This Year in History:
1796
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, administers what will become known as the world’s first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox, a disease that had killed millions of people over the centuries. While still a medical student, Jenner learned about rural English farm workers’ and physicians’ observations that people who had contracted […]
George Washington prepares a final draft of his presidential farewell address on September 17, 1796. Two days later, the carefully crafted words appeared in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, published in Philadelphia, officially notifying the American public that Washington would voluntarily step down as the nation’s first president. The decision was extraordinary: rarely, if ever, in […]
On October 19, 1796, an essay appears in the Gazette of the United States in which a writer, mysteriously named “Phocion,” attacks presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson. Phocion turned out to be former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. The essay typified the nasty, personal nature of political attacks in late 18th-century America. When the article appeared, Jefferson […]
