1769

1769 (MDCCLXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1769th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 769th year of the 2nd millennium, the 69th year of the 18th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1760s decade. As of the start of 1769, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Quick facts

1769 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1769 MDCCLXIX
Ab urbe condita	2522
Armenian calendar	1218 ԹՎ ՌՄԺԸ
Assyrian calendar	6519
Balinese saka calendar	1690–1691
Bengali calendar	1175–1176
Berber calendar	2719
British Regnal year	9 Geo. 3 – 10 Geo. 3
Buddhist calendar	2313
Burmese calendar	1131
Byzantine calendar	7277–7278
Chinese calendar	戊子年 (Earth Rat) 4466 or 4259 — to — 己丑年 (Earth Ox) 4467 or 4260
Coptic calendar	1485–1486
Discordian calendar	2935
Ethiopian calendar	1761–1762
Hebrew calendar	5529–5530
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1825–1826
- Shaka Samvat	1690–1691
- Kali Yuga	4869–4870
Holocene calendar	11769
Igbo calendar	769–770
Iranian calendar	1147–1148
Islamic calendar	1182–1183
Japanese calendar	Meiwa 6 (明和６年)
Javanese calendar	1694–1695
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 11 days
Korean calendar	4102
Minguo calendar	143 before ROC 民前143年
Nanakshahi calendar	301
Thai solar calendar	2311–2312
Tibetan calendar	ས་ཕོ་བྱི་བ་ལོ་ (male Earth-Rat) 1895 or 1514 or 742 — to — ས་མོ་གླང་ལོ་ (female Earth-Ox) 1896 or 1515 or 743

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Events

February 2 – Pope Clement XIII dies, the night before preparing an order to dissolve the Jesuits.^[1]
February 17 – The British House of Commons votes not to allow MP John Wilkes to take his seat after he wins a by-election, on the grounds that he was an outlaw when standing.^[2]
March 4 – Mozart departs Italy, after the last of his three tours there.^[3]
March 16 – Louis Antoine de Bougainville returns to Saint-Malo, following a three-year circumnavigation of the world with the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile, with the loss of only seven out of 330 men; among the members of the expedition is Jeanne Baré, the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe. She returns to France some time after Bougainville and his ships.

April 13 – James Cook arrives in Tahiti, on the ship HM Bark Endeavour, preparing for the 1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti on June 3. After the voyage, the data is found to be inaccurate in determining the distance between the Sun and Earth.
April 29 – Scottish inventor James Watt is granted a British patent for "A method of lessening the consumption of steam in steam engines" – the separate condenser,^[4] a key improvement (first devised by Watt in 1765) and the basis for the Watt steam engine which stimulates the Industrial Revolution.^[5]^[6]
May 9 – France conquers Corsica.
May 14 – Charles III of Spain sends Spanish missionaries, who found California missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey, and begin the settlement of California.
May 19 – Cardinal Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli is elected as the 249th pope, succeeding the late Clement XIII and choosing to take the regnal name of Pope Clement XIV.^[1]
June 3 – A transit of Venus is followed five hours later by a total solar eclipse, the shortest such interval in historical times. The transit is viewed by King George III of Great Britain, at the Kew Observatory.
June 7 – Frontiersman Daniel Boone first begins to explore modern-day Kentucky.

July 3 – Richard Arkwright patents a spinning frame in England, able to spin threads mechanically.^[7]
July 16 – Father Junípero Serra founds Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first of the 21 California missions.
July 20 – Recently appointed as the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, Irish-born soldier of fortune Alejandro O'Reilly sails into the French fort of La Balize with 21 Spanish ships, along with 2,056 soldiers, cannons and ammunition, and informs French Louisiana Governor Charles Philippe Aubry of his royal commission to take Louisiana on behalf of the King of Spain.^[8]
August 3 – The party of Gaspar de Portolà becomes the first white group to set foot in the area now known as Santa Monica, California.
August 18 – Brescia Explosion: The city of Brescia, Italy is devastated when the Church of San Nazaro is struck by lightning. The resulting fire ignites 200,000 lb (90,000 kg) of gunpowder being stored there, causing a massive explosion, which destroys 1/6 of the city and kills 3,000 people.^[9]
September – Massive droughts in Bengal lead to the Bengal famine of 1770, in which ten million people, a third of the population, will die, the worst natural disaster in human history (in terms of lives lost).
September 6–9 – David Garrick holds a Shakespeare Jubilee festival at Stratford-upon-Avon in England.
September 10 – Russo-Turkish War (1768–74): Russian forces take the Ottoman fortress of Chocim in Bukovina.

October 1 – James Cook names White Island, off the coast of New Zealand.
October 7 – James Cook lands in New Zealand, at Poverty Bay.
October 9 – In the first encounter between the Māori people and Europeans (at the future site of Gisborne, New Zealand), one Maori is shot and killed after he steals a sword from one of the officers of the Cook expedition. Several more Māori are killed in fighting the next day.^[10]
October 23 – Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrates a steam-powered artillery tractor (see drawing) in France.
November 1 – A party of the expedition of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola becomes the first Europeans to reach San Francisco Bay. Sergeant Jose Francisco de Ortega and his group accidentally discover the area while searching for Drakes Bay in Alta California.^[11]
November 12 –The Gorkhali Army conquer the last standing Malla Kingdom of Bhaktapur marking the end of The Malla dynasty in Nepal.
November 21 – Ireland's House of Commons rejects a spending bill passed by Great Britain's parliament, by a 94–71 margin.^[12]
December 13 – Dartmouth College is established in Hanover, New Hampshire, as John Wentworth, the Royal Governor, conveys a charter from King George III of Great Britain.
December 22 – The Sino-Burmese War (1765–69) is ended by a truce.

The Authorized King James Version of the Bible is published in England in the Oxford standard text, edited by Benjamin Blayney.
First recorded use of 'literally' as a metaphorical intensifier.^[13]

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