General Henry Knox is appointed as the Confederation Congress's Secretary of War, with added duties as the Secretary of Navy, both functions now of the U.S. Department of Defense.[1]
Thomas Jefferson is appointed the new U.S. Minister to France, and Benjamin Franklin's request for permission to return home is accepted.[1]
April–June
April 19– The Commonwealth of Massachusettscedes all of its claims to territory west of New York State to the United States Confederation Congress. The area will become the southern portions of Michigan and Wisconsin.[6][1]
April 21– The Empress Catherine the Great of the Russian Empire issues the Charter to the Towns, providing for "a coherent, unified system of administration" for new governments organized in Russia.
May 20– The Northwest Ordinance of 1785, setting the rules for dividing the U.S. Northwest Territory (later Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan) into townships of 36 square miles apiece, is passed by the Confederation Congress. Walter G. Robillard and Lane J. Bouman, Clark on Surveying and Boundaries (LexisNexis, 1997) The survey system will later be applied to the continent west of the Mississippi River.[1]
June 15– After several attempts, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and his companion, Pierre Romain, set off in a balloon from Boulogne-sur-Mer, but the balloon suddenly deflates (without the envelope catching fire) and crashes near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais, killing both men, making it the first fatal aviation disaster.
July–September
July 2– Don Diego de Gardoqui arrives in New York City as Spain's first minister to the United States.[1]
July 6– The dollar (and a decimal currency system) is unanimously chosen as the money unit for the United States by the Congress of the Confederation.[10]
The first newspaper in British India, the English-language Madras Courier, is published. It continues publication as a weekly until 1794.[15]
France mints new Louis d'or coins, with the image of King Louis XVI on the obverse, and one-sixth less gold than the coins with King Louis XV's image.[16]
October 17– The Commonwealth of Virginia stops the importation of new African slaves by declaring that "No persons shall henceforth be slaves within this commonwealth, except such as were so on the seventeenth day of October, 1785, and the descendants of the females of them." [17]
November 23–John Hancock of Massachusetts, the former President of the Continental Congress, is selected as the new President of the Congress of the Confederation, but is unable to take office because of illness.[1]
Charles Adams, John Adams’ son and John Quincy Adams's brother enters Harvard in August, at age 15. A few months later, he starts to drink often and would get into trouble, and was almost expelled from Harvard when he was caught running naked through the Campus while drunk with other boys.
The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America: From the Signing of the Definitive Treaty of Peace, September 10, 1783 to the Adoption of the Constitution, March 4, 1789, Volume II (Blair & Rives, 1837) p365
The United States: Its Beginnings, Progress and Modern Development, Volume 3, ed. by Edwin Wiley and Irving E. Rines (American Educational Alliance, 1912) p384
"The Role of Political Revolution in the Theory of International Law", by Theodor Schweisfurth, in The Structure and Process of International Law: Essays in Legal Philosophy, Doctrine and Theory, ed. by R. St.J. Macdonald and Douglas M. Johnston (Martinus Nijhoff, 1986) p913
Kalman Burnim; Edward A. Langhans; Philip H. Highfill (1975). A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press. p.357.