1796
Contents
Year 1796 (MDCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar).
Events of 1796
January - June
- January 16 - The first Dutch (and general) elections are held for the National Assembly of the Batavian Republic (the next Dutch general elections are held in 1888).
- February 1 - The capital of Upper Canada is moved from Newark to York.
- February 9 - The Qianlong Emperor abdicates at age 84 to make way for his son, the Jiaqing Emperor.
- March 9 - Widow Joséphine de Beauharnais marries General Napoléon Bonaparte.
- March 30 - Carl Gauss obtains conditions for the constructibility by ruler and compass of regular polygons, and is able to announce that the regular 17-gon is constructible by ruler and compasses.
- April 2 - The only night of the would-be Shakespearean play Vortigern and Rowena (actually written by William Henry Ireland) ends in the audience's laughter.
- April 12 - War of the First Coalition - Battle of Montenotte: Napoleon Bonaparte gains his first victory as an army commander.
- April 27 - Case of the Lyons Mail: During the night of April 27, 5 highwaymen attack the mail between Paris and Lyon, kill the postmen, and steal the funds sent to the armies in Italy.
- May 10
- Persian Expedition of 1796: Russian troops storm Derbent.
- War of the First Coalition - Battle of Lodi: General Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Austrian rearguard in forcing a crossing of the bridge over the River Adda in Italy. The Austrians lose some 2,000 men, 14 guns, and 30 ammunition wagons.
- May 14 - Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination.
- May 15 - Napoleon's troops take Milan.
- May 20 - The last mock Garrat Elections are held in Surrey, England.
- June 1 - Tennessee is admitted as the 16th U.S. state.
July - December
- July 10 - Carl Friedrich Gauss discovers that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most 3 triangular numbers.
- July 11 - The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under the terms of the Jay Treaty.
- July 14 - The de Portolá Expedition sets out from San Diego (now San Diego, California) to find the Port of Monterey (now Monterey, California).
- July 22 - Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio "Cleveland" after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.
- September 8 - French Revolutionary Wars - Battle of Bassano: French forces defeat Austrian troops.
- September 17 - U.S. President George Washington issues his Farewell Address, which warns against partisan politics and foreign entanglements.
- November: John Adams defeats Thomas Jefferson in the U.S. presidential election.
- November 4 - The Treaty of Tripoli (between the United States and Tripoli) is signed at Tripoli (see also 1797).
- November 6 Old Style - Catherine II of Russia (called Catherine The Great) dies and is succeeded by her son Paul I of Russia. His wife Sophie Marie Dorothea of Württemberg becomes Empress consort.
- November 10 - The de Portolá Expedition returns from its terminus point (now Menlo Park, California) to San Diego after failing to find Vizcaíno's Port of Monterey (now Monterey, California).
- November 17 - French Revolutionary Wars - Battle of Arcole: French forces defeat the Austrians in Italy.
- December 7 - The U.S. Electoral College meets to elect John Adams president.
Undated
- The Ron Santa Teresa distillery is established in Venezuela.
- The British government purchases a 40 acre (162,000 m²) site at Norman Cross (the first purposely built prisoner of war camp in Britain at that time).
- Mungo Park visits the Segu Kingdom.
- The British seize Ceylon from the Dutch.
- Annual British iron production reaches 125,000 tons.
- Spanish government lifts the restrictions against neutrals trading with the colonies, thus acknowledging Spain's inability to supply the colonies with needed goods and markets.
Ongoing events
Births
MDCCXCVI
Ab urbe condita 2549
Armenian calendar 1245
ԹՎ ՌՄԽԵ
Bahá'í calendar -48 – -47
Berber calendar 2746
Buddhist calendar 2340
Burmese calendar 1158
Byzantine calendar 7304 – 7305
Chinese calendar 乙卯年十一月廿二日
(4432/4492-11-22)
— to —
丙辰年十二月初三日(4433/4493-12-3)
Coptic calendar 1512 – 1513
Ethiopian calendar 1788 – 1789
Hebrew calendar 5556 – 5557
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat 1851 – 1852
- Shaka Samvat 1718 – 1719
- Kali Yuga 4897 – 4898
Holocene calendar 11796
Iranian calendar 1174 – 1175
Islamic calendar 1210 – 1211
Japanese calendar Kansei 8
(寛政8年)
Korean calendar 4129
Thai solar calendar 2339
- January 25 - William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist (d. 1852)
- February 22 - Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian mathematician (d. 1874)
- March 18 - Jakob Steiner, Swiss mathematician (d. 1863)
- May 1 - Junius Brutus Booth, English actor (d. 1852)
- May 4 - Horace Mann, American educator and abolitionist (d. 1859)
- June 14 - Nikolai Brashman, Russian mathematician of Czech origin (d. 1866)
- July 6 - Emperor Nicholas I of Russia (d. 1855)
- July 16 - Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, French painter (d. 1875)
- July 23 - Franz Berwald, Swedish composer (d. 1868)
- August 15 - John Torrey, American botanist (d. 1873)
- August 25 - James Lick, American land speculator (d. 1876)
- September 19 - Hartley Coleridge, British poet (d. 1849)
- September 22 - Davi Canabarro, Gaúcho rebel revolutionary (d. 1867)
- September 25 - Antoine-Louis Barye, French sculptor (d. 1875)
- October 23 - Stefano Franscini, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 1857)
- November 30 - Carl Loewe, German composer (d. 1869)
- December 17 - Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Canadian author (d. 1865)
- December 19 - Breton de los Herreros Spanish playwright (d. 1873)
- December 27 - Mirza Ghalib, Poet of Urdu (d. 1869)