1778
Cook Reaches Hawaii
On his third Pacific voyage, Cook sighted Oahu and Kauai - islands no European had ever logged. Hawaiian chiefs came aboard in feathered cloaks; Cook named the archipelago after his sponsor, the Earl of Sandwich. A year later he would return, and die on the same beach where he had been welcomed as a god.
Franco-American Alliance
Benjamin Franklin, in a plain brown coat in Versailles, signed the alliance that would sink Britain's war. France committed troops, ships, and money. Spain joined a year later. The American rebellion was now a world war and Britain's Atlantic trade routes were under threat from Gibraltar to the Indian Ocean.
Voltaire Dies in Paris
Eighty-three years old, returning to Paris in triumph after decades of exile, the old philosophe died in the house of a marquis. Refused Christian burial by the archbishop, his body was smuggled to a country abbey. Thirteen years later the Revolution brought him to the Pantheon in a cortege half a mile long.
Rousseau Dies at Ermenonville
Six weeks after Voltaire - his great rival he had never met - Rousseau died suddenly at the country estate of the Marquis de Girardin. He was buried on an island in a willow grove. Young pilgrims came to weep. The Revolution would move him to the Pantheon and lay him opposite Voltaire.