1786

Template:Year dab Template:Year nav

Template:C18 year in topic

Template:Year article header

Events

January–March

January 3 – The third Treaty of Hopewell is signed between the United States and the Choctaw.
January 6 – The outward bound East Indiaman Halsewell is wrecked on the south coast of England in a storm, with only 74 of more than 240 on board surviving.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
February 2 – In a speech before The Asiatic Society in Calcutta, Sir William Jones notes the formal resemblances between Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, laying the foundation for comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies.
March 1 – The Ohio Company of Associates is organized by five businessmen at a meeting at the Bunch-of-Grapes Tavern in Boston to purchase land from the United States government to form settlements in the modern-day U.S. state of Ohio.<ref>"Manasseh Cutler, the Man Who Purchased Ohio", by William F. Poole, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register (April 1873) p161</ref><ref>The Cincinnati Directory Advertiser for the Years 1836–7 (J. H. Woodruff, 1836) p198</ref>
March 13 – Construction begins in Dublin on the Four Courts Building, with the first stone laid down by the United Kingdom's Viceroy for Ireland, the Duke of Rutland.<ref>Sir John Carr, The Stranger in Ireland, Or, A Tour in the Southern and Western Parts of that Country in the Year 1805 (Lincoln & Gleason, 1806) p274</ref>

April–June

April 2 – The Creek Nation declares war on the U.S. State of Georgia over the matter of white settlers on land not ceded by the Nation. A truce is negotiated on April 17 between Creek Chief Alexander McGillivray (Hoboi-Hili-Miko) and U.S. Army General Lachlan McIntosh but is soon repudiated.<ref>Lucian Lamar Knight, Georgia's Landmarks, Memorials, and Legends (Byrd Printing, 1913) p476

</ref>

April 11 – Columbia College (modern-day Columbia University) holds its first graduation, with eight students, including DeWitt Clinton.<ref>Robert McCaughey, Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University (Columbia University Press, 2012) p54</ref>
April 25 – The United States and the Kingdom of Portugal sign their first commercial treaty, but it is never ratified.<ref>Robert Morris, ed., The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781-1784: November 1, 1782 – May 4, 1783 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988) p627</ref>
April 27 – British astronomer William Herschel publishes his first list of his discoveries, Catalogue of One Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars; two additional books are published in 1789 and 1802.<ref>Stephen James O'Meara, Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects (Cambridge University Press, 2016) p534</ref>
May 1 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro premieres in Vienna.
May 21 – The trial in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace ends in Paris.
June 2 – The Tignon law is enacted by Spanish Governor of Louisiana Esteban Rodríguez Miró, to force black women to wear a tignon headscarf.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
June 6 – Nathaniel Gorham is chosen as the new President of the U.S. Confederation Congress to substitute for John Hancock, who cannot take office because of illness.<ref name="Harper1786">Template:Cite book</ref>
June 10 – An earthquake-caused landslide dam on the Dadu River gives way, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.
June 25 – Gavriil Pribylov discovers St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

July–September

July 14 – Convention of London between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Spain: British settlements on the Mosquito Coast of Central America are to be evacuated; Spain expands the territory available to the British in Belize on the Yucatán Peninsula, for cutting mahogany.
July 31 – The 'Kilmarnock volume' of Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is published in Scotland.<ref>Template:Cite book via Internet Archive</ref>
August
- James Rumsey tests his first steamboat on the Potomac River, at Shepherdstown, Virginia.
- The Cabinet of Great Britain approves the establishment of a penal colony, at Botany Bay in Australia.
August 1 – Caroline Herschel discovers a comet (the first discovered by a woman) from England.
August 8 – Mont Blanc is climbed for the first time, by Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat.
August 11 – Captain Francis Light acquires the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah on behalf of the British East India Company, renaming it Prince of Wales Island in honour of the heir to the British throne,<ref name="Cassell's Chronology339">Template:Cite book</ref> and establishing the settlement of George Town. This is the first colony of the British Empire in Southeast Asia.
August 17 – Frederick William II, the paternal nephew of Frederick the Great, becomes King of Prussia.
August 18 – The Kingdom of Denmark-Norway charters six settlements in Iceland to trade with it, thus ending the Danish–Icelandic Trade Monopoly, and founding Reykjavík.
August 29 – Shays' Rebellion begins in Massachusetts.
September–December – Goethe undertakes his Italian Journey (published in 1817).
September 2 – A hurricane strikes Barbados.
September 11–14 - The Annapolis Convention is held by delegates from six of the 13 states (Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York) resulting in the scheduling of the Philadelphia Convention to draft a national constitution.<ref name="Harper1786"/>
September 14 – Connecticut cedes to the United States all of its claims to lands between the 41st and 42nd parallels north and west of the Connecticut Western Reserve.<ref name="Harper1786"/>
September 25 – The mine of Huancavelica in the Peruvian Andes collapses killing more than a hundred people.<ref name=historica/> The event is a major setback for quicksilver production in the Spanish Empire.<ref name=historica>Template:Cite journal</ref>
September 26 – Eden Agreement: A commercial treaty is signed between the Kingdoms of Great Britain and France.<ref name=CBH>Template:Cite book</ref>

October–December

October 6 – HMS Bellerophon begins service with the Royal Navy.<ref>Colin Pengelly, HMS Bellerophon (Pen and Sword, 2014)</ref>
October 10 – The Confederation Congress of the United States directs backpay for seven months for Virginia officers who have been waiting since 1782.<ref>Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (January 6, 1787) p145</ref>
October 12 – King George III of the United Kingdom appoints Captain Arthur Phillip as the first Governor of New Holland, which comprises the area of modern Australia from the 135th meridian east to the east coast and all adjacent islands in the Pacific Ocean.<ref>"Conquest", by Alan Atkinson, in Australia's Empire, ed. by Deryck M. Schreuder, Deryck Schreuder and Stuart Ward (Oxford University Press, 2008) p33</ref>
October 16 – The Confederation Congress establishes the United States Mint to make common coinage and currency for the U.S., to replace individual state coins.<ref name="Harper1786"/>
October 23
- The 13th century AH begins on the Islamic calendar on the 1st of Muharram 1201 AH
- The settlement of Östersund is established in Sweden.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
October 24 – General David Cobb of the Massachusetts militia defeats a body of rebel insurgents at Taunton, Massachusetts in one of the battles of Shays' Rebellion.<ref>Collections of the Old Colony Historical Society No. 6 (1899) p151</ref>
November 7 – The oldest musical organization in the United States, the Stoughton Musical Society, is founded.
November 30 – Peter Leopold Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgates a penal reform, making his country the first state to abolish the death penalty. This day is therefore commemorated by 300 cities around the world as Cities for Life Day.
December 4 – Mission Santa Barbara is founded by Padre Fermín Lasuén as the tenth of the Spanish missions in California.
December 4: Mission Santa Barbara is founded.
December 20 – Robert Burns's Address to a Haggis is first published, in Edinburgh.

Date unknown

Winter 1786/87 – English captain George Dixon becomes the first European to visit the Hawaiian island of Molokaʻi.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The town of Martinsborough, North Carolina, named for Royal Governor Josiah Martin in 1771, is renamed "Greenesville" in honor of United States General Nathanael Greene by the North Carolina General Assembly (the name "Greenesville" is later shortened, to become Greenville).
The last reliably recorded wolf in Ireland is hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster, County Carlow, for killing sheep.<ref>Template:Cite journal Template:Dead link</ref>