1786 Calendar

January 16, 1786 – The Commonwealth of Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.

June 10, 1786 – A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.

June 25, 1786 – Gavriil Pribylov discovers St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

August 8, 1786 – Mont Blanc on the French – Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr Michel-Gabriel Paccard.

August 11, 1786 – Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia.

August 29, 1786 – Shays’ Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

September 11, 1786 – The Beginning of the Annapolis Convention.

November 7, 1786 – The oldest musical organization in the United States is founded as the Stoughton Musical Society.

November 30, 1786 – Peter Leopold Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgates a penal reform making his country the first state to abolish the death penalty. Consequently, November 30 is commemorated by 300 cities around the world as Cities for Life Day.

December 29, 1786 – French Revolution: The Assembly of Notables is convened.

January 11, 1786 – Joseph Jackson Lister, English opticist and physicist (d. 1869)

February 2, 1786 – Jacques Philippe Marie Binet, French mathematician (d. 1856)

February 16, 1786 – Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (d. 1859)

June 13, 1786 – Winfield Scott, U.S. general (d. 1866)

June 21, 1786 – Charles Edward Horn, British musician (d. 1849)

September 10, 1786 – William Mason, American politician (d. 1860)

October 11, 1786 – Stevenson Archer, American Congressman (d. 1848)

November 18, 1786 – Carl Maria von Weber, German composer (d. 1826)

December 12, 1786 – William L. Marcy, American statesman (d. 1857)