1796

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1796.

Year 1796 (MDCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Events

January–June

• January 16 – The first Dutch (and general) elections are held for the National Assembly of the Batavian Republic (the next Dutch general elections are held in 1888).
• February 1 – The capital of Upper Canada is moved from Newark to York.
• February 9 – The Qianlong Emperor of China abdicates at age 84 to make way for his son, the Jiaqing Emperor.
• February 16 – The Kingdom of Great Britain is granted control of Ceylon by the Dutch.^[1]
• March 9 – Widow Joséphine de Beauharnais marries General Napoléon Bonaparte.
• March 30 – Carl Gauss obtains conditions for the constructibility by ruler and compass of regular polygons, and is able to announce that the regular 17-gon is constructible by ruler and compasses.

March 9: Joséphine de Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte

• April 2 – The only night of the supposed Shakespearean play Vortigern and Rowena (actually written by William Henry Ireland) ends in the audience's laughter.
• April 12 – War of the First Coalition – Battle of Montenotte: Napoleon Bonaparte gains his first victory as an army commander.
• April 27 – Case of the Lyons Mail: During the night, five highwaymen attack the mail between Paris and Lyon, kill the postmen and steal the funds sent to the armies in Italy.
• May 10
  • Persian Expedition of 1796: Russian troops storm Derbent.
  • War of the First Coalition – Battle of Lodi: General Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Austrian rearguard in forcing a crossing of the bridge over the River Adda in Italy. The Austrians lose some 2,000 men, 14 guns, and 30 ammunition wagons.
• May 14 – Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination, in England.
• May 15 – Napoleon's troops take Milan.
• May 20 – The last mock Garrat Elections are held in Surrey, England.
• June 1 – Tennessee is admitted as the 16th U.S. state.
• June 21 – British explorer Mungo Park becomes the first European to reach the Niger River.^[1]

July–December

• July 10 – Carl Friedrich Gauss discovers that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most 3 triangular numbers.
• July 11 – The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under the terms of the Jay Treaty.
• July 21 – Mungo Park reaches Ségou, the capital of the Bamana Empire.
• July 22 – Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio "Cleveland" after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.
• August 9 – Opening to traffic of the Wearmouth Bridge in England, designed by Thomas Paine in cast iron. Its span of 72 m (237 feet) makes it the world's longest single-span vehicular bridge extant at this date.^[2][3][4]
• August 19 – By the Second Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain and France form an alliance against Great Britain.
• September 8 – French Revolutionary Wars – Battle of Bassano: French forces defeat Austrian troops in the Veneto.
• September 17 – U.S. President George Washington issues his Farewell Address, which warns against partisan politics and foreign entanglements.
• November 3 – John Adams defeats Thomas Jefferson in the U.S. presidential election.
• November 4 – The Treaty of Tripoli (between the United States and Tripoli) is signed at Tripoli (see also 1797).
• November 6 (O.S.) – Catherine II of Russia (called Catherine The Great) dies and is succeeded by her son Paul I of Russia. His wife Sophie Marie Dorothea of Württemberg becomes Empress consort.
• November 12 – Groton, New Hampshire is incorporated as a town.
• November 17 – French Revolutionary Wars – Battle of Arcole: French forces defeat the Austrians in Italy.
• December – The British government begins work on a 40-acre (162,000 m²) site at Norman Cross for the world's first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp.^[5]
• December 7 – The U.S. Electoral College meets to elect John Adams president.

Date unknown

• Spanish government lifts the restrictions against neutrals trading with the colonies, thus acknowledging Spain's inability to supply the colonies with needed goods and markets.
• Jane Austen writes her first draft of Pride and Prejudice, under the title First Impressions. The book will not be published until 1813.
• Robert Burns' version of the Scots poem Auld Lang Syne is first published, in this year's volume of The Scots Musical Museum.^[6]
• Annual British iron production reaches 125,000 tons.

Births

• January 25 – William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist (d. 1852)
• February 22 – Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian mathematician (d. 1874)
• March 18 – Jakob Steiner, Swiss mathematician (d. 1863)
• May 1 – Junius Brutus Booth, English actor (d. 1852)
• May 4 – Horace Mann, American educator and abolitionist (d. 1859)
• June 14 – Nikolai Brashman, Russian mathematician of Czech origin (d. 1866)
• July 6 – Emperor Nicholas I of Russia (d. 1855)
• July 16 – Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, French painter (d. 1875)
• July 23 – Franz Berwald, Swedish composer (d. 1868)
• August 15 – John Torrey, American botanist (d. 1873)
• August 25 – James Lick, American land speculator (d. 1876)
• September 19 – Hartley Coleridge, British poet (d. 1849)
• September 22 – Davi Canabarro, Brazilian Gaúcho rebel revolutionary (d. 1867)
• September 25 – Antoine-Louis Barye, French sculptor (d. 1875)
• October 23 – Stefano Franscini, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 1857)
• November 30 – Carl Loewe, German composer (d. 1869)
• December 17 – Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Canadian author (d. 1865)
• December 19 – Breton de los Herreros, Spanish playwright (d. 1873)
• December 27 – Mirza Ghalib, Persian Poet of Urdu (d. 1869)

Deaths

• January 13 – John H. D. Anderson, Scottish scientist and inventor (b. 1726)
• February 23 – Jean-Nicolas Stofflet, French royalist general (executed) (b. 1751)
• March 6 – Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, French writer (b. 1713)
• March 19 – Hugh Palliser, British naval officer and administrator (b. 1722)
• May 12 – Johann Peter Uz, German poet (b. 1720)
• May 29 – Carl Fredrik Pechlin, Swedish politician (b. 1720)
• June 6 – Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, French revolutionary (b. 1749)
• June 11 – Samuel Whitbread, English brewer and politician (b. 1720)
• June 21 – Richard Gridley, American Revolutionary soldier (b. 1710)
• June 26 – David Rittenhouse, American astronomer, inventor, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman, and public official. (b. 1732)
• June 30 – Abraham Yates, American Continental Congressman (b. 1724)
• July 16 – George Howard, British field marshal (b. 1718)
• July 21 – Robert Burns, Scottish poet (b. 1759)
• August 1 – Robert Pigot, British army officer (b. 1720)
• August 21 – John McKinly, American physician and President of Delaware (b. 1721)
• September 21 – François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, French revolutionary general (killed in battle) (b. 1769)
• October 7 – Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher (b. 1710)
• October 16 – Antoine-Joseph Pernety, French writer (b. 1716)
• November 6 – Catherine the Great of Russia (b. 1729)
• date unknown – Elisabetta Caminèr Turra, Venetian writer (b. 1751)

References

• Chronology of 1796, mainly relating to Napoleon's campaign in Italy