Events
- January - First Letters of Junius, criticising the government, appear in the Public Advertiser.
- February–April - John Wilkes is expelled from Parliament three times.
- 8 April - The Theatre Royal, York, reopens under this title having been granted a Royal Patent. (The manager, Tate Wilkinson, also obtains a patent for his theatre in Hull.)
- 13 April - First voyage of James Cook: James Cook arrives in Tahiti on the ship HM Bark Endeavour, preparing to observe the solar eclipse of the planet Venus, which takes place on 3 June. After the voyage, the data is found to be inaccurate in determining the distance between the Sun and Earth.
- 29 April - James Watt patents an improved steam engine.
- 3 & 29 May - Eclipse runs her first races, giving rise to the phrase "Eclipse first and the rest nowhere."
- 3 July - Richard Arkwright patents a spinning frame able to weave fabric mechanically.
- 5–7 September - Actor-manager David Garrick stages a Shakespeare Jubilee festival in Stratford-upon-Avon, disrupted by rain and with no performances of Shakespeare's works.
- 7 October - James Cook reaches New Zealand.
- 19 November - Blackfriars Bridge across the River Thames in London opens to the public.
Read more about this topic: 1769 In Great Britain
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematising the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray’s Anatomy.”
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“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“On the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)