1758. Battle of Zorndorf between the Prussians, 30,000, under Frederick the Great, and 50,000 Russians, under Fermor. The Russians were defeated, with the loss of 19,000 killed, and 3,000 taken, and 103 cannon. Prussian loss, 10,000 killed. This was the bloodiest and one of the most remarkable battles of the seven years' war.
1770. Thomas Chatterton, an English poet of astonishing genius, died at the age of 18, by taking poison, to escape hunger and misery.
1776. David Hume, the Scottish historian, died. His History of England is a work of great merit, and has long been the most popular work of the kind.
1782. A large foraging party of British attacked at Combahee, in South Carolina, by the Americans under general Gist and colonel Laurens, who captured a schooner. Laurens was mortally wounded, and died aged 27.
1788. Archbishop Sens, premier of France under Louis XVI, seeing the finances of the state utterly desperate, and fearing for the king and more for himself, retired from the administration, and left the monarch, while bankruptcy and famine threatened the kingdom, to manage as he might, amid the storms which the measures of the minister himself had provoked to the uttermost. He fled to Italy with the greatest expedition, after having sent his resignation to his unfortunate sovereign.
1789. Mary Washington, mother of the illustrious general, died at Fredericksburgh, Va., aged 82.
1796. Lafayette and other prisoners released from the castle of Olmutz, at the requisition of the French government.
1797. John Baptist Louvet de Couvray, a French advocate, died; distinguished as an actor in the revolution, and an author.
1799. John Arnold, eminent for his improvements in the mechanism of timekeepers, died. He was the inventor of the expansion balance and detached escapement, and was the first artist who applied the gold cylindrical spring to the balance of a timepiece.
1800. Elizabeth Montague died; an English lady of considerable literary celebrity.