich pasture.” An image of the fertile frontier penned by historian S.P. Hildreth. After 1907 the clover was unseen until 1989 when it emerged in some topsoil delivered to a botanist’s backyard.
1788	As British settlers arrived in Australia the native Aborigines are believed to have numbered about 750,000, and to have inhabited Australia for up to 70,000 years.
1788	A botanical garden opened in Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife Island (Canary Islands).
1788	A great fire destroyed much of the wooden city of Kyoto, Japan.
1788	A salon from Paris of this time was later transferred [c1993] to the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, Ca.
1788-1789	King George III suffered a mental breakdown.
1788-1800	In 2007 Jay Winik authored “The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800.”
1788-1865	C.J. Thomson, Danish museum curator, contributed to the Three Age System classification of early man from stone to bronze to iron.
1789	Jan 7	The first U.S. presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation’s first president.
1789	Jan 21	Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach (b.1723), a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment, died. In 2010 Philipp Blom authored “A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment,” the story of the Paris salon run by Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach.
1789	Jan 23	Georgetown University was established by Jesuits in present-day Washington, D.C., as the 1st US Catholic college.
1789	January	January: The first national elections are held in the United States.
1789	Feb 2	Armand-Louis Couperin (63), French composer, organist at Notre Dame, died.
1789	Feb 4	Electors unanimously chose George Washington to be the first  president of the United States and John Adams as vice-president. The results of the balloting were not counted in the US Senate until two months later. Washington accepted office at the Federal Building of New York. His first cabinet included Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton as first secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph.
1789	Feb 8	Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer, composer, was born.
1789	Mar 2	Pennsylvania ended the prohibition of theatrical performances.
1789	Mar 4	The Constitution of the United States, framed in 1787, went into effect as the first  Federal Congress met in New York City. Lawmakers then adjourned for the lack of a quorum (9 senators, 13 representatives). In 2006 Robert V. Remini, historian of the US House of Representatives, authored “The House.”
1789	Mar 4	Pavel P. Gagarin, Russian monarch, was born.
1789	Mar 16	George S. Ohm (d.1854), German scientist,  was born. He gave his name to the ohm unit of electrical resistance. [WUD says Mar 16, 1787]
1789	March	March: The newly ratified Constitution of the United States is put into action as the first government begins operations.
1789	Apr 1	The U.S. House of Representatives held its first full meeting, in New York City. Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was elected the first House Speaker.
1789	Apr 6	The first US Congress began regular sessions at Federal Hall on Wall Street, NYC.
1789	Apr 8	The U.S. House of Representatives held its first meeting.
1789	Apr 16	George Washington left Mount Vernon, Va., for the first presidential inauguration in New York.
1789	Apr 21	John Adams was sworn in as the first vice president of the United States.
1789	Apr 23	President-elect Washington and his wife moved into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York. George Washington was inaugurated at Federal Hall and lived at 3 Cherry Street in New York City. In 1790, with construction on the new federal capital underway, the government was moved temporarily to Philadelphia, where Washington served out his two terms. He is the only president who never resided in the White House.
1789	Apr 28	Fletcher Christian lead a mutiny on the Bounty as the crew of the British ship set Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in the South Pacific. Richard Hough later authored: “Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian.”
1789	Apr 30	George Washington was inaugurated and took office in New York as the first president of the United States. He took his oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street and spoke the words “So help me God,” which all future US presidents have repeated. The oath as prescribed by the Constitution makes no mention of God of the Bible.
1789	April	April: Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against Captain William Bligh.
1789	April	April: George Washington becomes the first President of the United States.
1789	May 5	In France the Estates General, summoned by King Louis XVI, convened to repair the national finances. It sat for several weeks in May and June, but came to an impasse as the three Estates clashed over their respective powers. It was brought to an end when many members of the Third Estate formed themselves into a National Assembly, signaling the outbreak of the French Revolution.
1789	May 7	The first inaugural ball was held in New York in honor of President and Mrs. George Washington.
1789	May 10	Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier, Tiradentes, rebel for Independence, was arrested. He was betrayed by Joaquim Silverio dos Reis, a participant of the movement, in exchange of waiving of his due taxes; Silverio’s name is carved in Brazilian History as The Betrayer.
1789	May 12	The Society of St. Tammany was formed by Revolutionary War soldiers. It later became an infamous group of NYC political bosses.
1789	May 12	In England William Wilberforce laid out his case for the abolition of slavery to the House of Commons. This speech directly led to Britain’s abolition of slavery in 1807.
1789	May	May: Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery opens in Pall Mall. It serves to exhibit a collection of pictures commissioned by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting. Contributing artists include Richard Westall, George Romney, Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West, Angelica Kauffmann, John Opie, and more.
1789	May	May: In France, the Estates-General convenes for the first time in 175 years.
1789	Jun 1	Congress passed its first act which mandated the procedure for administering oaths of public office.
1789	Jun 4	The US constitution, enacted as sovereign law, went into effect.
1789	Jun 10	Bernard-Jordan de Launay, military governor of the Bastille, suspended the prisoners’ daily supervised walks outside the Bastille walls.
1789	Jun 14	Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty arrived in Timor in a small boat.
1789	Jun 17	The Third Estate in France declared itself a national assembly, and undertook to frame a constitution.
1789	Jun 20	Oath on the Tennis Court in Versailles, France, bonded members of the Third Estate to resist eviction until they have a new constitution.
1789	June	June: At the Estates General, representatives of the Third Estate — ie the general populace and not the clergy (First Estate) or the nobility (Second Estate) — declare themselves the National Assembly of France.
1789	Jul 4	The US passed its first tariff which included a 15% duty on imported nails among other things.
1789	Jul 9	In Versailles, the French National Assembly declared itself the Constituent Assembly and began to prepare a French constitution.
1789	Jul 11	In France just days before the Bastille was taken the tavern keepers and wine merchants of Belleville, angered by levies on food and drink, sacked the local tax collector’s office.
1789	Jul 13	Parisians rioted over an increase in price of grain. The mob plundered the armories and opened the prison gates of St. Lazare. The King at Versailles refused to withdraw his troops from Paris.
1789	Jul 14	Bastille Day. Tens of thousands of the citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille, the Paris fortress used as a prison to hold political prisoners, and released the seven prisoners inside at the onset of the French Revolution. Over 100 rioters were killed or wounded. The average Frenchman was 5 foot 2 and weighed 105 pounds. France’s Louis XIV made a diary entry that read “Rien” (nothing). Historian Francois Furet (1927-1997), a leading writer on the French Revolution, was best known for his work: “Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.” He refuted Marxist interpretations of the events that preceded and followed the fall of the monarchy. In 1939 W. Higgins edited “The French Revolution Told by Contemporaries.”
1789	Jul 14	The French Revolution. “It was not the literate and cultured minority of Frenchmen who brought down the government, as had been the case in England and America. Instead it was the common people, who marched upon the king and queen in their palace at Versailles. The Jacobins promulgated a Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen that went beyond the American Bill of Rights in affirming, “Nothing that is not forbidden by Law may be hindered, and no one may be compelled to do what the Law does not ordain,” for “Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others.”
1789	Jul 15	The electors of Paris set up a “Commune” to live without the authority of the government.
1789	Jul 18	Robespierre, a deputy from Arras, France, decided to back the French Revolution.
1789	Jul 22	Thomas Jefferson became the first head of the U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs.
1789	Jul 23	The Great Fear swept through France as the Revolution continued.
1789	Jul 27	President Washington signed a measure establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs, forerunner of the Department of State.
1789	July	July: Storming of the Bastille by citizens of Paris marks the beginning of the French Revolution.
1789	Aug 4	The Constituent Assembly in France dissolved feudal system by abolishing the privileges of nobility.
1789	Aug 7	The U.S. War Department was established by Congress.
1789	Aug 21	Augustin-Louis Baron Cauchy, French mathematician, was born.
1789	Aug 25	Mary Ball Washington, mother of George, died.
1789	Aug 26	The Constituent Assembly in Versailles, France, approved the final version of the Declaration of Human Rights.
1789	Aug 27	French National Assembly issued “Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen.”
1789	August	August: The National Assembly of France adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
1789	Sep 1	Lady Marguerite Blessington, beautiful English socialite and author, was born. She wrote a biography of Lord Byron.
1789	Sep 2	The Treasury Department, headed by Alexander Hamilton, was created in New York City and housed in Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl St.
1789	Sep 11	Alexander Hamilton was appointed the first U.S. secretary of the treasury. During his tenure, Hamilton established the National Bank, introduced an excise tax, suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion and spearheaded the effort for the federal government to assume the debts of the states. In the presidential election of 1800, Hamilton broke the deadlock between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr by supporting Jefferson. The enmity between Hamilton and his longtime political enemy Burr grew worse during the 1804 campaign for governor of New York.
1789	Sep 12	Franz Xaver Richter, composer, died at 79.
1789	Sep 13	Start of the US National Debt as the government took out its first loan, borrowed from the Bank of North America (NYC) at 6 percent interest. The US debt had reached $77 million when Washington became president.
1789	Sep 13	Guardsmen in Orleans, France, opened fire on rioters trying to loot bakeries, killing 90.
1789	Sep 15	James Fenimore Cooper (d.1851), American novelist, was born in Burlington, NJ. He is best known for “The Pioneers” and “Last of the Mohicans.” “The press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.”
1789	Sep 15	The U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs was renamed the Department of State.
1789	Sep 16	Jean-Paul Marat set up a new newspaper in France, L’Ami du Peuple (The Friend of the People).
1789	Sep 18	The 1st loan was made to pay salaries of the US president & Congress. [see Sep 13]
1789	Sep 22	The US Act 1 Stat. 70 temporarily established a post office and created the Office of the Postmaster General.
1789	Sep 22	Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov drove the Turkish army under Yusuf Pasha from the Rymnik River, upsetting the Turkish invasion of Russia.
1789	Sep 24	President George Washington appointed John Jay as the 1st Chief Justice.
1789	Sep 24	The US Federal Judiciary Act was passed. It created a six-person Supreme Court and provided for an Attorney General.
1789	Sep 25	The first United States Congress [proposed] adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights. 14 copies were hand written and 13 were sent to the individual states.
1789	Sep 26	Thomas Jefferson was appointed America’s first Secretary of State; John Jay the first chief justice of the United States; Samuel Osgood the first Postmaster-General; and Edmund Jennings Randolph the first Attorney General.
1789	Sep 28	Richard Bright, physician (Bright’s Disease, nephritis), was born in England.
1789	Sep 29	The U.S. War Department established a regular U.S. army with a strength of several hundred men.
1789	Sep	Fletcher Henderson left Tahiti with the Bounty with a light crew. 16 men were left abandoned.
1789	Oct 3	George Washington proclaimed the 1st national Thanksgiving Day to be Nov 26.     Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to “recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”      Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us. And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
1789	Oct 10	In Versailles France, Joseph Guillotin said the most humane way of carrying out a death sentence is decapitation by a single blow of a blade.
1789	Oct 10	Pierre-Louis Couperin, composer, died at 34.
1789	Oct 15	George Washington went to New England on the 1st presidential tour.
1789	Nov 2	The property of the Church in France was taken away by the state.
1789	Nov 5	French National Assembly declared all citizens equal under law.
1789	Nov 8	Bourbon Whiskey, 1st distilled from corn, was made by Elijah Craig in  Bourbon, Ky.
1789	Nov 13	Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to a friend in which he said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
1789	Nov 18	Louis Jacques Daguerre (d.1851), French painter, physicist and photography pioneer, was born. He invented the process of setting the impression on a light-sensitive, silver-coated metallic plate and developed by mercury vapor. See contrasting info 1765-1833, Nicephore Niepce, French lithographer.
1789	Nov 20	New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1789	Nov 21	North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1789	Nov 26	George Washington proclaimed on Oct 3 that Nov 26 be a National Thanksgiving Day in honor of the new Constitution. He made it clear that the day should be one of prayer and giving thanks to God, to be celebrated by all the religious denominations. In 1863 Pres. Lincoln designated the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day.
1789	Dec 3	Claude-Joseph Vernet, French seascape painter, died.
1789	Dec 13	The National Guard was created in France.
1789	Dec 28	Lydia Darrragh (b.1729), American spy, died in Philadelphia. Her exploits in 1777 did not become public until the publication of an anonymous article in 1827.
1789	Dec	In India’s city of Coringa 3 tidal waves caused by a cyclone destroyed the harbor city at the mouth of the Ganges river. Most ships were sunk and some 20,000 people drowned.
1789	December	December: George III recovers, ending the Regency Crisis.
1789	Mrs. Ann Radcliffe’s first gothic novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne is published.
1789	Pears’ soap is introduced by London soapmaker Andrew Pears, whose oval and translucent product will gain worldwide distribution.
1789	William Blake, British poet, painter, and printmaker publishes Songs of Innocence.
1789	Johann Friedrich Overbeck (d.1869), German Nazarene artist, was born.
1789	The ballet “La fille mal gardee” had its premiere. It included dialogue and singing as well as dancing.
1789	William Blake published his “Songs of Innocence.”
1789	Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) authored “The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the County of Southampton.” One chapter was about a local tortoise named Timothy. In 2006 Verlyn Klinkenborg authored “Timothy; Or, Notes Of an Abject Reptile,” a look at the parson from the point of view of the tortoise.
1789	In 1999 Rachel Wright authored “Paris: 1789,” an informative children’s book of Parisian life on the eve of the Revolution.
1789	Tammany Hall was a powerful Democratic political organization in NYC, founded as a fraternal benevolent society. The name was based after a Delaware Indian Chief, Tamanen or Temmenund, later facetiously canonized as patron saint of the US. The Tammany Hall officials lost on Nov. 6, 1894.
1789	In the US the Church of England Episcopal Church fomally separated from the Church of England became the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA.
1789	Congress introduced paid chaplains. In 1983 the Supreme Court ruled in Marsh vs. Chambers that it is not a violation of the Establishment Clause to have paid legislative chaplains. In 2002 Michael Newdow filed suit contending that taxpayer-funded chaplains was unconstitutional.
1789	The US Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) was meant to combat piracy. The Alien Tort Stature (ATS) was intended to be used to prosecute pirates for crimes committed outside the US.
1789	The first tobacco advertisement came out in the US. It depicted an Indian smoking a long clay pipe.
1789	Georgetown College was founded in Washington DC.
1789	Massachusetts commenced work on the Middlesex Canal. It was completed in 1808.
1789	The University of North Carolina was chartered. It was the first state university in the U.S. to begin instruction, in 1795. The University of Georgia was the first state university chartered, in 1785, but was not established until 1801.
1789	Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), French nobleman and chemist, presented a paper on the geology of the Earth that proposed that sea level had oscillated over time, as opposed to a stationary sea with linear sedimentation.
1789	Martin Klaproth, German chemist, discovered Uranium. It named after the planet Uranus discovered 8 years earlier.
1789	The HMS Bounty made a brief stop at the Cook Island of Rarotonga before moving on to Pitcairn Island.
1789	The flower China Rose was introduced to Europe.
1789	Ethan Allen (b.1738), leader of Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys, died. In 1949 Stewart H. Holbrook authored “Ethan Allen.” In 1969 Charles A. Jellison authored “Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel.”
1789	The prison ship Lady Julian delivered over 200 women to the penal colony at Sydney harbor. In 2002 Sian Rees authored “The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts.”
1789	Smallpox was introduced to Australia and caused devastation among the aborigines.
1789	In Brazil poet and dentist Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier helped launch the first Brazilian rebellion against the country’s Portuguese rulers.
1789	English Thomas Clarkson and his fellow abolitionists published 700 posters with the image of the slave ship Brookes loaded with 482 slaves. The ship, owned by the Brookes family of Liverpool, operated between the Gold Coast of Africa and Jamaica.
1789	Thomas Stokes built clocks in London.
1789	In England part of the art collection, 181 paintings, of Sir Robert Walpole was sold by his heirs to Catherine the Great for 40,000 Pounds.
1789	A French decree allowed wine and coffee to be served on the same premises.
1789	Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, a delegate to the Estates General, said the third estate is everything, has nothing  but wants to be something.
1789	The French dwarf Richeborg stood 23 inches and was costumed as a baby in diapers during the French Revolution. In the arms of innocent girls he could eavesdrop on sensitive conversations and carried secret dispatches in and out of Paris.
1789	The bankruptcy of the French government brought banks across Europe to their knees.
1789	Tobias Schmidt, a German piano maker, built the first guillotine.
1789	In Germany the Brandenburg Gate of Berlin was built.
1789	Russian soldiers under the leadership of Jose Pascual Domingo de Ribas y Boyons (aka Osip Deribas) chased Ottoman forces from the barracks hamlet of Khadjibey. He recognized the site’s potential for a military base to control the mouths of the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper and Bug rivers. Odessa became the name of the city built there.
1789-1793	Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish-born fur trader, became the 1st European to cross the North American continent.
1789-1795	John Jay served as the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court.
1789-1807	Selim III succeeded Abdul Hamid I in the Ottoman House of Osman.
1789-1837	Ben Wilson covered this period in his 2007 book “The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain, 1789-1837.”
1789-1854	John Martin, British artist. He was known as “Mad Martin” for his paintings of monumental disasters. His work included “Assuaging of the Waters” (1840), “The Eve of the Deluge,” and “The Deluge.”
1789-1914	In 2006 Michael Burleigh authored “Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War.”
1790	Jan 4	President Washington delivered the 1st “State of the Union” address.
1790	Jan 6	Johann Trier (73), composer, died.
1790	Jan 21	Joseph Guillotine proposed a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed to cut off the condemned person’s head as painlessly as possible.
1790	Jan 26	Mozart’s opera “Cosi Fan Tutte” premiered in Vienna.
1790	Feb 1	The US Supreme Court convened for 1st time in Royal Exchange Building, New York City, the nations temporary capital.
1790	Feb 6	The last stone of the Bastille, torn down by order of the French revolutionary leaders, was presented to the National Assembly.
1790	Feb 11	The first petition to Congress for emancipation of the slaves was made by the Society of Friends.
1790	Feb 20	Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (48) died.
1790	Feb 26	As a result of the Revolution, France was divided into 83 departments.
1790	February	February: The Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II dies and is succeeded by his brother Leopold II.
1790	Mar 1	President Washington signed a measure authorizing the first US Census. The Connecticut Compromise was a proposal for two houses in the legislature-one based on equal representation for each state, the other for population-based representation-that resolved the dispute between large and small states at the Constitutional Convention. Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman’s proposal led to the first nationwide census in 1790. The population was determined to be 3,929,625, which included 697,624 slaves and 59,557 free blacks. The most populous state was Virginia, with 747,610 people and the most populous city was Philadelphia with 42,444 inhabitants. The average cost of this year’s census was 1.13 cents per person.
1790	Mar 8	George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address.
1790	Mar 14	Captain Bligh returned to England with news of the mutiny on the Bounty.
1790	Mar 21	Thomas Jefferson (46) reported to President Washington in New York as the new US Secretary of state.
1790	Mar 22	Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) became the first US Secretary of State. As Secretary of State, he served on the first Board of Arts, the body that reviewed patent applications and granted patents. Jefferson was one of a triumvirate that served as both America’s first patent commissioner and first patent examiner.
1790	Mar 24	King George ordered the Admiralty to capture Fletcher Henderson for the mutiny on the Bounty.
1790	Mar 26	US Congress passed a Naturalization Act. It required a 2-year residency.
1790	Mar 27	The shoelace was invented.
1790	Mar 29	John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States (1841-1845), was born in Charles City County, Va. He was also the first vice-president to succeed to office on the death of a president.
1790	Mar 31	In Paris, France, Maximilien Robespierre was elected president of the Jacobin Club.
1790	Apr 3	Revenue Marine Service (US Coast Guard) was created.
1790	Apr 10	President George Washington signed into law the first United States Patent Act. The Patent Board was made up of the Secretary of State, Secretary of War and the Attorney General and was responsible for granting patents on “useful and important” inventions. In the first three years, 47 patents were granted. Until 1888 miniature models of the device to be patented were required. [see July 31]
1790	Apr 17	Benjamin Franklin (born 1706), American statesman, died in Philadelphia at age 84. He mechanized the process of making sounds from tuned glass with his glass armonica. In 2000 H.W. Brands authored his Franklin biography: “The First American.” In 2003 Walter Isaacson authored “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.” In 2005 Philip Dray authored “Stealing God’s Thunder,” an account of Franklin’s work with lightning rods.
1790	May 21	Paris was divided into 48 zones.
1790	May 26	Territory South of River Ohio was created by Congress.
1790	May 29	Rhode Island became the last of the 13 original colonies to ratify the United States Constitution. They held out for an amendment securing religious freedom. The state was largely founded by Baptists fleeing persecution in Massachusetts.
1790	May 31	The US copyright law was enacted.
1790	May	John Tanner (9) was kidnapped from his home in northern Kentucky by Saginaw Indians. He was taken to an area near what later became Saginaw, Michigan, where he learned the Ojibway language. After about 2 years he was sold to a woman named Net-no-kwa, who took him up to northern Michigan and later to Manitoba, Canada.
1790	Jun 9	The “Philadelphia Spelling Book” was the first US work to be copyrighted.
1790	Jun 9	Civil war broke out in Martinique.
1790	Jul 3	In Paris, the Marquis of Condorcet proposed granting civil rights to women.
1790	Jul 9	The Swedish navy captured one third of the Russian fleet at the naval battle of Svensksund in the Baltic Sea.
1790	Jul 12	The French Assembly approved a Civil Constitution providing for the election of priests and bishops.
1790	Jul 16	The District of Columbia was established as the seat of the United States government.
1790	Jul 17	Economist Adam Smith (b.1723), Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economy, died. In 2001 Emma Rothschild authored “Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment.” In 2002 Peter J. Dougherty authored “Who’s Afraid of Adam Smith.” In 2010 Nicholas Phillipson authored “Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life.”
1790	Jul 26	US Congress passed Alexander Hamilton’s Assumption plan making it responsible for state debts. Virginia eventually withdrew its opposition in return for having the nation’s new capital located on its borders.
1790	Jul 26	An attempt at a counter-revolution in France was put down by the National Guard at Lyons.
1790	Jul 31	The U.S. Patent Office granted its first patent to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont, developer of a new method the manufacture of pot and pearl ash, potash. [see Apr 10]
1790	July	July: Adam Smith, Scottish economist and philosopher, dies at age 67.
1790	Aug 2	The enumeration for the first US census began. It showed that 3,929,326 people were living in the US of which 697,681 were slaves, and that the largest cities were New York City with 33,000 inhabitants; Philadelphia, with 28,000; Boston, with 18,000; Charleston, South Carolina, with 16,000; and Baltimore, with 13,000. Census records for Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia were lost sometime between 1790 and 1830.
1790	Aug 4	US Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton urged that ten boats for the collection of revenue be built. This was to stop smuggling, especially of coffee, which was hampering trade. The Coast Guard was born as the Revenue Cutter Service. The Coast Guard was empowered to board and inspect any vessel in US waters and any US boat anywhere in the world.
1790	Aug 9	The Columbia returned to Boston Harbor after a three-year voyage, becoming the first ship to carry the American flag around the world.
1790	Sep 4	Jacques Necker was forced to resign as finance minister in France.
1790	Oct 3	John Ross, Chief of the United Cherokee Nation from 1839 to 1866, was born near Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Although his father was Scottish and his mother only part Cherokee, Ross was named Tsan-Usdi (Little John) and raised in the Cherokee tradition. A settled people with successful farms, strong schools, and a representative government, the Cherokee resided on 43,000 square miles of land they had held for centuries.
1790	Oct 21	Alphonse-Marie Louis de Lamartine, writer (Rene), was born in Macon, France.
1790	Oct 21	The Tricolor was chosen as the official flag of France.
1790	Oct 23	Slaves revolted in Haiti.
1790	Oct 28	NY gave up claims to Vermont for $30,000.
1790	October	October: Mozart’s Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in D major (Coronation) is performed for the first time at the coronation of Leopold II in Frankfurt-am-Main.
1790	Nov 11	Chrysanthemums were introduced into England from China.
1790	Nov 17	August Ferdinand Mobius, mathematician, inventor (Mobius strip), was born.
1790	November	November: Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution of France, which condemns the revolution as the beginning of mob rule.
1790	November	November: Vindication of the Rights of Man by Mary Wollstonecraft is the first published response to Burke.
1790	Dec 6	Congress moved from New York City to Philadelphia, where Washington served out his two terms. He is the only president who never resided in the White House.
1790	Dec 17	An Aztec calendar stone was discovered in Mexico City.
1790	Dec 19	Sir William Parry, England, Arctic explorer, was born.
1790	Dec 20	In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 23-year-old British subject Samuel Slater began production of the first American spinning mill. The British jealously guarded their technological superiority in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, making it illegal for machinery, plans and even the men who built and repaired them to leave the country. After serving a 7-year mill apprenticeship in England, Slater recognized the potential offered in America. He memorized the plans for intricate machine specifications, disguised himself as a farm worker and in 1789 sailed to a new life across the Atlantic. Slater entered into a partnership with Rhode Island merchant Moses Brown and built a small spinning mill–the equivalent of 72 spinning wheels. At first, Slater’s Mill employed only a handful of children between the ages of 7 and 12, but by 1800, he had more than 100 employees. By the time of Slater’s death in 1835, he owned or had an interest in 13 textile mills and left an estate of almost $700,000. From this small beginning, America’s own Industrial Revolution grew. [see Dec 21]
1790	Dec 21	Samuel Slater opened the first cotton mill in the United States in Rhode Island. [see Dec 20]
1790	Dec 23	Jean François Champollion, French founder of Egyptology, was born. He deciphered the Rosetta Stone.
1790	George Stubbs paints Lion Attacking a Horse. Its commingling of the horrific and the sublime, its exaltation of nature and the emotions mark it as a forerunner of the Romantic movement.
1790	Joseph Mallord William Turner is accepted into the Royal Academy at age 15.
1790	Mozart composes “Cosi Fan Tutte.”
1790
1790	Portrait of Elizabeth Farren by Thomas Lawrence, exhibited at the Royal Acadmey in 1790. This portrait met with great public and critical acclaim, and was praised above even the work of co-exhibitor Josuah Reynolds for itsnaturalistic freshness and vivacity.
1790	Scottish poet Joanna Baillie publishes Fugitive Verses.
1790	The British make an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad, and a third Anglo-Mysore War begins.
1790	Thomas Lawrence exhibits for the first time at the Royal Academy, with portraits of Queen Charlotte and the actress Elizabeth Farren (later Countess of Derby).
1790	William Blake publishes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
1790	King Kamehameha slaughtered virtually everyone on the island of Lanai (which means day of conquest) after being thwarted in his bid to conquer Maui.
1790	Henry Fuseli painted his famous work “The Nightmare” wherein a sleeping woman has a glowing demon on her chest and a lantern-eyed stallion parting the curtains behind. He also painted “Woman Standing at a Dressing Table or Spinet” about this time.
1790	Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800), Japanese painter, created his “Compendium of Vegetable and Insects.”
1790	Thomas Rowlandson, English artist, painted “The Lock-Up.”
1790	Goethe’s “Faust: Ein Fragment,” first appeared.
1790	Alexander Hamilton published his “Report on the Public Credit.”
1790	Emmanuel Kant published his “Critique of Judgement.” His analysis of the nature of art and aesthetic experience proved to be a major influence on modern ideas. These ideas were later revisited by Murdoch in her 1998 work “Existentialists and Mystics.” [see 1781]
1790	Beethoven composed his “Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II.”
1790	The opera “The Philosopher’s Stone” was composed and first performed. A 1997 score showed that a number of composers wrote various sections. Mozart’s name was associated with the 2nd act finale and a duet. It was a singspiel based on fairytales with a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. Other composers included Johann Baptist Henneberg, Benedikt Schack, Franz Haver Gerl and Emanuel Schikaneder.
1790	In South Carolina a 900-square-foot octagonal house was built about this time by Scottish immigrant William McKimmy. Ruins of the structure were found in 2009 on the banks of the May River in Blufton.  The design took off in 1848 following the publication of “A Home for All” by Orson Fowler, a self-taught architect and phrenologist.
1790	The Episcopal Church was founded.
1790	The US government issued $80 million in bonds to cover Revolutionary War debts and their trade established the financial activity on Wall Street.
1790	The US Trade and Intercourse Act prohibited states from acquiring land from Indians without federal approval.
1790	US Minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, said that the French “have taken Genius instead of Reason for their Guide, adopted Experiment instead of Experience, and wander in the Dark because they prefer Lightning to Light.” In 2000 Susan Dunn published “Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light.”
1790	The celerifere bicycle appeared in Paris about this time and was a two-wheeled, un-steerable vehicle that the rider propelled by striking his feet on the ground. This was improved upon with a bar to steer the front wheel in 1816 by Baron von Drais of Germany, and was called a draisine. The ordinary, which had a high front wheel, wire-spoked wheels and solid rubber tires, was developed in the 1870s.
1790	The US census categorized the population as “free white person, all other free persons except Indians, and slaves.”
1790	The US population was 20% African and numbered about 760,000.
1790	Fletcher Christian landed at Pitcairn Island.
1790	In Australia Pemulway, an Aboriginal warrior, speared and killed the governor’s gamekeeper at Botany Bay and waged war against the British for 12 years. His head was later sent to England. Eric Willmot later authored “Pemulway, the Rainbow Warrior.”
1790	In the Sandwich Islands [Hawaii] King Kamehameha built the Puukohola Heiau temple on the Big Island near the village of Kawaihau. It was built to the war god Ku-Ka’ili-moku. The king’s armies soon swept over all the Hawaiian islands and united the people for the first time.
1790	Pineapples were introduced to the Sandwich Islands later called Hawaii.
1790	The Haleakala Volcano on Maui erupted.
1790	La Fenice opera house in Venice was designed. It burned down for the 1st time in 1836.
1790	A bronze Buddha was cast in Japan. In 1945 it was donated by the Gump family to the city of San Francisco. It resides in the Japanese Tea Garden and was in need of $81,000 worth of repairs.
1790	In Porto, Portugal, the House of Sandeman winery was found by the Scot, George Sandeman.
1790	Denmark became the 1st country to abolish slavery.
1790	Floreana Island in the Galapagos began serving as a mail drop for whalers and seal hunters.
1790	Tadeusz Kosciusko returned to Poland and united the country in the battle against Prussian and Russian domination.
1790	The solitaire of Rodrigues, a flightless pigeon, was last seen.
1790-1792	Sans-culottes (French for without knee-breeches) was a term created during this period by the French to describe the poorer members of the Third Estate, according to the dominant theory because they usually wore pantaloons (full-length trousers) instead of the chic knee-length culotte. The term came to refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, but, above all, to the working class radicals of the Revolution.
1790-1799	In 2009 Marcus Daniel authored “Scandal & Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy,” a study of the American press during this period.
1790-1799	The revolutionary tide that swept Europe during this period was later covered by R.R. Palmer in his book “The Age of the Democratic Revolution.”
1790-1830	The “Dalton Minimum,” a period of low solar activity and especially cold climate, began this year and lasted to 1830.
1790-1848	Nicola Vaccai, Italian composer. He composed a version of “I Capuletti ed I Montecchi,” that was also done by Bellini.
1790-1869	Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, French poet, historian and statesman.
1791	Jan 14	Calvin Phillips, shortest known adult male (67 cm; 2′ 2″), was born.
1791	Feb 12	Peter Cooper, industrialist, philanthropist (Cooper Union), was born.
1791	Feb 20	Carl Czerny, pianist, composer (Schule der Virtuosen), was born in Vienna, Austria.
1791	Feb 25	President George Washington signed a bill creating the Bank of the United States.
1791	Mar 3	Congress established the U.S. Mint.
1791	Mar 3	The 1st Internal Revenue Act taxed distilled spirits and carriages.
1791	Mar 4	President Washington called the US Senate into its 1st special session.
1791	Mar 4	Vermont was admitted as the 14th state. It was the first addition to the original 13 colonies.
1791	Mar 4	1st Jewish member of US Congress, Israel Jacobs (Pennsylvania), took office.
1791	Mar 4	Vermont was admitted as the 14th state. It was the first addition to the original 13 colonies.
1791	Mar 6	Anna Claypoole Peale, painted miniatures, was born.
1791	Mar 10	John Stone of Concord, Mass, patented a pile driver.
1791	Mar 10	Pope condemned France’s Civil Constitution of the clergy.
1791	Mar 11	Samuel Mulliken of Philadelphia was the 1st to obtain more than 1 US patent.
1791	Mar 21	Captain Hopley Yeaton (1740-1812) of New Hampshire became the first commissioned officer of the US Revenue Cutter Service.
1791	Mar 23	Etta Palm, a Dutch champion of woman’s rights, set up a group of women’s clubs called the Confederation of the Friends of Truth.
1791	Mar 29	Pres. George Washington and French architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant examined the a site along the Potomac River that would become the US capital. Maryland and Virginia had ceded land to the federal government to form the District of Columbia. Chosen as the permanent site for the capital of the United States by Congress in 1790, President Washington was given the power by Congress to select the exact site—an area ten-miles square, made up of land given by Virginia and Maryland. Washington became the official federal capital in 1800. In 2008 Fergus Bordewich authored “Washington: The Making of the American Capital.”
1791	March	March: Haydn’s Symphony No. 93 in D minor and Symphony No. 96 in D major (Miracle) are performed for the first time at London’s Hanover Square Rooms
1791	March	March: Thomas Paine publishes the Rights of Man, Parts I & II. The book is banned and Paine is charged with seditious libel, and tried in absentia after he flees to Paris.
1791	Apr 12	Francis Preston Blair, Washington Globe newspaper editor, was born.
1791	Apr 15	Surveyor General Andrew Ellicott consecrated the southern tip of the triangular District of Columbia at Jones Point.
1791	Apr 18	National Guardsmen prevented Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris.
1791	Apr 23	The 15th president of the United States, James Buchanan, was born in Franklin County, Pa.
1791	Apr 23	James Buchanan, was born in Franklin County, Pa. He was the fifteenth U.S. president (1857-1861) and the only president not to marry.
1791	Apr 27	Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor, was born in Boston. He created the telegraph and the code which bears his name. Morse was a well-known painter who gained a wide reputation as a portrait artist. He graduated from Yale in 1810 and then studied painting in England for several years. Morse painted two notable portraits of Lafayette, was a founder of the National Academy of Design in 1826 and became professor of painting and sculpture at New York University in 1832-a position he held until his death in 1872. Morse invented the first practical recording telegraph in America and developed the Morse code, revolutionizing communication.
1791	April	April: William Wilberforce introduces the first Parliamentary bill to abolish the slave trade, but it is rejected.
1791	Apr	William Wilberforce again introduced a motion in British Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade, but lost by a vote of 163 to 88.
1791	May 3	Poland adopted a new Constitution. It was designed to redress long-standing political defects of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and its traditional system of “Golden Liberty.” The constitution put Lithuania under Polish domination. It is generally regarded as Europe’s first and the world’s second modern codified national constitution, following the 1788 ratification of the US Constitution.
1791	May 8	Capt. Edward Edwards set sail from Tahiti in the Pandora with the Bounty mutineers abandoned by Fletcher Henderson.
1791	May 9	Francis Hopkinson (53), US writer, music, lawyer, died.
1791	May 14	In Mexico a time capsule was placed atop a bell tower at Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral when the building’s topmost stone was laid, 218 years after construction had begun. Workers restoring the church found it in October, 2007.
1791	May 16	James Boswell’s celebrated 2-volume work, “The Life of Samuel Johnson,” was published. In 2001 Adam Sisman authored “Boswell’s Presumptuous Task,” an account of how Boswell came to write the Johnson biography.
1791	May 28	Joseph Schmitt (57), composer, died.
1791	May 29	Pietro Romani, composer, was born.
1791	Jun 9	John Howard Payne, American playwright and actor, was born.
1791	Jun 20	King Louis XVI of France attempted to flee the country in the so-called Flight to Varennes, but was caught.
1791	Jun 21	King Louis XVI and the French royal family were arrested in Varennes. In 2003 Timothy Tackett authored “When the King Took Flight,” an examination of the political culture during this period of transformation.
1791	June	June: The French Royal Family is captured at Varennes when they try to flee Paris in disguise.
1791	Jul 7	Benjamin Rush, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Non-denominational African Church.
1791	Jul 13	The bones of the greatest French satirist, philosopher, and writer, Voltaire (Jean-Marie Arouet) were enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris.
1791	Jul 16	Louis XVI was suspended from office until he agreed to ratify the constitution.
1791	Jul 14-to Jul 17	Riots took place in Birmingham, England. The houses of Joseph Priestley and other political dissenters were burned to the ground. Priestley had rejected various supernatural elements of Christianity, criticized the Church of England, and supported the French Revolution.
1791	Jul 17	National Guard troops opened fire in Paris on a crowd of demonstrators calling for the deposition of the king.
1791	Jul 24	Robespierre expelled all Jacobins opposed to the principles of the French Revolution.
1791	Jul 25	Free African Society (FAS) leaders drew up a plan to organize the African Church. Richard Allen purchased a site for a church for the African-American community in Philadelphia. It later stood as the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African Americans. The Richard Allen Museum contains 19th century artifacts from the church.
1791	Jul 26	Franz Xavier Wolfgang Mozart, 6th child of Austrian composer WAM, was born.
1791	July	July: 50 people are killed in Paris in the “Massacre of the Champs de Mars” when the National Guard fired into a mob gathered to sign petitions to overthrow the monarchy.
1791	July	July: The Priestly Riots take place in Birmingham, in which the rioters attacked and burned the houses, chapels, and homes of religious dissenters who supported the French Revolution.
1791	Aug 1	Robert Carter III, a Virginia plantation owner, freed all 500 of his slaves in the largest private emancipation in U.S. history.
1791	Aug 2	Samuel Briggs and his son patented a nail-making machine.
1791	Aug 4	The chief item in the Peace of Sistova agreement between the Austrian Empire and Turkey was the return of Belgrade to Turkey. The peace initiative resulted from the terms of the Convention of Reichenbach between Prussia and Austria. Belgrade had been taken in 1789 by the Holy Roman emperor Joseph II.
1791	Aug 14	Haitian slaves, led by voodoo priest Boukman Dutty, gathered to plan a revolution.
1791	Aug 26	John Fitch and James Rumsey, rival inventors, were both granted a US patent for a working steamboat.
1791	Aug 29	The Pandora under Capt. Edward Edwards sank in Endeavour Strait (later Torres Strait) between Australia and New Guinea. 33 crewmen and 4 prisoners died. They managed to use small boats and arrived in Timor on Sep 16.
1791	August	August: 100,000 slaves revolt in the French-controlled colony of San Domingo in the West Indies.
1791	Sep 1	Lydia Sigourney, US religious author (How to Be Happy), was born.
1791	Sep 3	The French National Assembly passed a French Constitution passed.
1791	Sep 5	Giacomo Meyerbeer, Vogelsdorf Germany, opera composer (Les Huguenots, Le Prophete), was born.
1791	Sep 6	Mozart’s last opera “La Clemenza di Tito,” premiered in Prague. It was composed for the coronation festivities of the King of Bohemia.
1791	Sep 9	French Royalists took control of Arles and barricaded themselves inside the town.
1791	Sep 13	France’s King Louis XVI accepted a constitution.
1791	Sep 14	Louis XVI solemnly swore his allegiance to the French constitution.
1791	Sep 22	Michael Faraday (d.1867), English physicist, was born in London. He demonstrated that a magnetic field induces a current in a moving conductor. He invented the dynamo, the transformer and the electric motor.
1791	Sep 26	Theodore Gericault, French painter, was born. He painted “Mounted Officer of the Imperial Guard.”
1791	Sep 27	Jews in France were granted French citizenship. Jews were granted religious and civic rights in 1791.
1791	Sep 30	Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” premiered in Vienna, Austria.
1791	September	September: Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (2nd eldest son of George III) marries Princess Frederica Charlotte of Prussia.
1791	September	September: Mozart’s “Magic Flute” premiers in Vienna.
1791	Oct 1	In Paris, the National Legislative Assembly held its first meeting.
1791	October	October: Irish revolutionists Theobald Wolfe Tone, Thomas Russell, James Napper Tandy, and other Protestants found the Society of United Irishmen to unite Protestants and Roman Catholics in agitating for independence from Britain.
1791	Nov 3	Gen. St. Clair moved his force of approximately 1,400 men to some high ground on the upper Wabash River. St. Clair was looking for the forces of Michikinikwa (Chief Little Turtle 1752-1812), who had recently defeated Gen. Josiah Harmar’s (1753-1813) army. St. Clair deployed only minimal sentry positions. [see Nov 4]
1791	Nov 4	General Arthur St. Clair, governor of Northwest Territory, was badly defeated by a large Indian army near Fort Wayne. Miami Indian Chief Little Turtle (1752-1812) led the powerful force of Miami, Wyandot, Iroquois, Shawnee, Delaware, Ojibwa and Potawatomi that inflicted the greatest defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Army at the hands of North American Indians. Some 623 regulars led by General Arthur St. Clair were killed and 258 wounded on the banks of the Wabash River near present day Fort Wayne, Indiana. The staggering defeat moved Congress to authorize a larger army in 1792.
1791	Dec 4	Britain’s Observer, oldest Sunday newspaper in world, was 1st published.
1791	Dec 5	Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna, Austria, at age 35. His first opera was “Idomeneo.” In 1920 Hermann Abert authored “W.A. Mozart.” In 1991 Georg Knepler authored “Wolfang Amade Mozart,” a Marxist view of Mozart in his times. In 1995 Maynard Solomon published a psychoanalytic biography of Mozart. In 1999 Peter Gay authored a Penguin short life of Mozart and Robert W. Gutman authored the comprehensive biography “Mozart.”
1791	Dec 15	The US Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took effect following ratification by Virginia. The First Amendment declared the separation of church and state and guaranteed freedom of religion, speech, the press and assembly. In 2007 Anthony Lewis authored “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A biography of the Frist Amendment.”
1791	Dec 17	NYC traffic regulation created the 1st 1-way street.
1791	Dec 22	Alexander Hamilton paid a $600 installment of $1,000 in blackmail to James Reynolds, who threatened to expose Hamilton’s relationship with Reynolds’ wife. Hamilton had begun a relationship with Maria Reynolds during the summer. A 2nd payment was made Jan 3.
1791	December	December: Mozart dies at age 35.
1791	James Boswell’s Life of Johnson is published.
1791	London furniture maker Thomas Sheraton publishes The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book, advocating a style more severe than those of Chippendale and Hepplewhite. It was immediately influential throughout England.
1791	Mrs. Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest is published.
1791	Jose Cardero, a Spanish artist in California, painted “Vista del Presidio de Monterey.”
1791	Alexander Hamilton authored his “Report on the Subject of Manufactures.” His plan to get the country’s economy going included tariffs to protect the young industries.
1791	Englishman Thomas Paine wrote the “Rights of Man” in Paris, promoting the French Revolution. It defended the French Revolution against Edmund Burke’s attack in “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790).
1791	The opera “The Beneficent Dervish” was initially attributed to Emanuel Schikaneder but a 1997 find indicated that Mozart wrote the work. Schikaneder was a Vienna theater impresario who had commissioned “The Magic Flute.”
1791	The Berlin Sing-Academie was established.
1791	In Berlin, Germany, the Brandenburg Gate was completed. It stood 66 feet tall and 213 feet wide, and was topped by the copper Quadriga, a sculpture of a goddess riding into the city aboard a chariot. It was restored in 2002.
1791	James Madison opposed the plans of Alexander Hamilton for a National Bank. Hamilton started the 1st Bank of the US. It did the work of a central bank even though private investors held most of its shares. It was dissolved in 1811.
1791	Aaron Burr (1756-1836), later US vice president (1801-1805), was elected as US Senator from New York (1791-1797).
1791	The US Providence Bank was later reported to have profited from traffic in slaves to the New World. The bank eventually became part of FleetBoston Financial Corp.
1791	A document was released in 2004 from Pittsfield, Mass., that contained a 1791 bylaw to protect the windows of a new meeting house from baseball players.
1791	William Sprague opened the 1st US carpet mill in Philadelphia.
1791	Legend says the Harel family began making Camembert cheese before this time. The family had given a priest refuge, who in gratitude gave them the recipe. In 2003 Pierre Boisard authored “Camembert: A National Myth.”
1791	Frantisek Koczwara, a Bohemian musician, died in a London brothel from auto-asphyxiation.
1791	Grigory A. Potemkin (b.1739), Russian army officer, statesman, Catherine II’s lover, died. In 2002 Simon Sebag Montefiore authored “Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin.”
1791	John Wesley (b.1703), English evangelist and theologian, died. He founded the Methodist movement.
1791	In Australia officials granted parcels of land around Sydney to convicts who have served their time, beginning years of dispossession of Aborigines that continued as white settlers dispersed throughout Australia. Clashes between Aborigines and settlers led to tens of thousands of deaths among Aborigines and hundreds of settler deaths.
1791	Sheikh Mansur, Chechen leader, was captured and died in the Schlusselburg Fortress.
1791	The United Irishmen Society was formed. Inspired by the French Revolution many Catholics and Protestants took up the cause of Irish nationalism during the next decade.
1791	The Marquesas Islands were officially discovered. Over a 30 year period western diseases ravaged the populace and only about 2,000 of 100,000 people survived.
1791	In St. Domingue Toussaint L’Ouverture joined the slave rebellion against plantation owners and later led a colonial revolt against France. In 1995 Madison Smart Bell authored “All Souls Rising,” a novel set in this period.
1791 to 1802	Printer William Bulmer printed Boydell’s Shakespeare in modern face, a type similar to Bodoni. It became a fashion which lasted for nearly 50 years
1792	Jan 17	One of the first US Treasury bonds was issued to Pres. George Washington and bears the earliest use of the dollar sign.
1792	Jan 28	Rebellious slaves in Santo Domingo launched an attack on the city of Cap.
1792	January	January: Mary Wollstonecraft publishes her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, for which she is called by reviewers a “hyena in petticoats.”
1792	Feb 7	Cimarosa’s opera “Il Matrimonio Segreto,” premiered in Vienna.
1792	Feb 15	Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre (42), astronomer and surveyor, was elected to the French Academy of Sciences to help establish the length of a proposed new unit of measurement, the meter.
1792	Feb 20	President Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office. [see Feb 20, 1789, May 8, 1794]
1792	Feb 21	US Congress passed the Presidential Succession Act. [see Mar 1]
1792	Feb 23	Joseph Haydn’s 94th Symphony in G premiered.
1792	Feb 23	Humane Society of Massachusetts was incorporated. It erected life-saving stations for distressed mariners.
1792	Feb 23	Joshua Reynolds (68), English portrait painter (Simplicity), died.
1792	Feb 29	The composer Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (d.1868) was born in Pesaro, Italy. His work included the opera “La Donna del Lago,” based on the Walter Scott romance “The lady of the Lake.”
1792	February	February: Benjamin West becomes the 2nd president of the Royal Academy, after the death of its first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
1792	Mar 1	US Presidential Succession Act was passed. [see Feb 21]
1792	Mar 4	Oranges were introduced to Hawaii.
1792	Mar 10	John Stuart (78), 3rd earl of Bute, English premier (1760-63), died.
1792	Mar 16	Sweden’s King Gustav III was shot and mortally wounded during a masquerade party by a former member of his regiment. He was murdered by Count Ankarstrom at an opera. It became the inspiration for Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. Gustav died 13 days later.
1792	Mar 20	In Paris, the Legislative Assembly approved the use of the guillotine.
1792	Mar 23	Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Symphony No. 94 in G Major,” also known as the “Surprise Symphony,” was performed publicly for the first time, in London.
1792	Mar 29	Gustav III, King of Sweden (1771-92), died of wounds inflicted by an assassin on March 16.
1792	March	March: Architect Robert Adam dies at age 63.
1792	March	March: King Gustav III of Sweden is assassinated.
1792	March	March: Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, dies and is succeeded by his son, Francis II, who will be the last Holy Roman Emperor.
1792	March	March: Sierra Leone is established under British rule as a home for former slaves.
1792	March	March: The guillotine is adopted as the official means of execution in France, and remains so until the death penalty is abolished in 1981. The last execution by guillotine is in 1977.
1792	March	March: Thomas Lawrence is appointed principal painter to George III.
1792	Mar to Apr	Speculator William Duer defaulted on Hamilton’s freshly exchanged “Stock in the Public Funds,” and caused the first American stock market crash. Hamilton injected liquidity, asked the banks not to call in loans and allowed merchants to pay customs duties with short-term notes.
1792	Apr 1	Gronings feminist Etta Palm demanded women’s right to divorce.
1792	Apr 2	Congress passed the Coinage Act, which authorized establishment of the U.S. Mint. It established the US dollar defined in fixed weights of gold and silver. State chartered banks issued paper money convertible to gold or silver coins to ease business transactions. U.S. authorized $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins & silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime.
1792	Apr 4	American abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. Radical Republican congressional leader, was born in Danville, Vt..
1792	Apr 5	George Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.
1792	Apr 14	Pres. George Washington appointed David Rittenhouse, the foremost scientist of America, the first director of the US Mint at a salary of $2000 per annum. Rittenhouse was then in feeble health and lived at the northwest corner of Seventh and Arch Streets, then one of the high places of Old Philadelphia, where he had an observatory and where he later died and was first buried.
1792	Apr 20	France declared war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia, marking the start of the French Revolutionary wars.
1792	Apr 21	Jose da Silva Xavier, Tiradentes, considered by many to be Brazil’s George Washington, was drawn and quartered by the Portuguese. He was hung in Rio de Janeiro. His body was broken apieces. With his blood, a document was written declaring his memory infamous. His head was exposed in Vila Rica. Pieces of his body were exposed in the cities between Vila Rica and Rio, in an attempt to scare the people who had listened to the independence ideas of Tiradentes.
1792	Apr 22	President Washington proclaimed American neutrality in the war in Europe.
1792	Apr 24	Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an officer stationed in Strasbourg, composed “La Marseillaise,” which later became the national anthem of France.
1792	Apr 25	Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by guillotine.
1792	Apr 30	John Montague (73), 4th Earl of Sandwich, English Naval minister, died.
1792	April	April: France declares war against Austria and Prussia.
1792	May 7	Capt. Robert Gray discovered Gray’s  Harbor in Washington state.
1792	May 8	US established a military draft.
1792	May 8	British Capt. George Vancouver sighted and named Mt. Rainier, Wash.
1792	May 11	The Columbia River was discovered and named by Captain Robert Gray.
1792	May 12	A toilet that flushed itself at regular intervals was patented.
1792	May 13	Giovanni-Maria Mastaia-Ferretti, later Pope Pius IX, “Pio Nono” (1846-78), was born at Sinigaglia.
1792	May 16	Denmark abolished slave trade.
1792	May 17	Stock traders signed the Buttonwood Agreement in New York City at the Tontine Coffee House Company near a Buttonwood tree, where business had been transacted in the past. 24 merchants formed their exchange at Wall and Water Streets where they fixed rates on commissions on stocks and bonds. This later developed into the New York Stock Exchange. A market crash and almost total halt in credit, trading and liquidity prompted the Buttonwood Agreement under the influence of Alexander Hamilton. The organization drafted its constitution on March 8th, 1817, and named itself the “New York Stock & Exchange Board.”
1792	May 18	Russian troops invaded Poland.
1792	May 19	The Russian army entered Poland.
1792	May 21	Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis (d.1843), French engineer and mathematician, was born. He became first person to describe the Coriolis force.
1792	Jun 1	Kentucky became the 15th state of the Union.
1792	Jun 4	Captain George Vancouver claimed Puget Sound for Britain. Englishman George Vancouver sailed into the SF Bay on his ship Discovery in this year and explored the Santa Clara Valley. Vancouver sailed the Inside Passage, the 1000-mile waterway between Puget Sound and Alaska.
1792	Jun 4	John Burgoyne, soldier, playwright, died.
1792	Jul 18	American naval hero John Paul Jones died in Paris at age 45. His body was preserved in rum in case the American government wished him back. In 1905 his body was transported to the US and placed in a crypt in Annapolis. In 2003 Evan Thomas authored “John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy.”
1792	Jul 30	The French national anthem “La Marseillaise” by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris.
1792	Jul 31	The foundation-stone was laid for the US Mint by David Rittenhouse, Esq. The property was paid for and deeded to the United States of America for a consideration of $4266.67 on July 18, 1792. The money for the Mint was the first money appropriated by Congress for a building to be used for a public purpose.
1792	Aug 4	Percy Bysshe Shelley (d.1822), English poet and author who wrote “Prometheus Unbound,” was born in Field Place, England. He married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of “Frankenstein.” He wrote the poem “Adonais.”
1792	Aug 5	Frederick 7th baron Lord North (60), English premier, died. He presided over Britain’s loss of its American colonies (1770-82).
1792	Aug 10	Some 10,000 Parisians attacked the Tuileries Palace of Louis XVI at the instigation of Georges Jacques Danton (33), after Louis ordered his Swiss guard to stop firing on the people. The mob massacred some 600 guardsmen. The king was later arrested, put on trial for treason, and executed the following January.
1792	Aug 11	A revolutionary commune was formed in Paris, France.
1792	Aug 13	Revolutionaries imprisoned the French royal family, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. [see Aug 10]
1792	Aug 18	Lord John Russel, Prime Minister of England from 1846 to 1852 and 1865 to 1866, was born.
1792	Aug 29	The English warship Royal George capsized in Spithead and 900 people were killed.
1792	August	August: A Paris mob storms the Tuileries Palace and 600 of the king’s Swiss guardsmen are massacred. King Louis XVI is arrested and taken into custody. He and his family are held as prisoners in the Temple.
1792	August	August: Coalition Armies (Austrian, Prussian, and French Royalist troops) attack France.
1792	August	August: French Legislative Assembly is dissolved.
1792	August	August: Lafayette, leader of the French National Guard, is declared a traitor by the National Assembly and is imprisoned for 5 years.
1792	Sep 2	Verdun, France, surrendered to the Prussian Army.
1792	Sep 2	In the “September Massacres”- French mobs removed nobles and clergymen from jails, and some 1,600.
1792	Sep 3	In France Princess de Lamballe (b.1749), the best friend of Marie Antoinette, was killed and her body mutilated by an angry mob. Her head was displayed under the window of Marie Antoinette, interned in Temple Prison.
1792	Sep 5	Maximilien Robespierre was elected to the National Convention in France.
1792	Sep 18	At Spithaead, England, verdicts and sentences were announced for the 10 prisoners from the mutiny on the Bounty. 4 men were acquitted, and 6 were found guilty and condemned to death. 2 of the condemned were pardoned and another was freed on a technicality. 3 were later hanged.
1792	Sep 21	Collot D’Herbois proposed to abolish the monarchy in France. The French National Convention voted to abolish the monarchy. 1st French Republic formed
1792	Sep 22	The first French Republic was proclaimed.
1792	Sep 27	George Cruikshank, London, caricaturist (Oliver Twist), was born.
1792	September	September: 1200 political prisoners are murdered in Paris during a wave of mob violence known as the September Massacres. Three Roman Catholic bishops and over 200 priests are slaughtered.
1792	September	September: The French National Convention abolishes the monarchy and officially declares France a republic.
1792	Oct 7	James Mason (b.1725), American Revolutionary statesman, died at Gunston Hall Plantation, situated on the Potomac River some 20 miles south of Washington D.C. Mason framed the Bill of Rights for the Virginia Convention in June 1776. This was the model for the first part of fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and the basis of the first 10 Amendments to the federal Constitution. In 2006 Jeff Broadwater authored “George Mason.”
1792	Oct 12	Columbus Day was 1st celebrated in the US.
1792	Oct 13	The “Old Farmer’s Almanac” was 1st published. [see Nov 25]
1792	Oct 13	The cornerstone of the executive mansion, later known as the White House, was laid during a ceremony in the District of Columbia.
1792	Nov 6	Battle at Jemappes: French army beat the Austrians.
1792	Nov 13	Edward John Trelawney, traveler and author (Adventure of a Younger Son), friend of Byron and Shelley, was born in England.
1792	Nov 25	The Farmer’s Almanac was 1st published. [see Oct 13]
1792	Dec 5	George Washington was re-elected president; John Adams was re-elected vice president.
1792	Dec 8	The 1st cremation in US: Henry Laurens.
1792	Dec 11	France’s King Louis XVI went before the Convention to face charges of treason. Louis was convicted and executed the following month.
1792	Dec 12	In Vienna Ludwig Van Beethoven (22) received 1st lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn.
1792	Dec 15	Alexander Hamilton, US Sec. of the Treasury, was accused of teaming with Mr. James Reynolds to speculate illegally in government securities. Hamilton then acknowledged to three lawmakers, including James Monroe, that he had paid hush money to Mr. Reynolds to cover an affair with Reynolds’ wife.
1792	Dec 26	Charles Babbage (d.1871), English inventor of the calculating machine, was born.
1792	December	December: Thomas Paine is found guilty of sedition (for publishing the Rights of Man) and is sentenced to death in absentia.
1792	William Murdoch invents gas lighting.
1792	John Trumbell painted his portrait of Alexander Hamilton.
1792	Captain Bligh published “A Voyage to the South Sea” after his return from the Mutiny on the Bounty.
1792	James Madison published an essay in a newspaper on property and slaves. In this essay Madison extended the idea of property from material possessions to the property in his opinions, especially his religious beliefs.
1792	Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) wrote her essay “Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” She married Godwin in 1797 after learning that she was pregnant and died in childbirth.
1792	Construction began on the Royal Chapel at Carmel, Ca. It was dedicated in 1795.
1792	An edition of the Bible was first printed in New York.
1792	A US Militia Act was created.
1792	US veterans hired William Hull to petition congress for more compensation.
1792	The dime coin “dismes” were first produced. Then came “half-dismes,” or what we call nickels.
1792	Explorer Jose Longinos Martinez wrote in his diary about grizzly maulings that killed 2 Indians in California.
1792	Archibald Menzies, Scottish doctor/surgeon, was the naturalist aboard the Discovery under Captain George Vancouver. He collected his first California poppy and classified it incorrectly as Celandine, an old world member of the same family (Papaveracae). [see 1794,1816,1825-1833]
1792	Three English sailors wandered from Vancouver’s supply ship Daedalus, anchored in Waimea Bay. They were captured and killed by native Hawaiians.
1792	Pierre Ordinaire, French chemist, invented absinthe as a digestive or all-purpose tonic. It quickly caught on as an apéritif. Ordinaire invented absinthe in 1797. It was popularized by Henri-Louis Pernod, who opened his first distillery in Switzerland before moving to Pontarlier, France, in 1805.
1792	Arthur Phillip, the 1st governor of New South Wales, Australia, returned to England accompanied by Bennelong, an Aboriginal who had earlier attacked and wounded him. Philip later gave Bennelong a house on a point in Sydney Cove. In 1973 it became the site of the Sydney Opera House.
1792	In England consumers began an organized boycott against West Indian sugar. The Anti-Saccharine Society displayed a cross-section of a slave ship with men shackled head-to-toe like sardines.
1792	William Wilberforce introduced a new motion in British Parliament for the gradual abolition of the slave trade. The “gradual” wording, proposed by home office minister Henry Dundas, led to passage of the bill in the House of Commons 230 to 85.
1792	James Penny, Liverpool slave trader, was presented with a magnificent silver epergne for speaking in favor of the slave trade to a parliamentary committee. Liverpool’s Penny Lane was named after him.
1792	The British St. George’s Bay Company transported a 2nd group of settlers to Freetown. This included 1,196 Blacks from Nova Scotia, 500 Jamaicans and dozens of rebellious slaves from other colonies.
1792	Niagara-on-the-Lake became the 1st capital of the Upper Canada (later Ontario). The Parliament met for 5 sessions before moving to York (Toronto).
1792	The Chinese poet Shih Tao-nan, shortly before succumbing to the plague noted: “Few days following the death of the rats, Men pass away like falling walls.”
1792	The crown jewels of France were stolen including the 67 carat Blue Diamond.
1792	The La Felecia opera house in Venice opened.
1792	In Mexico Campeche’s northern fort, the Reducto de San Jose, was built. It later housed the Museo de Barcas y Armas.
1792	In Scotland gas lighting was developed.
1792	Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (b.1703), conservative Islamic theologian, died. He founded Wahhabism and set out his ideas in “The Book of Unity” (1736). In 2004 Natana J. Delong-Bas authored “Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad.”
1792 to 1867	The US Capitol by William Thronton and others was originally Palladian in character
1792-1793	Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), Spanish painter, went deaf from an unexplained illness.
1792-1796	In St. Petersburg, Russia, Catherine the Great commissioned the building of the neoclassical rococo Alexander Palace for her eldest grandson, the future Alexander I.
1792-1867	Giovanni Pacing, Italian composer. His work included “Maria, Regina d’Inghilterra,” based on Victor Hugo’s drama “Marie Tudor.”
1792-1868	Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, Italian composer. His work included the opera “La Donna del Lago,” based on the Walter Scott romance “The Lady of the Lake.”
1793	Jan 3	Lucretia Coffin Mott women’s rights activist, was born. She was a teacher, minister, antislavery leader and founder of the 1st Women’s Rights Convention.
1793	Jan 9	The first US manned balloon flight occurred as Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J. He stayed airborne for 46 minutes, traveled close to 15 miles and set down at the “old Clement farm” in Deptford, New Jersey. [see Jun 23, 1784, Mar 9, 1793]
1793	Jan 19	French King Louis XVI was sentenced to death. [see Jan 21]
1793	Jan 21	Louis XVI (38), last of the French Bourbon dynasty, was executed on the guillotine. The vote in the National Convention for execution for treason won by a margin of one vote. The Great Terror followed his execution.
1793	Jan 23	Prussia and Russia signed an accord on the 2nd partition of Lithuania and Poland. The 2nd partition of Poland. Polish patriots had attempted to devise a new constitution which was recognized by Austria and Prussia, but Russia did not recognize it and invaded. Prussia in turn invaded and the two agreed to a partition that left only the central portion of Poland independent.
1793	January	January: King Louis XVI of France is tried and executed.
1793	January	January: Louis XVI’s brother, the Comte de Provence, who fled France in 1791, proclaims himself regent for his 7-year-old nephew Louis-Charles, Duc de Normandie, who is proclaimed Louis XVII by royalist émigrés.
1793	Feb 1	Ralph Hodgson of Lansingburg, NY, patented one of the world’s greatest inventions this day: Oiled silk.
1793	Feb 1	France declared war on Britain and the Netherlands.
1793	Feb 12	The US federal government passed its first fugitive slave law. This gave slave holders the right to reclaim their human property in free states.
1793	Feb 25	The department heads of the U.S. government met with President  Washington at his Mt. Vernon home for the first Cabinet meeting on record.
1793	February	February: England declares war on France.
1793	February	February: The French Republic declares war on England, Holland, and Spain.
1793	Mar 2	Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas (1836-38, 1841-44), was born near Lexington, Va. He fought for Texas’ independence from Mexico; President of Republic of Texas; U.S. Senator; Texas governor
1793	Mar 3	Charles Sealsfield, writer (The Making of America), was born.
1793	Mar 4	George Washington was inaugurated as President for the second time. His 2nd inauguration was the shortest with just 133 words. Since George Washington’s second term, Inauguration Day had been March 4 of the year following the election. That custom meant that defeated presidents and congressmen served four months after the election. In 1933, the so-called Lame Duck Amendment to the U.S. Constitution moved the inauguration of newly elected presidents and congressmen closer to Election Day. The 20th Amendment required the terms of the president and vice-president to begin at noon on January 20, while congressional terms begin on January 3.
1793	Mar 4	French troops conquered Geertruidenberg, Netherlands.
1793	Mar 5	Austrian troops crush the French and recapture Liege.
1793	Mar 10	In France, on a proposal by Georges-Jacques Danton (1759-1794), the National Convention decreed that there should be established in Paris an extraordinary criminal tribunal. The news of the failure of the French arms in Belgium had given rise in Paris to popular movements on March 9 and 10, 1793. On Oct 20 the extraordinary criminal tribunal received by decree the official name of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
1793	Mar 18	The 2nd Battle at Neerwinden: Austria army beat France.
1793	Mar 26	Pro-royalist uprising took place in Vendée region of France.
1793	Apr 1	The volcano Unsen on Japan erupted killing about 53,000.
1793	Apr 6	In France all executive power was conferred upon a Committee of Public Safety. Georges-Jacques Danton was one of the nine original members.
1793	Apr 14	A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo was crushed by French republican troops.
1793	Apr 17	The Battle of Warsaw was fought.
1793	Apr 22	Pres. Washington attended the opening of Rickett’s, the 1st circus in US.
1793	May 7	Pietro Nardini (71), composer, died.
1793	May 25	Father Stephen Theodore Badin became the 1st US Roman Catholic priest ordained.
1793	Jun 2	Maximillian Robespierre, a member of France’s Committee on Public Safety, initiated the “Reign of Terror,” a purge of those suspected of treason against the French Republic. Months of the Great Terror, followed the Revolution in France as thousands died beneath the guillotine.
1793	Jun 20	Eli Whitney petitioned for a cotton gin patent in Philadelphia.
1793	Jun 24	The first republican constitution in France was adopted.
1793	Jul 13	John Clare, English poet, was born.
1793	Jul 13	Pierre Dupont de Nemours was ordered arrested in Paris on charges of plotting with rebels against the French Revolutionary National Assembly.
1793	Jul 13	French revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later. In 1970 Marie Cher authored “Charlotte Corday, and Certain Men of the Revolutionary Torment.”
1793	Jul 23	Roger Sherman (b.1721) of Connecticut, signer of the Declaration of Independence, died. He was only man to sign the four most important documents that were most significant in the formation of the United States. Sherman signed the Association (the 1774 compact to boycott British goods), the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and Constitution. Sherman was among the first to declare that Parliament had no right to legislate for the colonies. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress, served in the first U.S.  House of Representatives and was a U.S.  senator.
1793	Jul 23	The French garrison at Mainz, Germany, fell to the Prussians.
1793	Jul 24	France passed the 1st copyright law.
1793	Jul 27	In France, Robespierre became a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
1793	July	July: Radical Jacobin Jean-Paul Marat is assassinated by Girondist sympathizer Charlotte Corday, who stabs him in his bath. She not only holds him responsible for the September Massacres, but believes Marat to be the centerpoint for everything that is threatening a true Republic, and believes that his death will be the death of violence throughout the nation. Instead her action leads to reprisals that utlimately bring on the Reign of Terror.
1793	Jul	Napoleon Bonaparte published a pro-republican pamphlet that made a good impression on the Jacobin faction that had seized power in Paris.
1793	Aug 14	Republican troops in France laid siege to the city of Lyons.
1793	Aug 22	Louis Duke de Noailles (80), marshal of France, was guillotined.
1793	Aug 27	Maximilien Robespierre was elected to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, France.
1793	Aug 28	Adam-Philippe Custine, Duke de Lauzun (French duke, general, fought in American Revolution, hero in both countries), was guillotined in Paris.
1793	Aug 29	Slavery was abolished in the French colony of Santo Domingo (Haiti).
1793	Sep 5	The Reign of Terror began during the French Revolution as the National Convention instituted harsh measures to repress counter-revolutionary activities. One delegate, claiming that the middle class Girondist (moderates) leaders be sentenced to death cried, “It is time for equality to wield its scythe over all the heads. Very well, Legislator, place Terror on the agenda!” The delegates agreed to arrest all suspects and dissenters, try them swiftly in the kangaroo courts known as the Revolutionary Tribunals, and sentence them uniformly to death.
1793	Sep 6	French General Jean Houchard and his 40,000 men began a three-day battle against an Anglo-Hanoverian army at Hondschoote, southwest Belgium, in the wars of the French Revolution.
1793	Sep 17	Captain Napoleon Bonaparte reached Toulon and presented himself to his new commander, General Carteaux, a former house painter and policeman.
1793	Sep 18	President George Washington laid the foundation stone for the U.S. Capitol on Jenkins Hill.
1793	September	September: The Reign of Terror begins in France. The National Convention is taken over by radical Jacobins who embark on a systematic and lethal repression of perceived enemies of the Revolution. Within the next 12 months, as many as 40,000 executions will take place.
1793	Oct 8	John Hancock, US merchant and signer (Declaration of Independence), died at 56.
1793	Oct 10	The rebellious French city of Lyons surrendered to Revolutionary troops.
1793	Oct 16	During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette was beheaded. Prosecutors claimed she had sexually abused her son and financially abused the French Monarchy.  In mourning for her husband, Louis XVI, who had been guillotined the previous January, clad in rags, her once-dazzling locks shorn by the executioner’s assistant, she even suffered the indignity of a crude sketch by the great French painter, Jacques Louis David. Antoinette bore herself with a regal indifference to her martyrdom. Madame Tussaud used her severed head as a model for her wax bust death mask. In 2001 Antonia Fraser authored “Marie Antoinette: The Journey.”
1793	Oct 19	Captain Napoleon Bonaparte was promoted to chef de bataillon (major) giving him greater voice in the councils of war and the siege of Toulon.
1793	Oct 20	In France an extraordinary criminal tribunal received the official name of the Revolutionary Tribunal by a decree. The news of the failure of the French arms in Belgium gave rise in Paris to popular movements on March 9 and 10, 1793, and on March 10, on the proposal of Danton, the Convention decreed that there should be established in Paris an extraordinary criminal tribunal.
1793	Oct 28	Eliphalet Remington, US gun maker, was born.
1793	Oct 28	Eli Whitney applied for a patent on the cotton gin, a machine which cleaned the tight-clinging seeds from short-staple cotton easily and effectively–a job which was previously done by hand. The patent was granted the following March. [see Mar 13, Jun 20, 1793, Mar 14, 1794]
1793	Oct 31	Execution of 21 Girondins (moderates) in Paris, stepping up the Reign of Terror. Pierre V. Vergniaud (40), French politician and elegant, impassioned orator of Girondins, was guillotined.
1793	October	October: Jacques-Louis David paints The Death of Marat, one of the most famous images of the French Revolution.
1793	October	October: Queen Marie Antoinette of France is tried and excuted.
1793	October	October: The French National Convention adopts the Republican Calendar, with 12 30-day months beginning with the Year One of the revolution (September 22, 1792).
1793	Nov 3	Stephen Fuller Austin was born. He colonized Texas.
1793	Nov 8	The Louvre opened in Paris as a museum. It was originally constructed as a fortress in the early thirteenth century.
1793	Nov 10	France outlawed the forced worship of God.
1793	Nov 12	Jean-Sylvain Bailley (53), French astronomer and mayor of Paris, was guillotined.
1793	Nov 19	The Jacobin Club was formed in Paris. Robespierre (1758-1794), Jacobin leader: “Terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe and inflexible.”
1793	Nov 26	Republican calendar replaced the Gregorian calendar in France.
1793	November	November: The Louvre Palace is opened to the public as a museum.
1793	Nov	In France Philippe Aspairt, a hospital porter, ventured alone into the limestones quarries south of Paris, site of the new cemetery, and got lost. Workmen found his bones 11 years later.
1793	Dec 6	Marie Jeanne Becu, Comtesse du Barry, flamboyant mistress of Louis XV, was guillotined in Paris.
1793	Dec 9	Noah Webster established NY’s 1st daily newspaper, American Minerva.
1793	Dec 19	French troops recaptured Toulon from the British. Napoleon Bonaparte led the intense shelling of British positions. This led to his promotion to brigadier general.
1793	Dec 20	Joseph Legros (54), composer, died.
1793	Dec 23	Thomas Jefferson warned of slave revolts in West Indies.
1793	Lansdown Crescent is completed in Bath.
1793
1793	The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David. David was a close friend of Marat, as well as a strong supporter of Robespierre and the Jacobins. Determined to memorialize his friend, David not only organized for him a lavish funeral, but painted his portrait soon afterwards. Despsite the haste in which it was painted, it is generally considered to be David’s best work, a definite step towards modernity, and an inspired political statement.
1793	The first Bank of England £5 note is issued in response to the need for smaller denomination banknotes to replace gold coin during the French Revolutionary Wars (previously the smallest note issued had been £10).
1793	Antonio Canova created his clay model for the sculpture “Penitent Magdalen.” The final marble version was completed in 1809.
1793	Jacques-Louis David painted “Death of Marat.”
1793	Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823), French artist, painted “Cupid Laughs at the Tears He Causes.”
1793	William Blake produced his “Labors of the Artist, the Poet, and the Musician.” He painted “Aged Ignorance.”
1793	Augustin Ximenez (1726-1817), Marquis of Ximenez, a Frenchman of Spanish origin, wrote a poem with the line “Attaquons dans ses eaux la perfide Albion,” which means “Let us attack perfidious Albion in her waters.” The poet of perfidy later lectured French soldiers that “Il est beau de perir,” which means “it is beautiful to perish.”
1793	The German Reformed Church was established in the US by Calvinist Puritans.
1793	Capt. George Vancouver introduced cattle to the islands of Hawaii and wrested from King Kamehameha the concession that women as well as men be allowed to eat the meat. The king agreed if separate animals were used.
1793	The 1st US half-cent and one cent coins were minted. For almost 6 decades the obverse side carried an image of Lady Liberty. The first coins were related to the silver dollar. The half-dollar contained half as much silver, the quarter had one-fourth as much. The dime had a 10th and the half dime has a 20th as much silver as the dollar. Only the penny was made of copper. In 1866 the Mint decided to produce a larger five-cent coin. In 2012 a one-cent copper coin minted this year fetched $1 million at a Florida auction.
1793	Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was first founded where the present day Cape Rock Park sits, when Don Louis Lorimier was given a land grant by the Spanish government. The City of Cape Girardeau celebrated its 200th year in 2006.
1793	In Vermont Captain John Norton founded a stoneware pottery shop in Bennington. The wares were rarely marked until 1823. Various members of the family worked at the pottery until it closed shop in 1894.
1793	The Spanish Governor of Alta California made the first official notice of the fire problem in California. He warned military officers, missions and civil authorities of the problem.
1793	There was a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Stephen Girard risked his life and fortune in stopping the epidemic.
1793	Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish-born fur trader, reached the Pacific coast completing his crossing of North America. He began the trip in 1789. He raised Britain’s claims to the pacific Northwest.
1793	The British took over the island of St. Vincent and a series of wars ensued against the black Caribs.
1793	China’s Emperor Qianlong turned away the British fleet under Lord George Macartney with the declaration that China had all things in abundance and had no interest in “foreign manufactures.”
1793	The courthouse at the St. Maarten Island Dutch capital of Philipsburg was built.
1793	The Minton dishware company was established in Stoke, Staffordshire, England.
1793-1795	The British engaged in the ill-fated Flanders Campaign.
1793-1801	In Afghanistan Zaman Shah ruled. Constant internal revolts continued.
1793-1835	Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans, English poet: “Though the past haunt me as a spirit, I do not ask to forget.”
1793-1860	Thomas Addison, English physician, discovered Addison’s disease, a usually fatal disease caused by the failure of the adrenal cortex to function and marked by a bronze-like skin pigmentation, anemia, and prostration.
1793-1863	Sam Houston, US soldier and political leader. He was president of the Republic of Texas from 1836-1838.
1794	Jan 13	President Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the union. The number of stripes was later reduced to the original 13.
1794	Jan 14	Dr. Jessee Bennet of Edom, Va., performed the 1st successful Cesarean section operation on his wife.
1794	Feb 4	France’s First Republic (Convention) voted for the abolition of slavery in all French colonies. The abolition decree stated that “the Convention declares the slavery of the Blacks abolished in all the colonies; consequently, all men, irrespective of color, living in the colonies are French citizens and will enjoy all the rights provided by the Constitution.” Slavery was restored by the Consulate in 1802, and was definitively abolished in 1848 by the Second Republic, on Victor Schoelcher’s initiative.
1794	Feb 4	Slaves in Haiti won emancipation.
1794	Feb 10	Joseph Haydn’s 99th Symphony in E, premiered.
1794	Feb 11	A session of US Senate was 1st opened to the public.
1794	Feb 14	1st US textile machinery patent was granted, to James Davenport in Phila.
1794	Feb 21	Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexican Revolutionary, was born.
1794	February	February: The French Assembly abolishes slavery.
1794	Mar 3	1st performance of Joseph Haydn’s 101st Symphony in D.
1794	Mar 3	Richard Allen founded AME Church.
1794	Mar 14	Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America’s cotton industry. He paid substantial royalties to Catherine T. Greene and this makes his claim to the invention suspect.
1794	Mar 22	Congress passed laws prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries, although slavery remained legal in the United States. Congress banned US vessels from supplying slaves to other countries.
1794	Mar 23	Josiah Pierson patented a “cold-header” (rivet) machine.
1794	Mar 23	Lieutenant-General Tadeusz Kosciusko returned to Poland.
1794	Mar 24	In Cracow a revolutionary manifesto was proclaimed. The Lithuanian and Polish nobility under the leadership of Tadas Kasciuska revolted against Russian control.
1794	Mar 27	The US Congress approved “An Act to provide a Naval Armament” of six armed ships. [see Oct 13, 1775]
1794	Mar 28	Marie-Joseph de Condorcet (b.1743), mathematician (Theory of Comets) and philosopher, died as a fugitive from French Revolution Terrorists.
1794	March	March: The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which had been razed in 1791, re-opens in a new building designed by Henry Holland.
1794	Apr 5	Georges-Jacques Danton (b.1759), French revolutionary leader, was guillotined along with Marie Jean Herault de Sechelles, French author, politician, and Camille Desmoullins, popular journalist. In 2009 Jonathan Cape authored “Danton: The Gentle Giant of Terror.”
1794	Apr 7	In Poland at the battle of Raclawice the revolutionary forces of Tadeusz Kosciusko defeated the imperial armies.
1794	Apr 8	Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicholas-Caritat, mathematician died.
1794	Apr 10	Matthew Calbraith Perry, the American Navy Commodore who opened Japan, was born.
1794	Apr 11	Edward Everett, governor of Massachusetts, statesman and orator, was born.
1794	Apr 19	Tadeusz Kosciusko forced Russians out of Warsaw.
1794	April	April: Britain signs a treaty with Prussia and the Netherlands against France.
1794	April	April: Joséphine de Beauharnais (future wife of Napoleon) is arrested along with her husband, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, during the Reign of Terror. The vicomte is executed. Josephine will be released in July.
1794	April	April: The first edition of Niklaus von Heideloff’s upscale and exclusive fashion magazine, The Gallery of Fashion, is published.
1794	May 6	In Haiti Toussaint Louverture (L’Ouverture), Haitian rebel leader, ended his alliance with the Iberian monarchy and embraced the French Republicans. An order followed that led to the massacre of Spaniards.
1794	May 6	Jean-Jacques Beauvarget-Charpentier (59), composer, died.
1794	May 8	Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry (identified oxygen), was executed on the guillotine during France’s Reign of Terror. In 2005 Madison Smartt Bell authored “Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in the Age of Revolution.”
1794	May 10	In France Elizabeth (30), the sister of King Louis XVI, was beheaded.
1794	May 18	The 2nd battle of Bouvines was between France and Austria.
1794	May 27	Cornelius Vanderbilt (d.1877), owner of the B & O railroad, was born on Staten Island. He started running steamships in 1818 and shuttled passengers to the West coast across Nicaragua for the gold rush. At age 70 he entered the railroad business. He was never accepted into New York elite society and died with an estimated $105 million fortune.
1794	May	May: Habeas Corpus is supended in England.
1794	May	Richard Allen purchased a blacksmith shop in Philadelphia and had it moved near St. Thomas. There he founded an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church he called Bethel, “House of God.” The Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia was founded by Richard Allen after he was pulled from his knees one Sunday by a white usher while praying at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church. It later stood as the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African Americans. The Richard Allen Museum contains 19th century artifacts from the church. In 1997 it was the world’s oldest AME church. The church elected its first female bishop in 2000.
1794	Jun 1	English fleet under Richard Earl Howe defeated the French. (MC, 6/1/02)
1794	Jun 4	Congress passed a Neutrality Act that banned Americans from serving in armed forces of foreign powers.
1794	Jun 4	British troops captured Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
1794	Jun 4	Robespierre was unanimously elected president of the Convention in the French Revolution.
1794	Jun 5	Congress passed the Neutrality Act, which prohibited Americans from enlisting in the service of a foreign power.
1794	Jun 8	Maximilian Robespierre, French Revolutionary leader, worried about the influence of French atheists and philosophers, staged the “Festival of the Supreme Being” in Paris.
1794	Jun 15	The Guillotine was moved to outskirts of Paris.
1794	Jun 18	George Grote, British historian, was born.
1794	Jun 23	Empress Catherine II granted Jews permission to settle in Kiev.
1794	Jun 26	French defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus.
1794	June	June: A Royal Navy fleet under the command of Admiral Lord Howe defeats a French fleet in the North Atlantic, capturing six French ships and sinking a seventh.
1794	Jul 5	Sylvester Graham, developed graham cracker, was born.
1794	Jul 8	French troops captured Brussels, Belgium.
1794	Jul 12	British Admiral Lord Nelson lost his right eye at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica.
1794	Jul 13	Robespierre boycotted the Committee of Public Safety and the National convention after being denounced as a dictator.
1794	Jul 17	In Philadelphia the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, one of the first black churches in the country, opened its doors.
1794	Jul 23	Chaos and anarchy were averted temporarily when Robespierre joined conciliation talks in Paris.
1794	Jul 26	After remaining uncharacteristically silent for several weeks, Robespierre demanded that the National Convention punish “traitors” without naming them.
1794	Jul 26	The French defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus in France.
1794	Jul 27	French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown and placed under arrest; he was executed the following day.
1794	Jul 28	Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to the guillotine. Robespierre had dominated the Committee of Public Safety during the “Reign of Terror.” He asserted the collective dictatorship of the revolutionary National Convention and attacked factions led by men such as Jacques-René Hébert which he felt threatened the government‘s power. Factions opposed to Robespierre gained momentum in the summer of 1794.  Declared an outlaw of the National Convention, Robespierre and many of his followers were captured and he—along with 22 of his supporters—were guillotined before cheering crowds.
1794	Jul 29	Seventy of Robespierre’s followers were guillotined.
1794	July	July: Robespierre is arrested and executed, ending the Reign of Terror in France.
1794	Aug 7	George Washington issued a proclamation telling a group of Western Pennsylvania farmers to stop their Whiskey Rebellion. In the US in western Pennsylvania, angry farmers protested a new federal tax on whiskey makers. The protest flared into the open warfare known as the Whiskey Rebellion between US marshals and whiskey farmers.
1794	Aug 20	American General “Mad Anthony” Wayne defeated the Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in the Northwest territory, ending Indian resistance in the area.
1794	Aug 21	France surrendered the island of Corsica to the British.
1794	August	August: British forces take Corsica from the French after bombardment by Captain Horatio Nelson, who lost the sight in his right eye due to an injury in the battle.
1794	Sep 10	America’s first non-denominational college, Blount College (later the University of Tennessee), was chartered.
1794	Sep 28	The Anglo-Russian-Austrian Alliance of St. Petersburg, which was directed against France, was signed.
1794	Oct 10	The Russian Army under Gen’l. Alexander Suvorov took Warsaw and captured Tadeus Kosciusko at Maciejowice. T. Vavzeckis was became the new commander of the revolutionary forces.
1794	Oct 15	US moneymakers minted some 2,000 silver dollars of which 1,750 were deemed good enough to go into circulation. The press initially used was designed for a smaller coin and large scale production on a bigger press began a year later.
1794	Nov 3	William Cullen Bryant, poet and journalist, was born.
1794	Nov 3	Thomas Paine was released from a Parisian jail with help from the American ambassador James Monroe. He had been arrested in 1893 for not endorsing the execution of Louis XVI and thus offending the Robespierre faction. While in prison Paine began writing his “The Age of Reason” (1794-1796).
1794	Nov 11	The Treaty of Canandaigua was signed at Canandaigua, New York, by fifty sachems and war chiefs representing the Grand Council of the Six Nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy (including the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora tribes), and by Timothy Pickering, official agent of President George Washington.  The Canandaigua Treaty, a Treaty Between the United States of America and the Tribes of Indians Called the Six Nations, was signed.
1794	Nov 16	Warsaw capitulated to the Russian Army and the revolution ended.
1794	Nov 19	The United States and Britain signed the Jay Treaty, which resolved some issues left over from the Revolutionary War. This was the 1st US extradition treaty.
1794	Nov 21	Honolulu Harbor was discovered.
1794	Nov 22	Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine, prohibited circumcision and the wearing of beards.
1794	Nov 28	Friedrich WLGA von Steuben (64), Prussian-US inspector-general of Washington’s army, died in Oneida, NY. Baron von Steuben, a former Prussian captain, had arrived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1777, and despite false credentials, was hired to drill and train Washington’s Continental Army. His manual of arms, known as the “Blue Book,” shaped basic training for American recruits for generations to come. In 2008 Paul Lockhart authored “The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army.”
1794	November	November: The Treason Trials exonerate three key British Radicals (Thomas Hardy, John Thelwall, John Horne Tooke) who had been charged with high treason. The trials had been orchestrated by Prime Minister William Pitt as a part of his campaign to cripple the radical movement in Britain, in hopes of avoiding a French-style revolution in England.
1794	Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin.
1794	Mrs. Radcliffe publishes The Mysteries of Udolpho.
1794	William Blake publishes Songs of Experience, which includes the poem “The Tyger.”
1794	Ukraine’s port city of Odessa was founded.
1794	William Blake painted “The Ancient of Days.” “He formed golden com-passes / And began to explore the Abyss.” From the epic “The First Book of Urizen.” Urizen is a pun and stands for “Your Reason.” On display at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England.
1794	“The Book of Thell” was printed by Blake in 14+ sets of 8 different designs.
1794	Spanish painter Goya completed his painting “Yard With Lunatics,” the last in a series of uncommissioned small paintings executed during his convalescence from an illness that left him deaf.
1794	French Azilum near Towanda, Pa., was planned as an asylum for Marie-Antoinette, her children and other loyalists of the monarchy seeking refuge from the French Revolution. Loyalists who kept their heads did come and settle.
1794	In the US Richard Allen was pulled from his knees one Sunday by a white usher while praying at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. He founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1787.
1794	The St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans was rebuilt. Two previous structures had burned down.
1794	George Washington established the first national armory at Springfield, Mass. He also authorized the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Md., where the Shenandoah flows into the Potomac.
1794	The first American silver dollar was minted. Congress decided in 1785 that the country‘s monetary system would be based on a silver coin called a dollar, similar to that of the Spanish dollar.
1794	A French inventor mixed ground graphite with clay and water and fired it to make strong pencil leads. [see 1765]
1794	Gov. Diego Borica took command of Alta California and remarked on the general fecundity of the Bay Area.
1794	Archibald Menzies introduced the California poppy to England. The seed that he brought to Kew Gardens did not survive. [see 1792, 1816,1825-1833]
1794	British Admiral Earl Howe defeated the French fleet.
1794	Ernst Chladni, German scientist, proposed that meteorites were masses of iron-rich extraterrestrial rock, which occasionally penetrated the earth’s atmosphere to strike the surface.
1794	The Royal Bayreuth porcelain factory was founded in Bavaria. The factory stamped this date on dishes made after 1900.
1794	In Italy the Bourbon monarchy created the Banca Nazionale di Napoli bringing together eight public banks including the Banco dei Poveri, established in 1563. The Piedmontese monarchy settled on the name Banco di Napoli in 1861.
1794	Napoleon’s occupying army in Maastricht, Netherlands, took back to France a giant dinosaur head that was found in a dark recess of St. Peter’s mountain in 1780. It was named the Mosasaurus and roamed the seas some 70 million years ago. The head was lugged to the home of Theodorus Godding, a canon at the local church. The French say that he swapped it to Napoleon for 600 bottles of wine. Records however seem to indicate otherwise.
1794	Scotland, parish of Kirkmichael, Banffshire, on the holy well of St. Michael. (Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xii, p.464): Many a patient have its water restored to health and many more have attested the efficacies of their virtues. But as the presiding power is sometimes capricious and apt to desert his charge, it now lies neglected, choked with weeds, unhonored, and unfrequented. In better days it was not so; for the winged guardian, under the semblance of a fly, was never absent from his duty… Every movement of the sympathetic fly was regarded in silent awe…
1794	The Russian Orthodox mission was founded in Alaska. It led to the Orthodox Church in America with 600,000 members.
1794 to 1797	Francisco Goya painted portraits, notably that of the actress La Tirana, that were influenced by tge style ad colouring of Velasques.
1794-1815	An anthology of first hand reports on the naval war between France and Britain was edited by Dean King and John B. Hattendorf and published in 1997.
1794-1824	Matthias Schmutzer, artist, produced over 1000 large-format watercolors of specimens from the imperial gardens  of Francis I. In 2006 H. Walter Lack authored “Florilegium Imperiale: Botanical Illustrations for Francis I of Austria.”
1794-1872	Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, German artist.
1794-1925	The Kajar Dynasty ruled over Iran. The Gulistan Palace (constructed in this era), contains the much disputed Peacock Throne.

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