1777 - Definition and Overview

Events

• The Cornish language died out
• 2nd edition of Encyclopædia Britannica published
• January 3 - American general George Washington defeats British general Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.
• January 12 - Mission Santa Clara de Asís is founded in what is now Santa Clara, California
• January 16 - Vermont declares its independence from New York becoming an independent country, a status it retained until it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791
• June 13 - American Revolutionary War: Marquis de Lafayette lands near Charleston, South Carolina to help the Continental Congress train its army.
• June 14 - Stars and Stripes adopted by the Continental Congress as the Flag of the United States.
• August 16 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Bennington - British forces are defeated by American troops.
• September 3 - American Revolutionary War: The Flag of the United States flies in battle for the first time, at Cooch's Bridge in Maryland.
• October 17 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Saratoga- American troops defeat the British.
• November 15 - American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate, the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation in the temporary American capital at York, Pennsylvania.
• November 29 - San Jose, California founded. It is the first pueblo in Spanish Alta California.
• December 24 - Kiritimati discovered by James Cook
• The code duello is adopted at the Clonmell Summer Assizes as the form for pistol duels in Ireland. It is quickly denounced but nevertheless widely adopted throughout the English-speaking world.

Births

• January 2 - Christian Daniel Rauch, sculptor
• February 12 - Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, poet
• March 17 - Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the United States
• April 12 - Henry Clay, American statesman
• April 30 - Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, astronomer and physicist
• August 14 - Hans Christian Ørsted, physicist and chemist
• October 16 - Lorenzo Dow, founder of the camp meeting movement
• December 4 - Madame Récamier, writer
• December 23 - Emperor Alexander I of Russia

Deaths

• February 24 - King Joseph I of Portugal
• September 22 - John Bartram, American botanist (b. 1699)