1781

• Bohemian mathematician Bernard Bolzano.
• Italian guitar composer Mauro Giuliani.
• French mathematician Siméon Poisson.
• Scottish physicist David Brewster.
• British inventor George Stephenson.
• English sculptor Francis Chantrey.
• English architect Robert Smirke.
• Indian religious leader Shri Swaminarayan.
• German philosopher Johann Meckel.
• German poet Adalbert von Chamisso.
• American architect Robert Mills.
• Richard M. Johnson, 9th Vice-President of the United States (under Martin Van Buren).
• German architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

• German philosopher Gotthold Lessing.

• The Austrian Empire abolishes serfdom and grants freedom of the press and religious tolerance.
• War of American Independence:
• Political activity:
• (March 1) Maryland is the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation (passed by the Continental Congress in 1777, after the other states relinquish their western land claims.
• (May) Prussia joins the League of Armed Neutrality.
• Military activity:
• (January 1) The Pennsylvania contingent of the Continental Army mutinies over the conditions they are forced to live in. However, when British General Henry Clinton sends messengers to them, the messengers are turned over.  George Washington appeals to Congress to improve their conditions.
• (January 5) The government of Virginia is forced to flee Richmond as an army under Benedict Arnold enters the city.
• (January 17) The Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina. British colonel Banastre Tarleton is defeated by General Daniel Morgan.  Tarleton himself escapes.
• (January 20) The New Jersey contingent of the Continental Army mutinies.  This time, Washington has two of the mutineers' leaders hanged.
• (February 3) The British under Admiral Rodney capture the Dutch-held Caribbean island St. Eustasius.  He confiscates a large amount of materiel that British merchants were selling to American rebels.  Because of this, he is plagued with lawsuits for the rest of his life.
• (January-March) British General Lord Cornwallis' supply lines are stretched precariously thin as General Nathaniel Greene leads him on a merry chase through South Carolina and North Carolina.
• (March 15) Cornwallis catches up with Greene.  At the Battle of Guilford Court House in North Carolina Greene retreats but the British suffer far more casualties.  Cornwallis falls back to Wilmington, NC, North Carolina to regroup.
• (April) French Admiral de Grasse captures Tobago from the British.
• (May) Louis XVI dismisses his war minister Necker.
• (May 10) Pensacola, the last holdout in West Florida, finally surrenders to the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez.
• (June 4) Banastre Tarleton raids Monticello but Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson escapes.
• (June 5) The British surrender Augusta, Georgia to Richard Henry Lee.
• (June 6) Washington and Rochambeau prepare for a combined assault on Manhattan Island.
• (August 28) Militia defeat a company of Loyalists at Elizabethtown, North Carolina.
• (September) Cornwallis defeats Greene at the Battle of Eutaw, then moves into Virginia.
• (September 28) Washington, Rochambeau, and fresh French troops brought by Admiral De Grasse surround Cornwallis' army at Yorktown, Virginia.
• (October 17) Lord Cornwallis offers a white flag.  By October 19, British troops, accorting to the terms of surrender, give up their arms while their band plays The World Turned Upside Down.
• (October 19) A British fleet leaves New York to relieve Cornwallis, too late.
• The Ancient Order of Druids founded.
• Thomas Jefferson (anonymously) publishes his Notes on the State of Virginia which contains his opinion of the inferiority of black people and his feeling that slavery should never be abolished.
• Yuma Indians destroy the Mission La Purisima Concepcion, the present site of Yuma, Arizona.
• The survivors of the Yuma attack found El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciúncula.
• Immanuel Kant publishes his Critique of Pure Reason.
• Tupac Amaru is captured, then drawn and quartered in Cuzco.
• Frederick Herschel discovers a new planet, the first discovered by telescope, and decidedly smashing Aristotelian cosmology.  He originally calls it George's Star after King George III, but it is now known as Uranus.

1780 - 1781 - 1782