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Date |
Event(s) |
| 1 | 1778 | - 1778: Cook explores Hawaiian Islands. He fails to locate Northwest Passage from Alaskan side and is killed in Hawaii the following year
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| 2 | 1779 | - 1779: The rise of Wyvill's Association Movement
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| 3 | 1780 | - 1780: The Gordon Riots develop from a procession to petition parliament against the Catholic Relief Act
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| 4 | 1781 | - 1781: Frederick William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus by its movement, although at the time he supposed it to be a comet
- 1781: The Americans obtain a great victory of British troops at the surrender of Yorktown
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| 5 | 1782 | - 1782: End of Lord North's time as Prime Minister. He is succeeded by Rockingham in his second ministry. Ireland obtains short-lived parliament
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| 6 | 1783 | - 1783: William Bentinck, Duke of Portland Prime minister (Whig)
- 1783: Joseph Michel Montgolfier and Jacques ?tienne Montgolfier invented the first practical hot air balloon.
- 1783: Shelburne's ministry, followed by that of William Pitt the Younger. Britain recognises American independence at the Peace of Versailles. Fox-North coalition established
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| 7 | 1784 | - 1784: Parliament passes the East India Act
- 1784: First edition of 'The Times' newspaper
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| 8 | 1785 | - 1785: Pitt's motion for Parliamentary Reform is defeated
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| 9 | 1786 | - 1786: The Eden commercial treaty with France is drawn up
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| 10 | 1788 | - 1788: George III suffers his first attack of 'madness' (caused by porphyria)
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| 11 | 1789 | - 1789: Outbreak of the French Revolution
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| 12 | 1790 | - 1790: Edmund Burke publishes his 'Reflections on the Revolution in France'
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| 13 | 1791 | - 1791: The 'Celerifere', an early version of the bicycle, was built around by Comte Mede de Sivrac. It was basically a scooter with a high seat
- 1791: James Boswell publishes his 'Life of Johnson' an Thomas Paine, his 'Rights of Man'
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| 14 | 1792 | - 1792: Volta discovered he could arrange metals in a series in such a way that chemical energy is converted into electrical energy; that is, two dissimilar metals are submerged in an electrolyte and connected by an circuit and thereby exchange electrons. By 1800, he had invented the so-called voltaic cell, a pile of such metals "consisting of pairs of silver and zinc disks separated by pieces of moist cardboard"
- 1792: Coal gas is used for lighting for the first time. Mary Wollstonecraft publishes her 'Vindication of the Rights of Women'
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| 15 | 1793 | - 1793: Outbreak of War between Britain and France. The voluntary Board of Agriculture is set up. Commercial depression throughout Britain
- 1793: Speculative 'Canal Bubble' in UK bursts
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| 16 | 1794 | - 1794: Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather, proposed that "warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament...possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering those improvements by generation to its posterity."
- 1794: Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin
- 1794: Metric system introduced in France
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| 17 | 1795 | - 1795: The 'Speenhamland' system of outdoor relief is adopted, making wages up to equal the cost of subsistence
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| 18 | 1796 | - 1796: Edward Jenner investigated the folk tale that milk maids were immune to small pox, the virus variola major, and in a brief series of experiments confirmed that exposure to cow pox, the virus vaccinia, rendered immunity
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| 19 | 1798 | - 1798: Thomas Robert Malthus, in his Essay on the Principle of Population, contended that population increses by a geometric ratio whereas the means of subsistence increase by an arithmetic ratio.
- 1798: Introduction of a tax of ten percent on incomes over ?200.
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| 20 | 1799 | - 1799: Trade Unions are suppressed. Napoleon is appointed First Consul in France
- 1799: Three-year commercial boom in Britain begins
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| 21 | 1800 | - 1800: Act of Union with Ireland unites Parliaments of England and Ireland
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| 22 | 1801 | - 1801: Close of Pitt the Younger's Ministry. The first British Census is undertaken
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| 23 | 1802 | - 1802: Peace with France is established. Peel introduces the first factory legislation
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| 24 | 1803 | - 1803: Beginning of the Napoleonic Wars. Britain declares war on France. Parliament passes the General Enclosure Act, simplifying the process of enclosing common land
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| 25 | 1805 | - 1805: Ludolf Christian Treviranus said that spermatozoa were analogous to pollen
- 1805: Nelson destroys the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar, but is killed in the process
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| 26 | 1806 | - 1806: Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet isolated the first amino acid, 'asparagine,' from asparagus.
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| 27 | 1807 | - 1807: William Bentinck, Duke of Portland Prime Minister to 1809 (Whig)
- 1807: Robert Fulton ushered in the era of self-propelled ships with his construction of a commercially viable paddle-wheel steamboat
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| 28 | 1808 | - 1808: Peninsular War to drive the French out of Spain (until 1814)
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1778 - 1778 (0 years)