A left-wing political club begins to meet in a Jacobin convent in Paris, thus becoming known as the Jacobins

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

Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against the captain, William Bligh

Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel

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 Brazilian rebel Tiradentes is beheaded in public in Rio de Janeiro as a warning to would-be revolutionaries

Thomas Paine moves hurriedly to France, to escape a charge of treason in England for opinions expressed in his Rights of Man

Rebellion breaks out in the Vendée and a peasant army marches against republican Paris

Toussaint L'Ouverture, a former slave, joins a Spanish force invading the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti)

English revolutionary Thomas Paine spends nearly a year in a French prison after opposing the execution of Louis XVI

George Washington uses military force to assert government authority on rebels in Pennsylvania refusing to pay a federal tax on whisky

After the Fort Greenville concessions, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh emerges as a champion of Indian territorial rights

A secret Protestant group, the Orange Society, is formed in Co. Armagh to resist Irish nationalism

The 26-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte comes to public attention for his part in saving the Convention in Paris from an assault by rebels

Irish nationalist Wolfe Tone sails from France to invade Ireland with a force of 14,000 French soldiers

Irish nationalist Wolfe Tone, convicted of treason for his failed invasion, cuts his throat to cheat the British gallows

Toussaint L'Ouverture is treacherously arrested and sent to France, where he dies in prison

The uprising by Irish nationalist Robert Emmet ends in disaster when he marches on Dublin with only about 100 men

The independence of Haiti from France is proclaimed by a new black ruler calling himself the emperor Jacques I

The Carbonari, an Italian group of revolutionaries, make their first appearance in Naples in opposition to French rule

Karageorge captures Belgrade and wins a limited independence for Serbia within the Ottoman empire

With acts of defiance in Sucre, Bolivia becomes the first American province to rebel against the Spanish authorities

Simón Bolívar, a young officer in Caracas, takes part in a coup which wins control of Venezuela from the Spanish