1777

Decades: 1720s 1730s 1740s 1750s 1760s - 1770s - 1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s

Years: 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780 1781 1782

Events

• January 16 - Vermont declares its independence from New York becoming an independent country, a status it retained until it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791
• The Cornish language died out
• 2nd edition of Encyclopædia Britannica published
• January 3 - American general George Washington defeats British general Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.
• January 12 - Mission Santa Clara de Asís is founded in what is now Santa Clara, California
• January 15 - American Revolutionary War: New Connecticut[?] (present day Vermont) declares its independence.
• June 14, Stars and Stripes adopted by Congress as United States flag
• October 17, American troops defeat the British in the Battle of Saratoga
• November 15, U.S. Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation
• December 24, Kiritimati discovered by James Cook
• The code duello is adopted at the Clonmell Summer Assizes as the form for pistol duels in Ireland. It is quickly denounced and widely adopted throughout the English-speaking world.

Births

• January 2, Christian Daniel Rauch[?], sculptor (+ 1857)
• February 12, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, poet (+ 1843)
• March 17 - Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the United States (+ 1864)
• April 12, Henry Clay, american statesman (+ 1852)
• April 30, Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, astronomer and physicist
• December 4, Madame Récamier[?], writer
• December 23 - Emperor Alexander I of Russia
• Hans Christian Ørsted, physicist and chemist

Deaths