1783 Explained

Year 1783 (MDCCLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1783

January - June

• February 3 - American Revolutionary War: Britain recognizes United States independence.
• February 4
  • American Revolutionary War

Great Britain formally declares that it will cease hostilities with the United States of America.

• • An earthquake in Calabria, Italy, leaves 50,000 dead.
• March 5 - Last celebration of Massacre Day.
• April 15 - Preliminary articles of peace ending the American Revolutionary War are ratified.
• May 18 - Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada - The first United Empire Loyalists reach Parrtown.
• June 4 or June 5 - The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon) in Annonay, France.
• June 8 - The volcano Laki, in Iceland, begins an 8-month eruption which kills 9,350 people and starts a 7-year famine. The eruption causes deaths of livestock when they eat contaminated grass and also widespread crop failure.

Effects of the Laki volcano were felt all over Europe. New evidence has been unearthed to conclude that this was one of "the greatest environmental catastrophies in European History".

July - December

• July 16 - Grants of land in Canada to American loyalists are announced.
• July 24 - The Treaty of Georgievsk is signed between the Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Kartli and Kakheti (Georgia).
• August 5 - Mount Asama erupts, causing turmoil in Edo period Japan.
• September 3 - American Revolutionary War - Treaty of Paris: A treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain is signed in Paris, ending the war.
• September 9 - Dickinson College was chartered in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
• October 3 - The Waterford Glassware Factory begins production in Waterford City, Ireland.
• November 2 - In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, US General George Washington gives his Farewell Address to the Army.
• November 21 - In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, marquis d'Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight (flight time: 25 minutes, Maximum height: 900 m).
• November 24 - In Spain, the Cedula of Population is signed, stating that anyone who will swear fealty to Spain, and is of the Roman Catholic faith, is welcome to populate Trinidad and Tobago.
• November 25 - American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City 3 months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
• November 30 - A 5.3 magnitude earthquake struck New Jersey.
• December 4 - At Fraunces Tavern in New York City, U.S. General George Washington formally bids his officers farewell.

Undated

• The city of Sevastopol is founded on the Crimean peninsula of the Russian Empire.
• United Empire Loyalists flee to Canada from the new United States.
• The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending hostilities between the Franco-Spanish Alliance and England.
• Loyalists from New York settle Great Abaco in the Bahamas.
• Ireland's last grey wolf is killed.
• Spanish government refuses to grant diplomatic recognition to the USA.

Births

• January 20 - Justus Johann Friedrich Dotzauer, German cellist and composer (d. 1860)
• January 23 - Stendhal, French writer (d. 1842)
• March 8 - Hannah Van Buren (d. 1819)
• April 3 - Washington Irving, American author (d. 1859)
• July 24 - Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan patriot, revolutionary leader and statesman (d. 1830)
• September 17 - Samuel Prout, English painter (d. 1852)
• September 17 - Nadezhda Durova, First female Russian army officer (d. 1866)
• October 31 - Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner, German chemist (d. 1857)

Deaths

• January 7 - William Tans'ur, English hymnist (b. 1700)
• February 6 - Capability Brown, English landscape gardener (b. 1716)
• March 23 - Charles Carroll, American lawyer and delegate to the Continental Congress (b. 1723)
• March 30 - William Hunter, Scottish anatomist (b. 1718)
• March 31 - Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian statesman (b. 1718)
• April 16
  • Benedict Joseph Labre, French saint (b. 1745)
  • Christian Mayer, Czech astronomer (b. 1719)
• May 23 - James Otis, American lawyer and patriot (b. 1725)
• September 18
  • Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (b. 1707)
  • Benjamin Kennicott, English churchman and Hebrew scholar (b. 1718)
• October 29 - Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician (b. 1717)
• November 22 - John Hanson, American delegate to the Continental Congress (b. 1715)
• November 23 - Yoriyuki Arima, Japanese mathematician (b. 1714)
• December 13 - Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer (b. 1717)
• December 16 - William James, British naval commander (b. 1720)