1789

Decades: 1730s 1740s 1750s 1760s 1770s - 1780s - 1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s

Years: 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 - 1789 - 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794

• January 7 - First nationwide United States election
• January 21 - The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, is printed in Boston, Massachusetts
• January 23 - Georgetown College becomes the first Catholic college in the United States (Washington, DC).
• February 4 - George Washington is unanimously elected to be the first President of the United States by the Electoral College.
• March 4 - In New York City, the first United States Congress meets and declares the new Constitution of the United States is in effect.
• April 1 - In New York City, the United States House of Representatives holds its first quorum and elects Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first House Speaker.
• April 30 - George Washington officially begins his term as the 1st President of the United States.
• November 21 - North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 12th U.S. state.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1789 in literature:
  • The Castles of Athlyn and Dunbane[?] - Ann Radcliffe
  • Earl Strongbow[?] - James White

• Beginning of the French revolution
• Change of Ottoman sultan of the Ottoman Empire from Abd-ul-Hamid I (1773-1789) to Selim III (1789-1807)
• Thomas Jefferson brings the first macaroni machine to the United States
• The Judiciary Act established the Supreme Court of the United States and the federal judiciary.
• July 14 - Storming of the Bastille Prison, Paris - a key event in the French revolution.
• September 29 - United States War Department[?] first establishes regular army with strength of several hundred men.
• Captain Cook[?] arrives in Hawaii and is thought to be the god Lono. The last time the Kumulipo is recited is this year, in his honor.

Births

• March 16 - Georg Simon Ohm[?], physicist and discoverer of Ohm's law (+ 1854)
• August 21 - Augustin Louis Cauchy (French mathematician )

Deaths

• April 7 - Abd-ul-Hamid I, Ottoman sultan
• May 25 - Anders Dahl, botanist for whom the dahlia is named