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1701
- 1800
1731-Johann Jakob Scheuchzer publishes Sacred Physics, a pictorial account of earth's history based on the Old Testament. Included is a description of what he believes is a fossilized victim of the biblical flood.
1735-Carl von Linné (better known as Linnaeus) publishes Systema Naturae, proposing the system of binomial nomenclature that will continue for over two centuries.
1740: South Carolina Slave Code - This infamous legislation regulated the use of slaves and became the model for slavery in other states, until repealed as an effect of the American Civil War. "All Negroes, Indians ... and all their offspring ... shall be and are hereby declared to be and remain forever hereafter slaves; and shall be deemed ... to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners."
1749-1817-During his lifetime, Abraham Gottlob Werner asserts that all rocks have been deposited by a primordial ocean. This mistaken "Neptunian" view is accepted with little question.
1751-Encyclopedists Diderot and d'Alembert publish the first volume of the Encyclopedia, or Classified Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Trades emphasizing a dispassionate presentation of factual information rather than reliance on age-old "wisdom".
1765 - Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England
-This British barrister set about writing down the entire English law in a 4-volume set, in easy-to-read English, thus making the law suddenly accessible to the common man. His research also made the book a must-read for lawyers and law students alike. It was re-published many times. Through it, the English law was readily imported to the British colonies and in fact it is said that Blackstone's Commentaries was the law in the American colonies for the first century of American independence. The Commentaries also allows us to witness the exact state of British law at that time on such things as the total legal submission of a wife to her husband, as was then considered natural law.
1768-James Cook sets sail on the Endeavour bound for the South Pacific. Accompanying Cook is naturalist Joseph Banks, who will collect tens of thousands of plant and animal specimens and initiate the exchange of flora and fauna between Europe, the Americas and the South Seas.
1771-Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon publishes Les Epoques de la Nature, asserting that the earth is a staggering 75,000 years old and existed long before the arrival of humans or any other form of life.
1784-Historian and naturalist Cosimo Alessandro Collini publishes a description of the first known pterosaur.
1776 - The American Declaration of Independence
"We the people," starts the Declaration of Independence proclaimed on July 4, 1776. The Declaration was a statement to the effect that "all political connection between (the United Colonies) and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be dissolved" and that a new state, the United States, was started. It remains a remarkable legal document in that it is the first time a government has rebuked the medieval theory that certain people possessed by right the power to rule others. "All men are created
equal, "rings the declaration, and have"
unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed." (Click here to read the
Declaration of
Independence.)
1776-Abbé Jacques-François Dicquemare describes reptilian fossils in Journal de Physique but refrains from speculating about their sources.
1777
- British troops occupied Philadelphia during the
American Revolution.
1779
- the USS Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones
and actually sinking at the time, defeated the British
frigate HMS Serapis in a battle off the coast of
Scotland during the American Revolutionary War. During
the battle, the British commander called on Jones to
surrender and Jones replied with his now-famous quote:
"I have not yet begun to fight."
1780
- British spy John Andre was captured along with papers
revealing Benedict Arnold's plot to surrender West Point
to the British.
1782
AD: Robert Aitken's Bible; The First English Language
Bible (a King James Version without Apocrypha) to be
Printed in America.
1787
- The Constitution of the United States of America - The 7 articles of the American Constitution were signed in Philadelphia in 1787 and formed the basis of the first republican government in the world. The Constitution defined the institutions of government and the powers of each institution, carefully carving out the duties of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The Constitution also declared that it was paramount to any other law, whether federal or state, and it would override any other inconsistent law. The American
Constitution
served as a model for the constitutions of many nations upon attaining independence or becoming democracies.
1787-Caspar Wistar and Timothy Matlack inform the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia that they have discovered a "giant's bone" in New Jersey. (The bone probably belongs to a dinosaur.)
1788: Through the Operation of Penal Law, A Country Is Formed
- Sydney was the site of the first British settlement on Australia, which had been designated as a prime location as a British penal colony. For fifty years, Britain sent its worst men, who were quickly chained into work gangs and put to building roads and bridges. By 1821, there were 30,000 British settlers in the British commonwealth, of which 75% were convicts.
1788-Juan-Bautista Bru mounts the first relatively accurate fossil reconstruction of an extinct animal from South America. Georges Cuvier classifies it as a giant sloth.
1789 - George Washington becomes the president of the United States, he proclaims the first national Thanksgivings Day in the same year.
1789
- Thomas Jefferson was appointed America's first
secretary of state.
1789-The French Revolution begins.
1789
- the first U.S. Congress adopted 12 amendments to the
country's new Constitution. Ten of those amendments were
ratified, and became known as "The Bill of
Rights."
1789
- Congress passed the First Judiciary Act, which provided
for an Attorney General and a Supreme Court.
1791
AD: Isaac Collins and Isaiah Thomas Respectively Produce
the First Family Bible and First Illustrated Bible
Printed in America. Both were King James Versions, with
All 80 Books.
1791
- The American Bill of Rights
- With the ink barely dry on the Constitution (signed only four years earlier), American statesmen amended their supreme law by declaring the rights of free speech, freedom of the press and of religion, a right to trial by one's peers (jury), and protection against "cruel and unusual punishment" or unreasonable searches or seizures. The ten amendments of Bill of Rights became known as the First to Tenth
Amendment (s) respectively. The Bill of Rights influenced many modern charters or bills of rights around the world.
1795-James Hutton overturns the "Neptunian" view of rock formation in his Theory of the Earth, suggesting instead that forces of rock creation are balanced by forces of rock destruction.
1797 John Adams becomes the second president of the United States
1799-Faujas publishes a description of the Maastricht animal, a spectacular
Mosasaur found in chalk quarries in the Netherlands.
1799 - Charles White publishes An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables, a treatise on the great chain of being, showing people of color at the bottom of the human chain.
1800 - Trees planted by pioneer John Capman, known as Johnny Appleseed, begins bearing fruit.
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