1769

1769 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).

Events

* James Watt demonstrates the first practical steam engine, an invention which inaugurated the Industrial Revolution in England
* Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen exhibits the "Mechanical Turk", a chess-playing machine
* Famine in Bengal kills 10 million people, a third of the population, in the worst natural disaster in human history (in terms of lives lost).
* The Maharajah of Mysore forces the British to agree a treaty of mutual assistance in view of the famine, but the British East India Company increases its demands on the Bengali people to keep profits up.
* David Garrick holds the first Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon.
* Richard Arkwright invents the spinning frame.
* The city of Brescia, Italy is devastated when the Church of San Nazaro, near Venice, is struck by lightning. The resulting fire ignites 200,000 lb (90,000 kg) of gunpowder being stored there, causing a massive explosion which destroys one sixth of the city and kills 3,000 people. The disaster prompts the Roman Catholic Church to abandon their religious objection to using lightning rods to protect their property.

January

February

March

April

* April 13 - James Cook arrives in Tahiti on the ship HM Bark Endeavour, preparing to observe the solar eclipse of the planet Venus, which took place on June 3rd. After the voyage, the data was found to be inaccurate in determining the distance between the Sun and Earth.

May

* May 14 - Charles III of Spain sends Spanish missionaries, who found California missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey and begin the settlement of California.

June

* June 4 - A transit of Venus is followed five hours later by a total solar eclipse, the shortest such interval in the historical past.
* June 7 - Frontiersman Daniel Boone first began to explore the present-day Bluegrass State, Kentucky.