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:
“Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden into history, it is the stories we didn’t write, the questions we didn’t ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“As I look at the human story I see two stories. They run parallel and never meet. One is of people who live, as they can or must, the events that arrive; the other is of people who live, as they intend, the events they create.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)