1774
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca
Russia imposed harsh terms on the Ottoman Empire: the Crimean Khanate became 'independent' (to be annexed nine years later), Russia claimed protection over Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands, and Russian merchant ships could sail freely through the Straits. It was the first great legal step in the Eastern Question. The clause on Orthodox protection would be invoked by Russia for decades as a pretext for intervention in Ottoman affairs.
Coercive (Intolerable) Acts
Parliament closed Boston Harbor, rewrote Massachusetts's charter, and quartered troops in civilian houses. Intended as surgical punishment, the Coercive Acts instead broadcast the colonial dispute to every port. Virginia declared a day of fasting; the Continental Congress was called. London had united twelve colonies by accident. The Quebec Act, passed the same session, further alarmed Protestants by extending Catholic rights into the Ohio country.
Priestley Isolates Oxygen
In his laboratory, Priestley heated red mercuric oxide with a burning glass and collected a colorless gas in which a candle burned with a 'remarkably vigorous flame.' He called it 'dephlogisticated air' and told Lavoisier about it over Paris dinner. Lavoisier would figure out what it really was and give it its name.
Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther
A 24-year-old Frankfurt lawyer published a short epistolary novel about an artistic youth's doomed love and suicide. It swept Europe in months. Young men wore blue coats and yellow waistcoats in Werther's honor; a wave of copycat suicides followed. Romanticism had found its first fever. Napoleon claimed to have read it seven times and carried it on the Egyptian campaign as a kind of talisman.
First Continental Congress Meets
Fifty-six delegates from twelve colonies - Georgia stayed home - met at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia. They drafted a bill of rights, organized a continental boycott, and agreed to meet again in May if London didn't back down. Patrick Henry told them: 'I am not a Virginian, but an American.'