First U.S. presidential election
Congress sets January 7, 1789 as the date by which states are required to choose electors for the country’s first‑ever presidential election. A month later, on February 4, George Washington was…
Also Within This Year in History:
1789
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.
Congress sets January 7, 1789 as the date by which states are required to choose electors for the country’s first‑ever presidential election. A month later, on February 4, George Washington was…
George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by all 69 presidential electors who cast their…
On February 12, 1789, Vermont Patriot Ethan Allen dies of a stroke at age 52 on his Winooski River homestead. Allen is best remembered as the patriotic leader of the…
The first session of the U.S. Congress is held in New York City as the U.S. Constitution takes effect. However, of the 22 senators and 59 representatives called to represent…
On April 1, 1789, the first U.S. House of Representatives, meeting in New York City, reaches quorum and elects Pennsylvania Representative Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg as its first speaker. Muhlenberg,…
Three weeks into a journey from Tahiti to the West Indies, the HMS Bounty is seized in a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate. Captain William Bligh and…
On April 30, 1789, George Washington is sworn in as the first American president and delivers the first inaugural speech at Federal Hall in New York City. Elements of the…
English Captain William Bligh and 18 others, cast adrift from the HMS Bounty seven weeks before, reach Timor in the East Indies after traveling nearly 4,000 miles in a small,…
In Versailles, France, the deputies of the Third Estate, which represent commoners and the lower clergy, meet on the Jeu de Paume, an indoor tennis court, in defiance of King…
Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs, on July 14, 1789.…
On July 15, 1789, only one day after the fall of the Bastille marked the beginning of a new revolutionary regime in France, the French aristocrat and hero of the…
The United States Treasury Department is founded on September 2, 1789. The institution’s roots can be traced to 1775, when America’s leaders were looking for ways to fund the Revolutionary…
The Judiciary Act of 1789 is passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six…
The first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights,…