1768

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File:Houghton 57-1633 - Astley's Amphitheatre, 1808 - cropped.jpg
January 9: Philip Astley presents first modern circus.

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Events

January–March

April–June

  • April 4 – The Cotopaxi volcano erupts in what is now Ecuador, at the time part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, covering the towns of Hambato and Tacunga with ash, but not causing fatalities.<ref>Alexander von Humboldt, Picturesque Atlas of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent reprinted by Cambridge University Press, 1814, reprinted 2011) p119</ref>
  • April 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.<ref name=Carruth>Gordon Carruth, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates, 3rd Edition (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1962) pp76-79</ref>
  • May 10Massacre of St George's Fields: John Wilkes is imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton, severely criticizing King George III. This action provokes protesters to riot; in the Southwark district of London, troops fire on the mob, killing seven.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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July–September

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  • August 27 – Almost all merchants and traders in the British colony of New York sign a pact not to import British manufactured goods as long as the Townshend Acts are in effect, nor to do business with nonassociators to the pact.<ref>Jerrilyn Greene Marston, King and Congress: The Transfer of Political Legitimacy, 1774-1776 (Princeton University Press, 2014) p106</ref>
  • August 30 – A fire burns much of the Library of the Vatican.<ref name=Fires/>
  • September 16Louis XV appoints René de Maupeou as Grand Chancellor of France (an office he will hold until 1790), and orders him to crush the judicial opposition.
  • September 2229 – The Massachusetts Convention of Towns, assembling in Boston, resolves on a written objection to the impending arrival of British troops rather than more militant action but causes panic in London.

October–December

  • October 1 – The British Army's 29th Infantry Regiment of foot soldiers, which will carry out the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, arrives in Boston Harbor along with three other regiments. The 700 foot soldiers march through the Massachusetts colony's capital as a show of force and begin their occupation.<ref>John K. Alexander, Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) p65</ref> Within a year, there will be "nearly 4,000 armed redcoats in the crowded seaport of 15,000 inhabitants."<ref>Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (Random House, 2002)</ref>
  • October 4 – The Sultan Mustafa III of the Ottoman Empire begins the Russo-Turkish War after the Russians refuse to withdraw troops from Poland.<ref>Virginia H. Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi, 1700-1783 (E.J. Brill, 1995) p100</ref>
  • October 14William Pitt resigns from his position as Prime Minister of Great Britain.<ref>"Pitt, William", by G. F. Russell Barker, in Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 45 (Smith, Elder, & Company, 1896) p232</ref>
  • October 15 – A powerful hurricane sweeps across Cuba during the Festival of Santa Teresa, killing hundreds of people. Spain's King Carlos III begins a precedent of ordering the colonial government to fund disaster relief, a task previously left to the Catholic Church.<ref>Sherry Johnson, Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) p83</ref>
  • October 17 – Representatives of the Cherokee nation sign the Treaty of Hard Labour with British representative John Stuart and relinquish all claims to the land between the Ohio River and the Allegheny Mountains, now the United States state of West Virginia.<ref>Charles Royce, The Cherokee Nation (Routledge, 2017)</ref>
  • October 29 – French colonists in Louisiana refuse to accept the colony's acquisition by Spain and begin an uprising that forces Spanish Governor Antonio de Ulloa to flee.<ref>Charles E. Gayarré, History of Louisiana: The French Domination (F. F. Hansell, 1903, reprinted by Pelican Publishing, 1972) p308</ref>
  • November 5 – The Treaty of Fort Stanwix is signed between the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca) relinquishing their claims to territory south of the Ohio River to the British.<ref>"Fort Stanwix, Treaty at", in Harper's Popular Cyclopedia of United States History, ed. by Benson J. Lossing (Harper & Brothers, 1893) p519</ref>
  • December 1 – The slave ship Fredensborg sinks off Tromøya, Norway.
  • December 10
  • December 15 – The king's refusal to sign state documents results in the December Crisis (1768) in Sweden.
  • December 21 – King Prithvi Narayan Shah unifies several small kingdoms to establish modern-day Nepal; this kingdom will collapse in 2008.

Date unknown

Births

File:Maria Edgeworth by John Downman 1807.jpg
Maria Edgeworth
File:Joseph-Bonaparte.jpg
Joseph Bonaparte
File:QueenCaroline1820.jpg
Caroline of Brunswick

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Deaths

File:Giovanni Antonio Canal.jpg
Canaletto
File:Johann Joachim Winckelmann (Raphael Mengs after 1755).jpg
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
File:Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne.jpg
Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle

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References

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Further reading