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Peace of Utrecht
The Peace of Utrecht is a series of peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715. The war involved three contenders for the vacant throne of Spain, and involved much of Europe for over a decade. The main action saw France as the defender of Spain against a multinational coalition. The war was very expensive and bloody and finally stalemated. -
The Spirit of the Laws was published
The Spirit of Laws is a treatise on political theory, as well as a pioneering work in comparative law, published in 1748 by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. Originally published anonymously, partly because Montesquieu's works were subject to censorship, its influence outside France was aided by its rapid translation into other languages. In 1750 Thomas Nugent published the first English translation. In 1751 the Roman Catholic Church added De l'esprit des lois. -
Watt patented the steam engine
James Watt, Scottish instrument maker and inventor whose steam engine contributed substantially to the Industrial Revolution. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1785. In May 1765, after wrestling with the problem of improving it, he suddenly came upon a solution the separate condenser, his first and greatest invention. Watt had realized that the loss of latent heat. It was pattened in 1769. -
U.S. Constitution was published
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. The Constitution was published in September 28, 1787, originally comprising seven articles, delineates the national frame of government. Its first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress; the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers. -
Storming of the Bastille
The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France, on the afternoon of 14 July 1789. The medieval armory, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained only seven inmates at the time of its storming, but was seen by the revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy's abuse of power; its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution.
In France, 14 July is the National Day, usually called Bastille Day in English. -
Flight to Varennes
The royal Flight to Varennes during the night of 20–21 June 1791 was a significant episode in the French Revolution in which King Louis XVI of France, his queen Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Paris in order to initiate a counter-revolution at the head of loyal troops under royalist officers concentrated at Montmédy near the frontier. They escaped only as far as the small town of Varennes-en-Argonne, where they were arrested. -
Execution of Louis XVI
The execution of Louis XVI by guillotine, a major event of the French Revolution, took place on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Révolution in Paris. At a trial on 17 January 1793, the National Convention had convicted the king of high treason in a near-unanimous vote; while no one voted "not guilty", several deputies abstained. Ultimately, they condemned him to death by a simple majority. The execution was performed four days later by Charles-Henri Sanson. -
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time. A French army under the command of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition, a British-led coalition consisting of units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands,The battle marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars. -
Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened
The Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened on September 27th 1825 with the prime purpose of transporting coal from the South West Durham collieries around Shildon, West Auckland and Witton Park, to the River Tees at Stockton, for shipment to the south of England. Was the first occasion on which a steam locomotive was used to haul passengers on a public railway. The locomotive concerned, Stephenson's 'Locomotion' still exists and is displayed at Head of Steam. -
Samuel Morse invented the telegraph
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines.
