1791

This article is about the year 1791.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	17th century 18th century 19th century
Decades:	1770s 1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s
Years:	1788 1789 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794

1791 by topic:

Arts and Sciences

Archaeology – Architecture – Art – Literature (Poetry) – Music – Science

Countries

Australia – Austria – Canada – Denmark – France – Great Britain – Ireland – Norway – Portugal – Russia – Scotland – Sweden – United States

Lists of leaders

State leaders – Colonial governors – Religious leaders

Birth and death categories

Births – Deaths

Establishments and disestablishments categories

Establishments – Disestablishments

Works category

Works

1791 in various calendars

Gregorian calendar	1791 MDCCXCI
Ab urbe condita	2544
Armenian calendar	1240 ԹՎ ՌՄԽ
Assyrian calendar	6541
Bengali calendar	1198
Berber calendar	2741
British Regnal year	31 Geo. 3 – 32 Geo. 3
Buddhist calendar	2335
Burmese calendar	1153
Byzantine calendar	7299–7300
Chinese calendar	庚戌年 (Metal Dog) 4487 or 4427     — to — 辛亥年 (Metal Pig) 4488 or 4428
Coptic calendar	1507–1508
Discordian calendar	2957
Ethiopian calendar	1783–1784
Hebrew calendar	5551–5552
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1847–1848
- Shaka Samvat	1712–1713
- Kali Yuga	4891–4892
Holocene calendar	11791
Igbo calendar	791–792
Iranian calendar	1169–1170
Islamic calendar	1205–1206
Japanese calendar	Kansei 3 (寛政３年)
Javanese calendar	1717–1718
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 11 days
Korean calendar	4124
Minguo calendar	121 before ROC 民前121年
Nanakshahi calendar	323
Thai solar calendar	2333–2334

1791 (MDCCXCI) was a common year starting on Saturday (dominical letter B) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday (dominical letter E) of the Julian calendar, the 1791st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 791st year of the 2nd millennium, the 91st year of the 18th century, and the 2nd year of the 1790s decade. As of the start of 1791, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events

January–June

• January 12 – Holy Roman troops reenter Liège, heralding the end of the Liège Revolution and the restoration of its Prince-Bishops.
• January 25 – The British Parliament passes the Constitutional Act 1791, splitting the old province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.
• February 21 – The United States opens diplomatic relations with Portugal.
• March 2 – In France:
  • Abolition of guilds is enacted.
  • A mechanical semaphore line for rapid long-distance communication is demonstrated by Claude Chappe in Paris.
• March 4 – Vermont is admitted as the 14th U.S. state.
• March 13 – Thomas Paine's chief work Rights of Man (first part) is published in London.
• March – In France, the National Constituent Assembly accepts the recommendation of its Commission of Weights and Measures that the nation should adopt the metric system.
• April 21 – The first of forty boundary stones delineating the borders of the new District of Columbia in the United States is laid at Jones Point Light, in Alexandria, Virginia.
• May 3 – The Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth proclaims the Constitution of May 3, 1791, the first modern codified constitution in Europe.
• June 20 – Flight to Varennes: The French Royal Family is captured when they try to flee in disguise.
• June 21 – Foundation date of the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain.

July–December

• July 8 – Composer Joseph Haydn is awarded an honorary doctorate of music at the University of Oxford.
• July 14 – The Priestley Riots against Dissenters break out in Birmingham, England.
• July 17 – The Champ de Mars Massacre occurs during the French Revolution.
• August 4 – The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman–Habsburg wars.
• August 6 – The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is finished.
• August 21 – Haitian Revolution: A slave rebellion breaks out in the French colony of Saint-Domingue.
• August 26 – John Fitch is granted a patent for the steamboat in the United States.
• August 27 – Battle of Tellicherry (Third Anglo-Mysore War) off the south-west coast of India: a British Royal Navy patrol forces a French convoy bound for Mysore to surrender.
• September 6 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera seria La clemenza di Tito premières at the Estates Theatre in Prague to mark the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia.
• September 13 – Louis XVI of France accepts the final version of the completed constitution.
• September 25 – Mission Santa Cruz is founded by Father Fermín Lasuén, becoming the 12th mission in the California mission chain.
• September 28 – Promulgation of the law on Jewish emancipation in France, the first such legislation in modern Europe.
• September 30 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's singspiel opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) premières at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna.
• October – The Legislative Assembly (France) convenes.
• October 9 – Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad is founded by Father Fermín Lasuén, becoming the 13th mission in the California mission chain.
• October 28 – Publication of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in France.
• December 4 – The first issue of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, is published in London.
• December 5 – Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies aged 35 at his home in Vienna, perhaps of acute rheumatic fever, and is buried two days later.
• December 15 – Ratification by the states of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution is completed, creating the United States Bill of Rights. Two additional amendments remain pending, and one of these is finally ratified in 1992, becoming the Twenty-seventh Amendment.

Date unknown

• The first American ship reaches Japan.
• An ordinance is written barring the game of baseball within 80 yards of the Meeting House in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (first known reference to the game of baseball in North America).
• The first serious secondary education school open to girls in Denmark, the Døtreskolen af 1791, is founded in Copenhagen.
• The School for the Indigent Blind, the oldest continuously operating specialist school of its kind in the world, is founded in Liverpool, England, by blind ex-merchant seaman, writer and abolitionist Edward Rushton.
• The Casbah of Algiers Palace is completed.

Births

Samuel Morse

Michael Faraday

Charles Babbage

• January 15 – Franz Grillparzer, Austrian writer (d. 1872)
• January 28 – Ferdinand Hérold, French composer (d. 1833)
• February 12 – Peter Cooper, American industrialist, inventor and philanthropist (d. 1883)
• February 21
  • Carl Czerny, Austrian composer (d. 1857)
  • John Mercer, chemist and industrialist (d. 1866)
• March 20 – Marie Ellenrieder, German painter (d. 1863)
• April 23 – James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (d. 1868)
• April 27 – Samuel Morse, American inventor (d. 1872)
• June 30 – Félix Savart, French physicist (d. 1841)
• July 26 – Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, Austrian composer and pianist (d. 1844)
• September 5 – Giacomo Meyerbeer, German composer (d. 1864)
• September 21 – István Széchenyi, Hungarian politician and writer (d. 1860)
• September 22 – Michael Faraday, British scientist (d. 1867)
• September 23 – Theodor Körner, German author and soldier (d. 1813)
• September 26 – Théodore Géricault, French painter (d. 1824)
• October 29 – John Elliotson, British physician (d. 1868)
• November 11 – Josef Munzinger, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 1855)
• December 7 – Ferenc Novák Hungarian Slovene writer (d. 1836)
• December 26 – Charles Babbage, British mathematician and inventor (d. 1871)
• date unknown – Enriqueta Favez, Swiss physician and surgeon (d. 1856)

Deaths

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• January 11 – William Williams Pantycelyn, Welsh hymnist (b. 1717)
• March 2 – John Wesley, English founder of Methodism (b. 1703)
• March 14 – Johann Salomo Semler, German historian and Bible commentator (b. 1725)
• April 2 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, French revolutionary leader (b. 1749)
• April 19 – Richard Price, Welsh philosopher (b. 1723)
• May 9 – Francis Hopkinson, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (b. 1737)
• June 5 – Frederick Haldimand, Swiss-born British colonial governor (b. 1718)
• June 10 – Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte, French admiral (b. 1720)
• July 17 – Martin Dobrizhoffer, Austrian Jesuit missionary (b. 1717)
• July 25 – Isaac Low, American delegate to the Continental Congress (b. 1735)
• August 16 – Charles-François de Broglie, marquis de Ruffec, French soldier and diplomat (b. 1719)
• September 25 – William Bradford, American printer (b. 1719)
• November 4 – Richard Butler, American soldier (b. 1743)
• December 5 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer (b. 1756)
• December 12 – Etteilla, French occult cartomancer (b. 1738)
  • Catharina Freymann, Norwegian pietist leader (b. 1708)
• Date unknown – Maria Petraccini, Italian anatomist and physician (b. 1759)

Further reading

• Louis Heilprin (1885). "Chronological Table of Universal History". Historical Reference Book. New York: D. Appleton and Company – via Hathi Trust. 1791