1799 C.C.
A HUMANIST PERSPECTIVE
Agriculture
The cultivation of beets as a root vegetable gained
importance in parts of Europe. However, most farmers continued to cultivate the
plant only for its greens. The beet only became highly commercially important in 19th century Europe following the development of the sugar beet in Germany and the discovery that sucrose could be extracted from them, providing an alternative to tropical sugar cane.
***
*Prussia’s Friedrich Wilhelm III received a loaf of
beet sugar from Berlin chemist Franz Karl Achard and was persuaded to give
Achard some land at Cunern in Silesia and finance his work with sugar beets.
Architecture and Engineering
*James Hoban: The United States Executive Mansion (the White House).
The United States Executive Mansion -- the White House -- at Washington, D. C., was completed after seven years of construction by Irish-American architect James Hoban who won a $500 prize for his design in an open competition.
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D. C. It has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800.
The house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1799 of white-painted Aquia Creek sandstone in the Neoclassical style. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) expanded the building outward, creating two colonnades that were meant to conceal stables and storage.
In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army during the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Construction continued with the addition of the South Portico in 1824 and the North in 1829.
Because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office which was eventually moved as the section was expanded. The third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as a reception area for social events; Jefferson's colonnades connected the new wings.
East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space. By 1948, the house's load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the interior rooms were completely dismantled and a new internal load-bearing steel frame constructed inside the walls. Once this work was completed, the interior rooms were rebuilt.
Today, the White House Complex includes the Executive Residence, West Wing, East Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—the former State Department, which now houses offices for the President's staff and the Vice President—and Blair House, a guest residence.
The Executive Residence is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, and Third Floor, as well as a two-story basement. The term White House is regularly used as a metonym for the Executive Office of the President of the United States and for the president's administration and advisers in general. The property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the President's Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of "America's Favorite Architecture".
***
*In Philadelphia, English-born Benjamin Henry Latrobe, regarded as the first professional American architect, designed the Greek revivalist Bank of Pennsylvania, based on an Ionic temple.
*Gracie Mansion was constructed in New York City. It would be acquired for the mayor’s residence in 1924.
Art
*Pauline Auzou: Young Woman Reading. {See A Female Perspective.}
*French artist Jacques-Louis David: Les Sabines (The Rape of the Sabine Women).
*Swiss-born Henry Fuseli opened Milton Gallery in London, exhibiting dozens of his own paintings on literary subjects. He had previously contributed to John Boydell’s Shakespeare gallery.
*French artist Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy: Mademoiselle Lange as Danae.
Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, original name Anne-louis Girodet De Roucy (b. January 29, 1767, Montargis, France — d. December 9, 1824, Paris, France), was a French painter whose works exemplify the first phase of the Romantic movement in French art. Girodet-Trioson won the Prix de Rome (1789) for his “Joseph Recognized by His Brothers,” which was influenced by the cold, sober Neoclassicism of his teacher, Jacques-Louis David. In “The Sleep of Endymion” (1792; Louvre, Paris) Girodet-Trioson displays a new emotional element akin to the troubled Romanticism of the novelist Chateaubriand. Girodet-Trioson let his literary interest take full reign in the composition of “Ossian Receiving the Generals of Napoleon at the Palace of Odin” (1801), painted for Napoleon’s residence, Malmaison. He continued to paint literary subjects in such works as “Entombment of Atala” (1808; Louvre). The latter picture, together with a windswept portrait of Chateaubriand meditating before the Roman Colosseum (1809; Versailles), is most typical of his work. Upon inheriting a large fortune in 1812, Girodet-Trioson ceased painting, shuttered himself from daylight, and wrote poetry, adjudged unreadable, on aesthetics.
***
*Spanish artist Francesco de Goya: Los Caprichos, a set of etchings that bitterly satirized Spanish society and the church. They were seized by the Inquisition.
Economic Enterprises
*The first British savings bank opened at Wendover, Buckinghamshire, where clergyman Joseph Smith had acted on the suggestion of Jeremy Bentham.
In Europe, savings banks originated in the 19th or sometimes even the 18th century. Their original objective was to provide easily accessible savings products to all strata of the population. In some countries, savings banks were created on public initiative, while in others, socially committed individuals created foundations to put in place the necessary infrastructure.
France claims the credit of being the mother of savings banks, basing this claim on a savings bank said to have been established in 1765 in the town of Brumuth, but it is of record that the savings bank idea was suggested in England as early as 1697. There was a savings bank in Hamburg, Germany, in 1778 and in Berne, Switzerland, in 1787. The first English savings bank was established in 1799, and postal savings banks were started in England in 1861. The first chartered savings bank in the United States was the Provident Institution for Savings in the Town of Boston, incorporated December 13, 1816. The Philadelphia Savings Fund Society began business the same year, but was not incorporated until 1819. In 1818 banks for savings were incorporated in Baltimore and Salem, and in 1819 in New York, Hartford, Newport and Providence.
***
*The Dutch East India Company’s charter expired after 198 years in which stockholders had received annual dividends averaging eighteen percent (18%).
The Dutch East Indies Company (also known as
Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie [VOC] – literally, United East Indies
Company) was formed in in 1602 by the merger of several separate companies
founded in the 1590s for trade in the Indian Ocean. It was a joint stock company, that is, the
separate holdings of the shareholders were not distinguished in the operations
of the company; profit and loss were shared equally according to stock
holdings. Under its charter from the
States General, the company had an official monopoly of all Dutch trade east of
the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Magellan Straits and the right to
exercise sovereignty in that region on behalf of the Dutch state. General company policy was set by the Heeren XVII (Seventeen Gentlemen) who
met in turn in the different provincial cities of the Netherlands and appointed
a governor-general to govern the company in Asia. From 1619, the company’s headquarters in Asia
was at Batavia.
The VOC aimed from the beginning to gain a monopoly
of the spice trade in Maluku, using military force to impose restrictive
treaties on indigenous states, to exclude foreign competitors, and to destroy
spice trees outside Dutch territories.
In 1641, the company seized Melaka from the Portuguese and in 1666-1669
conquered Makassar to deny it as a base for competitors, while in 1682 it
successfully excluded foreign traders from Banten. The VOC also sought to control the so-called
inter-Asiatic trade, especially between the archipelago and India. They established major interests in Bengal
and on the Coromandel coast for the purchase of cotton cloth to be exchanged
for spices. Java became important for
the supply of rice and wood.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
the VOC expanded its territorial holdings in the archipelago, making use of
wars of succession, especially on Java, to extend its control. In the eighteenth century, however, the spice
trade declined and with it the company.
The increased costs of administering a land-based empire, together with
rampant inefficiency and corruption, led the company to bankruptcy, and the
States-General allowed its charter to lapse on December 31, 1799. All debts and possessions were taken over by
the Dutch government.
***
*The
Russian government granted the Russian-American Company the monopoly of fur
trade in Alaska. The
Russian American Company established its headquarters in Sitka, Alaska.
The Russian-American Company was a Russian trading monopoly that established colonies in North America (primarily in California and Alaska) during the 19th century. The Northeastern Company, headed by the merchants Grigory I. Shelikov and Ivan I. Golikov, was organized in 1781 to establish colonies on the North American coast and carry on the fur trade. After Shelikov’s death (1795), the group merged with three others to form the United American Company. To confront foreign activity more effectively, the Russian Tsar (Czar) Paul I approved the formation of a monopoly, and all other companies were absorbed into United American. With the support of Shelikov’s son-in-law, the nobleman Nikolay P. Rezanov, the organization was granted a 20-year charter in 1799 and was renamed the Russian-American Company. The Tsar gave them exclusive trading rights in North America north of latitude 55° and made them responsible for the administration of Russian settlements there. Aleksandr A. Baranov directed company operations in America from Kikhtak (now Kodiak Island) from 1791 onward before establishing Novo-Arkhangelsk (New Archangel, now Sitka, Alaska, U.S.) as the new headquarters in 1804. In 1812 a company outpost was settled at Fort Ross in present-day California. Agreements with the United States, Spain, and Great Britain (c. 1824) confirmed the company’s control of North American territory north of 54°40′. However, after commercial and political rivalries with Great Britain increased and revenues from the colonies decreased, Russia decided to sell its holdings in America and refused to renew the company’s charter, which expired in 1862.
***
*Captain James Devereaux landed in Boston harbor in May not only with coffee and spices from the Dutch East Indies but also the first products (Japanese mats, lacquered goods and pans) imported from Japan.
Educational Institutions
*The
Royal Institution of Science was founded in England. Its aim was to further technology by means of
science.
*The
British Mineralogical Society was founded.
*The
Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, was founded at Camberley, England, to train
officers.
*The
Egyptian Institute was founded at Cairo.
*The
Universities of Cologne and Mainz were closed.
*Pestalozzi’s
school in Burgdorf, Switzerland, was opened.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (January 12, 1746 – February 17, 1827) was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach.
He founded several educational institutions both in German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland and wrote many works explaining his revolutionary modern principles of education. His motto "Learning by head, hand and heart" is still a key principle in successful 21st-century schools. Thanks to Pestalozzi, illiteracy in 18th-century Switzerland was overcome almost completely by 1830.
***
Exploration
*The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt sailed for Spanish America on the Pizarro. He arrived in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada (in the area of modern Venezuela), at the start of his five years of exploration in South America.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (September 14, 1769 – May 6, 1859) was a Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time in a manner generally considered to be a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. Humboldt supported and worked with other scientists, including Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, Matthew Fontaine Maury and Georg von Neumayer, most notably Aime Bonpland, with whom Humboldt conducted much of his scientific exploration.
Humboldt sailed from Coruma, Spain, for Spanish America aboard the Pizarro. Accompanying him was French botanist Aime Jacques Alexandre Bonpland. Bonpland traveled with Humboldt to Cuba, Mexico and the Andes. Bonpland became a professor of natural sciences at Buenos Aires from 1818 to 1821 and was imprisoned by the dictator of Paraguay from 1821 to 1830.
***
*The Scottish traveler Mungo Park
published his Travels in the Interior of
Africa, in 1795-97.
Mungo Park (11 September 1771 – 1806) was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the central portion of the Niger River.
Mungo Park (11 September 1771 – 1806) was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the central portion of the Niger River.
In 1794 Park offered his services to the African Association, then looking for a successor to Major Daniel Houghton, who had been sent in 1790 to discover the course of the Niger River and had died in the Sahara. Supported by Joseph Banks, Park was selected.
On June 21, 1795, he reached the Gambia River and ascended it 200 miles to a British trading station named Pisania. On December 2, 1795, accompanied by two local guides, he started for the unknown interior. He chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin and through the semi-desert region of Kaarta. The journey was full of difficulties, and at Ludamar he was imprisoned by a Moorish chief for four months. On July 1, 1796, Park escaped, alone and with nothing but his horse and a pocket compass. On the 21st of July, 1796, Park reached the long-sought Niger River at Segou, being the first European to do so. He followed the river downstream 80 miles to Silla, where he was obliged to turn back, lacking the resources to go further.
On his return journey, begun on July 30, Park took a route more to the south than that originally followed, keeping close to the Niger as far as Bamako, thus tracing its course for some 300 miles. At Kamalia, Park fell ill, and owed his life to the kindness of a man in whose house he lived for seven months. Eventually, he reached Pisania again on 10 June 1797, returning to Scotland by way of Antigua on December 22. Park had been thought dead, and his return home with news of the discovery of the Niger River evoked great public enthusiasm. An account of his journey was drawn up for the African Association by Bryan Edwards, and his own detailed narrative appeared in 1799 (Travels in the Interior of Africa). The book was extremely popular.
Travels in the Interior of Africa was a success because it detailed what he observed, what he survived, and the people he encountered. His honest descriptions set a standard for future travel writers to follow. This gave Europeans a glimpse of what Africa was really like. Park introduced them to a vast, unexplored continent. After Park's death, public and political interest in Africa began to increase. He had proved that Africa could be explored. Perhaps the most lasting effect of Park's travels, though, was their influence on European governments.
***
Inventions and Innovations
*George Cayley (b. December 27, 1773, Scarborough, England - d. December 15, 1857, Brompton, England) designed the first
flying machine configured with fixed wings, control surfaces on the tail, and a
means of propulsion.
George Cayley was a prolific English engineer and one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight. In 1799, he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. He was a pioneer of aeronautical engineering and is sometimes referred to as "the father of aerodynamics". Designer of the first successful glider to carry a human being aloft, he discovered and identified the four aerodynamic forces of flight: weight, lift, drag, and thrust, which act on any flying vehicle. Modern aeroplane design is based on those discoveries including cambered wings. He is credited with the first major breakthrough in heavier-than-air flight and he worked over half a century before the development of powered flight, being acknowledged by the Wright brothers. He designed the first actual model of an aeroplane and also diagrammed the elements of vertical flight.
***
*Wilhelm Lampadius (b. August 8, 1772, Hehlen [in Germany] - d. April 13, 1842, Freiburg, Germany) experimented
with coal gas for lighting in the palace of the elector of Saxony at Dresden.
Gas lighting was
pioneered by French chemist and civil engineer Philippe Lebon who developed
methods for producing inflammable gas from wood. Lebon would make important contributions to
the theory of gas lighting and would foresee most nineteenth century uses of
illuminating gas.
*Scottish steam engineer William Murdock developed methods for purifying and storing gas. Murdock had worked in Cornwall for Boulton and Watt since 1779 and had carried out experiments in the distillation of coal, peat, and wood.
*William Murdock constructed a rotary steam engine based on a pump design by Pappenheim in 1636. Sealing problems caused this engine to have a very low efficiency. Murdock also patented the slide valve, which would replace the drop valves used in steam engines up to that time.
*Smithson Tennant (b. November 30, 1761, Selby, England - d. February 22, 1815, Boulogne, France) invented bleaching powder, calcium hypochlorite. Bleaching was also introduced in the manufacture of paper enabling the use of colored rags as well as white ones.
***
*Scottish steam engineer William Murdock developed methods for purifying and storing gas. Murdock had worked in Cornwall for Boulton and Watt since 1779 and had carried out experiments in the distillation of coal, peat, and wood.
*William Murdock constructed a rotary steam engine based on a pump design by Pappenheim in 1636. Sealing problems caused this engine to have a very low efficiency. Murdock also patented the slide valve, which would replace the drop valves used in steam engines up to that time.
*Smithson Tennant (b. November 30, 1761, Selby, England - d. February 22, 1815, Boulogne, France) invented bleaching powder, calcium hypochlorite. Bleaching was also introduced in the manufacture of paper enabling the use of colored rags as well as white ones.
Smithson Tennant was an English chemist. Tennant is best known for his discovery of the elements iridium and osmium, which he found in the residues from the solution of platinum ores in 1803. He also contributed to the proof of the identity of diamond and charcoal. The mineral tennantite is named after him.
***
Labor
*Welsh
industrialist Robert Owen married the daughter of Scottish industrialist David
Dale and became manager and co-owner of Dale’s cotton mill in England’s
Lancashire. Owen vowed “to make
arrangements to supersede the evil conditions [of the millhands] ... by good
conditions.”
Robert Owen (b. May 14, 1771 – d. 17 November 17, 1858) was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.
Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars: First, no one was responsible for his will and his own actions because his whole character is formed independently of himself; people are products of their heredity and environment, hence his support for education and labor reform. Second, all religions are based on the same ridiculous imagination, that make man a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic; or a miserable hypocrite; (though in his later years Owen embraced Spiritualism). Third, support for the putting-out system instead of the factory system.
***
*In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first strike by a labor organization, the Federal Society of Cordwainers (shoemakers), succeeded after nine days. In this strike, the term “scab” (strikebreaker) was used for the first time.
Legislation and the Law
*The first British income tax bill passed Parliament
(January 9).
The income tax
bill would produce revenue of six million pounds sterling for the year. Introduced by Prime Minister William Pitt as
a war measure, the law levied a standard rate of ten percent on incomes over
200 pounds sterling; taxed incomes of 60 to 199 pounds at reduced rates;
allowed deductions for children, life insurance premiums, repairs to property,
and tithes, and would raise 175 million pounds over the next seventeen years.
*Responding to a peace-seeking effort by Dr. George Logan, Congress passed legislation that prohibited private citizens from negotiating international affairs with foreign governments (January 30).
*The first federal quarantine act was passed by Congress, offering federal aid for local quarantine enforcement (February 23).
*New Hampshire adopted a resolution vigorously supporting the Alien and Sedition Acts (June 15).
***
*Responding to a peace-seeking effort by Dr. George Logan, Congress passed legislation that prohibited private citizens from negotiating international affairs with foreign governments (January 30).
*The first federal quarantine act was passed by Congress, offering federal aid for local quarantine enforcement (February 23).
*New Hampshire adopted a resolution vigorously supporting the Alien and Sedition Acts (June 15).
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four internal security laws passed by the United States Congress, restricting aliens and curtailing the excesses of an unrestrained press, in anticipation of an expected war with France. After the XYZ Affair (1797), war with France appeared inevitable. Federalists, aware that French military successes in Europe had been greatly facilitated by political dissidents in invaded countries, sought to prevent such subversion in the United States and adopted the Alien and Sedition Acts as part of a series of military preparedness measures.
***
*The third Trade and Intercourse Act was passed and the first federal agents were named.
The third Trade
and Intercourse Act carefully regulated who could have contact with People of
the Sovereign Nations. It restricted
anyone without a license from having “any trade with the Indians” and subjected
unlicensed traders to a fine and/or imprisonment. The act also provided for the presidential
appointment of temporary federal agents to the tribes, the first “Indian
agents.” The act was designed to keep
federal control over all aspects of relations with the People of the Sovereign
Nations.
***
*Gradual emancipation began in New York and New
Jersey.
*New York passed a gradual emancipation law.
*The second state constitution of Kentucky was adopted. State officers were subject to direct election.
Literature
*Charles Brockden Brown: Arthur Mervyn; Edgar Huntly; and Ormond, or the Secret Witness.
*English poet Thomas Campbell: The Pleasures of Hope, a poem in couplets which has the lines: “Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,/And robes the mountain in its azure hue.”
Thomas Campbell (b. July 27, 1777 – d. June 15, 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing especially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. In 1799, he wrote "The Pleasures of Hope", a traditional 18th century survey in heroic couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs—"Ye Mariners of England", "The Soldier's Dream", "Hohenlinden" and in 1801, "The Battle of Mad and Strange Turkish Princes".
***
*French writer Sophie Cottin (nee Risteau): Claire d’ Albe. {See A Female Perspective.}
*German writer Novalis: Geistliche Leider (Devotional Songs) and Heinrich von Otterdingen.
*German writer Friedrich von Schlegel: Lucine (Lucinde), an autobiographical novel.
*German writer Johann Friedrich von Schiller: Die Piccolomini (The Piccolominos) and Wallensteins Tod (Wallenstein’s Death). Schiller’s Wallenstein is a trilogy of plays that is considered to be the greatest historical drama in German literature.
Wallenstein is the popular designation for a trilogy of dramas by German author Johann Friedrich von Schiller. It consists of the plays Wallenstein's Camp (Wallensteins Lager) with a lengthy prologue, The Piccolomini (Die Piccolomini), and Wallenstein's Death (Wallensteins Tod). Schiller himself also structured the trilogy into two parts, with Wallenstein I including Wallenstein's Camp and The Piccolomini, and Wallenstein II consisting of Wallenstein's Death. He completed the trilogy in 1799.
In this drama, Schiller addresses the decline of the famous general Albrecht von Wallenstein, basing it loosely on actual historical events during the Thirty Years' War. Wallenstein fails at the height of his power as successful commander-in-chief of the imperial army when he begins to rebel against his emperor, Ferdinand II. The action is set some 16 years after the start of the war, in the winter of 1633/1634 and begins in the Bohemian city of Pilsen, where Wallenstein is based with his troops. For the second and third acts of the third play the action moves to Eger, where Wallenstein has fled and where he was assassinated on February 26, 1634.
Media
***
Media
*Editor
Charles Brockden Brown published the first quarterly review in the United
States, the American Review and Literary
Journal (April 1).
*After
the Brumaire coup in France on November 9, more than 50 Paris newspapers were
suppressed. By 1811 only four remained,
the same number as before the French Revolution.
Medicine
*English chemist Humphry Davy produced
laughing gas (nitrous oxide), found it “absolutely intoxicating” when inhaled
and suggested its use as an anaesthetic in minor surgery.
Davy inhaled sixteen (16)
quarts of the laughing gas and found that it made him immune to pain.
Nitrous oxide was first synthesized by English natural philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley in 1772, who called it phlogisticated nitrous air. Priestley published his discovery in the book Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775), where he described how to produce the preparation of "nitrous air diminished", by heating iron filings dampened with nitric acid.
The first important use of nitrous oxide was made possible by Thomas Beddoes and James Watt, who worked together to publish the book Considerations on the Medical Use and on the Production of Factitious Airs (1794). This book was important for two reasons. First, James Watt had invented a novel machine to produce "Factitious Airs" (i.e. nitrous oxide) and a novel "breathing apparatus" to inhale the gas. Second, the book also presented the new medical theories by Thomas Beddoes, that tuberculosis and other lung diseases could be treated by inhalation of "Factitious Airs".
The machine to produce "Factitious Airs" had three parts: A furnace to burn the needed material, a vessel with water where the produced gas passed through in a spiral pipe (for impurities to be "washed off"), and finally the gas cylinder with a gasometer where the gas produced, 'air,' could be tapped into portable air bags (made of airtight oily silk). The breathing apparatus consisted of one of the portable air bags connected with a tube to a mouthpiece. With this new equipment being engineered and produced by 1794, the way was paved for clinical trials, which began when Thomas Beddoes in 1798 established the "Pneumatic Institution for Relieving Diseases by Medical Airs" in Hotwells (Bristol). In the basement of the building, a large-scale machine was producing the gases under the supervision of a young Humphry Davy, who was encouraged to experiment with new gases for patients to inhale. The first important work of Davy was examination of the nitrous oxide, and the publication of his results in the book: Researches, Chemical and Philosophical (1800). In that publication, Davy notes the analgesic effect of nitrous oxide and its potential to be used for surgical operations.
Despite Davy's discovery that inhalation of nitrous oxide could relieve a conscious person from pain, another 44 years elapsed before doctors attempted to use it for anesthesia. The use of nitrous oxide as a recreational drug at "laughing gas parties", primarily arranged for the British upper class, became an immediate success beginning in 1799. While the effects of the gas generally make the user appear stuporous, dreamy and sedated, some people also "get the giggles" in a state of euphoria, and frequently, erupt in laughter.
***
*Digitalis was related to heart disease
for the first time by physician John Ferriar, who noted the effect of dried
foxglove leaves on heart action and relegated to secondary importance the use
of foxglove as a diuretic.
*Harvard medical professor Benjamin
Waterhouse administered the first United States vaccination against smallpox.
Benjamin Waterhouse (March 4, 1754, Newport, Rhode Island - October 2, 1846, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. He is most well known for being the first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine in the United States, which he carried out on his own family.
Waterhouse first wrote to then-President John Adams, his former roommate, hoping to spread the word about cowpox vaccinations preventing smallpox. When he found President Adams unresponsive, he wrote a letter to Vice President Thomas Jefferson entitled "A prospect of exterminating the smallpox."
Jefferson replied with a letter dated Christmas Day, 1800, and soon offered his support. Once Jefferson became President the following year, Waterhouse introduced Edward Jenner's method of cowpox vaccination in the United States. He attempted to maintain a monopoly over the cowpox vaccine, for both financial reasons and to protect the vaccine from incompetent or fraudulent physicians. Waterhouse made the first vaccinations in the United States on four of his children. He commissioned a controlled experiment at the Boston Board of Health in which 19 vaccinated and 2 unvaccinated boys were exposed to the smallpox virus. The vaccinated boys demonstrated immunity and the 2 unvaccinated boys succumbed to the disease.
***
Music
*German composer Ludwig van Beethoven:
Piano Sonata No. 8 (Opus 13) [the Sonate
Pathetique].
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a
German composer. He is generally
regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of music, and was the
predominant figure in the transitional period between the Classical and
Romantic eras in Western classical music.
His reputation and genius have inspired – and in many cases intimidated
– ensuing generations of composers, musicians, and audiences. While primarily known today as a composer,
Beethoven was also a celebrated pianist and conductor, and an accomplished
violinist.
Born in Bonn, Germany, Beethoven moved
to Vienna, Austria, in his early twenties, and settled there, studying with
Joseph Haydn and quickly gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. In his late twenties, Beethoven began to lose
his his hearing gradually, and yet he continued to produce notable masterpieces
throughout his life, even when his deafness was almost total. Beethoven was one of the first composers who
worked as a freelance – arranging subscription concerts, selling his
compositions to publishers, and gaining financial support from a number of wealthy
patrons – rather than being permanently employed by the church or by an
aristocratic court.
Beethoven was born at Bonngasse 515
(today Bonngasse 20) in Bonn, Germany to Johann van Beethoven (1740-1792) of
Flemish origin and Magdalena Keverich van Beethoven (1744-1787) of Slavic
ancestry. Beethoven was baptized on
December 17, but his family celebrated his birthday on December 16.
Beethoven’s first music teacher was his
father, a musician in the electoral court at Bonn, who was apparently a harsh
and unpredictable instructor. Johann
would often come home from a bar in the middle of the night and pull young
Ludwig out of bed to play for him and his friend. Beethoven’s talent was recognized at a very
early age. His first important teacher
was Christian Gottlob Neefe. In 1787,
young Beethoven traveled to Vienna for the first time, where he may have met
and played for Mozart. He was forced to
return home because his mother was dying of tuberculosis. Beethoven’s mother died when he was 16,
shortly followed by his sister, and for several years he was responsible for
raising his two younger brothers because of his father’s worsening alcoholism.
Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, where he studied
for a time with Joseph Haydn, though he had wanted to study with Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, who had died the previous year.
He received additional instruction from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger
(Vienna’s preeminent counterpoint instructor), and Antonio Salieri, the legendary
rival of Mozart. Beethoven immediately
established a reputation as a piano virtuoso.
His first works with opus numbers, a set of three piano trios, appeared
in 1795. He settled into the career
pattern he would follow for the remainder of his life. Rather than working for the church or a noble
court (as most composers before him had done), Beethoven supported himself
through a combination of annual stipends or single gifts from members of the
aristocracy, income from subscription concerts, concerts, and lessons, and
proceeds from sales of his work.
Prominent musicologists debate whether or not the Pathétique may have been inspired by Mozart's piano sonata K. 457, since both compositions are in C minor and have three very similar movements. The second movement, "Adagio cantabile", especially, makes use of a theme remarkably similar to that of the spacious second movement of Mozart's sonata. However, Beethoven's sonata uses a unique motif line throughout, a major difference from Haydn or Mozart’s creation.
Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, commonly known as Sonata Pathétique, was written in 1798 when the composer was 27 years old, and was published in 1799. Beethoven dedicated the work to his friend Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. Although commonly thought to be one of the few works to be named by the composer himself, it was actually named Grande sonate pathétique (to Beethoven's liking) by the publisher, who was impressed by the sonata's tragic sonorities.
Prominent musicologists debate whether or not the Pathétique may have been inspired by Mozart's piano sonata K. 457, since both compositions are in C minor and have three very similar movements. The second movement, "Adagio cantabile", especially, makes use of a theme remarkably similar to that of the spacious second movement of Mozart's sonata. However, Beethoven's sonata uses a unique motif line throughout, a major difference from Haydn or Mozart’s creation.
***
*The Creation (Die
Schoepfung) was performed at Vienna under Haydn’s direction (March 19).
***
*The Theresienmesse (Theresa Mass), Mass No. 10, by the Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn was performed (September 8).
Theresienmesse is a Mass in B flat major written by Joseph Haydn and named after Maria Theresa of the Two Sicilies, empress consort of Francis II. The empress herself was the soprano soloist at private performances of both The Creation and The Seasons in May 1801 at the Viennese Court. The title does not appear on the autograph score, which is labeled simply with the Latin word "Missa".
Between 1796 and 1802, Haydn composed six Masses to celebrate the name-day of Princess Maria Hermenegild (1768-1845), who was the wife of his patron Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy II. The Theresienmesse, written in 1799, belongs in this series. The work is thought to have been premiered on September 8, 1799. The location was the Bergkirche, near the Esterházy family seat in Eisenstadt, Austria.
***
Notable
Births
*Elizabeth Acton (1799-1859): English poet and cook
who produced one of England's first cookbooks for the lay reader (April 17). {See A
Female Perspective.}
*Jose Antonio
Aguirre (1799-1860): Spanish pioneer of the area near modern day San Diego,
California, was born. {See A
Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Mary Anning (1799-1847): British paleontologist who
became a professional fossil collector whose dramatic finds would create a
sensation in London geological circles.
Among her finds would be the remains of an ichthyosaur (1811), a
pleiosaur, and a pterodactyl. {See A Female Perspective.}
*Anna
Atkins [nee Anna Children] (1799-1871): English botanist and photographer who
is considered to be the first woman to create a photograph, was born (March 16).
{See A Female
Perspective.}
*Honore
de Balzac (1799-1850): French novelist whose writings helped establish the
modern form of the novel was born in Tours, France (May 20).
Balzac’s father was a man of southern peasant stock who worked in the civil service for 43 years under Louis XVI and Napoleon. Honoré’s mother came from a family of prosperous Parisian cloth merchants. His sister Laure (later de Surville) was his only childhood friend, and she became his first biographer.
Balzac was sent to school at the Collège des Oratoriens at Vendôme from age 8 to 14. At Napoleon’s downfall his family moved from Tours to Paris, where he went to school for two more years and then spent three years as a lawyer’s clerk. During this time, he already aimed at a literary career, but as the writer of Cromwell (1819) and other tragic plays he was utterly unsuccessful. He then began writing novels filled with mystic and philosophical speculations before turning to the production of potboilers—gothic, humorous, historical novels — written under composite pseudonyms. Then he tried a business career as a publisher, printer, and owner of a typefoundry, but disaster soon followed. In 1828 he was narrowly saved from bankruptcy and was left with debts of more than 60,000 francs. From then on his life was to be one of mounting debts and almost incessant toil. He returned to writing with a new mastery, and his literary apprenticeship was over.
Two works of 1829 brought Balzac to the brink of success. Les Chouans, the first novel he felt enough confidence about to have published under his own name, is a historical novel about the Breton peasants called Chouans who took part in a royalist insurrection against Revolutionary France in 1799. The other, La Physiologie du mariage (The Physiology of Marriage), is a humorous and satirical essay on the subject of marital infidelity, encompassing both its causes and its cure. The six stories in his Scènes de la vie privée (1830; “Scenes from Private Life”) further increased his reputation. These long short stories are for the most part psychological studies of girls in conflict with parental authority. The minute attention he gave to describing domestic background in his works anticipated the spectacularly detailed societal observations of his later Parisian studies.
From this point forward, Balzac spent much of his time in Paris. He began to frequent some of the best-known Parisian salons of the day and redoubled his efforts to set himself up as a dazzling figure in society. To most people, Balzac seemed full of exuberant vitality, talkative, jovial and robust, egoistic, and boastful. He adopted for his own use the heraldic bearings of an ancient noble family with which he had no connection and assumed the honorific particle de. He was an avid seeker of fame, fortune, and love but was above all conscious of his own genius. It was also at this time that he began to have love affairs with fashionable or aristocratic women at this time, finally gaining that firsthand understanding of mature women that is so evident in his novels.
Between 1828 and 1834 Balzac led a tumultuous existence, spending his earnings in advance as a dandy and man-about-town. A fascinating raconteur, he was fairly well received in society. But social ostentation was only a relaxation from phenomenal bouts of work—14 to 16 hours spent writing at his table in his white, quasi-monastic dressing gown, with his goose-quill pen and his endless cups of black coffee. In 1832 Balzac became friendly with Éveline Hanska, a Polish countess who was married to an elderly Ukrainian landowner. She, like many other women, had written to Balzac expressing admiration for his writing. They met twice in Switzerland in 1833—the second time in Geneva, where they became lovers—and again in Vienna in 1835. They agreed to marry when her husband died, and so Balzac continued to conduct his courtship of her by correspondence. The resulting Lettres à l’étrangère (“Letters to a Foreigner”), that appeared posthumously (4 vol., 1889–1950), are an important source of information for the history both of Balzac’s life and of his work.
To clear his debts and put himself in a position to marry Madame Hanska became Balzac’s great incentive. He was at the peak of his creative power. In the period 1832–35 he produced more than 20 works, including the novels Le Médecin de campagne (1833; The Country Doctor), Eugénie Grandet (1833), L’Illustre Gaudissart (1833; The Illustrious Gaudissart), and Le Père Goriot (1835), one of his masterpieces. Among the shorter works were Le Colonel Chabert (1832), Le Curé de Tours (1832; The Vicar of Tours), the trilogy of stories entitled Histoire des treize (1833–35; History of the Thirteen), and Gobseck (1835). Between 1836 and 1839 he wrote Le Cabinet des antiques (1839), the first two parts of another masterpiece, Illusions perdues (1837–43; Lost Illusions), César Birotteau (1837), and La Maison Nucingen (1838; The Firm of Nucingen). Between 1832 and 1837 he also published three sets of Contes drolatiques (Droll Stories). These stories, Rabelaisian in theme, are written with great verve and gusto in an ingenious pastiche of 16th-century language. During the 1830s he also wrote a number of philosophical novels dealing with mystical, pseudoscientific, and other exotic themes. Among these are La Peau de chagrin (1831; The Wild Ass’s Skin), Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (1831; The Unknown Masterpiece), Louis Lambert (1834), La Recherche de l’absolu (1834; The Quest of the Absolute), and Séraphîta (1834–35).
In all these varied works, Balzac emerged as the supreme observer and chronicler of contemporary French society. These novels are unsurpassed for their narrative drive, their large casts of vital, diverse, and interesting characters, and their obsessive interest in and examination of virtually all spheres of life. The contrast between provincial and metropolitan manners and customs; the commercial spheres of banking, publishing, and industrial enterprise; the worlds of art, literature, and high culture; politics and partisan intrigue; romantic love in all its aspects; and the intricate social relations and scandals among the aristocracy and the haute bourgeoisie.
The year 1834 marks a climax in Balzac’s career, for by then he had become totally conscious of his great plan to group his individual novels so that they would comprehend the whole of contemporary society in a diverse but unified series of books. There were to be three general categories of novels: Études analytiques (“Analytic Studies”), dealing with the principles governing human life and society; Études philosophiques (“Philosophical Studies”), revealing the causes determining human action; and Études de moeurs (“Studies of Manners”), showing the effects of those causes, and themselves to be divided into six kinds of scènes—private, provincial, Parisian, political, military, and country life. This entire project resulted in a total of 12 volumes (1834–37). By 1837 Balzac had written much more, and by 1840 he had hit upon a Dantesque title for the whole: La Comédie humaine. He negotiated with a consortium of publishers for an edition under this name, 17 volumes of which appeared between 1842 and 1848, including a famous foreword written in 1842. In 1845, having new works to include and many others in project, he began preparing for another complete edition. A “definitive edition” was published, in 24 volumes, between 1869 and 1876. The total number of novels and novellas comprised in the Comédie humaine is roughly 90.
Also in 1834 the idea of using “reappearing characters” matured. Balzac was to establish a pool of characters from which he would constantly and repeatedly draw, thus adding a sense of solidarity and coherence to the Comédie humaine. A certain character would reappear—now in the forefront, now in the background, of different fictions—in such a way that the reader could gradually form a full picture of him. Balzac’s use of this device places him among the originators of the modern novel cycle. In the end, the total number of named characters in the Comédie humaine is estimated to have reached 2,472, with a further 566 unnamed characters.
In January 1842 Balzac learned of the death of Wenceslas Hanski. He now had good expectations of marrying Éveline, but there were many obstacles, not the least being his inextricable indebtedness. She in fact held back for many years, and the period of 1842–48 shows Balzac continuing and even intensifying his literary activity in the frantic hope of winning her, though he had to contend with increasing ill health.
Balzac produced many notable works during the early and mid-1840s. These include the masterpieces Une Ténébreuse Affaire (1841; A Shady Business), La Rabouilleuse (1841–42; The Black Sheep), Ursule Mirouët (1841), and one of his greatest works, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1843–47; A Harlot High and Low). Balzac’s last two masterpieces were La Cousine Bette (1847; Cousin Bette) and Le Cousin Pons (1847; Cousin Pons).
In the autumn of 1847 Balzac went to Madame Hanska’s château at Wierzchownia and remained there until February 1848. He returned again in October to stay, mortally sick, until the spring of 1850. Then at last Éveline relented. They were married in March and went to live in Paris, where Balzac lingered on miserably for the few months before his death.
Balzac did not quite realize his tremendous aim of making his novels comprehend the whole of society at that time. His projected scenes of military and political life were only partially completed, and there were certain other gaps, for instance in regard to the new class of industrial workers. Nevertheless, few novelists have thronged their pages with men and women drawn from so many different spheres, nor with characters so widely representative of human passions and frailties, projected with dynamic and convincing force.
Balzac is regarded as the creator of realism in the novel. He is also acknowledged as having helped to establish the technique of the traditional novel, in which consequent and logically determined events are narrated by an all-seeing observer (the omniscient narrator) and characters are coherently presented. Balzac had exceptional powers of observation and a photographic memory, but he also had a sympathetic, intuitive capacity to understand and describe other people’s attitudes, feelings, and motivations. He was bent on illustrating the relation between cause and effect, between social background and character. His ambition was to “compete with the civil register,” exactly picturing his contemporaries in their class distinctions and occupations. In this he succeeded, but he went even further in his efforts to show that the human spirit has power over men and events—to become, as he has been called, “the Shakespeare of the novel.”
Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters, which are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. His writing influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Many of Balzac's works have been made into or inspired films, and they are a continuing source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers, and critics alike.
***
*Rene
Auguste Caillie (1799-1838): French
explorer.
René-Auguste Caillié, (b. Nov. 19, 1799, Mauzé, near La Rochelle, France — d. c. 1838, La Badère), was the first European to survive a journey to the West African city of Timbuktu (Tombouctou).
Before Caillié was 20 he had twice voyaged to Senegal and traveled through its interior. In 1824 he began to prepare for his journey to Timbuktu by learning Arabic and studying Islam.
Caillie traveled through part of Upper
Guinea to Timbuktu in 1824-1828. His
accounts of this journey, published in 1830, whetted the European appetite for
further exploration.
Born in Mauze, France, Caillie traveled
to Senegal at the age of 16 where, among other things, he carried supplies to
the Gray-Dochard expedition in Bondu.
After a stay in France and Guadeloupe, Caillie returned to Senegal,
determined to get to Timbuktu. Toward
this end, he spent eight months with the Brakna Maure learning Arabic and being
educated as a Muslim. Dressed as a
Muslim and stating that he was an Arab from Egypt who had been enslaved by
Christians, he started inland from Kakundi on April 19, 1827, and traveled across
Guinea to Kourousa and then to Kong with Manding trade caravans. For five
months, he was delayed by illness in the village of Tieme, located near present
day Odienne in the northern Ivory Coast.
The illness he suffered from was probably scurvy.
In January, 1828, he traveled overland
with a caravan that was heading northeastward over present day southern Mali,
passing Sienso near the town of San. He
arrived in Djenne in March, 1828. After
a short stay, he traveled down the Niger River toward Timbuktu and reached Lake
Debo on April 2, 1828. On April 20,
1828, Caillie entered Timbuktu, where he remained until May 4. Then, joining a caravan that was crossing the
Sahara, he reached Fegou on August 12, 1828, went on to Tangiers and returned
to France. Caillie was the first
European known to reach Timbuktu and return alive. He also was the first to write a detailed
description of the city.
***
*Diego Vigil
Cocana (1799-1845): Last president of the Federal Republic of Central
America. {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Melville
Beveridge Cox (1799-1833): American
Methodist Episcopal missionary. {See A Christian Perspective.}
*Johann Joseph Ignaz von
Dollinger (1799-1890): German historical scholar and Roman Catholic theologian
was born in Bamberg, Germany (February 28).
{See A Christian Perspective.}
*Margaret Eaton (1799-1879): Wife
of United States Senator John Henry Eaton, and the woman who had a central role
in the Petticoat affair that disrupted the Cabinet of Andrew Jackson (December
3). {See A Female Perspective.}
*Sarah Ellis (1799-1872): English author of numerous books that stressed
women's role in society. {See A Female Perspective.}
*Mariano Gomez
y Guard (1799-1872): Filipino priest who was executed for his alleged
participation in the Cavite mutiny (August 2). {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Catherine Gore (1799-1861): British novelist and dramatist who produced
over 70 works. {See A Female Perspective.}
*Gu Taiqing (1799-c. 1876): Chinese
poet. {See A Female Perspective.}
*Hanaya Yohei (1799-1858): Japanese culinary innovator.
Hanaya Yohei (1799–1858) is generally credited as the inventor of today's Tokyo-style nigiri sushi (hand-formed sushi) at the end of Japan's Edo period.
Sushi at his time was made from freshly captured fish from the nearby Tokyo Bay. This ruled out many of today's popular materials such as salmon roe (ikura). Even though Edo (Tokyo) was a coastal city, food safety was still a concern before the invention of refrigeration. To prevent spoilage, Hanaya either slightly cooked or marinated the fish in soy sauce or vinegar. It was quite reasonable for people to dislike the fatty belly meat of tuna because it would decompose very quickly. Hanaya marinated the lean red meat in soy sauce. Then he served the sliced fish on vinegared rice balls that are large by today's standard. His sushi was totally different from today's "raw fish" stereotype.
Hanaya's cookery was a departure from Japanese eating habits of the time. In the early years, a chef only made sushi part-time. Then, slowly, inexpensive sushi stands (yatai) emerged. After the government outlawed these questionable food stands, sushi restaurants (ryotei) became mainstream. Today, relatively inexpensive conveyor belt sushi (kaiten-zushi) has become popular.
***
*Tanaka Hisashige
(1799-1881): Japanese engineer and
inventor.
Tanaka Hisashige (September 18, 1799 – November 7, 1881) was a Japanese engineer and inventor during the late Edo and Meiji period Japan. He is one of the founders of what later became Toshiba Corporation. He has been called the "Thomas Edison of Japan" or Karakuri Giemon.
Tanaka was born in Kurume, Chikugo province (present day Fukuoka prefecture) as the eldest son of a tortoise shell craftsman. A gifted artisan, at the age of 14, he had already invented a loom. At 20, he made karakuri dolls, with hydraulic mechanisms, capable of relatively complex movements, which were then much in demand by the aristocrats of Kyoto, the daimyo in various feudal domains, and by the Shōgun’s court in Edo. At age 21, he was performing around the country at festivals with clockwork dolls he constructed himself.
In 1834, Tanaka relocated to Osaka, where he experimented in pneumatics, hydraulics and various forms of lighting based on rapeseed oil. However, he soon moved on to Kyoto, where he studied rangaku, or western learning, and astronomy. In 1851, he built a Myriad year clock which is now designated as an Important Cultural Property by the Japanese government. With the development of the Sonnō jōi movement, the atmosphere in Kyoto became increasingly dangerous towards foreign influences and technology, and Tanaka was invited by Sano Tsunetami to the Saga Domain in Kyūshū, where he was welcomed by Nabeshima Naomasa.
While in Saga, Tanaka designed and built Japan’s first domestically made steam locomotive and steam warship. Although he had no previous experience in the field, he had access to a Dutch reference book, and had watched the demonstration of a steam engine conducted by the Russian diplomat Yevfimy Putyatin during his visit to Nagasaki in 1853.
He was also involved in the construction of a reverberatory furnace in Saga for the production of Armstrong guns. In 1864, he returned to his native Kurume Domain, where he assisted in the development of modern weaponry.
In 1873, six years after the Meiji Restoration, Tanaka, by then aged 74 and still energetic, was invited by Kubusho (the Ministry of Industries) to come to Tokyo to make telegraphs at the ministry's small factory. He relocated to the Ginza district in 1875 and rented the second floor of a temple in what is now Roppongi as a workshop which later evolved into his first company - Tanaka Seisakusho (Tanaka Engineering Works), the first manufacturer of telegraph equipment in Japan.
After his death in 1881, his son founded Tanaka Engineering Works (Tanaka Seizōsho). The company changed its name after Tanaka’s death to Shibaura Engineering Works (Shibaura Seizōsho) in 1904, and after a merger in 1939 with Tokyo Denki became Tokyo Shibaura Denki, more commonly known today as Toshiba.
***
*Mary
Howitt (1799-1888): English poet and author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly (March 12). {See A
Female Perspective.}
*Avdotia Istomina (1799-1848): Most celebrated Russian
ballerina of the 19th century. {See A Female Perspective.}
*Jalaram Bapa: Hindu saint. {See A Hindu Perspective.}
*Pauline-Marie Jaricot
(1799-1862): Founder of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith and the
Association of the Living Rosary (July 22).
{See A Christian Perspective.}
*Paul Jennings (1799-1874), an African American slave
owned by President James Madison who wrote a memoir about his life in the White
House, was born. {See A Pan-African Perspective.}
*Marie Lesieur (1799-1890):
French ballet dancer (October 8). {See A Female Perspective.}
*Manuel Maria
de Llano Lozano (1799-1863): Separatist Mexican politician who governed Nuevo
Leon (March 1). {See A Pan-Hispanic
Perspective.}
*Joaquin
Madariaga (1799-1848): Argentine soldier and politician who was a leader of the
resistance against the national government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Maeda Toshiyasu (1799-1859): Japanese
naturalist.
Maeda Toshiyasu
(March 23, 1799 - September 14, 1859) was a Japanese naturalist and entomologist. He was a daimyo (territorial lord) of Toyama
and with other daimyos and officials of the shogunate organized a society of
naturalists which met each month. An account was written of the subject
discussed, for instance, in September 1840 they discussed the beetle family
Scarabaeidae and wrote Kyôro-shakô-zusetsu
in which twenty chafer species are scientifically drawn and described. As these studies were refined each member of
the group became a specialist. Maeda
learned the Dutch language (the Japanese naturalists followed the German
Philipp Franz von Siebold who was then employed by the Dutch) and translated
the Dutch language Systema Naturae into Japanese.
***
*Makino Tadamasa
(1799-1858): Japanese daimyo. {See A Pan-Asian Perspective.}
*John
Meshullam (1799-1878): British Jew who established an agricultural farm in
Palestine in 1850. {See A Jewish Perspective.}
*Benjamin Namakeha (c.1799-1860): Hawaiian
high chief, is believed to have been born in this year. {See An Indigenous Peoples’
Perspective.}
*Nathaniel B. Palmer (1799-1877):
American sea captain and Antarctic explorer was born in Stonington, Connecticut
(August 8).
Nathaniel Brown Palmer (b. August 8, 1799, Stonington, Connecticut, United States — d. June 21, 1877, San Francisco, California), was an American sea captain and explorer after whom Palmer Land, a stretch of western Antarctic coast and islands, is named.
Palmer went to sea at the age of 14. He served first as a sailor on a blockade runner in the War of 1812 He later became a sealer, and his South Sea explorations were largely stimulated by the desire to locate new seal rookeries. Becoming captain of the schooner Galina in 1818, Palmer began explorations of the Cape Horn region and western Antarctic the following year. In 1820 he reported a landfall on the coast of Antarctica, which he called Palmer Land. Whether he was the first person to view Antarctica is controversial because Russian explorer Fabien Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and English explorer Edward Bransfield also claimed to have been the first to sight it in 1820. On these and subsequent voyages, Palmer discovered the Gerlache Strait and Orleans Channel in Antarctica as well as the South Orkney Islands.
From 1822 to 1826 he engaged in trade on the Spanish Main and helped to transport troops and supplies to Simón Bolívar during the war of South American independence. Throughout much of his career Palmer displayed a keen interest in shipbuilding and helped to design packets (passenger boats), pleasure yachts, and clipper ships.
After concluding a successful sealing career, Palmer, still in the prime of life, switched his attention to the captaining of fast sailing ships for the transportation of express freight. In 1843, Captain Palmer took command of the Paul Jones on her maiden voyage from Boston to Hong Kong, arriving in 111 days. In this new role, the Connecticut captain traveled many of the world's principal sailing routes. Observing the strengths and weaknesses of the ocean-going sailing ships of his time, Palmer suggested and designed improvements to their hulls and rigging. The improvements made Palmer a co-developer of the mid-19th century clipper ship.
Palmer closed his sailing career and established himself in his hometown of Stonington as a successful owner of clipper ships sailed by others. He died in 1877, at the age of 78.
Palmer Land, part of the Antarctic Peninsula, as well as the Palmer Archipelago, were named in honor for Nathaniel Palmer.
The Antarctic science and research program operated by the United States government continues to recall Palmer's role in the exploration of the Antarctic area. Palmer Station, located in the seal islands that Palmer explored, the clipper ship N.B. Palmer (built by Jacob Aaron Westervelt) and the Antarctic icebreaker RV Nathaniel B. Palmer are named after Captain Palmer.
Hero Bay, in the South Shetland Islands, is named for Captain Palmer's sloop Hero, one of the vessels of the Pendleton sealing fleet from Stonington which visited the islands in 1820-21.
***
*Jose Prieto
(1799-1875), a Chilean general who was behind the 1851 revolt of the Chilean
southern provinces, was born (March 25).
{See A Pan-Hispanic
Perspective.}
*Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837): Russian
poet, novelist, and dramatist, was born in Moscow, Russia (June 7). {See
also A Pan-African Perspective.}
The greatest poet of Russia, Pushkin was born
into a noble family and educated at the elite Corps of Pages. At an early age,
he came under the influence of the ideas of the French enlightenment. Exiled twice for radical views expressed in
his poetry, he maintained close contacts with the leaders of the future
Decembrist rebellion. They, however,
shielded him from their activities so as not to embroil him in their
conspiracy. So famous did Pushkin become that Czar Nicholas I personally
censored all of his writings. An
accomplished literary scholar, Pushkin brought much of Western literary manners
to Russia and greatly influenced the development of its literary language. He died fighting a historically controversial
duel.
***
*Raghunatha Tondaiman (1799-1839): Ruler of the princely state of
Pudukkottai. {See A Pan-Asian Perspective.}
*Levi Richards (1799-1876): Early leader of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [the Mormons] (April 14). {See A Christian Perspective.}
Joaquin
Bernardo Calvo Rosales (1799-1865): Costa Rican politician who signed
the Calvo treaty, the first border agreement between Costa Rica and Colombia. {See A
Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
John Brown Russwurm (1799-1851): First superintendent of
schools in Liberia and Governor of the African colony of Maryland and the
founder of Freedom’s Journal (the
first African American owned newspaper published in the United States). {See also A Pan-African Perspective.}
John Brown Russwurm (1799–1851) was an American abolitionist from Jamaica, known for his newspaper, Freedom's Journal. He moved from the United States to govern the Maryland section of an African American colony in Liberia, dying there in 1851.
Russwurm was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica to an English merchant father and an unknown black slave. The family stayed in Jamaica until 1807 when Russwurm was sent to Quebec. In 1812, father and son moved to Portland, Maine, where the elder Russwurm married widower Susan Blanchard in 1813. Blanchard (now Russwurm) insisted her husband grant “John Brown”, as he was then known, his full birth name. His father did so, and the now named “John Brown Russwurm” lived with his father, stepmother and her children from a previous marriage, accepted as part of the family. The elder Russwurm died in 1815 but his son stayed close to his stepmother, even after she re-married to become Susan Hawes. The John B. Russwurm House in Portland was owned by the family and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Russwurm attended Hebron Academy in Maine, focusing on his studies to finish his education and earning the nickname "Honest John". Graduating in his early twenties, he taught at an African-American school in Boston. Several years later he re-located back to Maine to live with his stepmother and her new husband, and they helped Russwurm pay for further education when he enrolled in Bowdoin College in 1824. Upon graduation in 1826, Russwurm became first African-American to graduate from Bowdoin College and third African-American to graduate from an American college.
Russwurm moved to New York City in 1827. On March 16 of that year, Russwurm, along with his co-editor, Samuel Cornish published the first edition of Freedom's Journal, an abolitionist newspaper dedicated to opposition of slavery. Freedom's Journal was the first newspaper in the United States to be owned, operated, published and edited by African Americans. Upon becoming senior editor in September 1827, Russwurm used his position to change the paper's initially negative stance on the colonialization of Africa by African-Americans to a positive advocacy for this position. These strong views forced Russwurm's resignation in March 1829, after which he immigrated to Liberia.
Upon emigrating to Liberia, Russwurm started work as the colonial secretary for the American Colonization Society between 1830 and 1834. He worked as the editor of the Liberia Herald, though he resigned his post in 1835 to protest America's colonization policies. Russwurm also served as the superintendent of education in Liberia's capital, Monrovia.
In 1833, Russwurm married Sarah McGill, the daughter of the Lieutenant-Governor of Monrovia, with whom he had a daughter and three sons. In 1836, he became the first black governor of the Maryland section of Liberia, a post he held until his death. In this post, Russwurm encouraged the immigration of African-Americans to Maryland and supported agriculture and trade. In 1850, shortly before his death, Russwurm returned to Maine for a visit, bringing two of his sons with him. They were enrolled at North Yarmouth Academy between 1850 and 1852 where they lived with their step-grandmother, Susan Hawes.
During his time in Liberia, Russwurm learned several of the native languages, encouraged trade and diplomatic relations with neighboring countries as well as whites. There is a statue of John Russwurm at his burial site at Harper, Cape Palmas, Liberia. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed John Brown Russwurm on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
***
*Jose de la
Cruz Sanchez (1799-1878): Eleventh Alcalde (Mayor) of San Francisco (November
8). {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Christian Friedrich Schonbein
(1799-1868): German chemist was born in Metzingen, Germany (October 18).
Christian Friedrich Schönbein, (b. October 18, 1799, Metzingen, Swabia — d. August 29, 1868, Sauersberg, near Baden-Baden), was a German chemist who discovered and named ozone (1840) and was the first to describe guncotton (nitrocellulose). His teaching posts included one at Epsom, England, before he joined the faculty at the University of Basel, Switzerland (1828), where he was appointed professor of chemistry and physics in 1835. He remained there until his death in 1868, and was buried in Basel.
It was while doing experiments on the electrolysis of water at the University of Basel that Schönbein first began to notice a distinctive odor in his laboratory. This smell gave Schönbein the clue to the presence of a new product from his experiments. Because of the pronounced smell, Schönbein coined the term ‘ozone’ for the new gas, from the Greek word ‘ozein’, meaning ‘to smell’. Schönbein described his discoveries in publications in 1840. He later found that the smell of ozone was similar to that produced by the slow oxidation of white phosphorus.
The ozone smell Schönbein detected is the same as that occurring in the vicinity of a thunderstorm, an odor that indicates the presence of ozone in the atmosphere.
Although his wife had forbidden him to do so, Schönbein occasionally experimented at home in the kitchen. One day in 1845, when his wife was away, he spilled a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid. After using his wife's cotton apron to mop it up, he hung the apron over the stove to dry, only to find that the cloth spontaneously ignited and burned so quickly that it seemed to disappear. Schönbein, in fact, had converted the cellulose of the apron, with the nitro groups (added from the nitric acid) serving as an internal source of oxygen. When heated, the cellulose was completely and suddenly oxidized.
Schönbein recognized the possibilities of the new compound. Ordinary black gunpowder, which had reigned supreme in the battlefield for the past 500 years, exploded into thick smoke, blackening the gunners, fouling cannons and small arms, and obscuring the battlefield. Nitrocellulose was perceived as a possible "smokeless powder" and a propellant for artillery shells thus it received the name of guncotton.
Attempts to manufacture guncotton for military use failed at first because the factories were prone to explode and, above all else, the burning speed of straight guncotton was always too high. It was not until 1884 that Paul Vieille tamed guncotton into a successful progressive smokeless gunpowder called Poudre B. Later on, in 1891, James Dewar and Frederick Augustus Abel also managed to transform gelatinized guncotton into a safe mixture, called cordite because it could be extruded into long thin cords before being dried.
He also did research on the passivity of iron, the
properties of hydrogen peroxide, and catalysis. In his lifetime he produced
more than 360 scientific papers.
***
*John Seys (1799-1872): American agent
for recaptured Africans (1858-1862). {See
A Pan-African Perspective.}
*Jedediah Smith (1799-1831): American
hunter, trapper, fur trader, and explorer, was born (January 6).
Jedediah
(“Diah”) Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was a hunter, trapper,
fur trader, trailblazer, author, cartographer, and explorer of the Rocky
Mountains, the American West Coast and the Southwest during the 19th century. Nearly forgotten by historians almost a century after
his death, Smith has been rediscovered as an American hero who was the first
European American man to travel overland from the Salt Lake frontier, the
Colorado River, the Mojave Desert, and finally into California. Smith was the
first United States citizen to explore and eastwardly cross the Sierra Nevada
and the treacherous Great Basin. Smith also was the first American to travel up
the California coast to reach the Oregon Country. Not only was he the first to
do this, but he and Robert Stuart discovered the South Pass.
This path became the main route used by pioneers to travel to the Oregon
Country. Surviving three massacres and one bear mauling, Jedediah Smith's
explorations and documented discoveries were highly significant in opening the
American West to expansion by white settlers and cattlemen.
Smith
was born in Jericho, now Bainbridge, New York on January 6, 1799. His early New
England ancestors include Thomas
Bascom, constable of Northampton,
Massachusetts, who came to America in
1634. Thomas Bascom was of Huguenot and French Basque
ancestry. Smith came from two God-fearing New England families and was personally taught by Methodist
circuit preachers. Around 1810, Smith's father, who owned a general store,
allegedly was caught using counterfeit currency. To protect his families
reputation the elder Smith moved his family West to Erie County, Pennsylvania. While growing up, Smith's love of nature and adventure came from his
mentor, Dr. Titus G. V. Simons, a pioneer physician who was on close terms with
the Smith family. Simons gave the young Smith a copy of Lewis and Clark’s journal to the Pacific. By legend, Smith is
claimed to have carried this journal on all of his travels throughout the
American West. His family's nickname for him while growing up was
"Diah". The Smith family moved westward again to Ohio and settled in Green Township or what is now
called Ashland County in 1817.
While in the Green Township,
the Smith family was running low on income. In 1821, Jedediah began writing his
journal and traveled to Illinois in an effort to find employment. By 1822,
Jedediah traveled to St. Louis and responded to an advertisement in the
Missouri Gazzette placed by General William H. Ashley. General Ashley and Major
Andrew Henry were partner owners of the American Fur Company. According to the
advertisement, General Ashley was looking for "Enterprising Young Men" to explore the Missouri River and
engage in the fur trade business in the Rocky Mountains. Jedediah, a 6 foot
tall, blue eyed 23 year old with a commanding presence, impressed Ashley enough
to hire him. Ashley initially led the expedition and Jedediah got his first
glimpse of the frontier West coming in contact with Sioux and Arikaras tribes.
Jedediah finally reached Fort Arikaras, under the control of Major Andrew Henry
at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains on the Yellowstone River. On his first
expedition up the Missouri, Jedediah learned to trap beaver and hunt buffalo.
In 1822, Gen. Ashley ordered
Smith to come back down the Missouri to Grand River. When Jedediah returned,
the Arikaras natives, who were becoming increasingly hostile, attacked and
massacred thirteen (13) of Ashley's men. Jedediah fought bravely, and the
surviving men, including General Ashley, took note of Jedediah's conduct during
the battle. Subsequently, Ashley appointed Smith as Captain of his men.
In
1823, as a leader of Ashley's men, Jedediah took a beaver trapping party and
explored the Rocky Mountains south of the Yellowstone River. The party spent the rest of 1823 Wintering
in the Wind River Valley. In 1824, Smith launched an exploratory expedition to
find an expedient route through the Rocky Mountains. Smith was able to retrieve
information from Crow natives. When
communicating with the Crow, one of Smith's men made a unique map (made of buffalo
hide and sand), and the Crow were able to show Jedediah and his men the
direction to the South Pass. Jedediah and his men crossed through this pass in
the Rocky Mountains and were able to reach the Green River in what is now Utah.
From
1824 to 1825, Jedediah and his men explored the Rocky Mountains and trapped the
Green, Bear, Snake, and Clark's Fork Rivers. On July 1, 1825 Smith became
partners with William H. Ashley. Ashley's other partner Andrew Henry had retired from the fur trade. The re-discovery
of the South Pass from the Crow Indians was very important since this was the
fastest and most direct route to get to the western slopes of the Rocky
Mountains and into California.
Smith
was often recognized by significant facial scarring due to a grizzly bear attack
along the Cheyenne River. In
1824, while looking for the Crow tribe to obtain fresh horses and get westward
directions, Jedediah was stalked and attacked by a large grizzly bear. The huge
bear jumped and tackled Jedediah to the ground. Jedediah's ribs were broken and
members of his party witnessed Smith fighting the bear, which ripped open his
side with its claws and took his head in its mouth. The bear suddenly retreated
and the men ran to help Smith. They found his scalp and ear nearly ripped off, but he convinced a friend, Jim Clyman, to sew it
loosely back on, giving him directions. The trappers fetched water, bound up
his broken ribs, and cleaned his wounds. After recuperating from his bloody
wounds and broken ribs, Jedediah wore his hair long to cover the large scar
from his eyebrow to his ear.
In
1826, William H. Ashley, retired from the fur trade and in a complicated business arrangement
sold his share to the newly created firm of Jedediah Smith, David E. Jackson,
and William L. Sublette. Smith and company proceeded
to make two expeditions to California in 1826 and 1827, which landed him in
trouble with the Mexican authorities. As with the Zebulon
Pike expedition two decades earlier,
the authorities saw Smith's party as a harbinger of future trouble with the
United States. Unlike Pike's expedition, which was commissioned by the United
States Army, the Smith party was a
private commercial venture. Although five members of the 1826 party carried
United States passports, the
excursion deep into Mexican territory was unauthorized by the United States
government and without permission from the Mexican government.
In its first trip, the Smith
party followed the Colorado River deep into the west in search of new beaver
hunting grounds, and ended up in harsh territory. To gather supplies for the
return trip, the group chose to travel to California. After an arduous pass
through the mountains into the Mojave Desert, the party was attacked by a group of Mohaves, and lost several men. Finding shelter with
a friendly Mojave village, the men recuperated and met two Tongva men, who offered to guide them to San
Gabriel Mission. The guides led them
through the desert via a path that avoided Death Valley and which more or less follows the route of
today's Interstate 15. From Soda
Lake, they followed the intermittent Mojave
River into the San Bernardino
Mountains, which they crossed, emerging
at the point where today the Community of Etiwanda is, and into a vastly different environment,
the more inviting California that sailors and newspapers talked about on the
East Coast. Rather than head to the nearby mission ranch, they quickly made their way west (following
the path of the future Route 66),
arriving at the Mission on November 27, 1826.
They
were received warmly by the President of the mission, José Bernardo Sánchez,
who managed to hide any misgivings he might have had. Father Sánchez gave
Jedidiah and his men a lavish dinner at Mission San Gabriel. (Several of the
Smith party remembered Sánchez fondly in their journals.) Sánchez advised Smith
to communicate with Jefe Político
(governor) José María Echeandía,
who was at San Diego, about his
party's status in the country.
On December 8, Echeandía ordered Smith to San Diego, apparently under arrest
(there was one symbolic soldier accompanying the party of mission priests and a
British sea merchant escorting Smith). The rest of the party remained at the
mission. Badly needing supplies, they quickly found work to do around the
mission under the supervision of Joseph "José" Chapman, a former
impressed sailor in crew of Hippolyte de Bouchard, who had become a naturalized citizen of Mexico. In San Diego, Smith was
interviewed several times by Echeandía, who never became convinced that Smith
was only looking for food and shelter. Smith asked for permission to travel
north to the Columbia River,
where known paths could quickly take his party back to United States territory.
Smith even handed over his journals in an attempt to prove his intentions.
However, Echeandía delayed a quick resolution, forwarding the issue for the
authorities in Sonora to review, much to Smith's displeasure. After being
hounded by Smith for a month, Echeandía released Smith and his men on the
promise that they leave California by the path they entered and never return.
Nevertheless, once released, the party made their way to the San Joaquín
Valley, which they explored.
By
early May 1827 Smith and his party had accumulated over 1500 pounds of
beaver. Getting these furs to the mountain man rendezvous
near Great Salt Lake was clearly a problem. Smith had traveled 350 miles north
but had seen no break in the wall of the Sierra. He turned up the rugged canyon
of what would later be called the American River (named after his party). The
snow was too deep. Had he completed his crossing this far north, it is possible
he could have found Lake Tahoe and the Humboldt River in Nevada, the vital
route across the Great Basin later used by California immigrants. But the heavy
snow forced Smith into a decision: he would save his horses, and his men, by
heading back west to the central valley and the Stanislaus River and re-establish
camp there. Peter Skene Ogden, a
year and a half later in 1828, discovered the Humbolt River basin's natural
route. Smith, having taken only two men and some
extra horses, began what would become his epic crossing of the Sierra Nevada
somewhat further south, crossing in the vicinity of Ebbets Pass. His plan was
to get to rendezvous as quickly as he could and return to his California
trapping party with more men later in the year.
After
crossing the Sierra Nevada, Smith likely saw Walker Lake and continued
east across central Nevada. His route was straight through some of the most
difficult desert in North America, known as the Great Basin. One man, Robert Evans, collapsed and could
go no further. Smith and Silas Gobel briefly left Evans and pressed on to the
foot of a mountain. Finding some water, Jed went back and rescued Evans. The
three eventually reached the Great Salt Lake, a beautiful sight to Smith as he
called it “my home of the wilderness”. Local Indians told him the whites were
gathered further north at “the Little Lake” (Bear Lake). The three de facto explorers reached the
rendezvous on July 3. The mountain men celebrated Smith's arrival with a cannon
salute (the first wheeled vehicle ever brought this far west) for they had
given up on Smith and his party for lost.
Despite
Echeandía's warning, Smith returned to California the next year with eighteen
men and two women following the Colorado River and Mojave Desert route he now
knew well. At the Colorado River, the party was attacked by the Mojave, killing
ten men and taking the two women. Smith and the other survivors were again well
received in San Gabriel. The party moved north to meet with the group that had
been left in the San Joaquin Valley. Unlike in San Gabriel, they were coolly
received by the priests at Mission San José, who had already received warning of Smith's
renewed presence in the area. Echeandía, who was at the time in Monterey attending business, once again arrested
Smith, this time along with his men. However, despite the breach of trust, the
governor once again released Smith on the same promise to leave the province
immediately and not to return, and as before, Smith and his party remained in
California hunting in the Sacramento Valley for several months, before heading
north along the Pacific Coast to use the Columbia River to return to their
headquarters. Jedediah became the first explorer to reach the Oregon
Country overland by traveling up the
California coast. However, his second run-in with the authorities, in addition
to the extreme hardships his parties experienced on both trips, convinced him
never to return to California, and he devoted his next years to building up his
fur company.
In the Oregon Country,
Smith's party fell into conflict over a stolen ax with the Umpqua people near
the Umpqua River. Smith's party had threatened to execute the man they accused
of stealing the ax. Later, Smith's group was attacked and fifteen of Smith's
nineteen men were killed. Smith managed to reach the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC)
post at Fort Vancouver, where he received aid. HBC governor George Simpson
happened to be at Fort Vancouver at the time, and he both sympathized with
Smith and chastised him for treating the Umpqua harshly. Simpson sent Alexander
McLeod south to rescue the remnants of Smith's party and their goods. McLeod
returned to Fort Vancouver with 700 beaver skins and 39 horses, all in bad
condition. John McLoughlin, in charge of Fort Vancouver, paid Smith $2,600 for
the goods. In return, Smith assured that his American
fur trade company would confine its operations to the region east of the Great
Divide.
In 1829, Captain Smith
personally organized a fur trade expedition into the Blackfeet territory. Smith
was able to capture a good cache of beaver before being repulsed by hostile
Blackfeet. A young Jim Bridger served as a riverboat pilot on the Powder River
during the profitable mountain man expedition. In four years of western fur
trapping, the firm of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette was able to make a
substantial profit. At an 1830 rendezvous on the Wild River Smith, Jackson, and
Sublette sold their fur trading company to Tom Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette,
Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb, and John Baptiste Gervais. These five men formed what
would become known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. In 1830, Smith retired
from the fur trading business and, on October 11, returned to St. Louis with a
profitable bounty.
After
Smith returned to St. Louis in 1830, his partners and himself wrote a letter on
October 29 to Secretary of War John H. Eaton and informed Eaton of the "military
implications" in terms of the British allegedly alienating the Indigenous
Peoples towards any American trappers in the Pacific Northwest. Smith's letter was an early statement of
what would soon become the national interest.
Smith
had not forgotten the financial struggles of his family in Ohio. After making a
sizable profit from the sale of furs, over $17,000 ($408,000 2009), Smith
sent $1,500 to his family in Green Township. Upon receiving this windfall, his
brother Ralph bought a farm. Smith also bought a house on First Avenue in St.
Louis to be shared with his brothers.
Smith bought two African slaves to take care of the property in St. Louis.
Smith's busy schedule in St.
Louis soon found him and Samuel Parkman making a map of Smith's cartographic discoveries
in the West. Smith, in order to make his map complete, needed first hand
information on the Southwest, an area he had not extensively explored. In 1831,
Smith and his partners formed a supply company of 74 men, twenty-two wagons,
and a "six-pounder" artillary cannon for protection. At the request
of William H. Ashley, Smith received a passport from Senator Thomas Benson on
March 3, 1831. Smith and company left St. Louis to trade in Santa Fe on April
10, 1831.
In
1831, Smith became involved in the supply trade known as the "commerce of
the prairies". Smith was leading supply wagons for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company on the Santa Fe Trail in
May, 1831 when he left the group to scout for water. He never returned to the group. The remainder of the
party proceeded on to Santa Fe hoping Smith would meet them there, but he never
arrived. A short time later, members of the trading party discovered a Mexican
merchant at the Santa Fe market offering several of Smith's personal belongings
for sale. When questioned about the items, the merchant indicated that he had
acquired them from a band of Comanche hunters.
A
further account in Give Your Heart to the
Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men by Winifred Blevins, cites details of
Smith's encounter with the Comanches in a box canyon. By their account, four
braves trapped Smith in the canyon.
According to Dale L. Morgan,
Jedediah Smith's biographer, Jedediah was looking for water for the 1831
expedition when he came upon an estimated 15–20 Comanches. There was a brief
face to face stand off until the Comanches scared his horse and shot him in the
left shoulder. After gasping from the injury, Jedediah wheeled his horse around
and with one rifle shot was able to kill their chief. The Comanches then rushed
on Jedediah, who did not have time to use his pistols, and stabbed him to death
with lances. Austin Smith, Jedediah's brother, was able to retrieve Jedediah's
rifle and pistols that the Indians had taken and traded to the Mexicans.
Jedidiah Smith was an
atypical mountain man. Following Methodist practices, Smith was known to be a
reserved pious man who often read the Bible, meditated, and prayed. Smith never
boasted and having a stern personality only rarely was known to have any sense
of humor. Smith did not practice sexual relations with Indigenous American
women. Unlike contemporary mountain men, Smith never smoked, got drunk, or used
profanity. Smith was known for his many systematic recorded observations on
nature and topography.
While travelling overland
throughout the American West, Jedediah's policy with the POTSN was to maintain
friendly relations with gifts and exchanges. However, if he felt it was
necessary to have a show of force against a hostile tribe, he would make a
demonstration by having one or two tribe members killed. This was done to
discourage any further tribal aggression against himself and his party. Also,
Smith punished his men for indiscriminately shooting Indigenous Americans
without justifiable cause. Smith's reluctance to kill Indigenous Americans was
due to his Methodist faith and training. Smith held contemporary beliefs that
Indigenous Americans were for the most part intellectually inferior to whites
and liars. Smith claimed that Indians were "children of nature"; a
link between animals and humans.
Jedediah
Smith's explorations were the main basis for accurate Pacific-West maps. All
the travels and discoveries of the trappers and fur traders since Ashley went
into the map of the western United States he prepared in the winter of 1830–31.
This map has been called “a landmark in mapping of the American West”. In a eulogy for Smith printed in the Illinois Magazine for June 1832 the
unknown author claimed “This map is now probably the best extant, of the Rocky
Mountains, and the country on both sides, from the States to the Pacific.” The original map is lost, but its content was
superimposed probably by George Gibbs on a base map by John C. Frémont, which
is on file at the American Geographical Society of New York.
Smith's
exploration of northwestern California is commemorated in the names of the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and the Smith River.
Most
of the western slope of Wyoming's famous Teton Range is named the Jedediah Smith
Wilderness after him. And the Jedediah
Smith Memorial Trail runs between Folsom and Sacramento, California, through the former gold-dredging fields that are now the American
River Parkway.
An
inscription on the Madonna of the Trail monument in Upland, California commemorates Smith's crossing of the San
Bernardino Mountains in 1826. The monument
is located on Route 66 on the path that Smith followed from Etiwanda to the San
Gabriel Mission.
***
*Edward
Stanley (Earl of Derby) (1799-1869): British prime minister (1852, 1858, and
1866) was born in Knowsley Park, Lancashire, England.
Edward Stanley, 14th earl of Derby, (b. March 29, 1799, Knowsley Park, Lancashire, England—d. October 23, 1869, London), was an English statesman, important as leader of the Conservative Party during the long period 1846–68, thrice prime minister, and one of England’s greatest parliamentary orators.
Entering Parliament as a Whig in 1820, Stanley held office under Viscount Goderich (1827–28) and became chief secretary for Ireland under Lord Grey in 1830, joining the Cabinet in 1831. In 1834, he resigned over the Irish Church question, but he served under Sir Robert Peel (1841) only to resign again (1845) over the repeal of the Corn Laws. He succeeded to the earldom in 1851 and was premier in 1852, 1858, and 1866. Among his legislative triumphs were the removal of Jewish discrimination in Parliament membership, the transfer of India’s administration from the East India Company to the crown, and the Reform Bill of 1867.
Stanley (Derby) disliked the drudgery of office and as Conservative leader seemed weak and indolent beside Benjamin Disraeli, who nonetheless admitted, “He abolished slavery, he educated Ireland, he reformed parliament.” Stanley (Derby) is chiefly remembered as epitomizing the aristocratic amateur. He excelled in whatever he did; as a racehorse owner, as a benevolent if autocratic landowner, and as a scholar who won the chancellor’s Latin verse prize at Oxford and published a blank verse translation of the Iliad (1864). Stanley nurtured the Conservatives and helped the protectionists survive difficult years while he educated them to accept Disraeli as his successor and to prepare for electoral victory. Though a somewhat neglected figure, Stanley (Derby) was a founder of modern Conservatism in Britain and a key figure linking the old and the new ruling classes.
***
*Maria Frederica von Stedingk
(1799-1868), a Swedish composer noted for her composition of Nocturne for melodiinstrument, was born
(October 31). {See A Female Perspective.}
*Manuel Isidoro
Suarez (1799-1846): Argentine colonel noted for his pivotal role in the Battle
of Junin. {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Gabriel Valencia (1799-1848): Mexican
soldier and an interim president of Mexico.
{See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Elizabeth van
Valkenburgh (1799-1846): American murderer who was hanged for poisoning her
husband (July). {See A Female Perspective.}
*Yang
Lu-ch’an (1799-1872), a Chinese martial arts master and founder of the Yang
style tai chi chuan, was born.
Yang Lu-ch'an or Yang Luchan (1799-1872), also known as Yang Fu-k'ui (Yáng Fúkuí), was born in Kuang-p'ing (Guangping). He was an influential teacher of the soft style martial art tai chi chuan in China during the second half of the 19th century. He is known as the founder of Yang style tai chi chuan.
Yang Lu Chan’s family was a poor farming/worker class family from Hebei Province, Guangping Prefecture, Yongnian County. Yang would follow his father in planting the fields and, as a teenager, held temporary jobs. One period of temporary work was spent doing odd jobs at the Tai He Tang Chinese pharmacy located in the western part of Yongnian City, opened by Chen De Hu of the Chen Village in Henan Province, Huaiqing Prefecture, Wenxian County. As a child, Yang liked martial arts and studied Chang Chuan, gaining a certain level of skill.One day Yang reportedly witnessed one of the partners of the pharmacy utilizing a style of martial art that he had never seen before to easily subdue a group of would-be thieves. Because of this, Yang requested to study with the pharmacy's owner, Chen De Hu. Chen referred Yang to the Chen Village to seek out his own teacher—the 14th generation of the Chen Family, Ch'en Chang-hsing.
After mastering the martial art, Yang Lu Chan was subsequently given permission by his teacher to go to Beijing and teach his own students, including Wu Yu-hsiang and his brothers, who were officials in the Imperial Qing dynasty bureaucracy. In 1850, Yang was hired by the Imperial family to teach Taijiquan to them and several of their élite Manchu Imperial Guards Brigade units in Beijing's Forbidden City. Among this group was Yang's best known non-family student, Wu Ch'uan-yü. This was the beginning of the spread of Taijiquan from the family art of a small village in central China to an international phenomenon. Due to his influence and the number of teachers he trained, including his own descendants, Yang is directly acknowledged by 4 of the 5 Taijiquan families as having transmitted the art to them.
After emerging
from Chenjiagou, Yang became famous for never losing a match and never
seriously injuring his opponents. Having refined his martial skill to an
extremely high level, Yang Lu Chan came to be known as Yang Wu Di (Yang the
Invincible). In time, many legends sprang up around Yang's martial prowess.
These legends would serve as the basis for various biographical books and
movies.
When Yang Lu Chan first taught in Yung Nien, his art was referred to as Mien Quan (Cotton Fist) or Hua Quan (Neutralising Fist). Whilst teaching at the Imperial Court, Yang met many challenges, some friendly some not. But he invariably won and in so convincingly using his soft techniques that he gained a great reputation.
Many who frequented the imperial households would come to view his matches. At one such gathering in which Yang had won against several reputable opponents, the scholar Ong Tong He was present. Inspired by the way Yang moved and executed his techniques, Ong felt that Yang's movements and techniques expressed the physical manifestation of the principles of Taiji (the philosophy). Thereafter, Yang’s art was referred to as Taijiquan and the styles that sprang from his teaching and by association with him was called Taijiquan.
*Elizabeth Yates (1799-1860), an English actress, was born (January 21). {See
A Female Perspective.}
*Ewing Young
(1799-1841), an American fur trapper and trader, was born.
Ewing
Young (1799 – February 9, 1841) was an American fur trapper and trader from Tennessee who traveled Mexican southwestern North
America and California before
settling in the Oregon Country.
As a prominent and wealthy citizen there, his death was the impetus for the
early formation of government in what became the state of Oregon. Young
traded along the Santa Fe Trail and
in Mexican Alta California prior
to that province becoming a part of the United States. He later moved north to
the Willamette Valley.
Young
was born in Tennessee to a farming family in 1799.
In the early 1820s, he moved to Missouri where he farmed briefly on the Missouri
River at Charitan.
In Missouri, Young was on
the far western edge of the American frontier, not far from the border of the
Spanish-controlled territories of present day Texas, New Mexico and the
Southwestern United States. Under the Spanish colonial system, trade between
Americans and the Spanish outpost at Santa Fe was prohibited. However, by 1821,
the new Republic of Mexico had won the Mexican War of Independence from Spain,
and a number of American adventurers living in Missouri were eager to test
whether trade with the newly-empowered Mexican authorities in Santa Fe would be
allowed. After a first small group of Americans returned successfully in
December 1821 from a small trading foray, Young eagerly signed up to join a
somewhat larger group going to trade in Santa Fe.
Young
sold the farm he had just bought, and in May 1822, became part of the first
overland wagon train to leave Missouri and head for Santa Fe, along what would
become known as the Santa Fe Trail. Young
and the others found that they were welcomed by the new Mexican authorities in
the Santa Fe de Nuevo México
province. For the next nine years, Young
began traversing the Southwest, dividing his time between Santa Fe and
Missouri. In particular, the Spanish and
later Mexicans had not focused on trapping the beaver and other fur-bearing
animals of the Southwest as demand was small within the Spanish trading system.
However, there was significant demand for these pelts in the American and
European markets.
Young
pioneered trapping in the American Southwest, leading many of the first
American expeditions into the mountains and watercourses of present day New
Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. He and his
associates would take the newly-caught peltry to Missouri for sale, purchase
trade goods there, and return to Nuevo Mexico, where the American goods were
sold for gold and silver coin. It was
during the trapping expedition of 1827-1828, that Young employed a teenaged Kit
Carson. Despite tension that developed with
Mexican authorities trying to restrict American activities, Young became a
successful trapper and businessman, eventually setting up a trading post in Pueblo
de Taos in northern Nuevo Mexico, in
the late 1820s. He took María Josefa Tafoya, the daughter of a prominent Taos
family and a Mexican citizen, as his wife in a common-law marriage.
In
the late 1820s and early 1830s, the Mexican authorities were growing concerned
about American settlers and their influences in Nuevo México, and began
imposing increasingly severe restrictions on trade and trapping. Perhaps in
part to avoid these restrictions, Young was baptized a Catholic in 1830
(perhaps he also became a Mexican citizen and formalized his marriage to Maria
Tafoya - however, if he did so, no record of these two events survives).
In
the Spring of 1830, Young led the first American trapping expedition to reach
the Pacific Coast from the Mexican Santa Fe de Nuevo México Province. Young's
journey to the west with traveling companions crossed eastern Alta California,
present day Arizona, then the Colorado River and the Mojave Desert and arrived at the Mission San
Gabriel Arcángel near the Pueblo
de Los Angeles in the settled Alta
California province, present day Los
Angeles in Southern California. After recuperating there, the group visited
the Mission San Fernando Rey de España in the nearby San Fernando Valley, and headed further north into California's great Central Valley via its southern San Joaquin Valley section, again, the first American trapping
expedition to do so.
Once
there the group moved north to the Sacramento
River in the Sacramento Valley where they encountered Peter Skene
Ogden of the Hudson's Bay
Company (HBC). The two groups jointly
trapped the valley before Young’s group moved on to San Francisco Bay to trade their pelts. After this they went
south to Pueblo de Los Angeles and then back to Taos before the year 1830 was
up. Upon his return to Taos with the proceeds of this expedition, Young became
one of the wealthiest Americans in Mexican territory.
Over
the next few years Young and his group continued traveling to Alta California
to trap and trade. Then in 1834 in San Diego Young encountered Hall J. Kelley, the great promoter of the Oregon Country.
Kelley invited Ewing Young to accompany him north to Oregon, but Young at first
declined. After re-thinking, Young agreed to travel with Kelley and they set
out in July 1834.
Ewing Young, arrived in Oregon in 1834, arriving at
Fort Vancouver on October 17 with Hall J. Kelley from California. Though a trapper by trade, Young then stayed as a permanent
settler in the Willamette Valley.
The group received little assistance from Dr. John McLoughlin and the HBC or the Methodist Mission group because the group was accused by the
Mexican government of Alta California of stealing 200 horses when they left.
The group denied this charge saying some uninvited traveling companions had
stolen the horses. Nonetheless, McLoughlin
blacklisted Young from doing business with the HBC.
In
Young and Kelley’s party that emigrated to Oregon was Webley John Hauxhurst,
who subsequently built the first grist mill in the Willamette Valley. Another
trapper, Joseph Gale, who would
later be an important figure in Oregon history was also part of the group.
Young
settled on the west bank of the Willamette River near the mouth of Chehalem Creek, opposite of Champoeg. His
home is believed to be the first house built by European-Americans on that side
of the river. In 1836, Young started to
build a distillery to produce alcohol.
Methodist Mission leader Jason Lee organized the Oregon Temperance Society and along with McLoughlin tried
to get Young to stop his efforts. McLoughlin
and the HBC prohibited alcohol sales to the Indigenous Americans. Late in the year, United States Navy Lieutenant William
A. Slacum arrived on the ship Loriot and helped to dissuade Young from following
through on the venture.
Slacum was there as an agent
of the United States President, and also helped to put together a joint venture
between all of them to purchase cattle. In
January 1837, Young was the leader of the Willamette Cattle Company that
traveled to California with the assistance of Slacum on the Loriot, and brought back 630 head of
cattle along the Siskiyou Trail, as all prior cattle in the valley was owned by
the HBC and rented to the settlers. Those
accompanying Young on the cattle drive were Philip Leget Edwards, Calvin
Tibbets, John Turner, William J. Bailey, George Gay, Lawrence Carmichael,
Pierre De Puis, B. Williams, and Emert Ergnette.
During the drive, Gay and Bailey murdered an Indigenous American boy in
retaliation for an attack several years earlier by the Rogue River Indians.
That attack had been in retaliation for murders that Young’s group had
committed on their travel to Oregon in 1834.
In
February 1841, Young died without any known heir and without a will. This created a need for some form of
government to deal with his estate, which had many debtors and creditors among
the settlers. Doctor Ira L. Babcock was
selected as supreme judge with probate powers after Young's death to deal with
Young's estate. The activities that followed his death eventually led to
the creation of a provisional government in the Oregon Country.
The
Ewing Young Historical Marker located along Oregon Route
240 notes the location of Young's farm
and grave.
A round-topped oak tree that is said to have grown from an acorn planted on his
grave is present at that location.
Ewing
Young Elementary School in Newberg, Oregon, is named in honor of Ewing Young. In 1942, the Liberty ship Ewing Young (hull #631 from Calships in Terminal Island,
California) was named in his honor. The
Ewing Young served in the Pacific
theater during World War II and
was scrapped in 1959.
***
*Jose Zamora
(1799-1856): Costa Rican head of state (March 20). {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
Notable Deaths
*Maria
Agnesi (1718-1799): Italian mathematician who died in January at the age of 80.
She had turned her home into a hospital and had spent the last fifteen years of
her life administering the Po Alberto Trivulzio Public Institution for Care of
the Elderly and Homeless. {See A Female Perspective.}
*Diego Marin
Aguilera (1757-1799): Spanish inventor who was an early aviation pioneer. {See A
Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Jose
Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez (1737-1799): Mexican priest, scientist, historian,
cartographer and journalist (February 2).
{See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
*Manuel Antonio Flores Maldonado Martinez Angulo y
Bodquin (c.1722-1799): Viceroy of New Granada and New Spain (March 20). {See A Pan-Hispanic
Perspective.}
*Asada
Goryu (1734-1799): Japanese astronomer (June 25).
Asada Goryu (March 10, 1734 – June 25, 1799) was a Japanese astronomer who helped to introduce modern astronomical instruments and methods into Japan. Asada spent much of his career in the flourishing commercial city of Osaka, where he practiced medicine for a living. Because of the Japanese government's policy of seclusion, Western scientific theory was generally available only through obsolete Chinese works edited by Jesuit missionaries in China. However, Asada managed to construct sophisticated mathematical models of celestial movements and is sometimes credited with the independent discovery of Kepler's third law.
The crater Asada on the Moon is named after him.
*Vasily
Bazhenov (1737-1799): Russian architect.
Vasily Ivanovich Bazhenov (March 1 (12), 1737 [or 1738] – August 2 (13), 1799) was a Russian neoclassical architect, graphic artist, architectural theorist and educator. Bazhenov and his associates Matvey Kazakov and Ivan Starov were the leading local architects of the Russian Enlightenment, a period dominated by foreign architects (Charles Cameron, Giacomo Quarenghi, Antonio Rinaldi and others). In the 1770s Bazhenov became the first Russian architect to create a national architectural language since the 17th century tradition interrupted by Peter I of Russia.
Born into a family of a priest,
Bazhenov studied in Moscow and at the Academy of Fine Arts where he earned a
scholarship to continue architectural studies in Western Europe. On his return to Russia in 1765, Bazhenov was
elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and given the assignment of
redesigning the Moscow Kremlin. He was
very influential in the creation of a uniquely Russian architectural tradition.
Pierre-Augustin
Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799): French comic dramatist, died in Paris,
France at the age of 67 (May 18).
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (b. January 24, 1732, Paris, France — d. May 18, 1799, Paris, France) was a French author of two outstanding comedies of intrigue that still retain their freshness, Le Barbier de Séville (1775; The Barber of Seville, 1776) and Le Mariage de Figaro (1784; The Marriage of Figaro, 1785).
Although Beaumarchais did not invent the type character of the scheming valet (who has appeared in comedy as far back as Roman times), his Figaro, hero of both plays, became the highest expression of the type. The valet’s resourcefulness and cunning were portrayed by Beaumarchais with a definite class-conscious sympathy. Le Barbier de Séville became the basis of a popular opera by the Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini. The second play, which inspired Mozart’s opera Le nozze di Figaro (1786), is openly critical of aristocratic privilege and somewhat anticipates the social upheavals of the Revolution of 1789.
Beaumarchais’s life rivals his work as a drama of controversy, adventure, and intrigue. The son of a watchmaker, he invented an escapement mechanism, and the question of its patent led to the first of many legal actions. For his defense in these suits he wrote a series of brilliant polemics (Mémoires), which made his reputation, though he was only partly successful at law.
After 1773, because of his legal involvements, Beaumarchais left France on secret royal missions to England and Germany for both Louis XV and Louis XVI. Despite growing popularity as a dramatist, Beaumarchais was addicted to financial speculation. He bought arms for the American revolutionaries and brought out the first complete edition of the works of Voltaire. Of his dramatic works, only his two classic comedies were to have lasting success. Because of his wealth, he was imprisoned during the French Revolution (in 1792), but, through the intervention of a former mistress, he was released.
Beaumarchais married three times. His first wife was Madeleine-Catherine Franquet (née Aubertin), whom he married on November 22, 1756. She died under mysterious circumstances only 10 months following the marriage. He married Geneviève-Madeleine Lévêque (née Wattebled) in 1768. Again, the second Mme. de Beaumarchais died under mysterious circumstances two years later, though most scholars believed she actually suffered from tuberculosis. Before her death in 1770, she bore a son, Augustin, but he died in 1772. Beaumarchais lived with his lover, Marie-Thérèse de Willer-Mawlaz, for twelve years before she became his third wife in 1786. Together they had a daughter, Eugénie.
Beaumarchais was accused by his enemies of poisoning his first two wives in order to lay claim to their family inheritance. Beaumarchais, though having no shortage of lovers throughout his life, was known to care deeply for both his family and close friends. However, Beaumarchais also had a reputation of marrying for financial gain, and both Franquet and Lévêque were previously married to wealthy families. While there was insufficient evidence to support the accusations, whether or not the poisonings took place is still the subject of debate.
Madame
Bellecour [Rose Perrine le Roy de la Corbinaye] (1730-1799): French actress
(August 5). {See A Female Perspective.}
Abraham
Bennet (1749-1799): British physicist and inventor.
Abraham Bennet (baptized December 20, 1749 - buried May 9, 1799) was an English clergyman and physicist, the inventor of the gold-leaf electroscope and developer of an improved magnetometer. Though he was cited by Alessandro Volta as a key influence on his own work, Bennet's work was curtailed by the political turbulence of his time.
Abraham was baptized in Taxal, Derbyshire, the son of another Abraham Bennet, a schoolmaster, and his wife Ann née Fallowes. There is no record of him having attended university but he is recorded as a teacher at Wirksworth Grammar School. He was ordained in London in 1775 and appointed curate at Tideswell and, one year later, additionally at Wirksworth, with a combined annual stipend of £60. He further became rector of Fenny Bentley, domestic chaplain to the Duke of Devonshire, perpetual curate of Woburn and librarian to the Duke of Bedford.
Bennet had broad interests in natural philosophy and was associated with, though not a member of, the Lunar Society and the Derby Philosophical Society. He was particularly close to Erasmus Darwin. Darwin suggested that Bennet make electrical measurements as part of an investigation into electricity and weather. Bennet then worked assiduously establishing his expertise in electricity, achieving sufficient reputation to be part of a meeting with Tiberius Cavallo, William Nicholson and Volta in London in 1782.
Bennet published New Experiments on Electricity in 1789. In it, he described:
· The gold-leaf electroscope;
· A doubler of electricity, already announced in a paper
communicated to the Royal Society by Rev. Richard Kaye, Dean of Lincoln in
1787; and
· A theory of electricity that anticipated Volta's contact
theory. Bennet's work was a key element
in leading Volta to the contact theory and the development of the voltaic pile.
Bennet described experiments with an electrophorus and the generation of electricity by evaporation. Bennet extended his thinking into various theories about electricity and weather, with electrical explanations of the aurora borealis and meteors. He interpreted lightning as the release of electrical charge from clouds, and went on to hypothesize that rain was caused by lightning and also that earthquakes had an electrical origin.
Among Bennet's other patrons were Joseph Banks, George Adams and the Wirksworth squires, the Gell family. The Gells, Kaye, Banks, Adams, and the Dukes of Devonshire and Bedford were all establishment figures whose hostility to the radicals of the Lunar and Derby Philosophical Societies intensified in the British reaction to the French Revolution. Bennet increasingly found it necessary to take sides, signing the Gells' petition against Jacobinism in 1795. Bennet's scientific work ends around this date, possibly from ill-health but also possibly from his inability to resolve the tensions among his erstwhile supporters.
Bennet married Jane (died 1826) and the couple had six daughters and two sons. Bennet died of a "severe illness".
Bennet was made a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1789.
Today, there is a memorial plaque in Wirksworth church and a portrait by
an unknown artist.
Isaiah
Berlin (1725-1799): Talmudic scholar died in Breslau (May 13). {See A Jewish Perspective.}
Joseph
Black: British chemist and physicist died in Edinburgh, Scotland at the age of
71 (December 6).
Joseph Black (b. April 16, 1728, Bordeaux, France — d. December 6, 1799, Edinburgh, Scotland) was a British chemist and physicist best known for the rediscovery of “fixed air” (carbon dioxide), the concept of latent heat, and the discovery of the bicarbonates (such as bicarbonate of soda). Black lived and worked within the context of the Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable flourishing of intellectual life in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen during the latter half of the 18th century. He could count the philosopher David Hume, economist Adam Smith, and geologist James Hutton among his friends.
Black was the son of expatriate Ulster merchant John Black and his Aberdeen-born wife, Margaret Gordon. At age 12, Black was sent to school in Belfast, and a few years later he moved to the University of Glasgow to study art. Black’s father later required him to choose a course of study leading to a profession. Because he chose medicine, Black came under the influence of an innovative teacher of chemistry, William Cullen, and, unusual for a young student, he started to conduct chemical experiments in his professor’s laboratory. Black did not graduate in medicine at Glasgow because he was attracted to the University of Edinburgh, where the medical school enjoyed more prestige. In order to graduate, students had to prepare a thesis. Black was particularly assiduous (many students did not take their work seriously), and he conducted a series of experiments on the chemical properties of an alkali — in particular, magnesia alba, now known as magnesium carbonate. The work had to have a medical connection, so Black described the application of this substance to minor digestive disorders. His medical degree was awarded in 1754.
The research on the nature of alkalinity, which Black conducted for his thesis, laid the basis for the most important paper of his career, Experiments upon Magnesia Alba, Quicklime, and Some Other Alcaline Substances, given to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1755. The earlier series of experiments for his thesis were conducted on magnesium salt and, for the first time, consisted of a planned cyclic series of quantitative experiments in which a balance was used at all stages. He found that with acids, magnesia alba behaved in a similar way to chalk (calcium carbonate), giving off a gas. He then heated a sample of the starting compound and found that the product, magnesia usta (now known as magnesium oxide), like quicklime (calcium oxide), did not effervesce with acids. Unlike quicklime, however, it was not caustic or soluble in water. Black hypothesized that the weight lost during heating was due to the gas generated. He then added a solution of potash (potassium carbonate) to the magnesia usta and showed that the product weighed the same as his original sample of magnesia alba. The difference between the alba and usta was therefore the gas, which Black called “fixed air.” It could be introduced to the latter to re-create the former by means of the potash.
Black broadened his experiments and took his conclusions to a higher stage in his 1756 paper to the Philosophical Society. He concentrated on calcium rather than magnesium salts, showing that, when chalk is heated strongly to quicklime, a gas is given off, and he concluded that this gas derives from the chalk and not from the fire in the furnace; this had been a point of contention among Edinburgh professors. The gas could be replaced by adding potash solution to the quicklime, which demonstrated that the fixed air is contained in the alkali. Black then showed that the gas is not a version of atmospheric air. He was thus the first chemist to show that gases could be chemical substances in themselves and not, as had been thought beforehand, atmospheric air in different states of purity. After Black’s seminal experiments, various other gases were chemically characterized in the second half of the 18th century, including oxygen (which he called dephlogisticated air) by the English clergyman and scientist Joseph Priestley, nitrogen by Daniel Rutherford (a pupil of Black), and hydrogen by the English physicist and chemist Henry Cavendish.
Black spent a couple of years following graduation working as a physician. In 1756, Cullen was appointed to the chemistry chair in Edinburgh, and Black filled the vacancy created in Glasgow, becoming professor of anatomy and lecturer in chemistry. Cullen had been particularly interested in the lowering of temperature which results from the evaporation of liquids. Black turned his attention to heat phenomena too, asking such questions as: Why does water not boil away suddenly when the temperature reaches boiling point? Why does ice not suddenly melt when the temperature exceeds the freezing point?
Black distinguished between the quantity of heat in a body and its intensity, or temperature, realizing that thermometers can be used to determine the quantity of heat if temperature is measured over a period of time while the body is heated or cooled. He took two similar glass flasks, pouring the same quantity of water into both and placing them in a freezing mixture. In one he had added a little alcohol to prevent freezing. They were then removed from the bath, one frozen and the other liquid, though at the same temperature. They were allowed to warm up naturally. The temperature of the water plus alcohol warmed up several degrees, while the ice remained at its freezing point. As the flasks had to be absorbing heat at the same rate, Black showed that the heat absorbed by the ice in 10 hours would have raised the temperature of the same quantity of water by 78 °C (140 °F). This was the latent heat of fusion of water. The experiments were extended to measure the latent heat of vaporization of water.
During his time at Glasgow, Black was in contact with the Scottish inventor James Watt, who was employed as instrument maker to the university. Watt worked on developing improvements to the steam engine, and his double-cylinder version essentially recognized the phenomena of latent heat. The two men, who became firm friends, were at pains to declare that their researches were conducted independently. Watt went on to develop the Soho Manufactory for steam engines and other products at Birmingham in partnership with Matthew Boulton. Although Black and Watt saw little of each other after Black’s Glasgow period, their separation resulted in a rich correspondence between them, much of which survives.
By the mid-1760s, powerful moves were afoot for Black to return to Edinburgh. Cullen was moved to a different chair of medicine to allow his former pupil to become professor of chemistry in 1766. At this point in his career, a change came over Black’s approach to chemistry. Instead of continuing to pursue fundamental concepts, Black turned his attention almost entirely to teaching and to advising landowners and entrepreneurs how chemical-based industries in Scotland (and sometimes farther afield) could be developed. There is no doubt that some felt that he was not treating his responsibility as an academic chemist seriously enough. Black certainly seems to have had an aversion to publishing his research. For example, he wrote nothing on his theories of heat for publication. His work became well known because of the large number of students (sometimes in excess of 300) who registered for his annual course of lectures and diffused his concepts throughout Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. Some of his work was published by others.
Scotland was rapidly industrializing, from a low base, in the 18th century. Some credit for this is due to the Board of Trustees for Manufactures in Scotland. Following the Act of Union of 1707, which united the English and Scottish parliaments, an annual sum of money was set aside to encourage industrial development. Initially, no mechanism was established for distribution of funds, but in 1727 a board of trustees was set up, and in the first year £6,000 was made available for the herring, linen, and wool industries. Later, Black and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh were closely involved in judging proposals made to the board. In particular, they judged proposals for the development of schemes to improve the bleaching of linen.
Linen was a major and expanding commodity in Scotland and Ireland. A crisis had arisen because the agent used in bleaching, potash made from wood ashes, had risen in price by 50 percent between 1750 and 1770 in response to a timber shortage. The usual alternative, sour milk, took weeks longer to take effect. Black’s university colleague Francis Home suggested that, instead of sour milk, dilute sulfuric acid be used. Black’s contribution was to increase the bleaching power of potash by adding lime to it. This resulted in Black’s only substantial publication concerning an industrial process, An Explanation of the Effect of Lime upon Alkaline Salts, which was published in Home’s Experiments on Bleaching (1771). Another approach to the bleaching problem was to look for a cheaper way of making potash. Cullen turned his mind to this and was rewarded by the board for his proposal to burn conifers in the remoter parts of the Scottish Highlands, and he speculated on whether ferns or seaweed would be an economically favorable source of the alkali. Black became interested and analyzed burned kelp (a form of seaweed) obtained from different sources on the Scottish coast. He demonstrated that the alkali yield could vary significantly from place to place.
Black’s skill at judging the viability of new proposals for industrial processes became renowned. After he had masterfully judged the financial benefits for establishing a tar works, Sir John Dalrymple, solicitor to the Board of Excise, described Black as “the best judge, perhaps in Europe, of the merit of such inventions.” Black was certainly in demand for his opinions, being consulted by a considerable number of industrialists on an extraordinarily broad range of topics. In the surviving correspondence these include sugar refining, alkali production, bleaching, ceramics glazing, dyeing, brewing, metal corrosion, salt extraction, glass making, mineral composition, water analysis, vinegar manufacture, and furnace construction. In addition, his views were sought on various agricultural matters.
There are relatively few clues to Black’s social life and relationships. He appears to have been convivial, being a member of the Poker and Oyster clubs for dining with his male friends. He entertained influential visitors to Edinburgh in his later years, such as the American diplomat Benjamin Franklin. He never married, though he enjoyed the company of Bluestocking women. He sometimes sang at social gatherings; he could play the flute; and he drew skillfully. His health was never robust, and he was careful with his diet.
Black’s chemistry teaching, in his earlier years, reflected the latest ideas. However, toward the end of his career, his views started to seem outdated. This was particularly the case when it came to his views on the nature of combustion. The 17th-century phlogiston theory, whereby burning substances emit an invisible, weightless substance called phlogiston, was superseded by the views of the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who proposed his oxygen theory from 1775. Black was reluctant to adopt this theory, though his pupils strongly argued its case. Black finally corresponded with Lavoisier in 1790 and bowed to the inevitable. From 1795, Black gave up nearly all of his teaching, though he retained his title. Black died a celebrated death, being found by his servant with a cup of milk balanced between his knees, not a drop having been spilled. It was commented upon that this was entirely in line with the ordered nature of his life and, further, that it reflected the perfection of his experimental procedures.
Black also was a member of the Poker Club and associated with David Hume, Adam Smith, and the literati of the Scottish Enlightenment, but he never married. He died in Edinburgh at the age of 71, and is buried there in Greyfriars Kirkyard.
The chemistry buildings at both the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow are named after Black.
Barbarini
Campanini (1721-1799): Italian dancer. {See
A Female Perspective.}
Bhagya Chandra [Ningthou Ching-Thang Khomba] (1748-1799): Manipuri monarch who invented the Ras Lila dance
– the “Dance of Divine Love”. {See A Hindu Perspective.}
Karl
Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799): Austrian composer (October 24).
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, original name (until
1773) Carl Ditters (b. November 2, 1739, Austria – d. October 24,
1799, Rothlhotta Castle, Neuhof, Bohemia [now Nové Dvory, Czech
Republic]), was a violinist and composer of instrumental music and of
light operas that established the form of the singspiel
(a comic opera in the German language).
A brilliant child violinist, Ditters played regularly at the
age of 12 in the orchestra of Prince von Sachsen-Hildburghausen and later in
the orchestra of the Vienna opera. He became friendly with the composer
Christoph Gluck and accompanied him in 1761 to Bologna, Italy. There Ditters
gained considerable celebrity with his violin playing. In 1765, Ditters became
director of the orchestra of the bishop of Grosswardein and wrote for it his
first opera, Amore in musica (“Love
in Music”). His first oratorio, Isacco
(“Isaac”), was also written during this time.
By 1770 Ditters was in the service of Count Schaffgotsch,
prince-bishop of Breslau, at Johannisberg, Silesia, Prussia. There he composed
11 comic operas, among them Il
viaggiatore americano (1770; “The American Traveler”), and an oratorio, Davidde penitente (1770; “Penitent
David”). In 1773 he was ennobled by Empress Maria Theresa under the name
Ditters von Dittersdorf to enable his appointment as Amtshauptmann (district administrator) of Freiwaldau. In about
1779, he formed a close friendship with Joseph Haydn, who directed five of his
operas at Eszterháza, and from 1783 he played in string quartets in Vienna with
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (on at least one famous occasion joined by Haydn and
Johann Vanhal, then a popular composer of string quartets). From this period
onward, Dittersdorf’s output was enormous. He produced the oratorio Giobbe (1786) and several operas, three
of which, Doktor und Apotheker (1786; “Doctor and Apothecary”), Hieronymus Knicker (1789), and Das
rote Käppchen (1790; “The Little Red Hood”), had great success. Doktor und Apotheker, in particular,
became one of the classic examples of the German singspiel. He also wrote a
large quantity of instrumental music, including about 120 symphonies and some
40 concerti. In 1795, following the bishop’s death, Dittersdorf was dismissed
with a small pension. Poor and broken in health, he accepted a post with Baron
Ignaz von Stillfried at Rothlhotta Castle in Bohemia. On his deathbed he
dictated his autobiography, which is of great interest to students of
18th-century music.
Dittersdorf was one of the earliest composers of the
Viennese Classical school. His symphonies, which are often of great interest,
display many elements reminiscent of Haydn. His violin concerti are worthy of
study, and his concerti for harp, for flute, for harpsichord, for double bass,
and for other instruments are often performed and recorded. As an opera
composer, Dittersdorf is chiefly remembered for his lighthearted and sometimes
sentimental singspiels.
Ebubekir
Ratib Efendi: Ottoman diplomat and writer. {See
A Muslim Perspective.}
Juan Bautista Pablo Forner
(1756-1799): Spanish satirist and scholar (March 7). {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
Seyh Galib [Galib Dede] [Mehmed
Es‘Ad](1757[1758?]-1799): Ottoman poet and seyh of the Mevlevi order (January
5). {See also A Muslim Perspective.}
Gâlib Dede, also called Şeyh Gâlib, pseudonyms of Mehmed Es ‘Ad (b. 1757, Istanbul – d. January 5, 1799, Constantinople), was a Turkish poet and one of the last great classical poets of Ottoman literature.
Gâlib Dede was born into a family that was well-connected with the Ottoman government and with the Mawlawīyah, or Mevlevîs, an important order of Muslim dervishes. Continuing in the family tradition by becoming an official in the Divan-ı Hümayun, the Ottoman imperial council, he thus established a career for himself in the Ottoman bureaucracy. Later, after giving up this government position, he became the sheikh (superior) of the Galata monastery, in Istanbul, the renowned center of the Mawlawīyah order. Remaining in this position for the rest of his life, he continued to write poetry. His work was much appreciated by the reigning Ottoman sultan, Selim III (himself a poet, musician, and Mawlawī dervish), and by other members of the court, who showed him great favor and respect. Gâlib Dede is primarily known for his masterpiece, Hüsn ü Aşk (“Beauty and Love”). This allegorical romance describes the courtship of a youth (Hüsn, or “Beauty”) and a girl (Aşk, or “Love”). After many tribulations, the couple is finally brought together, allegorizing the fundamental unity of love and beauty. In addition to this famous work, Gâlib Dede is known for his Divan (collection of poems). These poems illustrate his preoccupation with mystical religious themes and are characterized by highly symbolic language and complex conceits and wordplay. Thus, his work is often deemed inaccessible to the average reader.
Manuel Luis
Gayoso de Lemos Amorin y Magallanes (1747-1799): Spanish governor of Louisiana
(July 18). {See A Pan-Hispanic
Perspective.}
Juan
Vicente de Guemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo (1740-1799): Viceroy of New Spain who was one of the greatest reformers and one
of the finest administrators of the
Spanish colonial era (May 2). {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
Antonio
Gutierrez de Otero y Santayana (1729-1799): Spanish Lieutenant General best
known for repelling Admiral Nelson’s attack on Tenerife (May 14). {See A
Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
Hassan Nooraddeen: Sultan of
the Maldives. {See A Muslim Perspective.}
Ann Wood Henry (1734-1799): Treasurer of Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania (March 8). {See A Female Perspective.}
Patrick
Henry (1736-1799): American anti-federalist and orator who declared “Give me
liberty or give me death” at the start of the American Revolution died in Red
Hill, Virginia, at the age of 63 (June 6).
Patrick Henry, (b. May 29 [May 18, Old Style], 1736, Studley [Virginia] — d. June 6, 1799, Red Hill, near Brookneal, Virginia), was a brilliant orator and a major figure of the American Revolution, perhaps best known for his words “Give me liberty or give me death!” which he delivered in 1775. He was independent Virginia’s first governor (serving 1776–79, 1784–86).
Patrick Henry was the son of John Henry, a well-educated Scotsman who served in the colony as a surveyor, colonel, and justice of the Hanover County Court. Before he was 10, Patrick received some rudimentary education in a local school, later reinforced by tutoring from his father, who was trained in the classics. As a youth, he failed twice in seven years as a storekeeper and once as a farmer; and during this period he increased his responsibilities by marriage, in 1754, to Sarah Shelton. The demands of a growing family spurred him to study for the practice of law, and in this profession he soon displayed remarkable ability. Within a few years after his admission to the bar in 1760 he had a large and profitable clientele. He was especially successful in criminal cases, where he made good use of his quick wit, his knowledge of human nature, and his forensic gifts.
Henry’s oratorical genius was revealed in the trial known as the Parson’s Cause (1763). This suit grew out of the Virginia law, disallowed by King George III, which permitted payment of the Anglican clergy in money instead of tobacco when the tobacco crop was poor. Henry astonished the audience in the courtroom with his eloquence in invoking the doctrine of natural rights, the political theory that man is born with certain inalienable rights.
Two years later, at the capitol in Williamsburg, where he had just been seated as a member of the House of Burgesses (the lower house of the colonial legislature), Henry delivered a speech opposing the British Stamp Act. The act was a revenue law requiring certain colonial publications and documents to bear a legal stamp. Henry offered a series of resolutions asserting the right of the colonies to legislate independently of the British Parliament, and he supported these resolutions with great eloquence: “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George III…” Here Henry was interrupted by cries of “Treason! Treason!” Undaunted Henry concluded, according to a likely version, “…may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.”
In 1771 Patrick and his wife Sarah moved into their Scotchtown estate along with their children: Martha ("Patsy"), Anne, Elizabeth ("Betsy"), John, William, and Edmund ("Neddy"). Around that time, Sarah began to manifest disturbing behaviors which could not at that time be diagnosed or treated. Her mental condition deteriorated rapidly, and when she became dangerous to herself and others, she was clothed in a 'Quaker shirt,' an early form of strait jacket.
Following the general practice of the time, Patrick's friends and his physician, Dr. Thomas Hinde, advocated she be moved to the public hospital in Williamsburg. But after inspecting the facilities Patrick saw that if he agreed, his wife would be locked into a windowless brick cell containing only a filthy mattress on the floor and a chamber pot. There she would be chained to the wall with a leg iron. Appalled by what he saw, he instead prepared a private, two-room apartment for her in the basement of Scotchtown. Each room had a window, providing light, air circulation, and a pleasant view of the grounds. The apartment also had a fireplace, which provided good heat in the winter, and a comfortable bed to sleep in.
Patrick himself (or a slave when he was away on business) took care of Sarah and watched over her, fed her, bathed her, clothed her, and prevented her from harming herself. Sarah died in the spring of 1775. Because of her illness - then thought to have been caused by being “possessed by the devil” - she was denied a religious funeral service or a Christian burial. Her grieving husband buried her thirty feet from the home they shared and planted a lilac tree next to her grave to remember her. The tree still stands there, a few steps from the door to her basement.
During the decade between 1765 and 1774, Henry was an influential leader in the radical opposition to the British government. He was a member of the first Virginia Committee of Correspondence, which aided inter-colonial cooperation, and a delegate to the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775.
At the second Virginia Convention, in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, Henry delivered the speech that assured his fame as one of the great advocates of liberty. Convinced that war with Great Britain was inevitable, he presented strong resolutions for equipping the Virginia militia to fight against the British and defended them in a fiery speech with the famed peroration, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
It was orally reported that in response to Henry’s oration the crowd jumped up and shouted “To Arms! To Arms!” Indeed almost two hundred years, the speech and the reaction were orally reported in this manner. However, in the 1970s, historians began to question the authenticity of the oral reports of Henry speech. Historians today observe that Henry was known to have used fear of Indian and slave revolts in promoting military action against the British, and that according to the only written first-hand account of the speech, Henry used some graphic name-calling that failed to appear in oral heroic renditions.
Nevertheless, the resolutions passed, and Henry was appointed commander of the Virginia forces. However, his actions were curbed by the Committee of Safety. In reaction, he resigned on February 28, 1776. Henry served on the committee in the Virginia Convention of 1776 that drafted the first constitution for the state. He was elected governor the same year and was re-elected in 1777 and 1778 for one-year terms, thereby serving continuously as long as the new constitution permitted. As wartime governor, he gave General George Washington able support, and during his second term he authorized the expedition to invade the Illinois country under the leadership of George Rogers Clark.
After the death of his first wife, Henry married Dorothea Dandridge (1755-1831) on October 25, 1777, and retired to life on his estate in Henry County. From this marriage came eleven children.
He was recalled to public service as a leading member of the state legislature from 1780 to 1784 and again from 1787 to 1790. From 1784 to 1786 he served as governor. He declined to attend the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787 and in 1788 was the leading opponent of ratification of the U.S. Constitution at the Virginia Convention. This action, which has aroused much controversy ever since, resulted from his fear that the original document did not secure either the rights of the states or those of individuals, as well as from his suspicion that the North would abandon to Spain the vital right of navigation on the Mississippi River.
Henry was reconciled, however, to the new federal government, especially after the passage of the Bill of Rights, for which he was in great measure responsible. Because of family responsibilities and ill health, he declined a series of offers of high posts in the new federal government. In 1799, however, he consented to run again for the state legislature, where he wished to oppose the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, which claimed that the states could determine the constitutionality of federal laws. During his successful electoral campaign, he made his last speech, a moving plea for American unity. He died of stomach cancer at his home, Red Hill, before he was to have taken the seat.
Heshen
(1750-1799): Chinese courtier (February 22).
{See An Asian Perspective.}
Richard
Howe (1726-1799): English admiral during the French Revolution died at the age
of 73 (August 5).
Richard Howe (b. March 8, 1726, London — d. August 5, 1799) was a British admiral who commanded the Channel fleet at the Battle of the First of June (1794) during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Howe entered the navy in 1740, saw much active service, especially in North America, and was rapidly promoted. By the death of his elder brother, on July 6, 1758, he became Viscount Howe —an Irish peerage. In 1762, he was elected Member of Parliament for Dartmouth. During 1763 and 1765 he was a member of the Admiralty board and from 1765 to 1770 was treasurer of the navy. In 1770, Howe was promoted rear admiral and in 1775 vice admiral. In 1776, he was appointed to the command of the North American station, where, in his sympathy for the colonists, he tried conciliation. When France declared war and sent a powerful squadron under the Count d’Estaing, Howe was put on the defensive, but he baffled the French admiral at Sandy Hook and defeated his attempt to take Newport in Rhode Island by a fine combination of caution and calculated daring. On the arrival of Admiral John Byron from England with reinforcements, Howe left the station in September, returning to England.
On the change of ministry in March 1782 he was selected to command in the English Channel, and in the autumn of that year he carried out the difficult operation of the final relief of Gibraltar. The French and Spaniards had in all 46 line-of-battle ships to his 33, and his ships were ill-equipped and ill-manned. But Howe handled his ships well, the enemy was awkward and lacked initiative. Howe’s operation was brilliantly successful. From January 28 to April 16, 1783, Howe was first lord of the Admiralty, and again from December 1783 until August 1788, in William Pitt’s first ministry.
On the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in 1793 Howe was again named to the command of the Channel fleet. In 1794, he won the epoch-making victory of the First of June, a victory not excelled by any of his successors in the war, not even by Horatio Nelson, since they had his example to follow and were served by more highly trained squadrons than his.
The Battle of the First of June, also called Battle of the Glorious First of June or Battle of Ushant, (June 1, 1794), was the first great naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought between the French and the British in the Atlantic Ocean about 430 miles (690 km) west of the Breton island of Ouessant (Ushant). The battle arose out of an attempt by the British fleet under Earl Howe to intercept a grain convoy from the United States that was being escorted into Brest, France, by a fleet under Louis Villaret de Joyeuse. When the opposing fleets sighted each other on May 28, Villaret detached his convoy to the south while he attempted to lure Howe away to the north. Sporadic fighting occurred in misty weather for the next two days between Howe’s 26 ships of the line and Villaret’s 26 ships of the line (reinforced to 30 before the battle ended). In brilliant sunshine on Sunday, June 1, Howe engaged the enemy. Although only seven of Howe’s ships broke the French line, he disorganized their fleet and captured six ships; a seventh French ship was sunk. The battle was technically a British victory, but the French fleet had accomplished its task of drawing the British away and enabling the convoy of 130 merchant ships to reach Brest safely. The battle also proved that the navy of the French Revolution was capable of hard fighting even though most of the officers of the navy of the ancien régime had left France or been executed.
Both Britain and France claimed victory in the battle: Britain by virtue of capturing or sinking seven French ships without losing any of her own and remaining in control of the battle site; France because the vital convoy had passed through the Atlantic unharmed and arrived in France without significant loss. The two fleets were showered by their respective nations with both praise and criticism — the latter particularly directed at those captains not felt to have contributed significantly to the fighting. The British fleet in Spithead was treated with a Royal visit by King George III and the entire royal household
In 1797, Howe was called on to pacify the mutineers at Spithead, and he showed great influence with the seamen.
In 1782, Howe was made Viscount Howe of Langar and, in 1788, Baron and Earl Howe.
Dutch
physician and plant physiologist Jan Ingenhousz (1730-1799) died at Wiltshire,
England (September 7).
Jan Ingenhousz (b. December 8, 1730, Breda, Netherlands — d. September 7, 1799, Bowood, Wiltshire, England) was a Dutch-born British physician and scientist who is best known for his discovery of the process of photosynthesis, by which green plants in sunlight absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen.
As a physician in London (1765–68), Ingenhousz was an early proponent of variolation, or the inoculation against smallpox through the use of live, unmodified virus taken from patients with mild cases of the disease. In 1768 he traveled to Vienna to inoculate the family of the Austrian empress Maria Theresa and subsequently served as court physician. Returning to London in 1779, he published the results of an ingenious study on the chemical effects of plant physiology, Experiments Upon Vegetables, Discovering Their Great Power of Purifying the Common Air in Sunshine, and of Injuring It in the Shade and at Night. The English chemist Joseph Priestley had already shown that plants restore to the air a property necessary to—but destroyed by—animal life. Ingenhousz found that (1) light is necessary for this restoration (photosynthesis); (2) only the green parts of the plant actually perform photosynthesis; and (3) all living parts of the plant “damage” the air (respire), but the extent of air restoration by a green plant far exceeds its damaging effect.
A man of varied scientific interests, Ingenhousz also invented an improved apparatus for generating large amounts of static electricity (1766) and made the first quantitative measurements of heat conduction in metal rods (1789).
James
Iredell (1751-1799): Associate United States Supreme Court justice died in
Edenton, North Carolina at the age of 48 (October 20).
James Iredell (b. October 5, 1751, Lewes, Sussex, England — d. October 20, 1799, Edenton, North Carolina) was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1790–99).
At the age of 17, Iredell was appointed comptroller of the customhouse at Edenton, North Carolina, to which his father, formerly a Bristol merchant, had migrated. He studied law and became active in the American cause. Although hopeful as late as June 1776 for a reconciliation with Britain, he worked as one of the commissioners to draft and revise the laws of the new state of North Carolina. He served briefly as a superior court judge and as state attorney general and, in 1787, was charged by the legislature to codify the state’s statutes. From this effort, “Iredell’s Revisal” appeared in 1791.
Iredell was a leader of the North Carolina Federalists supporting ratification of the Constitution, and his letters in its defense (published over the name Marcus) are said to have prompted President George Washington to appoint him to the United States Supreme Court. He was the original court’s youngest member.
Iredell’s opinion in Calder v. Bull (1798) helped establish the principle of judicial review five years before it was actually tested in Marbury v. Madison. He is, however, remembered primarily for his dissents, most notably that in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), which maintained that an action of assumpsit could lie against a state only by authority of the Constitution, thus lending weight to the campaign for the 11th Amendment.
Iredell’s health failed less than 10 years after his appointment, in large part as a result of the travel and strain of holding circuit courts, which at the time was required of Supreme Court justices.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 divided the United States into 13 districts, each district having a court in one of 13 major cities. It also established three circuits, or appeals courts—one each in the eastern, central and southern United States. The Supreme Court Justices were required to "ride circuit," or travel to the various circuits and hear cases, twice each year. Partially as a result of the heavy travel burden, Justice Iredell's health failed and he died suddenly on October 20, 1799, in Edenton, North Carolina. He was 48. Iredell County, North Carolina, was established in 1788 and was named for him.
Veerapandiya
Kattabomman: Indian chieftain who fought the British. {See An Asian Perspective.}
Raja
Kesavadas (1745-1799): Dewan of Travancore (April 21). {See An Asian Perspective.}
Konoe Tsunehiro (1761-1799): Kugyo
(Japanese court noble). {See An Asian Perspective.}
Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799): German physicist and satirist who discovered
the principle of xerography died in Ober-Ramstadt, near Darmstadt, Hesse,
Germany, at the age of 56 (February 24).
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (b. July 1, 1742, Ober-Ramstadt, near Darmstadt, Hesse [Germany] — d. February 24, 1799, Göttingen, Hanover) was a German physicist, satirist, and writer of aphorisms, best known for his ridicule of metaphysical and romantic excesses.
Lichtenberg was the 17th child of a Protestant pastor, who taught him mathematics and natural sciences. In 1763, he entered Göttingen University, where in 1770 he became assistant professor of physics and in 1775 professor. This post he held until his death. Lichtenberg did research in a wide variety of fields—including geophysics, volcanology, meteorology, chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics—but most important were his investigations into physics. Notably, he constructed a huge electrophorus and, in the course of experimentations, discovered in 1777 the basic principle of modern xerographic copying; the images that he reproduced are still called “Lichtenberg figures.”
As a satirist and humorist Lichtenberg takes high rank among the German writers of the 18th century. His biting wit involved him in many controversies with well-known contemporaries, such as Johann Kaspar Lavater, whose science of physiognomy he ridiculed, and Johann Heinrich Voss, whose views on Greek pronunciation called forth a powerful satire, Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes (1782; “On the Pronunciation of the Muttonheads of Old Greece”). In 1769, and again in 1774, Lichtenberg resided for some time in England, and his Briefe aus England (1776–78; “Letters from England”) are the most attractive of his writings. He contributed to the Göttinger Taschenkalender (“Göttingen Pocket Almanac”) from 1778 onward and to the Göttingisches Magazin der Literatur und Wissenschaft (“Göttingen Magazine of Literature and Science”), which he edited for three years (1780–82) with J.G.A. Forster. He also published in 1794–99 an Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthschen Kupferstiche (“Full Explanation of Hogarthian Copper Engravings”).
From 1765 until the end of his life, Lichtenberg kept notebooks he referred to as Sudelbücher, or “waste books,” where he recorded quotations, sketched, and made brief observations on a wide range of subjects from science to philosophy. First published posthumously in 1800–06, they became his best-known work and gave him his reputation as an aphorist. Selections from the Sudelbücher were published in English as The Waste Books (2000).
Lichtenberg had many romances. Most of the women were from poor families. In 1777 he met Maria Stechard, then age 13, who lived with the professor permanently after 1780. She died in 1782. In the following year, he met Margarethe Kellner (1768–1848). He married her in 1789, in order to give her a pension, as he thought he was to die soon. She gave him six children, and outlived him by 49 years.
Lichtenberg was prone to procrastination. He failed to launch the first ever hydrogen balloon, and although he always dreamed of writing a novel à la Fielding's Tom Jones, he never finished more than a few pages. He died at the age of 56, after a short illness.
Dorothea
Maria Losch (1730-1799): Swedish master mariner (February 2). {See A Female Perspective.}
Luo
Ping (1733-1799): Qing dynasty painter.
Luo Ping, or Lo P'ing (1733-1799), was a Qing dynasty painter who lived in Gan Yuan (modern day Yangzhou) of Jiangsu Province. His style name was 'Disappearing Gentleman' (Dùnfu)，and his pseudonyms were 'Two Peaks' (Liǎng Fēng) and 'Monk of the Temple of Flowers' (Huā zhi Sì Sēng). He studied painting under Jin Nong and developed a unique personal style. He painted people, Buddhist images, plum blossoms with bamboo, flowers, and scenery paintings. He refused government service to live a life of poverty selling paintings. He was the youngest of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou.
Luo Ping's life began with loss and sadness. His father died when Luo was just one year old, and his mother soon after. However, from an early age the youth orphan was recognized as a talented poet and gained admission to the exclusive artistic circles of his home town, Yangzhou. At nineteen he married - for love -- the poet and painter Fang Wanyi (1732-1779). Their daughter and two sons (Yǔnshào and Yǔnzuǎn) also went on to become artists. All painted plum blossoms, the family trade mark.
Five years after his marriage, Luo met the man who would change his life. This was the nationally renowned poet, artist and bon vivant Jin Nong (1687-1763). The 70-year old master took a great liking to the talented young man, who was in turn inspired by the emotional and expressive art of his mentor. Luo also painted pictures for Jin Nong, who signed them with his own name and sold them. When, after 6 years of this close collaboration, Jin Nong died, Luo buried his teacher with as much reverence as if it were the funeral of his own father.
In the second half of his life, Luo often visited the capital, Beijing, where he caused a sensation in the fashionable cultural scene. On to a long painting scroll which he showed to everyone, he had painted ghosts and claimed to have seen such creatures with his own eyes.
Luo died, highly esteemed, at the age of sixty-six. Throughout his life he saw himself as an austere Buddhist and signed his works with the name "Monk of the Temple of Flowers".
Ma’afu-‘o-limuloa:
Chief of the House of Tupou in the Oceanic kingdom of Tonga (July).
Maʻafu-ʻo-limuloa (born sometime in the 18th century, died July 1799) was the 15th Tuʻi Kanokupolu, chief of the House of Tupou in the Oceanic kingdom of Tonga). He was a grandson of Mailelaumotomoto, the second Maʻafu-ʻo-Tukuʻiʻaulahi, the second hereditary chief of the Vainī on Tongatapu, and a member of the Tongan reigning house of Tupou. He was proclaimed somewhere in July 1799 by the Haʻa Havea clan, a junior branch of the Tuʻi Kanokupolu line.
Maʻafuʻolimuloa was killed, one day after his reign began, by the Haʻa Ngata Tupu (a senior clan), who did not agree with the Haʻa Havea. It would take many years before the chiefs agreed upon the successor: a distant cousin of his, Tupoumālohi, and then only to forestall ambitions of a candidate even less acceptable to them.
Etta Lubina Johanna Palm d’Aelders (1743-1799): Dutch
feminist and spy (March 28). {See A
Female Perspective.}
Paremmakkal
Thoma Kathanar (1736-1799): Author of Varthamanapusthakam,
the first travelogue in the Indian language and the Administrator of the
Archdiocese of Cranganore (March 20).
Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar (b. September 10, 1736 – d. March 20, 1799) is the author of Varthamanapusthakam (1790), the first ever travelogue in an Indian language. He was Administrator (Governador) of the Archdiocese of Cranganore from 1786 until his death in 1799.
Paremmakkal Thoma is considered to be the father of modern Malayalam (one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India) prose. He was also a polyglot, an efficient administrator and a Roman Catholic priest of Kerala who tried to bring about unity in the Church and also to maintain its unique heritage.
Paremmakkal Thoma was born as the fourth child of Paremmakkal Itty Chandy and Anna of Kadanad in Kottayam district on September 10, 1736. Initially he studied Sanskrit and Syriac from teachers nearby. Then he joined Alengad Seminary to learn Latin and Portuguese and for priesthood. In 1761, he was ordained as a Kathanar (priest). He served as vicar in different churches up to 1778.
Thomma Kathanar made tireless efforts to bring about unity in the Church in Kerala which had split following the Coonan Cross Oath. He also strived to get bishops from among the members of the Catholic Church in Kerala, and also to retain the rich heritage of the Malabar Church. In order to achieve those goals he undertook a hard and perilous journey to Rome in 1778 along with Mar Joseph Kariattil.
The breath-taking description of this journey is recorded in his famous book Varthamanapusthakam, considered to be the first travelogue among all Indian languages. The historic journey to Rome to represent the grievances of Kerala's Syrian Catholics started from the boat jetty in Athirampuzha in 1785. From Athirampuzha, they first proceeded to Kayamkulam by a country-boat. The journey then took them to Chinnapattanam, as Chennai was then known. From there they went to Kandy in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). From Ceylon they sailed to Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa. They were to sail to Portugal from there but adverse winds drifted their ship in the Atlantic Ocean taking it to the coast of Latin America. A further journey from the Latin American coast took them to their destination.
The journey to the destination took more than a year. While they were in Europe, Mar Joseph Kariattil was ordained in Portugal as the Bishop of Kodungalloor Archdiocese. The two representatives of the Kerala Catholic Church succeeded in convincing the church authorities in Rome and Lisbon about the problems in Kerala Church. On their way back home they stayed in Goa where Mar Kariattil died. When realizing that his end was near, Mar Kariattil appointed Thoma Kathanar as the Governador (governor) of Cranganore Archdiocese after him, and handed over the cross, chain and ring, the tokens of his power, which had been presented to him by the Portuguese queen.
The new Governador administered the affairs of the church establishing his headquarters at Angamaly. In 1792, the headquarters of the Archdiocese had to be shifted to Vadayar because of the attacks of Tippu Sultan. In the last four years of his life, Thoma Kathanar managed church administration from his own parish, Ramapuram.
Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar remained the Governador for thirteen years. He died on March 20, 1799.
Vathamanapusthakam was first published in the 18th century (in 1790) but was first printed in Malayalam in 1936. The manuscript of the book is kept at the Saint Thomas Christian Museum in Kochi.
Luis Paret y
Alcazar (1746-1799): Spanish painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period (February
14). {See A Pan-Hispanic Perspective.}
Eleonora
Anna Naria Felice de Fonseca Pimentel [Leonor da Fonseca Pimentel Chaves]
(1751-1799), an Italian poet, died in Naples (August 20). {See A Female Perspective.}
Pope
Pius VI (1717-1799): Catholic pope died in Valence, France at the age of 81
(August 29). {See A Christian Perspective.}
Qianlong
(1711-1799): Emperor of China (r. 1735-1796) died in Beijing (February 7). {See An
Asian Perspective.}
Matthew
Quintal (1766-1799): Mutineer aboard the HMS Bounty.
Matthew Quintal (March 3, 1766 in Padstow, Cornwall – 1799, Pitcairn Island) was an English able seaman and mutineer aboard HMS Bounty. His surname was, in all probability, the result of mis-spelling the Cornish surname "Quintrell". He was the last of the mutineers to be murdered on Pitcairn Island. He was murdered by Ned Young and John Adams, leaving them the last two men alive on the island.
Following the mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the Bounty was taken to Tahiti for a few days before being compelled to set sail. Quintal joined Christian and seven other mutineers. They took with them eleven Tahitian women and six men. After months at sea, the mutineers discovered the uninhabited Pitcairn Island and settled there in January 1790. It was Quintal who burned the Bounty in order to prevent any return.
After three years, a conflict broke out between the Tahitian men and the mutineers, resulting in the deaths of all the Tahitian men and five of the Englishmen (including Fletcher Christian). Quintal was one of the survivors.
One of the other survivors, William McCoy, discovered a means of distilling alcohol from one of the island's fruits. He and Quintal quickly descended into alcoholism, often bullying the surviving women. McCoy committed suicide by jumping off a cliff in a drunken frenzy. After McCoy's suicide, Quintal threatened to kill the rest of the community. The other two surviving men, Ned Young and John Adams, subsequently killed him with an axe during one of his drunken stupors.
Quintal’s descendants reside on Norfolk Island to this day. A descendant, Malcolm Champion, was an Olympic swimmer.
Yitzhak HaLevi ben Mordechai
Raitzes (c.1730-1799): Polish rabbi (June 14). {See A Jewish Perspective.}
Ram
Charan Maharaj (1720-1799): Founder of a unique religious tradition called Ram
Snehi Sampradaya. {See A Hindu Perspective.}
Rani Velu Nachiyar: First Tamil
Queen to fight against the British is believed to have died in this year. {See
A Female Perspective.}
Carlo Rezzonico (1724-1799): Catholic cardinal who
defended Jesuits against the accusations that led to the suppression of the
order (January 26). {See A Christian Perspective.}
Mir Sadiq: Minister in the cabinet of Tipu Sultan of
Mysore. {See A Muslim Perspective.}
Joseph Boulogne Saint-Georges (c. 1739-1799):
Afro-French violinist and composer and, for a time, one of the best swordsman
in France (June 10). {See also A Pan-African Perspective.}
Joseph Bo(u)logne,
Chevalier de Saint-George (sometimes
erroneously spelled Saint-Georges) (December 25, 1745 – June 10, 1799) was one
of the most important figures in the Paris musical scene in the second half of
the 18th century. He was also famous as
a swordsman and equestrian. Known as the "black Mozart" he was one of
the earliest musicians of the European classical type known to have African
ancestry.
Joseph Bologne was born in Guadeloupe to Nanon, a Wolof former slave, and a white French plantation owner, Georges Bologne de Saint-George. Although his father called himself ‘de Saint-George’, after one of his properties, he was not born into the nobility. Some biographers have mistaken him for Pierre Tavernier-Boulogne, controlleur général of finance, whose nobility dated back to the 15th century. The confusion surrounding the nobility of Saint-George's father originated with Roger de Beauvoir’s novel of 1840 ("Le Chevalier de Saint-George"). However, Georges Bologne was not ennobled until 1757, when he acquired the title of Gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roi.
In 1747, Georges Bologne was accused unjustly of murder and fled to France with Nanon and her child to prevent their being sold. After two years, he was granted a royal pardon and the family returned to Guadeloupe. In 1753, Georges took Joseph, who was then eight, to France permanently where he was enrolled in a private academy.
At the age of 13, Saint-George became a pupil of La Boëssière, a master of arms, and excelled in all physical exercises, especially fencing. While still a student, Saint-George beat Alexandre Picard, a fencing-master of Rouen, who had mocked him as ‘La Boëssière’s upstart mulatto’. For this victory, Saint-George was rewarded by his father with a horse and buggy. He also studied literature and horseback riding, and became an exceptional violinist.
On graduating at the age of 19, he was made a Gendarme de la Garde du Roi and dubbed chevalier. After the end of the Seven Years' War, Georges Bologne returned to his Guadeloupe plantations, leaving his son with a handsome annuity. The young chevalier became the darling of fashionable society; all contemporary accounts speak of his romantic conquests. In 1766, the Italian fencer Giuseppe Faldoni came to Paris to challenge Saint-George. Faldoni won, but proclaimed Saint-George the finest swordsman in France.
Saint-George studied music in Saint-Domingue with the black violinist Joseph Platon before emigrating to Paris in 1752. The teacher, Platon, played an unspecified Saint-George violin concerto at Port-au-Prince (Haiti) on April 25, 1780.
After
1764, works dedicated to him by Lolli and Gossec suggest that Gossec was his
composition teacher and that Lolli taught him violin. Saint-George’s technical
approach was similar to that of Gaviniés, who may also have taught him. In 1769
he became a member of Gossec’s new orchestra, the Concert des Amateurs, at the
Hôtel de Soubise, and was soon named its leader.
While still a young man, Saint-George acquired multiple reputations as the best swordsman in France, as a violin virtuoso, and as a composer in the classical tradition. He composed and conducted for the private orchestra and theatre of the marquise de Montesson, the morganatic wife of the King's cousin, Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. In 1771, he was appointed maestro of the Concert des Amateurs, and later director of the Concert de la Loge Olympique, the biggest orchestra of his time (65-70 musicians). This orchestra commissioned Joseph Haydn to compose six symphonies (the "Paris Symphonies" Nr. 82-87), which Saint-George conducted for their world premiere. Renowned both for his skill as a composer and musician, he was selected for appointment as the director of the Royal Opera of Louis XVI. But this was prevented by three Parisian divas who petitioned the King in writing against the appointment, insisting that it would be beneath their dignity and injurious to their professional reputations for them to sing on stage under the direction of a "mulatto".
Thwarted in his musical career, Saint-George earned fresh renown as a competitive fencer. He had already been dubbed "chevalier" by appreciative crowds at the Palais Royal. There is a famous portrait of him crossing swords in an exhibition match with the daring transvestite spy, the Chevalier d'Eon, in the presence of George of Hanover, the Prince of Wales and Britain's future king.
Like many others associated with the aristocracy and the court at Versailles, Saint-George served in the army of the Revolution against France's foreign enemies, although he is not known to have joined the domestic revolutionary struggle prior to the imprisonment of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He was appointed the first black colonel of the French army, and commanded a regiment of a thousand free colored volunteers, largely consisting of former slaves from the region of his birth. Repeatedly denounced, however, because of his aristocratic parentage and past association with the royal court, he was later expelled from the army, arrested, and jailed for nearly a year. After the revolution, he was entrusted with the leadership of the orchestra of the Royal Palace. He died in Paris in 1799.
In1777, Saint-George conducted the premières of Joseph Haydn's six "Paris symphonies." Marie-Antoinette had them performed several nights in a row, such that one of these symphonies, No. 85, was subtitled "The Queen," in her honor. Mozart stayed in Paris in 1778 during the time of Saint-George's triumph.
Saint-George's second opera, La Chasse ("The Hunt," now lost), first performed on October 12, 1778 was enthusiastically received by the audience and the press alike.
Saint-George owed his fame as much to his virtuosity as for his compositions. His concertos attracted crowds to the Hôtel de Soubise (current headquarters of the National Archives), and to performances by the Concert des Amateurs (eighty musicians), led by Saint-George. The composer's operas (including one for which the libretto was written by Choderlos de Laclos) had undeniable popularity at the Italian Comedy. Saint-George's qualities as a conductor were such that his orchestras were considered to be among the best in Europe.
During the 17th century, the increase in the black population in France became a political issue. In order to protect their trade, slave owners and traders demanded that the King maintain racial separation. The Code Noir, a book of laws pertaining to blacks, was issued in response to these concerns. The philosopher Voltaire was among those who argued that Africans and their descendants were genetically inferior to white Europeans.
On April 5, 1762, King Louis XV decreed that peoples of color (nègres and mulattos) must register with the clerk of the Admiralty within two months. Saint-George's mother, Nanon, registered herself; she was 34 at the time of registration. On May 10, 1762, La Boissière registered Saint-George as Joseph de Boulogne.
Saint-George would pay dearly as the first black colonel of the French Army in its fight for the Revolution. With his legion, he arrested General Miaczinski in Lille, thwarting the betrayal of Dumouriez. However, Saint-George was dismissed on September 25, 1793, accused of using public funds for personal gain. He was acquitted after spending 18 months in jail.
After the revolution, abandoned by his former protectors, Saint-George continued to lead orchestras, but his standard of living was considerably diminished compared to the extraordinary luxury in which he had lived under the monarchy.
Joseph de Boulogne - Le Chevalier de Saint-George died in 1799 at the age of 54. In the ensuing 200 years, he fell into obscurity. Critics accuse French cultural institutions of having deliberately ignored and minimized the importance of Saint-George, on the basis of his ethnic background.
Saint-George wrote symphonies, roughly 25 concertos for violin and orchestra, string quartets, sonatas, and songs in the style of Mozart, Haydn and the composers of the Mannheim school. He also wrote at least five operas with a possible sixth opera, Le droit de seigneur, disputed among music scholars. Excerpts from his first opera, Ernestine, were also used in an opera pastiche, Recueil d’airs et duos, along with music by other composers.
Physicist Horace-Benedict de Saussure died in Geneva,
Switzerland (January 22).
Horace Bénédict de Saussure (b. February 17, 1740, Geneva, Switzerland — d. January 22, 1799, Geneva) was a Swiss physicist, geologist, and early Alpine explorer who developed an improved hygrometer to measure atmospheric humidity.
Saussure became professor of physics and philosophy at the Academy of Geneva in 1762 and in 1766 developed what was probably the first electrometer, used to measure electric potential. The word geology was introduced into scientific nomenclature by Saussure with the publication of the first volume of his Voyages dans les Alpes (1779–96; “Travels in the Alps”), a work that contains the results of more than 30 years of geologic studies. In 1783 Saussure built the first hygrometer utilizing a human hair to measure humidity. He also performed early laboratory experiments on the origin of granite.
In 1784, Saussure was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He died in Geneva in 1799.
The genus of high alpine plants Saussurea, some adapted to growing in some of the most extreme high alpine climates tolerated by any plant, is named after him. The standard botanical author abbreviation Sauss. is applied to species Saussure described. His work as a mineralogist was also recognized. The Saussurite mineral is named after him.
Saussure was honored by being depicted on the 20 Swiss franc banknote of the sixth issue of Swiss National Bank notes (1979-1995 when replaced by the eighth issue, and the notes were recalled in 2000).
Saussure’s son, Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure, was a noted specialist in organic chemistry and his daughter, Albertine Necker de Saussure, was a pioneer in the education of women.
Lazaro
Spallanzani (1729-1799): Italian physiologist who contributed to the study of
animal reproduction died in Pavia, Cisalpine Republic at the age of 70
(February 11).
Lazzaro Spallanzani (b. January 12, 1729, Modena, Duchy of Modena — d. February 11, 1799, Pavia, Cisalpine Republic) was an Italian physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions and animal reproduction. His investigations into the development of microscopic life in nutrient culture solutions paved the way for the research of Louis Pasteur.
Spallanzani was the son of a distinguished lawyer. He attended the Jesuit college at Reggio, where he received a sound education in the classics and philosophy. He was invited to join the order, but, although he was eventually ordained (in 1757), he declined this offer and went to Bologna to study law. Under the influence of his kinswoman Laura Bassi, a professor of mathematics, he became interested in science. In 1754, Spallanzani was appointed professor of logic, metaphysics, and Greek at Reggio College and in 1760 professor of physics at the University of Modena.
Although Spallanzani published in 1760 an article critical of a new translation of the Iliad, all of his leisure was being devoted to scientific research. In 1766, he published a monograph on the mechanics of stones that bounce when thrown obliquely across water. His first biological work, published in 1767, was an attack on the biological theory suggested by Georges Buffon and John Turberville Needham, who believed that all living things contain, in addition to inanimate matter, special “vital atoms” that are responsible for all physiological activities. They postulated that, after death, the “vital atoms” escape into the soil and are again taken up by plants. The two men claimed that the small moving objects seen in pond water and in infusions of plant and animal matter are not living organisms but merely “vital atoms” escaping from the organic material. Spallanzani studied various forms of microscopic life and confirmed the view of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek that such forms are living organisms. In a series of experiments he showed that gravy, when boiled, did not produce these forms if placed in phials that were immediately sealed by fusing the glass. As a result of this work, he concluded that the objects in pond water and other preparations were living organisms introduced from the air and that Buffon’s views were without foundation.
The range of Spallanzani’s experimental interest expanded. The results of his regeneration and transplantation experiments appeared in 1768. He studied regeneration in a wide range of animals including planarians, snails, and amphibians and reached a number of general conclusions: the lower animals have greater regenerative power than the higher; young individuals have a greater capacity for regeneration than the adults of the same species; and, except in the simplest animals, it is the superficial parts not the internal organs that can regenerate. His transplantation experiments showed great experimental skill and included the successful transplant of the head of one snail onto the body of another. In 1773, he investigated the circulation of the blood through the lungs and other organs and did an important series of experiments on digestion, in which he obtained evidence that digestive juice contains special chemicals that are suited to particular foods. At the request of his friend Charles Bonnet, Spallanzani investigated the male contribution to generation. Although the spermatozoa had first been seen in the 17th century, their function was not understood until some 30 years after the formulation of the cell theory in 1839. As a result of his earlier investigations into simple animals, Spallanzani supported the prevailing view that the spermatozoa were parasites within the semen. Both Bonnet and Spallanzani accepted the preformation theory. According to their version of this theory, the germs of all living things were created by God in the beginning and were encapsulated within the first female of each species. Thus, the new individual present in each egg was not formed de novo but developed as the result of an expansion of parts the delineation of which had been laid down within the germ by God at the creation. It was assumed that the semen provided a stimulus for this expansion, but it was not known if contact was essential nor if all the parts of the semen were required. Using amphibians, Spallanzani showed that actual contact between egg and semen is essential for the development of a new animal and that filtered semen becomes less and less effective as filtration becomes more and more complete. He noted that the residue on the filter paper retained all its original power if it were immediately added to the water containing the eggs. Spallanzani concluded that it was the solid parts of the secretion, proteinaceous and fatty substances that form the bulk of the semen, that were essential, and he continued to regard the spermatozoa as inessential parasites. Despite this error, Spallanzani performed some of the first successful artificial insemination experiments on lower animals and on a dog.
As Spallanzani’s fame grew, he became a fellow of most of the scientific societies in Europe. In 1769, he accepted a chair at the University of Pavia, where, despite other offers, he remained for the rest of his life. He was popular with students and colleagues. Once a small group, jealous of his success, accused him of malpractice in association with the museum that he controlled, but he was soon vindicated. Spallanzani took every opportunity to travel, to study new phenomena, and to meet other scientists. The accounts of his journeys to Constantinople and Sicily still provide interesting reading. Toward the end of his life he conducted further research on microscopic animals and plants that he had started early in his career; he also began studies on the electric charge of the torpedo fish and sense organs in bats. In his last set of experiments, published posthumously, he attempted to show that the conversion of oxygen to carbon dioxide must occur in tissues, not in the lungs (as Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier had suggested in 1787).
Tipu
Sultan (1750-1799): Sultan of Mysore (India) (May 4). {See
also A Muslim Perspective.}
Tipu Sultan, also spelled Tippu Sultan, also called Tippu Sahib or Fateh Ali Tipu, byname Tiger of Mysore, (b. 1750, Devanhalli [India] — d. May 4, 1799, Seringapatam) was a sultan of Mysore who won fame in the wars of the late 18th century in southern India.
Tipu was instructed in military tactics by French officers in the employ of his father, Hyder Ali, who was the Muslim ruler of Mysore. In 1767, Tipu commanded a corps of cavalry against the Marathas in the Carnatic (Karnataka) region of western India, and he fought against the Marathas on several occasions between 1775 and 1779. During the second Mysore war he defeated Colonel John Brathwaite on the banks of the Coleroon River (February 1782). He succeeded his father in December 1782 and in 1784 concluded peace with the British and assumed the title of sultan of Mysore. In 1789, however, he provoked a British invasion by attacking their ally, the raja of Travancore. He held the British at bay for more than two years, but by the Treaty of Seringapatam (March 1792) he had to cede half his dominions. He remained restless and unwisely allowed his negotiations with Revolutionary France to become known to the British. On this pretext the governor-general, Lord Mornington (later the marquess of Wellesley), launched the fourth Mysore war. Seringapatam, Tipu’s capital, was stormed by British-led forces on May 4, 1799, and Tipu died leading his troops in the breach.
Tipu was an able general and administrator, and, though a Muslim, he retained the loyalty of his Hindu subjects. He proved cruel to his enemies and lacked the judgment of his father, however.
Tipu Sultan and his father Hyder Ali are regarded as pioneers in the use of solid fuel rocket technology or missiles for military use. A military tactic they developed was the use of mass attacks with rocket brigades on infantry formations. Tipu Sultan wrote a military manual called Fathul Mujahidin in which 200 rocket men were assigned to each Mysorean "cushoon" (brigade). Mysore had 16 to 24 cushoons of infantry. The areas of town where rockets and fireworks were manufactured were known as Taramandal Pet ("Galaxy Market"). It was only after Tipu's death that the technology eventually reached Europe.
In 1792, during the Third Anglo-Mysore War, there was mention of two rocket units fielded by Tipu Sultan, 120 men and 131 men respectively. Lieutenant Colonel Knox was attacked by rockets near Srirangapatna on the night of February 6, 1792, while advancing towards the Kaveri River from the north. The Rocket Corps ultimately reached a strength of about 5000 in Tipu Sultan's army. Mysore rockets were also used for ceremonial purposes. When the Jacobin Club of Mysore sent a delegation to Tipu Sultan, 500 rockets were launched as part of the gun salute.
During the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, rockets were again used on several occasions. One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later famous as the First Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was defeated by Tipu's Diwan, Purnaiya, at the Battle of Sultanpet Tope.
The following day, Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force, and took the whole position without losing a single man. On April 22, 1799, twelve days before the main battle, rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment, then threw a great number of rockets at the same instant to signal the beginning of an assault by 6,000 Indian infantry and a corps of Frenchmen, all directed by Mir Golam Hussain and Mohomed Hulleen Mir Mirans. The rockets had a range of about 1,000 yards. Some burst in the air like shells. Others, called ground rockets, would rise again on striking the ground and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was spent.
During the conclusive British attack on Seringapatam on May 2, 1799, a British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu Sultan's fort, causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the battlements. On the afternoon of May 4 when the final attack on the fort was led by Baird, he was again met by "furious musket and rocket fire", but this did not help much. In about an hour's time the fort was taken; perhaps within another hour Tipu had been shot (the precise time of his death is not known), and the war was effectively over.
After the fall of Seringapatam, 600 launchers, 700 serviceable rockets and 9,000 empty rockets were found. Some of the rockets had pierced cylinders, to allow them to act like incendiaries, while some had iron points or steel blades bound to the bamboo. By attaching these blades to rockets they became very unstable towards the end of their flight causing the blades to spin around like flying scythes, cutting down all in their path.
These experiences eventually led the Royal Woolwich Arsenal to start a military rocket research and development program in 1801, based on the Mysorean technology. Their first demonstration of solid-fuel rockets came in 1805 and was followed by publication of A Concise Account of the Origin and Progress of the Rocket System in 1807 by William Congreve, son of the arsenal's commandant. Congreve rockets were soon systematically used by the British during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. These descendants of Mysorean rockets were used in the 1814 Battle of Baltimore, and are mentioned in the Star Spangled Banner.
Veeran Sundaralingam
(Sundaralinga Kudumbanar): Indian military leader who fought the British East
India Company. {See An Asian
Perspective.}
Toypurina (1760-1799):
Tongva/Gabrielino (Indigenous American) medicine woman who led a revolt in
California (May 22). {See An Indigenous Peoples’ Perspective.}
Marie
Louise Therese Victoire (1733-1799), a Princess of France, died (June 7). {See A Female Perspective.}
George
Washington (1732-1799): Commander in chief of American forces during the
American Revolution and the first President of the United States (1789-1797)
died and was buried in Mount Vernon, Virginia at the age of 67 (December 14). {See also A Pan-European Perspective and A
Pan-African Perspective.}
George Washington, also called Father of His Country (b. February 22 [February 11, Old Style], 1732, Westmoreland county, Virginia — died December 14, 1799, Mount Vernon, Virginia), was the American Revolutionary commander-in-chief (1775–83) and the first president of the United States (1789–97).
There is a no simple explanation for
the success of the American form of democracy. However, part of any
knowledgeable explanation for the success of America must begin with George
Washington. George Washington was the
consequence of one of the most perceptive deals in American history. When the American Revolutionary War began it
was fought for a time mainly in Massachusetts and the bordering Northern
states. It did not take too long for the
men of Massachusetts to begin to resent their burden. If it was to be a continental war, the South
too would have to be visibly engaged.
Virginia was rich and Massachusetts was chronically short of the money
for arms and supplies. John Adams had
the notion that if a continental commander could be appointed, and he was a
Virginian, then the North and the South and the Middle Colonies would have a
palpable, breathing symbol of a common cause.
A good deal would depend on the chosen man. Adams used his great influence with the
wartime Congress first to push the idea of a continental command and then to
see that it went to the man of his choice: George Washington.
The son of a Virginia planter,
Washington became a surveyor at age seventeen, a land speculator at eighteen,
and a militia major at twenty. Leading
forty colonial soldiers and a few POTSN into the Ohio River valley on a May 28,
1754 “peace” mission, Washington destroyed a French and POTSN contingent and
his legend began to form.
Shortly after his initial success
against the French, Washington was forced to surrender Pennsylvania’s Fort
Necessity to a larger French force after a withering barrage killed one third
of his men and a flood washed out the fortification. Allowed to take his troops home, Washington
returned to Virginia with his reputation intact. Volunteering for the French and Indian War
the following year, Washington was appalled when General Edward Braddock of
Britian insisted on a frontal attack after Washington warned him that the enemy
would use guerrilla tactics. Braddock
and most of his British officers were killed near Fort Duquesne, Pennsylvania,
while Washington and other survivors escaped.
By the war’s end in 1763, Washington had gained valuable fighting
experience and resented the widespread discrimination against American
officers.
Between wars, Washington married widow
Martha Dandridge Custis and built his estate’s value by diversifying beyond
tobacco to wheat, lumber, and bricks, and teaching crafts to his skilled
slaves. Remaining a public figure, he
served as assemblyman, county justice and vestryman, and entertained some 2,000
guests over a six-year period.
Washington attended the 1774 Continental Congress as a militant colonial
and, as the best known soldier in America, he was the logical candidate to
command the troops.
By the time Washington took command of
the rebel troops on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, common in 1775, he was the
embodiment of a perfect American general.
He had extensive military experience, he had come to disdain the British,
and at a broad-shouldered six feet three inches tall, he towered over almost
all his troops. He assumed command in a
buff and blue uniform, and his task looked every bit as imposing. The continental troops were poorly trained
and constantly turning over, because their enlistments expired after a few
months. But for the next six years,
Washington kept the army intact with stiff discipline, occasional corporal
punishment and his own shining example astride a white horse.
Against the overwhelming superiority of
the British army and navy – not to mention 17,000 Hessian mercenaries the
British imported – Washington had poor prospedts in head-to-head combat. What he did have was a strategy, keeping his
troops together until the British wore down.
In January of 1776, Washington drove
the British out of Boston Harbor by mounting cannon and mortar on Dorchester
Heights. When the war shifted south, he
was badly beaten in Brooklyn Heights, but escaped with most of his troops. The battle set a trend: lose on the field but
survive to fight again.
Driven out of New York to a bitterly
cold winter on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, Washington led a
force of 2,400 men across the river on December 26, 1776, routed a Hessian
force in Trenton, New Jersey, and beat a pursuing British army at
Princeton. After Benedict Arnold and
Horatio Gates’ forces stopped the British in Saratoga, New York, the next year,
France allied itself with America.
Nonetheless, Washington spent a cold winter in Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania, and had to thwart Gates’ attempt to dislodge him as commander in
chief. Congress granted Washington
extraordinary powers, but he enhanced his reputation by refusing to use them. He understood that without popular support
and a lawful cause, he could not keep the union together. Congress went bankrupt, Arnold turned
traitor, the underpaid and often starving troops twice mutinied, but Washington
persisted through several more difficult years.
In 1781, Washington faked an attack on
New York City, pinning many British troops there, then joined his French allies
to force the British surrender in Yorktown, Virginia. When Washington resigned rather than usurp
power over the country that worshiped him, his reputation spread throughout the
western world.
Around this time, for the first of many
times, Washington was called “Father of his Country.” Again he returned to Virginia. Again the nation recalled him. The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, but
Americans remained restless. Troops returned
home, only to find their wartime scrip worthless and themselves overwhelmed by
property and poll taxes. Writing about
Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, Superintendent of War Henry Knox
hyperbolically told Washington that 12,000 to 15,000 rebels intended to
redistribute all property. Washington
was sufficiently alarmed that he agreed to preside over the 1787 Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia.
Washington took little action at the
convention, but his presence assured it of respectability and his signature on
the Constitution –- with an aside that it would need amendments – helped
supporters whin its ratification. In
gratitude, the citizens of the new nation elected Washington first president of
the United States.
There were still roiling currents
beneath the ship of state – divisions between the northern and southern states,
animosity between the emerging Federalist and Republican parties – but
Washington’s leadership kept it on course.
His wise choices for leadership positions – John Jay at the Supreme
Court, Jefferson at State, Alexander Hamilton at Treasury, Henry Knox at War,
Edmund Randolph at Justice, and Samuel Osgood at the United States Post Office
among more than 1,000 offices – occupied Washington during his first term
(1789-1793).
Although he intended to retire,
Washington remained president for a second term to forestall domestic
disharmony and deal with the revolutionary wars in France and with growing
disputes with Britain over western territories.
Washington remained neutral, which led to pro-France
“Democratic-Republican societies” that opposed him and eventually created a
formal opposition party to Washington’s Federalist party. In Pennsylvania, Washington put down the
so-called Whiskey Rebellion over liquor taxes without a single shot being
fired, then typically pardoned all the protesters. Washington’s troops under General “Mad
Anthony” Wayne defeated an Indian force at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Washington barely got a bitterly divided
Congress to approve the 1794 Jay Treaty that removed Great Britain from
northwestern posts, but failed to prevent its impressment of American
sailors. Late in the second term,
Washington sent Thomas Pinckney to Madrid to negotiate an outlet to the sea via
the Mississippi River.
Historians have described President
Washington as more like a monarch than a chief executive. Riding in a horse drawn coach, receiving
callers at the White House as for a royal reception, he was widely deferred to
and he achieved every one of his major goals except for the creation of a
national university and the construction of a Potomac canal. Indeed, from the perspective of many modern
scholars, Washington’s remote and autocratic style of leadership would be unacceptable
today, but his prestige maintained a fragile national unity. When he retired for good in 1796, he issued a
farewell address warning citizens against the “baleful effects” of party strife
and asking them to “cherish public credit” but use it “as sparingly as
possible.” His speech, originally
written in 1792, was widely viewed as isolationist, but in reality it asked for
abstention from international conflicts for the following two decades. Not counting an undeclared war with France in
the 1790s and sparring with the Barbary pirates in the early 1800s, Washington
essentially got his wish, because his successors kept the peace until the War
of 1812.
Alone among the slaveholding
Founding Fathers from Virginia, Washington freed his slaves – albeit, not
effective until the death of his wife.
Washington died at his home in Mount Vernon only days before the dawning
of the nineteenth century, survived by his widow but no children. However, while Washington fathered no
biological children, he did father a grateful nation, and the American people
are, in essence, his heirs.
Physician
William Withering (1741-1799) died at Birmingham, England (October 6).
William Withering (b. March 17, 1741, Wellington, Shropshire, England — d. October 6, 1799, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, Warwickshire) was an English physician best known for his use of extracts of foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) to treat dropsy (edema), a condition associated with heart failure and characterized by the accumulation of fluid in soft tissues. Withering’s insights on the medical uses of foxglove proved crucial to modern understanding of heart failure, and today drugs containing the active compound, known as digitalis, are still prescribed.
Influenced by his father, Edmund, who worked as an apothecary, and by his uncle, Brooke Hector, who worked as a physician in Lichfield, Withering enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1762, following four years of medical apprenticeship. In 1766, having shown little interest in botany, which formed a large part of the medical curriculum at the time, he prepared his thesis on malignant sore throat, titled De Angina Gangraenosa. This was also the year that—following a thorough self-study of the Bible and sacred history—Withering changed from an atheist to a Christian. While in Edinburgh, he also participated in Masonic activities.
Withering soon relocated to Stafford, where he attended private patients and served as a founding physician of the Stafford General Infirmary. He began to enjoy botany and met Helena Cookes, who sketched the plants he collected. They were married on September 12, 1772, and had three children. Seeking a more substantial income, Withering decided to move to Birmingham to fill a vacancy created by the death of physician and Lunar Society co-founder William Small in 1775. (The Lunar Society was a gathering of naturalists and inventors who met monthly in the Midlands of England, traveling under the light of the full moon.) The move to Birmingham was suggested to Withering by Lichfield physician Erasmus Darwin. Together with fellow physician John Ash, Withering served as a founder of the Birmingham General Hospital, which opened in 1779. There he treated several thousand patients each year, many of whom were impoverished and received their care gratis.
Withering’s lasting reputation lies primarily with his publication An Account of the Foxglove, and Some of Its Medical Uses (1785). Though foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) had been used in folk medicine for centuries, Withering drew upon 156 of his own cases to objectively demonstrate its efficacy in treating dropsy, the edematous bodily swelling that typically accompanied heart failure. In particular, he noted that foxglove leaf preparations were efficacious in small, non-toxic doses and that their action varied according to the plant’s stage of bloom. Withering’s publication created considerable furor with fellow Lunar Society member Erasmus Darwin, who claimed priority in having published on foxglove’s therapeutic use in managing dropsy. This was not the first conflict between Withering and Darwin. The previous year, Darwin, together with fellow members of the Lichfield Botanical Society, had published the first English translation of Swedish naturalist and explorer Carolus Linnaeus’ Genera et Species Plantarum (the translated text was published in 1784) without acknowledging Withering’s contributions.
Withering gained renown for his botanical writings, the first of which, following in the tradition of English naturalist John Ray, was A Botanical Arrangement of All the Vegetables Growing Naturally in G. Britain (1776). Withering’s later work, An Arrangement of British Plants (1787–92), was designed to show amateur botanists, many of whom were young women, the utility of the Linnaean classification system. In addition, this work introduced his specially designed field microscope, which subsequently became known as the Withering botanical microscope.
Withering contributed to the clinical distinction of scarlet fever and to the medical use of lead and rum. Following the Birmingham riots of 1791, he left England and went to Portugal, where, as he had done in Stafford and Birmingham, he analyzed the mineral content of spa waters. In 1783 he prepared the English translation of Swedish chemist and naturalist Torbern Bergman’s mineralogy treatise, and, in recognition for his study of the properties of barium carbonate, this mineral was subsequently named witherite. The flowering plant Witheringia solanacea (order Solanales) was also named in his honor.
In 1794 Withering returned to Birmingham, where he died following complications of tuberculosis. He was buried at Edgbaston Old Church in Edgbaston, Birmingham, where his memorial tablet is marked by the staff and snake of Asclepius, the Greco-Roman god of medicine, and sprigs of Digitalis and Witheringia. Today digitalis continues to serve as the active ingredient of the cardiac glycoside drugs digoxin and digitoxin.
Polly
Young (1749-1799): English soprano (September 20). {See A Female Perspective.}
Mariya
Voinovna Zubova (1749-1799), a Russian composer and concert singer, died in
Saint Petersburg. {See A Female Perspective.}
Performing Arts
The
play The Italian Father by the
American dramatist William Dunlap was first performed, in New York, New York.
Johann
Christian Gottlieb Graupner played in blackface in performance of Oroonoko, one of the earliest minstrel
shows. A young German musician, Gottlieb
Graupner, who arrived in South Carolina, in 1795, blackened his face and sang
African American songs he had heard in Charleston. He billed himself as "The Gay Negro
Boy" in the Federal Street Theatre in Boston. This was the first minstrel performance on
record. Graupner later organized the Boston Philharmonic Society.
The oratorio The
Creation, by Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn, premiered in
Vienna.
The Piccolominos (Die
Piccolomini) by Friedrich von Schiller was performed at Weimar’s Hoftheater
(January 10).
The Death of Wallenstein (Wallensteins
Tod) by Friedrich von Schiller was performed at Weimar’s Hoftheater (April
20). The
Death of Wallenstein completed the Schiller’s trilogy.
Population
A
census recorded only 368 people living in the Arkansas Territory.
Scholarly
Publications
A
letter announcing “the discovery at Rosetta of some inscriptions that may offer
much interest” arrived at the Institute of Egypt which had been founded by
Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris to gather knowledge about the country he had
conquered and was colonizing.
An Army Corps of Engineers captain
named Pierre-Francois Bouchard found a large block of basalt with a polished
surface that had been chiseled with Greek characters, with hieroglyphs, and
with characters that would later be called demotic. Bouchard suspected that all three
inscriptions would say the same thing and that this stone would be the key to an
understanding of the Egyptian language of antiquity and its hieroglyphic
writings.
The inscription on the
“Rosetta Stone” would be found to date around 197 B.C.T. and to be written in
three languages: Greek and two forms of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The stone would enable scholars to learn to
read ancient Egyptian texts.
American
historian Hannah Adams: A Summary History
of New England. Adams was the first
professional woman writer in the United States. {See A Female Perspective.}
Ottoman
lexicographer and historian Mutercim Asim: Bayhan-i
Kati, a translation of a Persian dictionary. {See A Muslim Perspective.}
Johann
Gottlieb Fichte: “System der Sittenlehre.”
German
writer Johann Gottfried Herder: Metakritik
(Metacriticism), an attack on the
philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and the first of his Briefen zur Beforderung der Humanitat (Letters on the Progress of Mankind).
From
December 1799 to 1825, French mathematician and physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace
published the five-volume Traite de
mecanique celeste/Celestial Mechanics. In this work, Laplace extended and
corrected Isaac Newton’s theories of the solar system and began Laplace’s
summary of the advances in mathematical astronomy made during the eighteenth
century. Laplace also showed that the
solar system is stable, despite periodic perturbations.
Scottish political writer James
Mackintosh: Introduction to the Law of
Nature and Nations.
Gaspard Monge: Geometrie descriptive (Descriptive
Geometry) consisting of Monge’s 1794 to 1795 lectures at the Ecole Normale
in Paris and provided the first printed account of descriptive geometry
(geometry in three dimensions, the basis for mechanical drawing).
Hannah
More: Strictures on a Modern System of
Female Education. {See also A Female Perspective.}
In this work, More rejected the doctrine of paternal
austerity because “it drives the general spirit to artifice and the rugged to
despair. It generates deceit and
cunning, the most hopeless and hateful of the whole category of female
failings.” More advocated the early establishment of paternal trust,
encouraging the child’s sense of dependency while circumventing secrecy: “the
dread of severity will drive terrified children to seek, not for reformation
but for impunity. A readiness to forgive
them promotes frankness; and we should, above all things, encourage them to be
frank in order to get at their faults.” More sought to define female potential
in terms of the capacity to transcend the stereotyping that consigns women to
weakness and folly.
Mungo
Park: Travels in the Interior of
Africa. {See also A Pan-African
Perspective.}
Park had returned from nineteen months
of travels that followed his escape from four months’ imprisonment after being
captured by an Arab chief. He would make
a second expedition to the Niger in 1805 and reached Bamako before perishing in
the rapids during an attack by the indigenous people in 1806.
Italian mathematician Paolo Ruffini: Teoria generale delle equazioni (General theory of equations) which
contains the first proof that the general equation of the fifth degree cannot
be solved by algebraic methods based on radicals, although the proof is flawed
in some details.
Schlegel: Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Romer.
German theologian Friedrich
Schleiermacher: Uber die Religion: Reden
an die Bebildeten unter ihren Verachtern (Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers). Seeking to locate a belief in God in
intuition and feeling rather than dogma, Schleiermacher’s work would have a
profound influence on modern Protestant theology. {See A Christian Perspective.}
In The
naturalists miscellany, George Shaw gave the first scientific account of
the duck-billed platypus, based on a skin and a sketch provided by a former
governor of New South Wales, Australia.
From
December 1799 to 1805, English historian Sharon Turner published his History of England from the Earliest Period
to the Norman Conquest. His work encouraged a serious study of Britain’s
ancient past.
Scientific Achievements
Baron
Cuvier in France introduced the term phylum
to denote a category more general than classes.
He took the word from the Greek for “tribe.”
Antoine-Francois, comte de Fourcroy, isolated urea.
The
German mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss proved the fundamental theorem of
algebra: that every algebraic equation has as many solutions as the exponent of
the highest term.
Gauss’s doctoral dissertation, “New proof of the
theorem that every integral rational function of one variable can be decomposed
into real factors of the first or second degree” is the first successful proof
of the fundamental theorem of algebra – that every polynomial equation has a
solution.
Alexander
von Humboldt identified the Jurassic Period in Earth’s history.
The
Great Leonid meteor shower, a periodic event that would later be found to be
associated with a comet, was observed by Wilhelm von Humboldt.
Andrew
Jackson’s law partner found the remains of an 800 year old village.
Judge Overton wanted to
build a new home six miles south of Nashville, Tennessee, and unknowingly chose
a site in the midst of some Mississippi mounds.
When he dug the foundation, he found that the earth was filled with
ancient graves and stone coffins. When
the site was finally excavated in the twentieth century it was found to be the
site of a large village inhabited between 1000 and 1300 by People of the
Sovereign Nations (POTSN).
French chemist Joseph-Louis Proust
discovered that the elements in a compound are combined in definite proportions
by mass. This discovery forms the basis
of Proust’s Law: the proportions of the elements in a compound are always the
same, no matter how the compound is made.
English geologist William Smith
suggested that rock strata can be identified by their characteristic fossils.
This system of classification would become basic to paleontology.
In 1799, William Smith noted that different strata,
or layers, of rock had their own characteristic fossils, which turned up in
those layers and nowhere else. He
suggested that the various strata of rock, even when bent and interrupted by
geologic pressures, could be identified by their typical fossils. This insight, coupled with the inference that
higher strata are more recent and lower strata older, meant that the layers of the
earth’s crust offered a guide to the history of life. Paleontologists have since named the
intervals of prehistoric time, with their contemporaneous life forms, for the
rock strata associated with them. Thus,
today we know of the Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras; the
Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic,
Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Quaternary periods; the Paleocene, Eocene,
Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene epochs.
American
born British inventor and physicist Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, procured
a charter for the Royal Institution (a scientific society) in Britain, with the
naturalist and explorer Joseph Banks as first president.
In
Siberia, a perfectly preserved mammoth was found.
France’s
National Convention fixed values of meters and kilograms in the law of the 10th
of December.
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