istoryworld
Events relating to europe
William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself
In his Principles Jeremy Bentham defines 'utility' as that which enhances pleasure and reduces pain
A left-wing political club begins to meet in a Jacobin convent in Paris, thus becoming known as the Jacobins
Alexander Mackenzie explores by canoe from central Canada through the Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean
Delegates of the Third Estate swear an oath in a tennis court at Versailles, pledging themselves not to disperse until France has a constitution
The painter Jacques-Louis David sketches the events in the Versailles tennis court
An excited Paris mob liberates the seven prisoners held in the forbidding fortress of the Bastille
Parisians force their way into the palace at Versailles and insist on Louis XVI and his royal family accompanying them back to Paris
French doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposes a decapitation machine as a more humane form of capital punishment
Francisco de Goya is appointed court painter to the new Spanish king, Charles IV
Joseph Haydn sets off for England, where impresario Johann Peter Salomon presents his London symphonies
A second fleet arrives in Sydney, bringing more convicts and a regiment, the New South Wales Corps, to keep order
Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel
English painter J.M.W. Turner is only 15 when a painting of his, a watercolour, is first exhibited at the Royal Academy
Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches
French inventor Claude Chappe develops a hilltop signalling system, for which he coins the words telegraph and semaphore
Louis XVI and his family attempt to flee from Paris to the border but are captured at Varennes
Stationed at Valence, Napoleon becomes president of the local Jacobin club and makes radical speeches against the nobility and clergy
Naval officer George Vancouver sails from Britain on the voyage which will bring him to the northwest coast of America
Wolfe Tone is one of the founders in Belfast of the Society of United Irishmen
Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man, his reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
The Swedish king Gustavus III is assassinated at a midnight masquerade in Stockholm – an event later dramatized by Verdi
France declares war on the Austrian emperor, an event that plunges Europe into more than 20 years of conflict
In a first demonstration of the gullotine, a highwayman is beheaded in a Paris square
A French officer, Rouget de Lisle, writes a stirring anthem for France, soon to be known as the Marseillaise
