1768

1768 (MDCCLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1768th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 768th year of the 2nd millennium, the 68th year of the 18th century, and the 9th year of the 1760s decade. As of the start of 1768, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Quick Facts

1768 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1768 MDCCLXVIII
Ab urbe condita	2521
Armenian calendar	1217 ԹՎ ՌՄԺԷ
Assyrian calendar	6518
Balinese saka calendar	1689–1690
Bengali calendar	1174–1175
Berber calendar	2718
British Regnal year	8 Geo. 3 – 9 Geo. 3
Buddhist calendar	2312
Burmese calendar	1130
Byzantine calendar	7276–7277
Chinese calendar	丁亥年 (Fire Pig) 4465 or 4258 — to — 戊子年 (Earth Rat) 4466 or 4259
Coptic calendar	1484–1485
Discordian calendar	2934
Ethiopian calendar	1760–1761
Hebrew calendar	5528–5529
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1824–1825
- Shaka Samvat	1689–1690
- Kali Yuga	4868–4869
Holocene calendar	11768
Igbo calendar	768–769
Iranian calendar	1146–1147
Islamic calendar	1181–1182
Japanese calendar	Meiwa 5 (明和５年)
Javanese calendar	1693–1694
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 11 days
Korean calendar	4101
Minguo calendar	144 before ROC 民前144年
Nanakshahi calendar	300
Thai solar calendar	2310–2311
Tibetan calendar	མེ་མོ་ཕག་ལོ་ (female Fire-Boar) 1894 or 1513 or 741 — to — ས་ཕོ་བྱི་བ་ལོ་ (male Earth-Rat) 1895 or 1514 or 742

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Events

January–March

January 9 – Philip Astley stages the first modern circus, with acrobats on galloping horses, in London.
February 11 – Samuel Adams's circular letter is issued by the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and sent to the other Thirteen Colonies. Refusal to revoke the letter will result in dissolution of the Massachusetts Assembly, and (from October) incur the institution of martial law to prevent civil unrest.
February 24 – With Russian troops occupying the nation, opposition legislators of the national legislature having been deported, the government of Poland signs a treaty virtually turning the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into a protectorate of the Russian Empire.^[1]
February 27 – The first Secretary of State for the Colonies is appointed in Britain, the Earl of Hillsborough.
February 29 – Five days after the signing of the treaty, a group of the szlachta, Polish nobles, establishes the Bar Confederation, to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian influence, and against King Stanisław II Augustus.^[2]
March 1 – King Louis XV of France decrees that all cities and towns in the kingdom will be required to post house numbering on all residential buildings, primarily to facilitate the forced quartering of troops in citizens' homes.^[3]
March 17
- Britain's Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Sir William Johnson, concludes a peace agreement with the leaders of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora tribal nations) of the northern American lands, and with Chiefs Oconostota and Attakullakulla of the Cherokee nation in the southern American lands.^[4]
- Prithvi Singh begins a reign of 10 years as the new Raja of Jaipur (part of the modern-day Indian state of Rajasthan), 12 days after the death of Madho Singh.^[5]
March 27 – Catherine the Great of Russia dispatches troops under General Pyotr Krechetnikov to intervene in a civil war in Poland, at the request of Poland's King Stanisław II Augustus, a move that will ultimately lead to the Partitions of Poland.^[2]

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.^[6]
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.^[7]
May 10 – Massacre of St George's Fields: John Wilkes is imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton, severely criticizing King George III of Great Britain. This action provokes protesters to riot; in the Southwark district of London, troops fire on the mob, killing seven.^[8]
May 15 – After the Treaty of Versailles, the island of Corsica is ceded by Genoa to France.
June 14 – The largest mass meeting ever held in New England, up to this time, takes place at the Old South Church to support a petition demanding that the British remove a ship which has been hindering navigation in Boston Harbor.^[7]
June 20 – Russo-Turkish War (1768–74): Russia captures the fortress of Bar.

July–September

July 1–3 – Louis Antoine de Bougainville, on his circumnavigation westbound, sails through the Bougainville Strait and along the north shore of Bougainville Island in the Solomons.^[9]
July 14 – The massacre of Polish people (most likely by the Russians) at the village of Balta, now a part of Ukraine but at the time an Ottoman Empire town on the frontier with Poland, leads to the Russo-Turkish War.^[10]
July 18 – "The Liberty Song", the first American patriotic song, is published in the Boston Gazette and includes the refrain "In freedom we're born". ^[7]
July 25 – The Imperial Court of China's Emperor Qianlong and his three senior grand councilors, Fuheng, Yenjisan and Liu T'ung-hsun, issues a directive to officials in the Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces warning them about the need to respond to rumors of sorcery.^[11]
August 7 – The palace of the Ottoman Grand Vizier is destroyed by a fire in Constantinople ^[12]
August 26 – James Cook departs from Plymouth aboard HMS Endeavour on his first voyage of discovery.^[13]
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.^[14]
August 30 – A fire burns much of the Library of the Vatican.^[12]
September 16 – Louis XV of France appoints René de Maupeou as Chancellor (an office he will hold until 1790), and orders him to crush the judicial opposition.
September 22–29 – 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.^[15] Within a year, there will be "nearly 4,000 armed redcoats in the crowded seaport of 15,000 inhabitants."^[16]
October 4 – The Sultan Mustafa III of the Ottoman Empire begins the Russo-Turkish War after the Russians refuse to withdraw troops from Poland.^[17]
October 14 – William Pitt resigns from his position as Prime Minister of Great Britain.^[18]
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.^[19]
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.^[20]
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.^[21]
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.^[22]
December 1 – The slave ship Fredensborg sinks off Tromøya, Norway.
December 10
- The Royal Academy is founded in London, with Joshua Reynolds as its first President.^[23]
- The first of the weekly numbers of the Encyclopædia Britannica, edited by William Smellie, are published in Edinburgh; one hundred are planned.
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

The Petit Trianon, originally designed for Madame de Pompadour, is completed in the park of the Palace of Versailles, and inaugurated by Louis XV of France.
New Smyrna, Florida, the largest attempt at colonization by the British in the New World, is founded by Dr. Andrew Turnbull.
The Steller's sea cow, discovered on Bering Island in 1741, is driven to extinction.
The Complete Farmer: Or, a General Dictionary of Husbandry, written by "A Society of Gentlemen", a group of members of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts in Britain, concludes publication in weekly numbers and is first published in book form.
Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, the founder of the Al Khalifa dynasty, constructed Qal'at Murair in the town of Zubarah in present-day Qatar. The fortress served to consolidate his control over Zubarah and neighboring tribes.