In the early 1750s, French expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought France into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756–the first official year of fighting in the Seven Years War–the British suffered a series of defeats against the French and their broad network of Native American alliances.
He was a grandson of George II and the first English-born and English-speaking monarch since Queen Anne. His reign was one of elegance and the age of some of the greatest names in English literature – Jane Austen, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth. It was also the time of great statesmen like Pitt and Fox and great military men like Wellington and Nelson. in 1773 the ‘Boston Tea Party’ was the first sign of the troubles that were to come in America. The American Colonies proclaimed their independence on July 4th 1776. George was well meaning but suffered from a mental illness due to intermittent porphyria and eventually became blind and insane. His son ruled as Prince Regent after 1811 until George’s death.
The Seven Years War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas.
The St Andrews Society of Golfers was formed to compete in its own annual competition using Leith’s rules. The first ever 18-hole course was constructed at St Andrews in 1764, establishing the now recognized standard for the game.
The first mechanical shower, operated by a hand pump, was patented in England in 1767 by William Feetham, a stove maker from Ludgate Hill in London. His shower contraption used a pump to force the water into a vessel above the user’s head and a chain would then be pulled to release the water from the vessel.
Tecumseh was born in an Indian village near present-day Xenia, Ohio.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French statesman and military leader who led many successful campaigns during the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars, and was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again briefly in 1815 during the Hundred Days.
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor.
The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on July 2, 1776 at the Pennsylvania State House, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild was a German Jewish banker, businessman and financier. Born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany, he was the third of the five sons of Gutle and Mayer Amschel Rothschild, and was of the second generation of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
The Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, the first extensive abolition legislation in the western hemisphere, passed the Pennsylvania General Assembly on March 1, 1780. To appease slave owners, the act gradually emancipated enslaved people without making slavery immediately illegal.
The battle of Piqua was a military engagement fought on Aug. 8, 1780 at the Indian village of Piqua along the Mad River in western Ohio Country between the Kentucky militia under Gen. George Rogers Clark and Shawnee Indians under Chief Black Hoof.
Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel. Uranus was the first planet found using a telescope. Uranus is an Ice Giant planet and nearly four times larger than Earth.
Bank of North America, The first and second bank of united states
Some Founding Fathers were strongly opposed to the formation of a central banking system; the fact that England tried to place the colonies under the monetary control of the Bank of England was seen by many as the “last straw” of oppression which led directly to the American Revolutionary War.
Others were strongly in favor of a central bank. Robert Morris, as Superintendent of Finance, helped to open the Bank of North America in 1782, and has been accordingly called by Thomas Goddard “the father of the system of credit and paper circulation in the United States.” As ratification in early 1781 of the Articles of Confederation had extended to Congress the sovereign power to generate bills of credit, it passed later that year an ordinance to incorporate a privately subscribed national bank following in the footsteps of the Bank of England. However, it was thwarted in fulfilling its intended role as a nationwide central bank due to objections of “alarming foreign influence and fictitious credit, favoritism to foreigners and unfair policies against less corrupt state banks issuing their own notes, such that Pennsylvania’s legislature repealed its charter to operate within the Commonwealth in 1785
Godfrey Lewis Rockefeller, was an American farmer and businessman. He was an early settler of Richford, New York and his personal characteristics and hard life have led him to be called “a most unlikely progenitor of the clan”. His son William Rockefeller Sr. was the father of oil baron John D. Rockefeller.
Congress ratified preliminary articles of peace ending the Revolutionary War with Great Britain on April 15, 1783. On September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, bringing the Revolutionary War to its final conclusion.
The History of Hot Air Ballooning. On September 19, 1783 Pilatre De Rozier, a scientist, launched the first hot air balloon called ‘Aerostat Reveillon’.
The first presidential election was held on January 7, 1789, and Washington won handily. John Adams (1735-1826), who received the second-largest number of votes, became the nation’s first vice president. The 57-year-old Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, in New York City.
The French Revolution began in May 1789 when the Ancien Régime was abolished in favour of a constitutional monarchy. Its replacement in September 1792 by the First French Republic led to the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 and an extended period of political turmoil.
Congress passes the first law about who should be granted U.S. citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows any free white person of “good character,” who has been living in the United States for two years or longer to apply for citizenship. Without citizenship, nonwhite residents are denied basic constitutional protections, including the right to vote, own property, or testify in court.
The English are the largest ethnic group among the 3.9 million people counted, though nearly one in five Americans are of African heritage.
In 1791, former Morris aide and chief advocate for Northern mercantile interests, Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, accepted a compromise with the Southern lawmakers to ensure the continuation of Morris’s Bank project; in exchange for support by the South for a national bank, Hamilton agreed to ensure sufficient support to have the national or federal capitol moved from its temporary Northern location, New York, to a “Southern” location on the Potomac. As a result, the First Bank of the United States (1791–1811) was chartered by Congress within the year and signed by George Washington soon after. The First Bank of the United States was modeled after the Bank of England and differed in many ways from today’s central banks. For example, it was partly owned by foreigners, who shared in its profits. Also, it was not solely responsible for the country’s supply of bank notes. It was responsible for only 20% of the currency supply; state banks accounted for the rest. Several founding fathers bitterly opposed the Bank. Thomas Jefferson saw it as an engine for speculation, financial manipulation, and corruption. In 1811 its twenty-year charter expired and was not renewed by Congress. Absent the federally chartered bank, the next several years witnessed a proliferation of federally issued Treasury Notes to create credit as the government struggled to finance the War of 1812; a suspension of specie payment by most banks soon followed as well.
A joint House and Senate Conference Committee settled remaining disagreements in September. On October 2, 1789, President Washington sent copies of the 12 amendments adopted by Congress to the states. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified 10 of these, now known as the “Bill of Rights.”
Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
Right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain a well regulated militia.
No quartering of soldiers.
Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination, double jeopardy.
Rights of accused persons, e.g., right to a speedy and public trial.
Right of trial by jury in civil cases.
Freedom from excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishments.
Other rights of the people.
Powers reserved to the states
Guillotine, instrument for inflicting capital punishment by decapitation, introduced into France in 1792.
America’s first one-cent piece, called the “large cent,” was first struck in 1793, one year after the Mint opened. It was so big that it was hard to use, but it wasn’t replaced by a smaller penny until 1857, more than 50 years later.
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber.
Cornelius Vanderbilt (May 27, 1794 – January 4, 1877) was an American business magnate who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. After working with his father’s business, Vanderbilt worked his way into leadership positions in the inland water trade and invested in the rapidly growing railroad industry. Nicknamed “The Commodore”, he is known for owning the New York Central Railroad. His biographer T. J. Stiles says, “He vastly improved and expanded the nation’s transportation infrastructure, contributing to a transformation of the very geography of the United States. He embraced new technologies and new forms of business organization, and used them to compete….He helped to create the corporate economy that would define the United States into the 21st century.”
As one of the richest Americans in history and wealthiest figures overall, Vanderbilt was the patriarch of the wealthy and influential Vanderbilt family. He provided the initial gift to found Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. According to historian H. Roger Grant: “Contemporaries, too, often hated or feared Vanderbilt or at least considered him an unmannered brute. While Vanderbilt could be a rascal, combative and cunning
United States military engagement with the Northwest Indian Confederation on the Maumee River near what is now Toledo, Ohio.
The Eleventh Amendment’s text prohibits the federal courts from hearing certain lawsuits against states. The Amendment has also been interpreted to mean that state courts do not have to hear certain suits against the state, if those suits are based on federal law.
Metric system, international decimal system of weights and measures, based on the metre for length and the kilogram for mass, that was adopted in France in 1795 and is now used officially in almost all countries.
The modern pencil was invented in 1795 by Nicholas-Jacques Conte, a scientist serving in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. The magic material that was so appropriate for the purpose was the form of pure carbon that we call graphite.
The Treaty of Greenville was signed in 1795 after the Battle of Fallen Timbers and ended the Northwest Indian War. The Native Americans lost land in the present day Ohio area to the American settlers.
The first quarters, made in 1796, not only lacked Washington’s picture, they also lacked a denomination. It was probably easy to tell a quarter from a dollar because a dollar had to weigh four times as much. There was no value marked on quarters until 1804, when “25c” was added to the reverse.
Edward Jenner, Cowpox, And Smallpox Vaccination. We begin our history of vaccines and immunization with the story of Edward Jenner, a country doctor living in Berkeley (Gloucestershire), England, who in 1796 performed the world’s first vaccination.