1784 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1784 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Incumbents

15 January - Henry Cavendish's paper Experiments on Air reveals the composition of water.^[1]
28 February - John Wesley charters the Methodist Church.^[2]
8 March - Mary Bailey, a mariticide, becomes the last person in Britain to suffer a sentence for murder of death by burning, at Winchester.^[3]
15 April - General election won by William Pitt the Younger's Tory Party.^[4]
21 June - Commutation Act reduces duties on spirits and tea, and implements window tax.^[4]
2 August - The first mail coach runs between Bristol and London.^[2]
13 August - Parliament passes the India Act to regulate the East India Company.^[5]
16 August - Britain creates the colony of New Brunswick in Canada.
21 August - Joseph Bramah receives his first lock patent.
15 September - The Italian Vincenzo Lunardi makes the first hydrogen balloon flight in Britain, from Moorfields in London to South Mimms.^[2]
4 October - The Englishman James Sadler makes the first hot air balloon flight in Britain, from Oxford to Woodeaton.^[6]

Britain receives its first bales of cotton imported from the United States.
Industrial Revolution: Henry Cort of Funtley, Hampshire, applies the coal-fired reverbatory furnace to the puddling process for conversion of cast to wrought iron.^[7]
Publication of the Annals of Agriculture edited by Arthur Young begins.

^ Cavendish, Henry (1784). "Experiments on Air". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 75: 372–384. JSTOR 106582.
^ ^a ^b ^c Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
^ "Timeline of capital punishment in Britain". http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/timeline.html. Retrieved 2011-02-02.
^ ^a ^b Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 228–230. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^ Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 336–337. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
^ Hibbert, Christopher (1988). "Sadler's Balloon Ascents". The Encyclopædia of Oxford. London: Macmillan. pp. 370–1. ISBN 0-333-39917-X.
^ Gales, W.K.V. (1981). Ironworking. Princes Risborough. p. 8. ISBN 0-85263-546-X.