Exploration & Expansion in the 18th century

262 sourced entries, 1700 CE to 1799 CE, oldest first. Also see Exploration & Expansion across every century or everything else in the 18th century.

• 1700February 27 – The island of New Britain is discovered by William Dampier, in the western Pacific.source
• 1700Mission San Xavier del Bac is founded in New Spain near Tucson, as a Spanish Roman Catholic mission. Its location had first been scouted by the Spanish in 1692.source
• 1700The value of sales of English manufactured products to the Atlantic economy is £3.9 million.source
• 1702April 24 – The first two missionaries from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts set sail from England to North America.source
• 1702June 16 – The English East India Company founds a settlement on Pulo Condore (modern-day Côn Sơn Island) off the coast of southern Vietnam as an entrepôt for ships travelling between India and China.source
• 1702July 24 – A total eclipse of the sun is visible on a path crossing the northern Pacific Ocean and Central America.source
• 1702October 28 – Sieur Juchereau, Lieutenant General of Montréal, establishes the first trading post on the Wabash River in order to trade buffalo hides with American Indians. The site of the trading post may be the modern-day location of Vincennes, Indiana.source
• 1704February 29 – Raid on Deerfield (Queen Anne's War): French Canadians and Native Americans sack Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing over 50 English colonists.source
• 1705January 31 – The Hester, a British 28-gun sailing ship with a crew of 70, is lost in Persia.source
• 1705With the interest paid from daimyō loans, the Konoike buy a tract of ponds and swampland, turn the land into rice paddies, and settle 480 households numbering perhaps 2,880 peasants on the land.source
• 1706February 6 – The city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is incorporated by governor Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdes as La Villa de Alburquerque in the Spanish colonial province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in New Spain. Governor Cuervo sends a report on April 23 to the Spanish Crown and to New Spain's Governor, Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, 10th Duke of Alburquerque announcing that the new villa, consisting of 35 families and having a population of 252 adults, has been named in honor of the Duke.source
• 1706May 12 – A total eclipse of the Sun takes place and is visible in most of Europe, with a path crossing modern-day Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Russiasource
• 1706June 9 – Frederick IV of Denmark-Norway sends the first two Protestant missionaries to India, dispatching Lutherans Heinrich Plütcshau and Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg to Denmark-Norway's colony in India, the Dansk Ostindien, based at Tharangambadi ("Tranquebar") in what is now the Tamil Nadu state.source
• 1708March 23 – James Francis Edward Stuart, Jacobite pretender to the throne of Great Britain, unsuccessfully tries to land from a French fleet in the Firth of Forth in Scotland.source
• 1709May 6 – The first influx into Britain of poor refugee families of German Palatines from the Rhenish Palatinate arrives in England. Most of them are Protestants en route to the New World colonies.source
• 1710June – Protestant Swiss and German Palatines, under the leadership of Christoph von Graffenried, travel to Bath County in the Province of Carolina. The settlers displace the native town of Chattoka and found New Bern, named for von Graffenried's hometown of Bern in Switzerland.source
• 1710September 7 – In Jonathan Swift's satirical Gulliver's Travels, fictional Gulliver sets off on his fourth and final journey, a voyage to the Land of the Houyhnhnms.source
• 1710November 30 – The first visit to the Pacific islands of Palau is made by a Jesuit expedition led by Francisco Padilla; unfortunately, the ship is driven to Mindanao by a storm, leaving two priests stranded.source
• 1710Explorer Juan Arias Diaz becomes the first non-Incan visitor to Choquequirao, an Inca site in Peru.source
• 1711April 3 – Clipperton Island is rediscovered by Frenchmen Martin de Chassiron and Michel Du Bocage, who draws up the first map and claims the island for France. The island had been discovered by Alvaro Saavedra Cedrón in 1528.source
• 1711August 1 – The Dutch East India Company trading ship Zuytdorp leaves the Netherlands on an ill-fated voyage to Indonesia bearing a load of freshly minted silver coins. The wreck site remains unknown until the mid-20th century, on a remote part of the Western Australian coast between Kalbarri and Shark Bay.source
• 1711August 22 – The Quebec Expedition, a British attempt to attack Quebec as part of Queen Anne's War, fails when 8 of its ships are wrecked in the Saint Lawrence River and 890 people, mostly soldiers, drown.source
• 1711September 10 (also dated September 12) – John Lawson, Christoph von Graffenried, two African American slaves and two Native Americans leave on an exploration expedition from New Bern, North Carolina, and travel north by canoe up the Neuse River.source
• 1711September 14 (approximate date) – Tuscarora natives capture John Lawson, Christoph von Graffenried and their expeditionary party, and bring them to Catechna.source
• 1712May 15 – Curuguaty in Paraguay is founded by Juan Gregorio de Bazán y Pedraza on the banks of the Curuguaty River.source
• 1712The VOC Zuytdorp is wrecked off the coast of Western Australia.source
• 1712Early March – Start of the Cassard expedition, a sea voyage by French Navy captain Jacques Cassard during which he ransacks Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands and pillages Montserrat, Antigua, Surinam, Berbice, Essequibo, St. Eustatius and Curaçao, returning to France with loot worth over nine million francs.source
• 1714April 12 – Italian Jesuit missionary Niccolò Gianpriamo is dispatched from Portugal on an evangelical trip to Asia starting with the Portuguese Indian colony of Goa, where he arrives after five months.source
• 1714July 8 – Longitude prize: The Parliament of Great Britain votes "to offer a reward for such person or persons as shall discover the Longitude" (£10,000 for any method capable of determining a ship's longitude within 1 degree; £15,000, within 40 minutes, and £20,000 within ½ a degree).source
• 1714Louis Juchereau de St. Denis establishes Fort St. Jean Baptiste, at the site of present day Natchitoches, Louisiana (the first permanent European settlement in the Louisiana Territory, after Biloxi (1699) and Mobile, Alabama (1702) were separated).source
• 1715October 12 – William Mackintosh of Borlum, leader of the Jacobite rising against Great Britain, lands with 1,500 men in Scotland after crossing the Firth of Forth from France.source
• 1717The Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) is set up in Cádiz.source
• 1718March 13 – Daniel Overbeek becomes the new Dutch Governor of Ceylon (the modern-day nation of Sri Lanka), arriving after a 10-month sea voyage from the Netherlands.source
• 1718May 7 – The settlement of New Orleans is founded in New France.source
• 1718May 22 – Sailing the Queen Anne's Revenge English pirate Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, leads 400 sailors in four ships, and blockades the port of Charleston, South Carolina for an entire week, plundering all arriving ships. After their departure, Queen Anne's Revenge and Adventure are both lost at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina; a week later. Blackbeard allows Stede Bonnet to command the Revenge (which is renamed the Royal James) once again. Bonnet rescues 25 sailors abandoned by Blackbeard on a sandbar and continues his life of piracy.source
• 1719July 11 – Russia's Baltic Sea fleet is first spotted from the Swedish coast, starting the Russian Pillage of 1719–21 as part of the Great Northern War.source
• 1720May 25 – The British privateer Speedwell, captained by George Shelvocke, is wrecked off of the coast of Chile on the uninhabited "Robinson Crusoe Island" (Más a Tierra, where Alexander Selkirk was marooned for 5 years). The crew is marooned for 5 months but can build a boat from timbers salvaged from the wreck, and is able to escape the island on October 6.source
• 1720August 14 – The Spanish Villasur expedition, which set out on June 16 from New Mexico, with the intention of checking French influence on the Great Plains of North America, ends in failure, as it is ambushed by a Pawnee and Otoe force.source
• 1720The Kangxi Emperor announces that all western businessmen in China can trade only in Guangzhou.source
• 1720Jonathan Swift begins major composition work on Gulliver's Travels in Ireland.source
• 1720The Tuscarora people leave North Carolina as a result of European colonization.source
• 1721July 31 – The Spanish expedition led by Coahuila Governor José de Azlor y Virto de Vera, sent to recapture Texas from the French, encounters Neches River the smaller French force of Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who had led the French expansion westward from the Louisiana territory. Realizing that his forces are badly outnumbered, St. Denis abandons hope of colonizing the east Texas territory and Azlor retakes the area.source
• 1722November 15 (November 4 O.S.) – Russia's Emperor Peter the Great issues an order establishing the Caspian Flotilla during its war against Persia to gain complete control of the landlocked Caspian Sea.source
• 1722A small group of Bohemian Brethren (the "Hidden Seed") from northern Moravia are allowed to settle in a new village, Herrnhut, on the Berthelsdorf estate of the pietist Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf in Upper Lusatia (Saxony), forming the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, seed of the Moravian Church's renewal.source
• 1724January 18 – The Dutch East India Company cargo ship Fortuyn, on its maiden voyage, departs from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa after a layover of 16 days following its arrival from the Netherlands. With a crew of 225 commanded by Pieter Westrik, the ship departs for Batavia in the Dutch East Indies and is never seen again.source
• 1725October 23 – Russia dispatches 1,500 troops and 120 civilians to Russia's border with China, on a mission to survey the boundaries in order to make a treaty with the Chinese Empire. Serbian adventurer Sava Vladislavich leads a group of cartographers to prepare maps in advance of traveling on to Beijing.source
• 1726January 27 – On its maiden voyage, the Dutch East India Company frigate Aagtekerke departs from the Dutch Cape Colony on the second leg of its journey to the Dutch East Indies across the Indian Ocean and is never seen again. Aagtekerke carried a crew of 200 men.source
• 1726December 24 – The settlement of Montevideo is founded by the Spaniards in the Viceroyalty of Peru.source
• 1727January 6 – Martin Spanberg and two other members of the First Kamchatka expedition arrive in Okhotsk, after a journey from Saint Petersburg of almost two years. After the end of winter, the 63-member group, commanded by Vitus Bering, proceeds to the Kamchatka River, to prepare for exploration of the Arctic.source
• 1727July 23 – Seventeen Ursuline Sisters from France land in New Orleans, in the Louisiana territory of New France, after a journey that began on February 22. They later create the orphanage which is the predecessor of Catholic Charities and the Ursuline Academy, the oldest Catholic school in the United States.source
• 17271727–1800 – Lt. Col. Francisco de Mello Palheta smuggles coffee seeds to Brazil in a bouquet, starting a coffee empire.source
• 1728April 30 – The 82 survivors of the wreckage of the Dutch East India Company frigate Zeewijk arrive in the new ship that they had built, Sloepie, at their original destination of Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta in Indonesia).source
• 1728July 14 – The First Kamchatka Expedition, led by Vitus Bering and his crew sail northward on the ship Archangel Gabriel from the Kamchatka Peninsula, through the Bering Strait, and round Cape Dezhnev.source
• 1728August 16 – Because of advancing Arctic ice, the First Kamchatka Expedition turns around after Vitus Bering concludes (inaccurately) that it had reached the easternmost point of Russia and Asia, and fails to spot the coast of Alaska because of the weather.source
• 1728September 15 – Persian physician Mohammad Mehdi ibn Ali Naqi completes Zad al-musafirin, his treatise for travelers to Persia on preservation of their health. He notes the date as a postscript in his manual.source
• 1729The third oldest settlement in Mississippi, Port Gibson, is founded by French settlers.source
• 1730February 28 – Vitus Bering returns to the Russian capital of Saint Petersburg after completing the First Kamchatka expedition.source
• 1730June 27 – French explorer Alphonse de Pontevez, commanding the frigate Le Lys, claims an Indian Ocean atoll for France and names it after himself as the Alphonse Atoll. The next day, he claims and names the St. François Atoll.source
• 1731May 10 – The Pacific Fleet of the Russian Navy is established by order of the Empress Anna of Russia, who directs Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev to assume command over the new fleet and to develop Okhotsk as a major port.source
• 1732February 9 – The Swedish East India Company begins its profitable first expedition to China, departing Gothenburg on the ship Friedericus Rex Sueciae under the command of Colin Campbell.source
• 1732March 3 – English Captain Charles Gough rediscovers Gough Island in the South Atlantic.source
• 1732April 12 – King Christian VI of Denmark-Norway signs the charter for the new Danish Asia Company (Dansk Asiatisk Kompagni), granting it a 40-year monopoly on Denmark-Norway's trade in Asia, leading to the creation of Danish India and cities of Trankebar (now Tharangambadi in Tamil Nadu), Frederiknagore (now Serampore in West Bengal) and the Frederiksøerne Islands (now the Nicobar Islands).source
• 1732August 21 – Mikhail Gvozdev in the Sviatoi Gavriil makes the first known crossing of the Bering Strait, from Cape Dezhnev to Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska, marking the first time that Europeans have reached the northwest coast of North America.source
• 1732October 16 – Russia approves the second Kamchatka expedition of Danish-born Russian cartographer Vitus Bering, and the Admiralty orders him to sail east and try to claim uncharted lands in North America.source
• 1733February 12 – British colonist James Oglethorpe founds Savannah, Georgia.source
• 1733March 21 – The Molasses Act is passed by British House of Commons, which reinforces the negative opinions of the British by American colonists. The Act then goes to the House of Lords, which consents to it on May 4 and it receives royal assent on May 17.source
• 1734January 8 – Salzburgers, Lutherans who were expelled by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salzburg, Austria, in October 1731, set sail for the British Colony of Georgia in America.source
• 1734March 12 – Salzburgers arrive at the mouth of the Savannah River in the British Colony of Georgia.source
• 1734June 30 – War of the Polish Succession: Russian troops take Gdańsk (German: Danzig), which had been besieged since February 1734, after the failure of a French expedition to relieve the city.source
• 1735October 14 – John Wesley and his brother Charles set sail from England for Savannah in the Province of Georgia in British America; on the voyage they first encounter members of the Moravian Church.source
• 1736June 19 – A French Academy of Sciences expedition, led by Pierre Louis Maupertuis, with Anders Celsius, begins work on measuring a meridian arc in Torne Valley, Finland.source
• 1736November 13 – Word of the discovery of silver, south of what is now the U.S.-Mexican border, reaches Sonora Governor Juan Bautista Anza and soon leads to prospectors coming to Nogales to find more silver. Late in October, a Yaqui Indian prospector, Antonio Siraumea, had discovered large slabs of silver ("Las planchas de plata"), and at the Estancia Arizona, a ranch owned by Captain Bernardo de Urrea. The region, and later the U.S. territory, and state of Arizona are named for Urrea's ranch.source
• 1737August 15 – The Portuguese frigate Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem arrives at Maldonado (now in Uruguay) as Captain Duarte Pereira brings the news that the Spanish–Portuguese War ended by an agreement signed on March 16.source
• 1737September 20 – Runner Edward Marshall completes his journey in the Walking Purchase, forcing the cession of 1200000 acre km2 of Lenape-Delaware tribal land to the Province of Pennsylvania.source
• 1738July 10 – Thomas Pellow of Cornwall finally escapes captivity, 23 years after having been captured by Barbary pirates and held as a slave in Morocco. He arrives in British territory when the ship he is on sails into Gibraltar Bay on July 21, and later recounts his story in the book The Adventures of Thomas Pellow, of Penryn, Mariner: Three and Twenty Years in Captivity Among the Moors.source
• 1738October 22 – The excavation of Herculaneum, a Roman city buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, begins near the Italian city of Resina on orders from King Charles III of Spain to his engineer, Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre.source
• 1738China's Qing government announces that all western businessmen have to use the Cohong in Guangzhou to trade.source
• 1739January 1 – Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, in the South Atlantic Ocean.source
• 1741May 4 – Vitus Bering sets out from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to map the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.source
• 1741July 15 – Alexei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska, and sends some men aboard his ship ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.source
• 1741December 7 – Aleksei Chirikov of Russia presents the first written description of the northwest coast of North America.source
• 1742August 27 – George Anson, captain of HMS Centurion, arrives with his seriously ill crew at the island of Tinian (now U.S. territory as one of the Northern Mariana Islands) and saves his mission.source
• 1742September 5 – The 46 survivors of Russia's Great Northern Expedition return to Petropavlovsk after having been shipwrecked on an island in the Bering Strait ten months earlier. They had completed the building of a new ship from the wreckage of the St Pyotr on August 21. Edward Heawood, "A History of Geographical Discovery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries"source
• 1743January 1 – The Verendrye brothers, probably Louis-Joseph and François de La Vérendrye, become the first white people to see the Rocky Mountains from the eastern side (the Spanish conquistadors had seen the Rockies from the west side).source
• 1743January 12 – The Verendryes, and two members of the Mandan Indian tribe, reach the foot of the mountains, near the site of what is now Helena, Montana.source
• 1743April 2 – The Verendrye brothers bury a tablet claiming the Great Plains of North America for King Louis XV of France. A schoolgirl in Pierre, South Dakota, unearths the tablet 170 years later on February 16, 1913.source
• 1743April 9 – The Verendrye brothers make the first contact since 1722 between Europeans and the Sioux Indians, whom they refer to as Les Gens de la Fleche Collee ("the people of the sheathed arrow").source
• 1743May 10 – In New France, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville ends his final term (multiple times over 43 years) as Governor of colonial French Louisiana, which he helped colonize; he is succeeded by the Marquis de Vaudreuil (for the next 10 years) and returns to France.source
• 1743October 19 – Louis Maria Colons, one of nine French Canadians who had attempted to colonize territory in what is now New Mexico, is executed for attempting to persuade the Pueblo Indians to rise up against the Spanish colonial government.source
• 1743December 3 – Ecuadorian scientist Pedro Vicente Maldonado departs from Brazil in order to purchase the most state-of-the-art equipment for the French Geodesic Missionsource
• 1744October 25 – Spanish explorers Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan y Santacilla complete their mission of exploration and depart from the Peruvian seaport of Callao for a return to Spain.source
• 1745April 4 (March 24, old style) – Under the command of British Army General William Pepperrell, the first 4,300 American colonists in the New England Army depart Boston to liberate the French North American colony of Nova Scotia. The flotilla of 80 military transports and 18 armed escorts is scattered by a storm, but the first troops disembark at Canso, Nova Scotia, on April 15 and begin training while waiting for the arrival of the Royal Navy squadron commanded by Admiral Peter Warren.source
• 1747June 24–October 14 – The English ships Dobbs galley and California, under Captains William Moore and Francis Smith, explore Hudson Bay, discovering there is no Northwest Passage by this route.source
• 1747August 24 – Seyyid Abdullah Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Cyprus, becomes the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and serves until 1750.source
• 1747December 7 – Benjamin Franklin forms the Pennsylvania Associators, the first militia in the colony of Pennsylvania, which had no standing militia because of its foundation by pacifistic Quakers.source
• 1748February 7 – The San Gabriel mission project begins with the founding of the first Roman Catholic missions further northward in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in what is now central Texas. On orders of the Viceroy, Juan Francisco de Güemes, Friar Mariano Marti establish the San Francisco Xavier mission at a location on the San Gabriel River in what is now Milam County. The mission, located northeast of the future site of Austin, Texas, is attacked by 60 Apache Indians on May 2, and San Xavier is abandoned after a few years.source
• 1748July 29 – Royal Navy Admiral Edward Boscawen arrives at the coast of southeastern India with 28 ships, to defend Fort St. David from attacks by armies of French India. Historian Francis Grose later writes that Boscawen had brought the largest fleet "ever seen together in the East Indies", with nine ships of the line, two frigates, a sloop, and two tenders" and 14 ships of the British East India Company. Altogether, Boscawen has 3,580 sailors under his command. He then launches an offensive to destroy the French fort at Pondicherry and drive France from the subcontinent.source
• 1749July 9 – The British naval fort at Halifax is founded on mainland Nova Scotia as a defense against the New France Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, less than 100 mi away.source
• 1749August 3 – French explorer Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville, commissioned by New France to explore the Ohio Territory claimed by both France and Britain, buries the first of six engraved lead markers claiming the land for King Louis XV. The first plate is buried on the banks of the Allegheny River, near a rock with petroglyphs, in what is now Venango County, Pennsylvania.source
• 1749August 15 – Four Russian sailors— Aleksei Inkov, Khrisanf Inkov, Stepan Sharapov and Fedor Verigin— are rescued after having been marooned on the Arctic Ocean island of Edgeøya for more than six years. They are the only survivors of a crew of 14 whose koch had been blown off course in May 1743 and then broken up by ice. The four are returned home on September 28.source
• 1749August 19 – At a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas (then a part of the New Spain province of Nuevo Santander), four Apache chiefs and Spanish colonial officials and missionaries literally "bury the hatchet", placing weapons of war into a pit and covering it as a symbol that the Apaches and the Spaniards will fight no further war against each other.source
• 1749October 19 – Two months after Pierre Céloron begins his inspection of the Ohio territory on behalf of France, Christopher Gist starts his survey of the lands along the right bank of the Ohio River on behalf of the British grant to the Ohio Company.source
• 1749December 7 – Father Junípero Serra begins his missionary work in the New World, 100 days after departing on a voyage from Spain and a day after his arrival at Veracruz in Mexico. During the period from 1769 to 1782, Serra will be the founder of nine missions in the Province of Las Californias, including the sites around which future California cities will be built, including Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá in 1769 and Mission San Francisco de Asís in 1776.source
• 1750February 15 – After Spain and Portugal agree that the Uruguay River will be the boundary line between the two kingdoms' territory in South America, the Spanish Governor orders the Jesuits to vacate seven Indian missions along the river (San Angel, San Nicolas, San Luis, San Lorenzo, San Miguel, San Juan and San Borja).source
• 1750April 13 – Dr. Thomas Walker and five other men (Ambrose Powell, Colby Chew, William Tomlinson, Henry Lawless and John Hughes) cross through the Cumberland Gap, a mountain pass through the Appalachian Mountains, to become the first white people to venture into territories that had been inhabited exclusively by various Native American tribes. On April 17, Walker's party continues through what is now Kentucky and locates the Cumberland River, which Walker names in honor of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland.source
• 1750July 9 – Traveller Jonas Hanway leaves St. Petersburg to return home, via Germany and the Netherlands. Later the same year, Hanway reputedly becomes the first Englishman to use an umbrella (a French fashion).source
• 1750The King of Dahomey has income of 250,000 pounds from the overseas export of enslaved people.source
• 1752August 21 – A group of Scottish Presbyterians who had fled to America from Scotland held the first Covenanter communion in the 13 American colonies, meeting in New Kingstown, Pennsylvania.source
• 1752August 25 – The first group of the United Brethren church, commonly called the Moravians, leaves Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on a mission to find 100000 acre of land on which to build "Villages of the Lord" for German emigres to settle upon in America; after a 450 mile journey, they arrive in Edenton, North Carolina on September 10 and eventually purchase the Wachovia Tract, a set of lands in the western North Carolina colony.source
• 1752November 22 – "Father Le Loutre's War", the war between the British Canadian colonists of Nova Scotia and the indigenous Mi'kmaq (Micmac) tribe halts temporarily when a peace treaty is signed between the warring parties at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Governor Hopson, accompanied by former Governor Cornwallis, signs on behalf of the British and Chief Kopit (Jean-Baptiste Cope), the Sakamaw of the Mi'kmaq, signs on behalf of his people.source
• 1753September 18 – Britain's Board of Trade sends a directive to the colonial and provincial governors of Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania ordering them to send delegates to a summit meeting with the Iroquois Confederacy. The message instructs the governors that King George II has ordered "a Sum of Money to be issued for Presents to the Six Nations of Indians" and ordering New York's Governor George Clinton "to hold an Interview with them for delivering these Presents, for burying the Hatchet, and for renewing the Covenant Chain with them."source
• 1753Robert Wood publishes The ruins of Palmyra; otherwise Tedmor in the desart in English and French, making the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra known to the West.source
• 1754September 11 – Anthony Henday, an English explorer, becomes the first white man to reach the Canadian Rockies, after climbing a ridge above the Red Deer River near what is now Innisfail, Alberta.source
• 1754October 24 – China's Qianlong Emperor reverses a longstanding policy that barred Chinese subjects from ever returning to China if they remained out of the country for more than three years.source
• 1755May 17 – Spanish missionary Tomas Sanchez and three families establish a settlement on the north side of the Rio Grande in New Spain. Sanchez names it Villa de Laredo. The new settlement is the northernmost part of the colony of Nuevo Santander, founded by José de Escandón, 1st Count of Sierra Gorda, which now comprises parts of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and the U.S. state of Texas. The portion of Villa de Laredo north of the river later becomes Laredo, Texas; the remaining portion south of the river is later renamed Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.source
• 1755May 19 – General Braddock hosts Iroquois leaders Scaroyady, Kaghswaghtaniunt and Silver Heels at Fort Cumberland, the British Army base in the colony of Maryland. The three chiefs pledge their alliance with the British in advance of Braddock's expedition into the Ohio Country.source
• 1755July 9 – French and Indian War – Braddock Expedition: British troops and colonial militiamen are ambushed and suffer a devastating defeat inflicted by French and Indian forces. During the battle, British General Edward Braddock is mortally wounded. Colonel George Washington survives.source
• 1757February 22 – King Frederick V of Denmark issues an order to create a Lutheran mission for African slaves at the Danish West Indies (the modern-day United States Virgin Islands) at St. Croix.source
• 1757April 17 – The Spanish mission of Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá is founded by Spanish missionary families on the banks of the San Saba River near modern-day Menard, Texas. Less than two years later, the European settlement is destroyed by the native Comanche Indians who lives in the area.source
• 1757October 4 – Bearing British flags, two French privateers sail up the Gambia River and attempt to capture the British fort on James Island, but their ruse is discovered the next day before they can stage their attack. The two ships are captured by the Royal Navy after retreatingsource
• 1757Robert Wood publishes The ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Coelosyria in English and French, making the ancient city of Baalbek, Syria known to the West.source
• 1758February 22 – A fleet of 158 British Royal Navy warships, under the command of Admiral Edward Boscawen, departs from Plymouth toward North America in an effort to conquer the French Canadian territories of New France. Many of the sailors die of nutritional deficiencies along the way, including the scurvy that kills 26 of the crew of HMS Pembroke, captained by future world explorer James Cook on his first long voyage.source
• 1758The French build the first European settlement in what becomes Erie County, New York, at the mouth of Buffalo Creek.source
• 1759February 17 – "The greatest fleet that had ever put out for America" departs from Portsmouth with 250 shipssource
• 1759September 14 – Carrington Bowles publishes A Journey Through Europe, a board game designed by John Jefferys, the earliest board game whose designer's name is known.source
• 1759The town of Egedesminde (modern Aasiaat) is founded in Greenland.source
• 1760May 17 – Captain Giraudais's French fleet reaches the Gaspé Peninsula of northeast Quebec and captures seven British merchant ships, but Giraudais learns that the British have already preceded him up the St. Lawrence River and diverts to Chaleur Bay at Newfoundland.source
• 1760June 4 – Expulsion of the Acadians: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia taken from the Acadians.source
• 1761Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory opens in the midlands of England.source
• 1762March 5 – A Royal Navy fleet with 16,000 men departs Britain from Spithead and sets sail toward Cuba in order to seize strategic Spanish Empire possessions in the Americas.source
• 1762June 8 – Cherokee Indian war chief Ostenaco and his two aides, Standing Turkey (Cunneshote) and Pouting Pigeon, are received by King George III. They had arrived three days earlier at Plymouth on the British frigate Epreuvre as guests of the Timberlake Expedition of Henry Timberlake, to discuss terms of peace with the British government.source
• 1764February 15 – The settlement of St. Louis is established.source
• 1764March 15 – The day after his return to Paris from a nine-year mission, French explorer and scholar Anquetil Du Perron presents a complete copy of the Zoroastrian sacred text, the Zend Avesta, to the Bibliothèque Royale in Paris, along with several other traditional texts. In 1771, he publishes the first European translation of the Zend Avesta.source
• 1764March 20 – After the British victory in the French and Indian War, the first post-war British expedition to explore the newly acquired territories east of the Mississippi River comes under attack by Tunica warriors. The 340 British Army men, under the command of Major Arthur Loftus, were at a spot south of Natchez, Mississippi and were forced to flee in their boats back toward the port of New Orleans while under fire from an unknown number of Tunicas firing from both banks.source
• 1764March 23 – Following lobbying by George Johnstone, the Governor of British West Florida, Britain's Lords of Trade vote to recommend the northern boundary for the new province to run from the confluence of the Yazoo River and the Mississippi (at modern-day Vicksburg, Mississippi) to the Chattahoochee River (at modern-day Phenix City, Alabama), and the Privy Council soon approves, bringing about 38000 sqmi km2 under the West Florida's jurisdiction.source
• 1764July 11 – Conditional repatriation of the Acadians in Canada, French colonists who took up arms against the British during the war, is approved by order of King George III on advice of the Privy Council. The Council offers settlement to any Acadians willing to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown and that those living in New Brunswick are to "be allowed to settle in Nova Scotia, but that they should be dispersed in small numbers in various localities."source
• 1765February 14 – Spain's five-member "special junta", appointed by Prime Minister Jerónimo Grimaldi, delivers its report regarding "ways to address the backwardness of Spain's commerce with its colonies and with foreign nations". The report provides detailed orders to be delivered to José de Gálvez, the visitador general in charge of New Spain.source
• 1765April 5 – After completing the portion of the Mason–Dixon line marking the semi-circular boundary between Pennsylvania and Delaware, English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon begin the two-and-a-half-year process of plotting out the 230-mile boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland along the latitude of 39°43′20″ N.source
• 1765The first chocolate factory in the Thirteen Colonies is established by Dr. James Baker at Dorchester, Massachusetts.source
• 1765It is believed that the first true restaurant opens in Paris, where a tavern-keeper named Boulanger sells cooked dishes at an all-night place on the Rue Bailleul.source
• 1766September 23 – John Penn, the Colonial Governor of Pennsylvania and one of the four Penn family owners of the Pennsylvania land grant, issues a proclamation forbidding British American colonist residents from building settlements on lands in the west "not yet purchased of the Nations" of the Iroquois Indians.source
• 1766October 4 – The kingdom of France formally cedes its rights to the Malouines Islands to Spain. On March 24, Spain renames the islands the Malvinas, and in 1833, the United Kingdom re-colonises the recently abandoned territory and renames it the Falkland Islands.source
• 1767June 17 – British Royal Navy Captain Samuel Wallis becomes the first European to visit the island of Tahiti in the Pacific Ocean, during HMS Dolphins second circumnavigation; he also sights Mehetia.source
• 1767July 3 – Pitcairn Island in the Pacific Ocean is sighted from HMS Swallow, by 15-year-old Midshipman Robert Pitcairn, on a British Royal Navy expeditionary voyage commanded by Philip Carteret, the first definite European sighting.source
• 1767September 29 – The Spanish Empire's Governorate of the Río de la Plata and Governorate of Paraguay begin the process of expulsion of the 456 members of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) from southern South America, placing them on five ships bound for Spain.source
• 1767November 1 – Scottish-born American merchant and shipowner Andrew Sprowle of Portsmouth, Virginia, establishes the Gosport Shipyard on the western shore of the Elizabeth River in the Virginia Colony, on the site of what will eventually become the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.source
• 1768April 5 – The New York Chamber of Commerce, first of its kind in the American colonies, is founded by 20 New York merchants at Bolton and Sigel's Tavern at 54 Pearl Street in New York City. Former New York City mayor John Cruger Jr. is elected the Chamber's first president.source
• 1768July 1–3 – Louis Antoine de Bougainville, on his circumnavigation westbound, sails through the Bougainville Strait and along the north shore of Bougainville Island in the Solomons.source
• 1768August 26 – James Cook departs from Plymouth aboard on his first voyage of discovery.source
• 1768New Smyrna, Florida, the largest attempt at colonization by the British in the New World, is founded by Dr. Andrew Turnbull.source
• 1769March 16 – Louis Antoine de Bougainville returns to Saint-Malo, following a three-year circumnavigation of the world with the ships Boudeuse and Étoile, with the loss of only seven out of 330 men; among the members of the expedition is Jeanne Baré, the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe. She returns to France some time after Bougainville and his ships.source
• 1769April 13 – James Cook arrives in Tahiti, on the ship HM Bark Endeavour, preparing for the 1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti on June 3. After the voyage, the data is found to be inaccurate in determining the distance between the Sun and Earth.source
• 1769May 14 – Charles III of Spain sends Spanish missionaries, who found California missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey, and begin the settlement of California.source
• 1769June 7 – Frontiersman Daniel Boone first begins to explore modern-day Kentucky.source
• 1769July 20 – Recently appointed as the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, Irish-born soldier of fortune Alejandro O'Reilly sails into the French fort of La Balize with 21 Spanish ships, along with 2,056 soldiers, cannons and ammunition, and informs French Louisiana Governor Charles Philippe Aubry of his royal commission to take Louisiana on behalf of the King of Spain.source
• 1769October 1 – James Cook names White Island, off the coast of New Zealand.source
• 1769October 7 – James Cook lands in New Zealand, at Poverty Bay.source
• 1769October 9 – In the first encounter between the Māori people and Europeans (at the future site of Gisborne, New Zealand), one Maori is shot and killed after he steals a sword from one of the officers of the Cook expedition. Several more Māori are killed in fighting the next day.source
• 1769November 1 – A party of the expedition of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola becomes the first Europeans to reach San Francisco Bay. Sergeant Jose Francisco de Ortega and his group accidentally discover the area while searching for Drakes Bay in Alta California.source
• 1770February 14 – Scottish explorer James Bruce arrives at Gondar, capital of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) and is received by the Emperor Tekle Haymanot II and Ras Mikael Sehul.source
• 1770March 26 – First voyage of James Cook: English explorer Captain James Cook and his crew aboard complete the circumnavigation of New Zealand.source
• 1770April 12 – The Townshend Acts are repealed by Britain's Parliament by the efforts of Prime Minister Frederick North, with the exception of the increased duties on imported tea. The American colonists, in turn, stop their embargo on British imports.source
• 1770April 18 (April 19 by Cook's log) 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. Land is sighted at Point Hicks, and named after Lieutenant Hicks who first observes landform at 6am.source
• 1770April 29 – First voyage of James Cook: Captain Cook drops anchor on 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.source
• 1770June 11 – First voyage of James Cook: grounds on the Great Barrier Reef.source
• 1770August 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.source
• 1770c. September – Johann Gottfried Herder meets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Strasbourg.source
• 1771July 12 – The first voyage of James Cook around the world ends as returns to England after almost three years.source
• 1771September 8 – In California, Fathers Pedro Cambon and Angel Somera found Mission Vieja, later called, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, in what becomes San Gabriel, California.source
• 1771December 31 – Men, women and children of the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes begin a 23-day encampment at Mobile, part of the British colony of West Florida, at the invitation of British Southern Indian superintendent John Stuart, as their leaders negotiate a treaty.source
• 1772February 12 – Breton-French explorer Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec discovers the uninhabited Kerguelen Islands in the Southern Indian Ocean.source
• 1772March 20 – Pedro Fages, the Spanish Governor of Alta California, and Juan Crespí, a Catholic priest, set off from the capital at Monterey with a party of 12 soldiers and begin the first European exploration of the lands around San Francisco Bay.source
• 1772July 13 – The second voyage of James Cook departs from Plymouth on Captain Cook's new ship, HMS Resolution and the companion ship HMS Adventure in an attempt to prove the existence of an uncharted continent even further south than New Zealand.source
• 1772October 28 – Basque-Spanish explorer Domingo de Bonechea, in the Aguila, sights Tauere atoll, which he names San Simon y Judas.source
• 1772December 14 – Second voyage of James Cook: The crew of finds that the ice floes encountered on their journey south are a source of fresh water, a "discovery... of utmost importance to the success of the voyage."source
• 1773January 17 – Second voyage of James Cook: Captain Cook in HMS Resolution (1771) becomes the first European explorer to cross the Antarctic Circle.source
• 1773March 9–19 – Second voyage of James Cook: Tobias Furneaux in explores the coast of Van Diemen's Land.source
• 1773June 4 – 1773 Phipps expedition towards the North Pole sets out from Britain.source
• 1773August 11 – Second voyage of James Cook in the Tuamotus: Captain Cook discovers Tekokota, which he names Doubtful Island.source
• 1773August 12 – Second voyage of James Cook in the Tuamotus: Captain Cook discovers Marutea Nord, which he names Furneaux Island.source
• 1773October 10 – Daniel Boone leads the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement in Kentucky, but is turned back in an attack by Native Americans, in which his son is killed.source
• 1773November 10 – Four ships – the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, the Beaver and the William – depart Britain for America, carrying the first Indian tea to be subject to the newly enacted taxes. The William is lost in a storm; the Dartmouth is the first ship to reach Boston, docking on November 28.source
• 1773December 16 – Boston Tea Party: A group of American colonists, dressed as Mohawk Indians, steal aboard ships of the East India Company and dump their cargo of tea into Boston Harbor, in protest against British tax policies.source
• 1774May 19 – Shakers Ann Lee and eight followers sail from Liverpool, England for colonial America.source
• 1774June 2 – Intolerable Acts: A new Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to provide better housing for British soldiers upon demand, is passed.source
• 1774June 16–17 – English explorer James Cook becomes the first European to sight (and name) Palmerston Island in the South Pacific Ocean.source
• 1774September 4 – English explorer James Cook becomes the first European to sight (and name) the island of New Caledonia in Melanesia.source
• 1774October 10 – English explorer James Cook becomes the first European to sight (and name) Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean, uninhabited at this date.source
• 1774October 21 – The word Liberty is first displayed on a flag raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts, in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.source
• 1774November 27 – Spanish Navy Captain Domingo de Bonechea arrives at Tahiti in the ship Aguila and tries unsuccessfully to claim it for Spain and to convert the Tahitians to the Roman Catholic faith.source
• 1775July 30 – Second voyage of James Cook: anchors off the south coast of England, Captain Cook having completed the first eastbound global circumnavigation.source
• 1775Action by citizens of Machias, Maine, in capturing British ships recognises the existence of a United States Merchant Marine.source
• 1775The British forces offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms.source
• 1775Probable date – Jeanne Baret returns to France, becoming the first woman to complete a circumnavigation of the globe.source
• 1776March – Restrictions on the grain trade in Sweden are lifted.source
• 1776June 17 – Lt. José Joaquín Moraga leads a band of colonists from Monterey Presidio, landing on June 29 and, with Father Francisco Palóu, constructing the Mission San Francisco de Asís ("Mission Dolores") of the new Presidio of San Francisco, the oldest surviving building in the modern-day city.source
• 1776July 12 – Captain James Cook sets off from Plymouth, England, in HMS Resolution on his third voyage, to the Pacific Ocean and Arctic, which will be fatal to him.source
• 1776July 29 – Domínguez–Escalante expedition: Francisco Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and eight other Spaniards set out from Santa Fe on an 1800-mile (2900 km) trek through the American Southwest. They are the first Europeans to explore the vast region between the Rockies and the Sierras.source
• 1777March 29–30 – Third voyage of James Cook: English explorer Captain Cook discovers Mangaia and Atiu in the Cook Islands.source
• 1777December 24 – Third voyage of James Cook: English explorer Captain Cook locates Kiritimati (Christmas Island).source
• 1778January 18 – Third voyage of James Cook: Captain James Cook, with ships HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, first views Oʻahu then Kauaʻi in the Hawaiian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, which he names the Sandwich Islands.source
• 1778March 6–October 24 – Captain Cook explores and maps the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, from Cape Foulweather (Oregon) to the Bering Strait.source
• 1778August 26 – Triglav, at 2,864 m ft above sea level the highest peak of Slovenia, is ascended for the first time by four men: Luka Korošec, Matevž Kos, Štefan Rožič, and Lovrenc Willomitzer, on Sigmund Zois' initiative.source
• 1778November 26 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to land on Maui.source
• 1778The first settlement is made in the area of modern-day Louisville, Kentucky, by 13 families under Colonel George Rogers Clark.source
• 1779February 12 – Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Bouligny arrives with Malagueño colonists at Bayou Teche, to establish the city of New Iberia, Louisiana.source
• 1779July 24 – American Revolutionary War – American forces, led by Commodore Dudley Saltonstall, launch the Penobscot Expedition in what is now Castine, Maine, resulting in the worst naval defeat in U.S. history, until surpassed by the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.source
• 1779September 14–15 – American Revolutionary War – Little Beard's Town, a loyalist stronghold, is burnt by the Sullivan Expedition.source
• 1780March 17 – American Revolutionary War: The British San Juan Expedition sails from Jamaica under the command of Captains John Polson and Horatio Nelson to attack the Captaincy General of Guatemala (modern-day Nicaragua) in New Spain.source
• 1780July 11 – French soldiers arrive in Newport, Rhode Island to reinforce the colonists, in the American Revolutionary War.source
• 1780November 30 – American Revolutionary War: The British San Juan Expedition is forced to withdraw.source
• 1780Jose Gabriel Kunturkanki, businessman and landowner, proclaims himself Inca Túpac Amaru II.source
• 1780Western countries pay 16,000,000 ounces of silver for Chinese goods.source
• 1782February 18 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: Shirley's Gold Coast expedition lands at Elmina on the Dutch Gold Coast. The British expedition fails to take the fort here but over the next several weeks seizes, with minimal resistance, four small Dutch forts.source
• 1783August 10 – The British East India Company packet ship Antelope (1781) is wrecked off Ulong Island in the Palau (Pelew) group, resulting in the first sustained European contact with those islands.source
• 1783Loyalists from New York settle Great Abaco in the Bahamas.source
• 1783The city of Sevastopol is founded on the Crimean Peninsula of the Russian Empire, by Rear Admiral Thomas MacKenzie.source
• 1785August 1 – The fleet of French explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse leaves Paris for the circumnavigation of the globe.source
• 1786June 25 – Gavriil Pribylov discovers St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.source
• 1786August 8 – Mont Blanc is climbed for the first time, by Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat.source
• 1786September–December – Goethe undertakes his Italian Journey (published in 1817).source
• 1786October 23 – The settlement of Östersund is established in Sweden.source
• 1786Winter 1786/87 – English captain George Dixon becomes the first European to visit the Hawaiian island of Molokaʻi.source
• 1787May 13 – Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England, with the 11 ships of the First Fleet, carrying around 700 convicts and at least 300 crew and guards to establish a penal colony in Australia.source
• 1787December 23 – Captain William Bligh sets sail from England for Tahiti, on .source
• 1788January 18 – The leading ship (armed tender HMS Supply) in Captain Arthur Phillip's First Fleet arrives at Botany Bay, to colonise Australia.source
• 1788January 24 – The La Perouse expedition in the Astrolabe and Boussole arrives off Botany Bay, just as Captain Arthur Phillip is attempting to move his colony from there to Sydney Cove in Port Jackson.source
• 1788January 26 – Eleven ships of the First Fleet from Botany Bay, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, land at Sydney Cove (which will become Sydney), Australia, where he determines to establish the British prison colony of New South Wales, the first permanent European settlement on the continent.source
• 1788February 17 – The uninhabited Lord Howe Island is discovered by the brig HMS Supply, commanded by Lieutenant Ball, who is on his way from Botany Bay to Norfolk Island with convicts to start a penal settlement there. They arrive at Norfolk Island on March 6.source
• 1788March 10 – The La Perouse expedition leaves Sydney Cove for New Caledonia, never to be seen again.source
• 1788April 7 – American pioneers establish the town of Marietta (in modern-day Ohio), the first permanent American settlement outside the original Thirteen Colonies.source
• 1788June 17 – English captains Thomas Gilbert and John Marshall, returning from Botany Bay, become the first Europeans to encounter the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific Ocean. They also chart islands in "Lord Mulgrove's range", later known as the Marshall Islands.source
• 1789July 10 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River Delta.source
• 1789Peggy of Castletown, Isle of Man, the world's oldest surviving private yacht, is built.source
• 1789The first version of a graphic description of a slave ship (the Brookes) is issued on behalf of the English Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.source
• 1790January 30 – The first boat specialized as a rescue lifeboat is tested on the River Tyne in England.source
• 1790December 10 – The Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars begin in New South Wales, Australia, as a result of deterioration in relations and increasing colonization.source
• 1791April 29–May 8 – The first American ships reach Japan, brigantine Lady Washington captained by John Kendrick of Boston, and the brig Grace.source
• 1791A mechanical semaphore line for rapid long-distance communication is demonstrated by Claude Chappe in Paris.source
• 1792May 11 – Robert Gray's Columbia River expedition: Captain Robert Gray, on the Columbia Rediviva, becomes the first white man to discover the mouth of the Columbia River.source
• 1792September – Macartney Embassy: George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, sails from Portsmouth in HMS Lion as the first official envoy from Great Britain to China.source
• 1792October 29 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after British Admiral Lord Hood by Lt. William Broughton of the Vancouver Expedition, who spots the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.source
• 1792James Johnstone establishes that Vancouver Island is an island.source
• 1793February 11 – French expedition to Sardinia (Expédition de Sardaigne): A French fleet under admiral Laurent Truguet debarks troops near Cagliari in Sardinia.source
• 1793February 22 – French expedition to Sardinia: A small French and Corsican force briefly occupies the small Sardinian island of La Maddalena, then withdraws to Corsica. 23-year-old lieutenant Napoleon Buonaparte is second-in-command.source
• 1793May 25 – French expedition to Sardinia: The last French troops occupying the small Sardinian island of San Pietro surrender to a Spanish fleet.source
• 1793July 20 – Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie's 1792–1793 Peace River expedition to the Pacific Ocean reaches its goal at Bella Coola, British Columbia, making him the first known person to complete a transcontinental crossing of northern North America.source
• 1793The Al Bu Falah move to Abu Dhabi.source
• 1794February 8 – Wreck of the Ten Sail on Grand Cayman.source
• 1795December 28 – Construction of Yonge Street, formerly recognized as the longest street in the world, begins in York, Upper Canada (modern-day Toronto).source
• 1795Daniel McGinnis discovers the supposed Money Pit on Oak Island, Nova Scotia. (according to one story)source
• 1796May 10 – Persian Expedition of 1796: Russian troops storm Derbent.source
• 1796June 21 – Scottish explorer Mungo Park becomes the first European to reach the Niger River.source
• 1796July 22 – Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio Cleveland, after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.source
• 1797March 5 – Protestant missionaries from the London Missionary Society land in Tahiti, from the Duff (celebrated as Missionary Day in French Polynesia).source
• 1797October 21 – In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate is launched to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli; the ship will remain in commission in the 21st century.source
• 1798May 9 – Napoleon sets off for Toulon, sailing aboard Vice-Admiral Brueys's flagship L'Orient; his squadron is part of a larger fleet of over 300 vessels, carrying almost 37,000 troops.source
• 1798July 7 – In the action of USS Delaware vs La Croyable, the newly-formed United States Navy makes its first capture.source
• 1798November 8 – British whaler John Fearn becomes the first European to land on Nauru.source
• 1798November 28 – Trade between the United States and modern-day Uruguay begins when John Leamy's frigate John arrives in Montevideo.source
• 1799July 15 – In the Egyptian port city of Rosetta, French Captain Pierre Bouchard finds the Rosetta Stone.source
• 1799Conrad John Reed, 12, finds what he describes as a "heavy yellow rock" along Little Meadow Creek in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, and makes it a doorstop in his home. Conrad's father John Reed learns that the rock is actually gold in 1802, initiating the first gold rush in the United States.source