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Year '1785' ('MDCCLXXXV') was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar).

Contents

Events of 1785

January - June

July - December

Undated

Births

Unknown dates

Deaths

Unknown dates

Events of 1785

January - June

★ January 1 The first issue of the ''Daily Universal Register'', later known as ''The Times'', is published in London.

★ January 7 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England to Calais, France in a hydrogen gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.

★ January 27 - The University of Georgia is founded.

★ May 10 - A hot air balloon crashes in Tullamore, widely recognised as the worlds first aviation diasater

July - December

★ July 6 - The dollar is unanimously chosen as the money unit for the United States. This is the first time a nation has adopted a decimal coinage system.

★ August 1 - Fleet of French explorer Jean Francois de Galoup, count la Përouse leaves Paris for circumnavigation.

★ August 15 - Cardinal de Rohan is arrested in Paris - the necklace affair comes into open.

★ November - Drought occurs in Haiti.

Undated

★ University of New Brunswick is founded in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

★ Coal gas is first used for illumination.

★ Louis XVI of France signs to a law that a handkerchief must be square.

★ British government establishes a permanent land force in the Eastern Caribbean, based in Barbados.

★ The North Carolina General Assembly incorporates Lincolnton, North Carolina (named for American General Benjamin Lincoln) as the new county seat for Lincoln County.

★ Belfast Academy later Belfast Royal Academy is founded by Rev. Dr James Crombie in Belfast, Northern Ireland

★ Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi publishes ''Letters on the Teachings of Spinoza'', and starts the Pantheism controversy

Births

★ January 4 - Jakob Grimm, German philologist, folklorist, and writer (d. 1863)

★ January 4 - Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (d. 1831)

★ February 8 - Martín Miguel de Güemes Argentine military leader (d. 1821)

★ February 10 - Claude-Louis Navier, French engineer and physicist (d. 1836)

★ March 27 - Louis XVII of France (d. 1795)

★ April 4 - Bettina von Arnim, German poet (d. 1859)

★ April 26 - John James Audubon, French-American naturalist and illustrator (d. 1851)

★ May 18 - John Wilson, Scottish writer (d. 1854)

★ July 6 - William Jackson Hooker, English botanist (d. 1865)

★ August 15 - Thomas de Quincey, English writer (d. 1859)

★ August 23 - Oliver Hazard Perry, American naval officer (d. 1819)

★ October 18 - Thomas Love Peacock, English satirist (d. 1866)

★ October 20 - George Ormerod, English historian and antiquarian (d. 1873)

★ November 18 - David Wilkie, Scottish artist (d. 1841)

Unknown dates

★ (none)
: ''See also .''

Deaths

★ January 3 - Baldassare Galuppi, Italian composer (b. 1706)

★ January 19 - Jonathan Toup, English classical scholar and critic (b. 1713)

★ January 23 - Matthew Stewart, Scottish mathematician (b. 1717)

★ April 14 - William Whitehead, English writer (b. 1715)

★ May 8 - Etienne Francois, Duke of Choiseul, French statesman (b. 1719)

★ May 8 - Pietro Longhi, Venetian painter (b. 1701)

★ June 2 - Jean Paul de Gua de Malves, French mathematician (b. 1713)

★ June 30 - James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia (b. 1696)

★ August 17 - Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of the Colony and the state of Connecticut (b. 1710)

★ August 26 - George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, British soldier and politician (b. 1716)

★ August 28 - Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, French sculptor (b. 1714)

★ October 4 - David Brearly, delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (b. 1703)

★ November 18 - Louis Philip I, Duke of Orléans, French soldier and writer (b. 1725)

★ November 19 - Bernard de Bury, French composer (b. 1720)

★ November 25 - Richard Glover, English poet (b. 1712)

★ December 6 - Kitty Clive, English actress and playwright (b. 1711)

★ December 29 - Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian author (b. 1742)

Unknown dates

★ (none)
: ''See also .''