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June 17

1579

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December 20

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In the 15th century, Europeans began to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of new routes to China and the East, but in the process they discovered what they labeled a "New World," although Indigenous people had lived there for centuries. Other explorers have pushed the limits of flight and seafaring, and traversed the frozen Continent of Antarctica.

Exploration

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1492 was the year “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” on the first of his four transatlantic voyages. But the year wasn’t all smooth sailing. Spain’s Catholic monarchs ended centuries of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula, eventually driving out 3 million Muslims. The Spanish also expelled close to 200,000 Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism. And in what was surely a marvel to medieval farmers, the first recorded meteorite slammed into an Alsatian wheat field.

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The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1774, with 12 of the original 13 colonies in attendance, and agreed to a boycott of British goods. Louis XVI became king of France, beginning a reign that would end in 1793 with the French Revolution and his execution by guillotine. In England, scientist, philosopher and theologian Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen gas as one component of air.

1774

The “shot heard round the world”—the opening salvo of the American Revolution, fired at the Battles of Lexington and Concord—got 1775 off with a bang. Before the year was out, the Second Continental Congress had appointed George Washington to command the troops and Benjamin Franklin to run the post office. Meanwhile in France, King Louis XVI was crowned, likely unaware that he’d one day face his own revolution—and the guillotine.

1775

Few years in U.S. history were more momentous than 1776. The Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence and named the new country the United States of America. As the Revolutionary War raged, General George Washington crossed the Delaware River in a successful surprise attack on British-funded mercenaries. The British hanged 21-year-old spy Nathan Hale. And the first working combat submarine (a one-man vessel called the “Turtle”) attacked a British ship in New York Harbor by attaching a powder keg to its hull. 

1776

Though overshadowed by 1776, 1777 would be a momentous year for American patriots. Victory over British troops at the Battle of Saratoga became an early turning point in the war for independence. The Continental Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the new nation’s flag and the Articles of Confederation as its first constitution. The 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette arrived from France to join the fight. Meanwhile, Spain and Portugal concluded a two-year conflict over their own colonies in the Americas.

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While a few battles remained to be fought, the American Revolution essentially ended in 1781 when British General Cornwallis surrendered his troops to American and French forces at Yorktown. The Articles of Confederation—America’s first constitution—took effect, after ratification by the original 13 states. In what would become California, 44 settlers established Los Angeles, while in South America, Spanish forces brutally executed Tupac Amaru II, leader of a rebellion by indigenous people there.

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George Washington became the first president of the United States in 1789, the same year the new U.S. Constitution went into effect and Congress drafted the Bill of Rights. In Paris, rioters stormed the Bastille prison, a key moment in the French Revolution. Things were stormy even at sea, as rebellious British sailors set their tyrannical captain William Bligh adrift in a rowboat—the famous mutiny on the Bounty.

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In 1804, Haiti proclaimed its independence from France, becoming just the second independent nation in the Americas, after the United States. In the U.S., Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed longtime adversary Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and Lewis and Clark began their expedition to explore and map the American West. Back in France, Napoleon crowned himself his nation’s emperor, its first in 1,000 years.

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In this year, a new armed conflict erupted between England and America—named, simply, the War of 1812. In Europe, French emperor Napoleon invaded Russia, along with the largest army ever assembled, some 600,000 men. In England, a group known as the Luddites attacked textile mills to destroy newfangled industrial machinery, adding a new word to the language for anyone who opposes technological progress. And in a landmark for folklore, German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first volume of fairy tales.

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The War of 1812 raged on in 1814 as British troops captured Washington, D.C., setting fire to the Capitol, the White House and other landmarks. (The war ended in December with the Treaty of Ghent.) Francis Scott Key, observing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry, wrote a poem that would be set to music as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated his throne and went into exile on the island of Elba—though he’d escape the next year.

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Known as the “Year of Revolutions,” 1848 saw simultaneous uprisings against entrenched monarchies across much of Europe, including Italy, France, Austria and more. In a signal of things to come, it was also the year Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto.” In the U.S., prospectors discovered gold at Sutter’s Creek in California, precipitating the Gold Rush of 1849, while in Seneca Falls, New York, women’s rights advocates held their first national convention.

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In the last year of relative calm before the storm of the Civil War, Americans elected dark horse candidate Abraham Lincoln as their president. Out West, the Pony Express began express mail delivery. In December, South Carolina became the first Southern state to secede from the Union; 10 more would follow in the new year. In England, Charles Dickens published the first installment of “Great Expectations,” a landmark of Victorian-era literature.

1860

In 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as America’s 16th president. Just weeks later, the newly formed Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, igniting the American Civil War. To fund the conflict, Congress enacted the country’s first income tax. Elsewhere in the world, multiple states on the Italian Peninsula united to form the Kingdom of Italy, while multiple European powers invaded Mexico to collect unpaid debts. Back in Britain, The Times gave readers the first-ever published weather forecast.

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In 1865, the American Civil War came to an end, President Lincoln was assassinated and the 13th amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery in the U.S. The Secret Service came into being, originally created to prevent widespread counterfeiting that plagued the financial system. Elsewhere in the world, rebels in the Dominican Republic forced out Spanish occupiers to restore their country’s independence, and in England, Lewis Carroll published “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” 

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The 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1868, granting citizenship and extending rights to formerly enslaved people. President Andrew Johnson narrowly survived conviction in his impeachment trial, and Americans elected Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant to succeed him. The Meiji Restoration began in Japan, marking an end to the nation’s feudal era and the rise of rapid modernization. Thomas Edison filed his first patent (for a vote recorder), and Louisa May Alcott published the first volume of “Little Women.”

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The Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871, ending in France’s humiliating defeat. What emerged: a new and expanded German Empire, and the revolutionary Paris Commune, which briefly overthrew the French government. In Africa, journalist Henry Stanley began his famous search for missing explorer Dr. Livingstone. In the U.S., fire destroyed much of Chicago, forcing the young city to rebuild from the ground up, the first professional association of baseball players formed and, in Brooklyn, P.T. Barnum debuted his first traveling circus.

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After the highly contested 1876 U.S. presidential election, the Compromise of 1877 put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House. In exchange, post-Civil War federal oversight of Southern affairs known as Reconstruction ended—and, with it, any effort toward protecting Black citizens’ civil and political rights. The first general strike in U.S. history—by more than 100,000 workers—halted the nation’s railroads. Thomas Edison demonstrated his latest invention, the phonograph, while in Moscow, Tchaikovsky’s opera “Swan Lake” premiered in Moscow.

1877

A Year In History: 1579

Sir Francis Drake claims California for England

John Fletcher is baptized

Sir Francis Drake claims California for England

John Fletcher is baptized

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