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Riga, 1781: eight hundred and fifty-six pages

Immanuel Kant's German-language Critik der reinen Vernunft appeared in 1781 in the first edition now conventionally designated "A," carrying the imprint Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch.

The volume ran to 856 numbered pages, on top of its title, dedication and preface leaves. The title page used the contemporary spelling Critik; the modern German title is normally spelled Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

A letter to Marcus Herz, and no fixed publication day

On 1 May, Kant wrote to his former student Marcus Herz announcing that a book titled Critique of Pure Reason would appear at the current Easter book fair, and described it as the result of investigations that had grown out of questions the two had discussed.

1 May was the date of Kant's letter, not a securely established publication date. The year and the Easter-fair context are securely documented; the consulted bibliographical sources do not establish an exact release day.

Kant's own account of the timing was retrospective: at least twelve years of reflection, then roughly four to five months to put the thing into its final written form.

Six years to a substantially revised edition

The reception history records little public reaction in the first couple of years, and much of it hostile. Christian Garve and J. G. H. Feder produced the heavily edited hostile review that appeared in 1782.

Kant issued the more accessible Prolegomena in 1783. The substantially revised second edition of the Critique itself did not appear until 1787.

25 November 1783: a sequenced handover

British troops left New York City on 25 November 1783, two days later than planned, because bad weather had postponed the embarkation. The September 3 peace treaty required Britain to withdraw its armies, garrisons and fleets from the United States, and Sir Guy Carleton arranged the city's evacuation.

As the British departed, a detachment of the American army marched in, and civil government was immediately placed in possession. Washington afterwards reported to Congress that the transfer had gone off with regularity and good order.

Knox secured the city; the procession came after

American troops under Henry Knox took control of the city before the ceremonial entry. Only then did George Clinton, governor of New York, and George Washington enter lower Manhattan in a public procession.

The men who did it were a detachment, not the wartime Continental Army — most of that army had already disbanded and gone home.

What the day did not end

Nearly 30,000 Loyalists had left New York in the evacuation that began in April 1783, months before the last soldiers embarked.

The date closed the occupation of the city, not of the region: an editorial note in the Franklin Papers has British troops leaving the surrounding areas only by 4 December. Britain went on occupying several frontier posts inside territory awarded to the United States until 1796.

12 May 1784: three men at Passy

On the evening of 12 May 1784, David Hartley met Benjamin Franklin and John Jay at Passy, near Paris. The three exchanged their governments' ratifications of the definitive peace treaty.

Franklin's eyewitness account of the exchange identifies only those three people. The place matters: the 1783 signing had happened at the Hôtel d'York, not here.

What Article 10 required

The treaty signed on 3 September 1783 ran to ten articles, the last of which set a deadline for exchanging ratifications — six months from signature, or sooner if possible.

The Congress of the Confederation had ratified at Annapolis on 14 January 1784, and George III ratified for Britain, but the American instrument reached Franklin and Jay only after transatlantic delays. Hartley travelled to Passy to make the exchange after the treaty's stated six-month window had already run out, and neither government let the delay wreck the settlement.

Completed, not begun

The exchange completed the ratification process and brought the definitive treaty into effect. It did not make the United States independent for the first time: Article 1 had already recorded British recognition of the states as free, sovereign and independent.

Authenticated copies were afterwards transmitted to Congress and the states. Writing the next day, Franklin treated the evening at Passy as the completion of the "great and hazardous enterprise" in which the Americans had been engaged.

5 May 1789: about 1,200 deputies in a temporary hall

On 5 May 1789, deputies of the clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate assembled before Louis XVI in a temporary columned hall behind the Menus-Plaisirs building at Versailles. About 1,200 had come from across France for the first Estates-General in 175 years.

Gouverneur Morris, an American in the hall, recorded waiting in the cramped space from shortly after eight in the morning until after noon.

Speeches that answered the wrong question

Louis XVI presided and delivered the opening address. Charles de Barentin, Keeper of the Seals, and the finance minister Jacques Necker also spoke; Morris noted the loud applause that greeted Necker.

The speeches concentrated on the kingdom's crisis and its finances. None of them settled the question that decided who would control the assembly: whether the three orders would deliberate and vote separately, or the deputies would vote together by head.

Rank, worn on the head

Morris also recorded the awkward contest over whether Third Estate deputies should keep their hats on after the king covered his own — a point of ceremony that was really a point of rank.

The opening ended without breaking the dispute. The orders immediately deadlocked over whether deputies' credentials should be verified jointly or separately, and the deadlock ran on into June.

20 April 1792: the king proposes the war

On 20 April 1792, Louis XVI appeared before the Legislative Assembly in Paris, had foreign minister Charles-François Dumouriez's report read out, and formally proposed war against the king of Hungary and Bohemia. The Constitution required the proposal to come from him.

The transcript notes an alteration in the king's voice as he proposed war against the family of his wife, Marie Antoinette.

The grievances, and the name of the enemy

The decree named Vienna's protection of French émigrés, its military preparations, its support for German princes' claims in France, and Francis's diplomatic notes of 18 March and 7 April. It presented the war as defensive and disavowed conquest.

The target was a person, not a state. When the draft called him Francis II, a deputy interrupted to argue that as king of Bohemia he was still only Francis I; he became Holy Roman Emperor later in 1792.

Sanctioned the same day

At its evening sitting the Assembly adopted the proposal and decreed war in the name of the French nation. Seven deputies are identified in the record as opposed.

A deputation of 24 members carried the decree straight back to Louis XVI, and he sanctioned it that day.

1 February 1793: the Convention declares

After hearing its general-defence committee's report, the National Convention declared on 1 February 1793, in the name of the French nation, that the Republic was at war with the king of England and the stadtholder of the United Provinces.

France issued the declaration, not Britain. A surviving printed copy is catalogued as National Convention Decree No. 368.

The grievances

The decree listed Britain's refusal to recognise republican representatives, its restrictions on French trade and citizens, its support for émigrés, its military preparations, and activity near the Scheldt.

The decree also cited Britain's order that the French representative, François Bernard de Chauvelin, leave the country. After news of Louis XVI's execution, Britain had given him eight days to leave.

Three articles, and a navy

The declaration ran to three operative articles. Beyond announcing war, it directed the provisional executive council to deploy the necessary forces and authorised it to use the Republic's naval forces as the security of the state required.

Spain is often folded into this date and does not belong there. The Convention issued its separate declaration concerning Spain on 7 March.

5 September 1793: Paris comes to the Convention

On 5 September 1793 a Paris delegation led by municipal officials entered the National Convention and demanded stronger enforcement of food-supply laws and the formation of a revolutionary army. Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, the Commune's prosecutor, spoke for them.

The petitioners wanted more than soldiers: they asked for a tribunal — and the guillotine — to follow the revolutionary army.

Maximilien Robespierre was presiding over the Convention when the delegation sought admission.

What the decree actually authorized

The Convention decreed a treasury-paid armed force in Paris to suppress counterrevolutionaries, enforce revolutionary laws and public-safety measures, and protect food supplies.

The force was set at 6,000 armed men and 1,200 artillerymen. The decree ordered it organized that very day and paid its members at the rate of the Paris gendarmerie.

The slogan that was never decreed

Bertrand Barère, reporting for the Committee of Public Safety, invoked the slogan about placing terror on the order of the day while arguing that the proposed army would direct popular force against counterrevolutionaries.

The enacted decree did not formally proclaim that "Terror is the order of the day." The phrase appears in reported versions of Barère's speech, where the revolutionary army — not the Convention itself — was the actor expected to spread terror among enemies.

September 5 is often presented as the formal beginning of the Reign of Terror, but scholars dispute that interpretation because no decree legally proclaimed terror that day, and surviving newspaper versions of Barère's wording differ.

24 October 1795: Prussia accedes

On 24 October 1795 Prussia joined the partition arrangement previously negotiated by Russia and Austria, completing the three powers' political agreement over the remaining Polish-Lithuanian lands.

The treaty's preamble referred back to the Austro-Russian convention of January 1795 and stated that the parties were fixing more precisely the boundaries created by the complete partition of Poland.

Only plenipotentiaries of Russia, Prussia and the Habsburg emperor were parties; no representative of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth participated.

Terms, and the clocks attached to them

The agreement guaranteed Russia's acquisitions, adjusted territory between Austria and Prussia, and assigned Kraków and the surrounding lands to Austria.

Prussian forces were given six weeks from signature to evacuate Kraków and the other Austrian-assigned lands, and the border demarcation was to be completed within three months.

A traditional date for a drawn-out settlement

October 24 is the conventional date of the Third Partition, but the settlement was a process: Russia and Austria concluded an earlier compact in January 1795, Prussia joined in October, and a further tripartite convention followed on 26 January 1797.

The partitioning powers already occupied much of the territory before the treaty, so the date marks diplomatic completion rather than a single-day military takeover.

Stanisław August Poniatowski remained nominally king until he signed his abdication at Grodno on 25 November, the anniversary of his coronation.

Two in the morning, 14 December 1799

Between two and three in the morning on 14 December 1799, at Mount Vernon, Washington woke Martha unable to speak normally and struggling to breathe. He kept her from leaving the bed to summon help because he feared she would catch cold.

Shortly after sunrise, at Washington's own request, the overseer Albin Rawlins bled him. Martha wanted the bleeding stopped; Washington signalled for more. Tobias Lear estimated that roughly half a pint came out in that first bleeding.

Three doctors and about twenty-one hours

James Craik, Elisha Cullen Dick and Gustavus Richard Brown treated him with further bloodletting, blistering, steam, gargles, calomel and tartar emetic. His difficulty breathing and swallowing continued through the day. Dick opposed excessive bleeding and proposed a tracheotomy; the senior physicians rejected it.

About 21 hours passed between the severe onset and the end. No modern examination was possible: acute epiglottitis is a leading retrospective diagnosis, and a 2020 reanalysis gives equal weight to a retropharyngeal abscess.

Two wills, and who was in the room

Late that afternoon Washington had Martha bring him two wills. He identified one as superseded and watched her burn it, then gave Lear instructions for organising his military papers and accounts.

He died between ten and eleven that night, aged 67. Lear, Craik and Martha were there, along with the enslaved valet Christopher Sheels and enslaved women including Caroline and Charlotte. At about midnight his body was carried downstairs and laid out in Mount Vernon's large room.

19 Brumaire at Saint-Cloud: "Outlaw him!"

On 10 November 1799 the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred convened at Saint-Cloud, where the Ancients had transferred both bodies the day before.

Bonaparte's appearance before the Five Hundred did not produce the submission the plotters expected. It provoked cries that he be outlawed, and he withdrew under protection.

Grenadiers in the Orangerie

Lucien Bonaparte, president of the Five Hundred, appealed to the troops waiting outside. Grenadiers commanded by Joachim Murat entered the Orangerie and expelled the resisting deputies; some got out through windows or into the gardens.

Only afterwards did a reduced and compliant legislative body enact the Law of 19 Brumaire, declaring that the Directory no longer existed and excluding 61 named representatives.

Three consuls, and a version of events issued at eleven

The law created a provisional executive consular commission — Sieyès, Roger Ducos and General Bonaparte — with the full powers the Directory had held. Bonaparte was one of three unranked provisional consuls that night, not yet First Consul; the Constitution of Year VIII was signed only on 13 December.

The legislature then adjourned itself, ordering each council to appoint a 25-member interim commission for urgent legislation and constitutional work. At 11 p.m. Bonaparte issued a proclamation presenting himself as the republic's rescuer and his legislative opponents as armed assassins.

18 November 1803: the assault at Vertières

On 18 November 1803 the Indigenous Army commanded by Jean-Jacques Dessalines attacked the French defensive positions at Vertières and the approaches to Cap-Français, in northern Saint-Domingue.

François Capois led repeated assaults against the fortified French position while other commands under Dessalines pressed the surrounding defences; the division general Jean-Baptiste Clerveaux commanded forces in the attack. Disease, battlefield losses, isolation and John Loring's British blockade offshore had already worn Rochambeau's position down.

The night, and then the paper

By the end of the fighting Rochambeau's force had withdrawn into Cap-Français. That night he sought negotiations.

The formal capitulation was signed on 19 November by Dessalines and Rochambeau's authorised representative, Duveyrier. It required Cap-Français and its dependent forts to be handed to Dessalines, and allowed ten days for evacuation.

What the document covered, and what the story adds

The capitulation governed Cap-Français and its dependent forts — not every French position on Hispaniola. A French force still held Môle-Saint-Nicolas, and the eastern part of the island was a separate theatre; with a British squadron waiting offshore, Rochambeau's ships could not simply sail home.

In Haiti's best-known battle tradition, Capois rose after his horse was shot and drove the assault onward, and Rochambeau halted fire to salute him. That account is central to national memory but survives chiefly through later Haitian historians rather than any same-day eyewitness source.

2 December 1804: midday at Notre-Dame

Napoleon and Joséphine entered Notre-Dame de Paris around midday on 2 December 1804, for a specially negotiated imperial consecration and coronation attended by Pope Pius VII. The imperial procession ran to 25 carriages; the ceremony involved roughly 20,000 invited guests, and 500 instrumentalists and singers performed.

Pius VII received Napoleon's religious oath, blessed the kneeling couple, and anointed their foreheads and hands.

Two crowns, and no communion

Napoleon took the imperial crown from the altar and placed it on his own head, then crowned Joséphine as she knelt before him. This was not a snatched improvisation in front of a startled pope — French and papal negotiators had debated and approved the rite's gestures in advance.

One planned element did not happen. The imperial couple did not take communion.

The oath came after the pope retired to the sacristy

Once Pius had retired to the sacristy, Napoleon swore a constitutional oath with his hand on the Gospel, and the herald proclaimed him crowned and enthroned.

No new office was created that afternoon: the Senate's sénatus-consulte of 18 May 1804 had already established the hereditary Empire and proclaimed Napoleon emperor. After acclamations at about 3:30 p.m., the couple returned to the Tuileries around 6:30 and dined alone.