1781

{| align=right cellpadding=3 id=toc style="margin-left: 15px;"\n|- \n| align="center" colspan=2 | Years:
1778 1779 1780 - 1781 - 1782 1783 1784\n|-\n| align="center" colspan=2 | Decades:
1750s 1760s 1770s - 1780s - 1790s 1800s 1810s\n|- \n| align="center" | Centuries:
17th century - 18th century - 19th century

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1781 in art
\n1781 in literature
\n1781 in music
\n1781 in science
\n----\nList of state leaders in 1781
\nList of religious leaders in 1781
\n|} \n

Table of contents

1 Events 2 Births 3 Deaths

Events

\n* January 5 - American Revolutionary War: Richmond, Virginia is burned by British naval forces led by Benedict Arnold.\n* January 30 - Articles of Confederation ratified by 13th state, Maryland.\n* January - William Pitt the Younger, later Prime Minister, enters Parliament.\n* March 1 - American Continental Congress implements the Articles of Confederation.\n* March 13 - Sir William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus. Originally he calls it Georgium Sidus (George's Star) in honour of King George III of England.\n* March 15 - American Revolutionary War: American General Nathanael Greene loses Battle of Guilford Court House to British.\n* August 30 - American Revolutionary War: French fleet under Comte de Grasse enters Chesapeake Bay, cutting British General Charles Cornwallis off from escape by sea.\n* September 4 - Los Angeles is founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula (City of the Queen of the Angels) by a group of 44 Spanish settlers. \n* September 5 - British fleet under Thomas Graves arrives and fights de Grasse, but to no effect.\n* September 10 - Graves gives up trying to break through the now-reinforced French fleet and returns to New York, leaving Cornwallis to his fate.\n* October 19 - General Charles Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, Virginia, ending the armed struggle of the American Revolutionary War.\n* November 5 - John Hanson is elected President of the Continental Congress.\n* December 12 - French and British fleets fight the Battle of Ushant.\n* Bank of North America is chartered by the Continental Congress.

• Charles Messier publishes final catalog of Messier objects.\n* Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovers tungsten.\n* Immanuel Kant publishes Critique of Pure Reason.\n* Jeremy Bentham formulates utilitarian ethics.\n* Reverend Samuel Peters publishes General History of Connecticut, using the term blue law for the first time.\n* Antonio Salieri selected as music teacher of Princess of Württemberg over Mozart.

Births

\n* January 26 - Achim von Arnim, poet (+ 1831)\n* January 30 - Adelbert von Chamisso, poet, botanist (+ 1838)\n* February 17 - Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, French physician, inventor of stethoscope (+ 1826)\n* March 4 - Rebecca Gratz, American educator, philanthropist (+ 1869)\n* March 13 - Karl Friedrich Schinkel, master builder (+ 1841)\n* June 9- George Stephenson (+ 1848)\n* June 21 - Siméon-Denis Poisson, French mathematician, physicist (+ 1840)\n* July 6 - Thomas Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore (+ 1826)\n* July 6 - John D. Sloat, American naval officer (+ 1867)\n* September 3 - Eugène de Beauharnais, son of Napoleon’s wife, Josephine\n*September 6 - Anton Diabelli, music publisher, editor, composer\n*October 1 - James Lawrence, Captain of the United States Navy known for his success fulactivities during the War of 1812.\n*November 6 - Lucy Aikin, English writer (+ 1864)\n*November 20 - Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, German jurist (+ 1854)\n*November 30 - Alexander Berry (d. 1873) Scotish adventurer, founder of Berry Australia\n* December 11 - Sir David Brewster, Scottish physicist (+ 1868)\n*William Williams of Wern, minister (+ 1840)

Deaths

\n* March 18 - Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, French statesman, economist\n* Peter Scheemakers, Flemish sculptor \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n