1768. Laurence Sterne, an eccentric English author and divine, died. His romance of Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey, are well known.
1775. British Gen. Gage seized 13,425 musket cartridges and 3000 pounds of ball, all of it private property, stored on Boston Neck.
1776. The British troops having evacuated Boston, Sir Archibald Campbell, unaware of this movement, on entering the harbor with 1700 men, was made prisoner by Washington.
1780. Congress resolved to call in by taxes in one year and burn all the continental money emitted prior to that time, and to issue ten million dollars new money, redeemable in specie within six years.
1781. Anne Robert James Turgot, an eminent French statesman, died. He studied divinity, but his talents recommending him to the notice of the government, he was appointed to a civil office, where he displayed so great ability that he was appointed comptroller of the finances. His measures were grand, liberal and useful: but being ridiculed by the profligate and the vicious, who rioted on the miseries of the people, he retired from public life.
1796. Steuben county erected in south western New York.
1797. Palma Nuova, a frontier town in Italy, evacuated by the archduke Charles, who had wrested it from the Venitians only ten days before. The French under Bernadotte and Serrurier, on entering it found 30,000 rations of bread, and a million quintals of flour.
1805. Bonaparte assumed the title of king of Italy.
1814. John Vint, editor of the Isle of Man Gazette, and a distinguished philanthropist, died.
1817. An earthquake in Spain, Portugal, and Sicily, destroyed whole villages.