1787

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Year 1787 (MDCCLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1787

January - June

• January 6 - The North Carolina General Assembly authorizes nine commissioners to purchase 100 acres of land for the county seat of Chatham County. The town is named Pittsborough (later shortened to Pittsboro) for William Pitt the Younger.
• January 11 - William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
• February 4 - Shays' Rebellion fails.
• February 28 - Charter granted establishing the institution known today as the University of Pittsburgh.
• April 2 - Charter of Justice signed providing the authority for the establishment of the first New South Wales (ie Australian) Courts of Criminal and Civil Jurisdiction.
• May 13 - Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England with eleven ships full of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.
• May 14 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates begin to meet to write a new Constitution for the United States.
• May 25 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates begin to convene a Constitutional Convention intended to amend the Articles of Confederation. However, a new Constitution for the United States was eventually produced. George Washington presided over the Convention.
• May - Orangist troops attack Vreeswijk, Harmelen and Maarssen. Civil war starts in the Netherlands.
• June 6 - Franklin College, named for Benjamin Franklin, opens in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It later merges with Marshall College to become Franklin and Marshall College.
• June 20 - Oliver Ellsworth moves at the Federal Convention that the government be called the United States.
• June 28 - Princess Wilhelmina of Orange, sister of Frederick, the king of Prussia, is captured by patriots and taken to Goejanverwellesluis, and not allowed to travel to the Hague.

July - December

• July 13 - The U.S. Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance establishing governing rules for the Northwest Territory. It also establishes procedures for the admission of new states and limits the expansion of slavery.
• July 15 - Lord's cricket ground is established and the MCC incorporated.
• August 27 - Launching a forty-five-foot steam powered craft on the Delaware River, John Fitch demonstrates the first US patent for his design.
• September 13 - Prussian troops enter the Netherlands. Within a few weeks 40,000 Patriots (out of a population of 2,000,000) went into exile in France (and learned from observation the ideals of the French Revolution).
• September 17 - United States Constitution is adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
• October 1 - Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792: Alexander Suvorov, though sustaining a wound, routs the Turks in the Battle of Kinburn.
• October 27 - the first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, was published in a New York paper.
• October 29 - Premiere of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte) in the Estates Theatre in Prague.
• December 7 - Delaware ratifies the Constitution and becomes the first U.S. state.
• December 8 - The Mission La Purisima Concepcion is founded by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, becoming the eleventh mission in the California mission chain.
• December 12 - Pennsylvania becomes the second U.S. state.
• December 18 - New Jersey becomes the third U.S. state.

Undated

• In Britain, Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp found the "Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade" with support from John Wesley, Josiah Wedgwood and others.
• The North Carolina General Assembly incorporates Waynesborough and designates it the county seat for Wayne County, North Carolina.
• The element Silicon was first identified by Antoine Lavoisier as a component of the Latin term or "Flints" (meaning "Hard Rocks").

Births

• February 10 - William Bradley, Britain's tallest ever man (d. 1820)
• March 7 - George Bethune English, American explorer and writer (d. 1828)
• March 11 - Ivan Nabokov, Russian General
• March 17 - Edmund Kean, British actor (d. 1833)
• April 26 - Ludwig Uhland, German poet (d. 1862)
• December 10 - Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, American educator (d. 1851)
• December 16 - Mary Russell Mitford, English novelist and dramatist (d. 1855)

Deaths

• February 13
• Rudjer Boscovich, Croatian scientist and diplomat (b. 1711)
• Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, French statesman and diplomat (b. 1717)
• April 1 - Floyer Sydenham, English classical scholar (b. 1710)
• April 2 - Thomas Gage, British general (b. 1719)
• May 10 - William Watson, English physician and scientist (b. 1715)
• May 28 - Leopold Mozart, Austrian composer (b. 1719)
• June 20 - Karl Friedrich Abel, German composer (b. 1723)
• July 4 - Charles de Rohan, prince de Soubise, Marshal of France (b. 1715)
• August 1 - Alphonsus Liguori, Italian founder of the Redemptionist order (b. 1696)
• October 7 - Henry Muhlenberg, German-born founder of the U.S. Lutheran Church (b. 1711)
• November 3 - Robert Lowth, English bishop and grammarian (b. 1710)
• November 15 - Christoph Willibald Gluck, German composer (b. 1714)
• December 18 - Francis William Drake, British admiral and Governor of Newfoundland (b. 1724)
• December 18 - Soame Jenyns, English writer (b. 1704)

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