1786

This article is about the year 1786.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	17th century – 18th century – 19th century
Decades:	1750s  1760s  1770s  – 1780s –  1790s  1800s  1810s
Years:	1783 1784 1785 – 1786 – 1787 1788 1789

1786 by topic:

Arts and Sciences

Archaeology – Architecture – Art – Literature (Poetry) – Music – Science

Countries

Canada –Denmark – France – Great Britain – Ireland – Norway – Scotland –Sweden – United States

Lists of leaders

Colonial governors – State leaders

Birth and death categories

Births – Deaths

Establishments and disestablishments categories

Establishments – Disestablishments

Works category

Works

1786 in other calendars

Gregorian calendar	1786 MDCCLXXXVI
Ab urbe condita	2539
Armenian calendar	1235 ԹՎ ՌՄԼԵ
Assyrian calendar	6536
Bengali calendar	1193
Berber calendar	2736
British Regnal year	26 Geo. 3 – 27 Geo. 3
Buddhist calendar	2330
Burmese calendar	1148
Byzantine calendar	7294–7295
Chinese calendar	乙巳年 (Wood Snake) 4482 or 4422     — to — 丙午年 (Fire Horse) 4483 or 4423
Coptic calendar	1502–1503
Discordian calendar	2952
Ethiopian calendar	1778–1779
Hebrew calendar	5546–5547
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1842–1843
- Shaka Samvat	1708–1709
- Kali Yuga	4887–4888
Holocene calendar	11786
Igbo calendar	786–787
Iranian calendar	1164–1165
Islamic calendar	1200–1201
Japanese calendar	Tenmei 6 (天明６年)
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 11 days
Korean calendar	4119
Minguo calendar	126 before ROC 民前126年
Thai solar calendar	2328–2329

1786 (MDCCLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (dominical letter A) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday (dominical letter D) of the Julian calendar, the 1786th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 786th year of the 2nd millennium, the 86th year of the 18th century, and the 7th year of the 1780s decade. Note that the Julian day for 1786 is 11 calendar days difference, which continued to be used from 1582 until the complete conversion of the Gregorian calendar was entirely done in 1929.

Events

January–June

• January 3 – The third Treaty of Hopewell was signed between the United States of America and the Choctaw.
• January 6 – The outward bound East Indiaman Halsewell was wrecked on the south coast of England in a storm with only 74 of more than 240 on board surviving.
• February 2 – In a speech before The Asiatic Society in Calcutta, Sir William Jones noted the formal resemblances between Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, laying the foundation for comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies.
• May 1 – Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro premiered in Vienna.
• May 21 – The trial in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace ended in Paris.
• June 10 – An earthquake-caused landslide dam on the Dadu River gave way, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.
• June 25 – Gavriil Pribylov discovered St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

July–December

• July 14 – Convention of London between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Spain: British settlements on the Mosquito Coast of Central America were to be evacuated; Spain expanded the territory available to the British in Belize on the Yucatán Peninsula for cutting mahogany.
• August
  • James Rumsey tested his first steamboat on the Potomac River at Shepherdstown, Virginia.
  • The Cabinet of Great Britain approved the establishment of a penal colony at Botany Bay in Australia.
• August 1 – Caroline Herschel discovered a comet (the first discovered by a woman).
• August 8 – Mont Blanc was climbed for the first time by Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat.

August 8: Mont Blanc climbed.

• August 11 – Captain Francis Light acquired the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah on behalf of the British East India Company, renaming it Prince of Wales Island in honour of the heir to the British throne, the first colony of the British Empire in Southeast Asia.
• August 17 : The paternal nephew of Frederick the Great, Frederick William, became King of Prussia, as Frederick William II.
• August 18 : The Kingdom of Denmark–Norway chartered six settlements in Iceland to trade with it, thus ending the Danish–Icelandic Trade Monopoly and founding Reykjavík.
• August 29 – Shays' Rebellion began in Massachusetts.
• September–December – Goethe undertook his Italian Journey (published in 1817).
• September 2 – A hurricane struck Barbados.
• September 11–14 – Annapolis Convention was held, resulting in scheduling of the Philadelphia Convention.
• September 26 – Eden Agreement: Commercial treaty was signed between the Kingdoms of Great Britain and France.
• November 7 – The oldest musical organization in the United States, the Stoughton Musical Society, was founded.
• November 30 – Peter Leopold Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgated a penal reform making his country the first state to abolish the death penalty. November 30 is therefore commemorated by 300 cities around the world as Cities for Life Day.
• December 4 – Mission Santa Barbara was founded by Padre Fermín Lasuén as the tenth of the Spanish missions in California.

December 4: Mission Santa Barbara was founded.

Date unknown

• The town of Martinsborough, North Carolina, named for Royal Governor Josiah Martin in 1771, was renamed "Greenesville" in honor of United States General Nathanael Greene by the North Carolina General Assembly; the name "Greenesville" was later shortened to become Greenville.
• The last reliably recorded wolf in Ireland was hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster, County Carlow, for killing sheep.

Births

• January 8 – Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States (d. 1844)
• January 12 – Sir Robert Inglis, Bt, English politician (d. 1855)
• January 23 – Auguste de Montferrand, French architect (d. 1858)
• February 16 – Maria Pavlovna of Russia, Grand duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach (d. 1859)
• February 24 – Martin W. Bates, U.S. Senator from Delaware (d. 1869)
• February 26 – François Arago, French astronomer, physicist and politician (d. 1853)
• February 24 – Wilhelm Grimm, German philologist and folklorist (d. 1859)
• March 22 – Joachim Lelewel, Polish historian (d. 1861)
• March 25 – Giovanni Batista Amici Italian astronomer, microscopist, and botanist (d. 1863)
• May 12 – Jean-François Barrière, French historian
• May 29 – Alexander Bryan Johnson, American philosopher (d. 1867)
• June 13 – Winfield Scott, American general and Presidential candidate (d. 1866)
• August 17
  • Davy Crockett, American frontiersman (d. 1836)
  • Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Mother of Queen Victoria (d. 1861)
• August 25 – King Ludwig I of Bavaria (d. 1868)
• September 10 – William Mason, American politician (d. 1860)
• September 11 – Friedrich Kuhlau, German composer (d. 1832)
• September 18
  • King Christian VIII of Denmark (d. 1848)
  • Justinus Kerner, German physician (d. 1862)
• September 24 – Charles Bianconi, Italian-Irish entrepreneur (d. 1875)
• September 29 – Guadalupe Victoria, 1st President of Mexico (d. 1843)
• November 18
  • Henry Bishop, English composer (d. ??)
  • Carl Maria von Weber, German composer (d. 1826)
• December 12 – William L. Marcy, American statesman (d. 1857)

date unknown

• Caroline Cornwallis, English writer (d. 1858)
• Kim Jeong-hui, Korean epigrapher (d. 1856)
• probable – Moshoeshoe I of Lesotho (d. 1870)

Deaths

Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Frederick II of Prussia

• January 4 – Moses Mendelssohn, Jewish philosopher (b. 1729)
• January 7 – Jean-Étienne Guettard, French physician and scientist (b. 1715)
• January 14 – Meshech Weare, Governor of New Hampshire (b. 1713)
• February 28 – John Gwynn, English architect and engineer (b. 1713)
• March 11 – Charles Humphreys, American delegate to the Continental Congress (b. 1714)
• April 10 – John Byron, British naval officer (b. 1723)
• May 15 – Eva Ekeblad, Swedish scientist & agronomist, first female member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (b.1724)
• May 19 – John Stanley, English composer (b. 1712)
• May 21 – Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist (b. 1742)
• May 25 – Pedro III of Portugal, consort of Queen Maria I of Portugal (b. 1717)
• June 19 – Nathanael Greene, major general in the Continental Army, 3rd Quartermaster General (b. 1742)
• August 17 – King Frederick II of Prussia ("Frederick the Great") (b. 1712)
• September 5 – Jonas Hanway, English merchant, traveler, and philanthropist (b. 1712)
• October 2 – Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel, British admiral (b. 1725)
• October 17 – Johann Ludwig Aberli, Swiss artist (b. 1723)
• October 20 – Humphrey Sturt, British architect (b. 1725)
• November 30 – Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish military leader who aided the United States in its quest for independence in the American Revolutionary War (b. 1746)
• December 26 – Gasparo Gozzi, Italian critic and dramatist (b. 1713)