Year 1785 (MDCCLXXXV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar).
Events of 1785
January - June
- January 1 - The first issue of the Daily Universal Register, later known as The Times, is published in London.
- January 7 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England to Calais, France in a hydrogen gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
- January 27 - The University of Georgia is founded.
- May 10 - A hot air balloon crashes in Tullamore, causing a fire that burns down about 100 houses, making it the world's first aviation disaster (by 36 days).
- 15 June - After several attempts, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and his companion, Pierre Romain, set off in a balloon from Boulogne-sur-Mer, but the balloon suddenly deflates (without the envelope catching fire) and crashes near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais, killing both men. Although more than a month after the Tullamore crash, some people consider this crash the world's first aviation disaster.
July - December
Undated
Births
- January 4
- February 8 - Martín Miguel de Güemes Argentine military leader (d. 1821)
- February 10 - Claude-Louis Navier, French engineer and physicist (d. 1836)
- March 27 - Louis XVII of France (d. 1795)
- April 4 - Bettina von Arnim, German poet (d. 1859)
- April 26 - John James Audubon, French-American naturalist and illustrator (d. 1851)
- May 18 - John Wilson, Scottish writer (d. 1854)
- May 20 - Marcellin Champagnat, Saint
- July 6 - William Jackson Hooker, English botanist (d. 1865)
- August 15 - Thomas de Quincey, English writer (d. 1859)
- August 23 - Oliver Hazard Perry, American naval officer (d. 1819)
- September 27 - David Walker, Abolitionist (d. 1830)
- October 15 - José Miguel Carrera, Chilean general and founding father (d. 1821)
- October 18 - Thomas Love Peacock, English satirist (d. 1866)
- October 20 - George Ormerod, English historian and antiquarian (d. 1873)
- November 18 - David Wilkie, Scottish artist (d. 1841)
Deaths
- January 3 - Baldassare Galuppi, Italian composer (b. 1706)
- January 19 - Jonathan Toup, English classical scholar and critic (b. 1713)
- January 23 - Matthew Stewart, Scottish mathematician (b. 1717)
- April 14 - William Whitehead, English writer (b. 1715)
- May 8
- June 2 - Jean Paul de Gua de Malves, French mathematician (b. 1713)
- June 30 - James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia (b. 1696)
- August 17 - Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of the Colony and the state of Connecticut (b. 1710)
- August 26 - George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, British soldier and politician (b. 1716)
- August 28 - Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, French sculptor (b. 1714)
- October 4 - David Brearly, delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (b. 1703)
- November 18 - Louis Philip I, Duke of Orléans, French soldier and writer (b. 1725)
- November 19 - Bernard de Bury, French composer (b. 1720)
- November 25 - Richard Glover, English poet (b. 1712)
- December 6 - Kitty Clive, English actress and playwright (b. 1711)
- December 29 - Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian author (b. 1742)
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