/year

The 1790s

814 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 18th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1790 CE75 entries

  • January 8 – United States President George Washington gives the first State of the Union address, in New York City.
  • May 17–18 – Battle of Andros: An Ottoman–Algerian fleet destroys the fleet of the Greek privateer Lambros Katsonis.
  • November 27 – U.S. President George Washington and his wife, Martha Washington, arrive in the new temporary U.S. capital, Philadelphia, and take up residence at the President's House located at 524 Market Street.

1791 CE77 entries

  • April 29–May 8 – The first American ships reach Japan, brigantine Lady Washington captained by John Kendrick of Boston, and the brig Grace.
  • May 3 – The Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth proclaims the Constitution of May 3, 1791, the first modern codified constitution in Europe.
  • September 25 – Mission Santa Cruz is founded by Basque Franciscan Father Fermín Lasuén, becoming the 12th mission in the California mission chain.

1792 CE93 entries

  • April 5 – United States President George Washington vetoes a bill designed to apportion representatives among U.S. states. This is the first time the presidential veto is used in the United States.
  • September 2–7 – French Revolution: September Massacres – Rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic bishops and more than 200 priests, together with at least 1,000 other criminals.
  • September – Macartney Embassy: George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, sails from Portsmouth in HMS Lion as the first official envoy from Great Britain to China.

1793 CE89 entries

1794 CE84 entries

  • May 7 – Maximilien Robespierre establishes the Cult of the Supreme Being as the new state religion of the French First Republic.
  • July 27 (9 Thermidor) – French Revolution – Thermidorian Reaction: Maximilien, Augustin Robespierre and Saint-Just are arrested on the orders of the French National Convention; they are executed the next day, ending the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.
  • August 9 – Napoleon is arrested and put under house arrest at Nice for his association with the Robespierres during their fall in the Thermidorian Reaction. He is later taken to Antibes and detained in a military fort.

1795 CE79 entries

  • January 14 – The University of North Carolina opens to students at Chapel Hill, becoming the first state university in the United States.
  • January 16 – War of the First Coalition: Flanders campaign: The French occupy Utrecht, Netherlands.
  • December 13 – Wold Cottage meteorite: A meteorite falls at Wold Newton, a hamlet in Yorkshire in England. This meteorite fall is subsequently used as a literary premise by science fiction writer Philip José Farmer, as the basis for the Wold Newton family.

1796 CE89 entries

  • March 30 – Carl Gauss obtains conditions for the constructibility by ruler and compass of regular polygons, and can announce that the regular 17-gon is constructible by ruler and compasses.
  • December 7 – The U.S. Electoral College meets to elect John Adams president of the United States.
  • December – The British government begins work on a 40-acre (162,000 m²) site at Norman Cross, for the world's first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp.

1797 CE74 entries

  • January 7 – The parliament of the Cisalpine Republic adopts the Italian green-white-red tricolour as their official flag (this is considered the birth of the flag of Italy).
  • February 14 – French Revolutionary Wars – Battle of Cape St. Vincent: The British Royal Navy under Admiral Sir John Jervis defeats a larger Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, Portugal.
  • November – 1797 Rugby School rebellion: The students at Rugby School in England rebel against the headmaster, Henry Ingles, after he decrees that the damage to a tradesman's windows should be paid for by the students.

1798 CE79 entries

  • July 1 – Egyptian Campaign: Napoleon Bonaparte disembarks his French army in Marabout Bay near Alexandria.
  • September – Charles Brockden Brown publishes the first significant American novel, the Gothic fiction Wieland: or, The Transformation; an American Tale.
  • October 22 – Capitulation of the French garrison at Hyderabad to East India Company troops under James Kirkpatrick, British Resident.

1799 CE75 entries

  • April 27 – French Revolutionary Wars: The Battle of Cassano takes place outside of Milan, as Russian and Austrian troops commanded by General Alexander Suvorov rout the French Army under the command of General Jean Moreau.
  • May 21 – The Siege of Acre ends after two months; Napoleon's attempt to widen his Middle Eastern campaign into Syria is frustrated by Ottoman forces, and he withdraws to Egypt.
  • August 15 – War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Novi – the defeat of Barthélemy Joubert's army by Suvorov's Austrian–Russian troops.