1769

• (August 15) Napoleon Bonaparte born on Corsica. See below.
• Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington, commander of the army that defeated Napoleon, born in Dublin.
• French zoologist Georges Cuvier, founder of vertebrate paleontology.
• English portait painter Thomas Lawrence.
• New York politician, and 1812 Presidential Candidate De Witt Clinton.
• English civil engineer and geologist William Smith, originator of the idea of dating rock strata by characteristic fossils.
• poet Amelia Opie.
• Scottish composer James Oswald.
• German explorer, scientist, and political activist, Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt.
• English lanscape painter Thomas Barker of Bath.
• Japanese woodblock artist Utagawa Toyokuni.

• Ottawa chief Pontiac assassinated by an Illini indian hired by a British trader.
• Pope Clement XIII. Giovanni Vincenzo Antinio Ganganelli] is elected Pope Clement XIV.

• Exploration and colonization
• Father Junipero Serra founds Mission San Diego de Alcala, the first Spanish mission in California.
• Spanish missionaries in California write of several severe earthquakes in the region.
• Daniel Boone explores Kentucky and Tennessee despite the British prohobition from crossing the Appalachian Mountains.
• Captain James Cook observes a Transit of Venus from the South Pacific.  A party of French and Spanish scientists observe it from Baja California.
• Cook arrives in New Zealand, circumnavigates the islands, thoroughly sutveying and mapping them.
• Invention
• James Watt patents his improved steam engine.
• Nicolas Cugnot builds the first steam-powered automobile.
• Foundings
• Construction of the Maryland State House begun in Annapolis.
• Dartmouth College founded in Hanover, New Hampshire.
• Wheeling, founded in Virginia (later West Virginia).
• Conflict
• The French invade their new possession, Corsica. The last armed resistance of the "Corsican Republic" is their defeat at the battle of Ponte-Novo on May 8.  The Republic's leader, Pasquale Paoli, flees to London in June.  Of course, they didn't realiz what came with the package.
• Giovanni Vincenzo elected Pope Clement XIV. Noting what happened to his predecessor in 1768, he accedes to Bourbon demands and begins suppression of the Jesuit Order.
• The Cherokee Indians, being pushed west by settlers, try to conquer the Chickasaw but are defeated at the Battle of Chickasaw Oldfields.
• A Spanish army enters New Orleans, quelling the rebellion of the previous year and installing new governor Alejandro O'Reilly.
• King Frederick of Prussia tries to interest Empress Catherine of Russia in a partition of Poland.
• The British East India Company gains control of all European trade in India.
• A Chinese army invades Burma, but is repulsed.
• The Gurkhas conquer Nepal. Their leader, Prithvi Narayan Shah, becomes king.

1768 - 1769 - 1770