1786 - Definition and Overview

Events

• May 21 - Trial of the Necklace affair ends in Paris
• August 8 - Mont Blanc was climbed for the first time by Dr. Michael-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat.
• September 2 – Hurricane in England
• Choctaw Treaty
• Chickasaw Treaty
• Robert Burns publishes Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
• Francis Light acquires the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah on behalf of the British East India Company. It is the first British colony in South-East Asia.
• Anglo-Spanish treaty gives Belize to Britain
• First ship of convicts leaves Britain for Botany Bay, Australia - 820 out of 1138 aboard are convicts
• The trade with Iceland is opened to all Danish and Norwegian traders.

Births

• January 8 - Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States (+ 1844)
• January 23 - Auguste de Montferrand, architect (d. 1858)
• February 24 - Wilhelm Grimm, philologist, folklorist (+ 1859)
• March 22 - Joachim Lelewel, Polish nationalist historian (+ 1861)
• August 17 - David "Davy" Crockett (+ 1836)
• August 25 - Ludwig I, King of Bavaria
• September 18 - King Christian VIII of Denmark
• September 24 - Charles Bianconi, Italian-Irish entrepreneur.
• November 18/December 18 - Carl Maria von Weber, German composer
• Henry Bishop, English composer
• Friedrich Kuhlau, German composer
• Balusvami Dikshitar, brother of composer Muttuswami Dikshitar and introducer of the violin into Carnatic music

Deaths

• May 19 - John Stanley, English composer
• May 21 - Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist
• August 17 - Friedrich II the Great, or Frederick the Great, of Prussia