1783 - Definition and Overview

Events

• February 3 - American Revolutionary War: Spain recognizes United States independence.
• February 4 - American Revolutionary War: Great Britain formally declares that it will cease hostilities with the United States of America.
• May 18 - Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada- First United Empire Loyalists reach Parrtown.
• June 5 - The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon) in Annonay, France.
• June 8 - The volcano Laki, in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption until February 1784 which kills 9350 people and starts a seven-year famine. Eruption causes deaths of livestock when they eat contaminated grass and also widespread crop failure.
• July 16 - Grants of land in Canada to American loyalists announced.
• August 5 - Mt. Asama erupts, causing turmoil in Edo period Japan.
• September 3 - American Revolutionary War ends: Treaty of Paris - A treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain is signed in Paris, ending the war.
• November 2 - In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, US General George Washington gives his "Farewell Address to the Army".
• November 21 - In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d'Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight (flight time: 25 minutes, Maximum height: 5½ miles).
• November 25 - American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
• December 4 - At Fraunces Tavern in New York City, US General George Washington formally bids his officers farewell.

• City of Sevastopol founded;
• United Empire Loyalists flee to Canada from the new United States;
• Treaty of Versailles signed, ending hostilities between the Franco-Spanish Alliance and England.
• Loyalists from New York settle Great Abaco in the Bahamas.

Births

• January 23 - Stendhal, writer
• March 8 - Hannah Van Buren, First Lady of the United States
• April 3 - Washington Irving, American author
• April 10 - Hortense de Beauharnais Queen of Holland and mother of the Emperor Napoleon III of France.
• September 17 - Samuel Prout, watercolour painter

Deaths

• March 31 - Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian statesman
• October 29 - Jean le Rond d'Alembert, mathematician