1782 - Definition and Overview

Events

• January 7 - The first American commercial bank opens (Bank of North America).
• January 15 - Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris goes before the U.S. Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage
• February 5 - Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca.
• March 8 - In Ohio the Gnadenhutten massacre of Native Americans takes place in which 29 men, 27 women, and 34 children were killed by white militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by another Native American group.
• April 6 - Rama I succeeded King Taksin of Thailand who was overthrown in an coup d'etat.
• April 12 - A British fleet under Admiral Sir George Rodney defeats a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse at the Battle of the Saintes in the West Indies.
• June 18 – In Switzerland, Anna Goldi in sentenced to death for witchcraft – the last legal witchcraft sentence
• August 7 - George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic "Purple Heart".
• November 30 - American Revolutionary War: In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized in the Treaty of Paris).

• London creates Foot Patrol for public security
• Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries try to cross the English Channel with a hot-air balloon
• British parliament extends James Watt's copyright for the steam engine to the year 1800

Births

• Charlotte Dacre, author (d. 1842)
• January 18 - Daniel Webster, statesman (d. 1852)
• March 18 - John Calhoun, Vice President of the United States (d. 1850)
• July 26 - John Field, English composer (d. 1837)
• October 27 - Nicolo Paganini, violinist and composer (d. 1840)
• December 5 - Martin Van Buren, Eighth president of the United States of America
• William Miller, American baptist preacher

Deaths

• May 15 - Marquis of Pombal, Portuguese prime minister
• May - Richard Wilson, Welsh painter (born 1714)
• September 6 - Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Wife of 3rd President Thomas Jefferson (born 1748)
• Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, British Whig politician, prime minister 1765-66 and 1782 (born 1730)
• Daniel Solander, Swedish botanist (born 1736)
• Ange-Jacques Gabriel, French architect (born 1698)
• Giovannini, Italian composer
• Hyder Ali, Indian general, sultan of Mysore (born c1722)
• Daniel Bernoulli, Swiss mathematical physicist (born 1700)
• Johann Christian Bach, German composer (born 1735)
• Metastasio, Pen name of Pietro Armando Dominico Trapassi, Italian poet and librettist (born 1698)