1770

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1770 (MDCCLXX) was a common year starting on Monday (dominical letter G) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday (dominical letter C) of the Julian calendar, the 1770th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 770th year of the 2nd millennium, the 70th year of the 18th century, and the 1st year of the 1770s decade. As of the start of 1770, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1918.

Events

January–June

• January 1 – Foundation of Fort George, Bombay laid by Colonel Keating, principal engineer, on the site of the former Dongri Fort.
• March 5 – Eleven American men are shot, five fatally, by British troops in an event that helps starting the American Revolutionary War five years later.
• March 26 – First voyage of James Cook: English explorer Captain James Cook and his crew aboard HMS Endeavour complete the circumnavigation of New Zealand.
• April 18 (April 19 by Cook's log)^[1] 18:00 – First voyage of James Cook: English explorer Captain James Cook and his crew become the first recorded Europeans to encounter the eastern coastline of the Australian continent.
• April 20 – Georgian king Erekle II defeats the Ottoman forces in the battle of Aspindza, despite being abandoned by an ally, Russian General Totleben.
• April 29 – First voyage of James Cook: Captain Cook drops anchor on HMS Endeavour in a wide bay about 16 km (10 mi) south of the present city of Sydney, Australia. Because the young botanist on board the ship, Joseph Banks, discovers 30,000 specimens of plant life in the area, 1,600 of them unknown to European science, Cook names the place Botany Bay on May 7.
• May 7 – Fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette arrives at the French court.
• May 16
  • Marie Antoinette marries Louis-Auguste (who later becomes King Louis XVI of France).
  • Fireworks lit by Eric Engelbrecht at the wedding of the crown prince of France in Paris cause a fire, killing 132 people.

July 5: Battle of Chesma, painting by Ivan Aivazovsky.

• June 3 – Gaspar de Portolà and Father Junípero Serra establish Monterey, the presidio of Alta California territory for Spain from 1777–1822, United Mexican States 1824–1846, until the California Republic.
• June 9 – Falklands Crisis (1770): Some 1600 Spanish marines, sent by the Spanish governor of Buenos Aires in five frigates, seize Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands. The small British force present promptly surrenders.^[2]
• June 11 – First voyage of James Cook: HMS Endeavour grounds on the Great Barrier Reef.

July–December

• July 1 – Lexell's Comet (D/1770 L1) passes the Earth at a distance of 2184129 km, the closest approach by a comet in recorded history.^[3]
• July 5 – Battle of Chesma and Battle of Larga: The Russian Empire defeats the Ottoman Empire in both battles.
• August 1 (July 21 in Julian Calendar) – Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) – Battle of Kagul: Russian commander Pyotr Rumyantsev routs 150,000 Turks.
• August 22 (August 23 by Cook's log) – First voyage of James Cook: Captain Cook determines that New Holland (Australia) is not contiguous with New Guinea and claims the whole of its eastern coast for Great Britain, later naming it all New South Wales.

Date unknown

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

Births

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Ludwig van Beethoven

• February 21 – Georges Mouton, Marshal of France (d. 1838)
• March 2 – Louis-Gabriel Suchet, Marshal of France (d. 1826)
• March 20 – Friedrich Hölderlin, German writer (d. 1843)
• April 3 – Theodoros Kolokotronis, Greek general (d. 1843)
• April 7 – William Wordsworth, English poet (d. 1850)
• April 8 – John Campbell, Australian public servant and politician (d. 1830)
• April 11 – George Canning, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1827)
• April 25 – Georg Sverdrup, Norwegian philologist (d. 1850)
• April 30 – David Thompson, English-Canadian explorer (d. 1857)
• May 10 – Louis-Nicolas Davout, Marshal of France (d. 1823)
• May 15 – Ezekiel Hart, Canadian entrepreneur & politician (d. 1843)
• May 27 – Ignaz Döllinger, German anatomist and physiologist (d. 1841)
• May 29 – Charles Adams, second son of President John Adams (1735–1826) (d. 1800)
• June 1 – Friedrich Laun, German author (d. 1849)
• June 3 – Manuel Belgrano, Argentine politician and general in the Independence War (d. 1820)
• June 7 – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1828)
• June 20 – Moses Waddel, American educator/minister and bestselling author (d. 1840)
• August 1 – William Clark, explorer, Governor of Missouri Territory, and Superintendent of Indian Affairs (d. 1838)
• August 3 – King Frederick William III of Prussia (d. 1840)
• August 18 – Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer, German scholar (d. 1825)
• August 27 – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher (d. 1831)
• October 10 – Adam Johann von Krusenstern, Baltic German explorer who lead the First Russian circumnavigation (d. 1846)
• December 17 – Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer (d. 1827)
• December 18 – Nicolas Joseph Maison, Marshal of France and Minister of War (d. 1840)

Deaths

• January 7 – Carl Gustaf Tessin, Swedish politician (b. 1695)
• January 20 – Charles Yorke, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (b. 1722)
• January 30 – Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis, Maltese linguist, historian and cleric (b. 1712)
• February 26 – Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer and violinist (b. 1692)
• March 5 – Crispus Attucks, African-American dockworker, first to die in the Boston Massacre (b. 1723)
• March 27 – Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Venetian artist (b. 1696)
• April 25 – Jean-Antoine Nollet, French abbot and physicist (b. 1700)
• May 30 – François Boucher, French painter (b. 1703)
• June 23 – Mark Akenside, English poet and physician (b. 1721)
• July 21 – Charlotta Frölich, Swedish agronomist (b. 1698)
• July 27 – Robert Dinwiddie, British colonial Governor of Virginia (b. 1693)
• August 24 – Thomas Chatterton, English poet (b. 1752)
• September 30
  • George Whitefield, English-born Methodist leader (b. 1714)
  • Thomas Robinson, 1st Baron Grantham, English politician and diplomat
• October 14 – Benning Wentworth, colonial governor of New Hampshire (b. 1696)
• October 18 – John Manners, Marquess of Granby, British soldier (b. 1721)
• November 9 – John Campbell, 4th Duke of Argyll, Scottish politician
• November 13 – George Grenville, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1712)
• November 24 – Charles-Jean-François Hénault, French historian (b. 1685)
• December 5 – James Stirling, Scottish mathematician (b. 1692)

References

Further reading

• John Blair; J. Willoughby Rosse (1856). "1770". Blair's Chronological Tables. London: H.G. Bohn – via Hathi Trust.