Year 1787 (MDCCLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar).
Events of 1787
January - June
- February 4 - Shays' Rebellion fails.
- February 28 - Charter granted establishing the institution known today as the University of Pittsburgh.
- April 2 - Charter of Justice signed providing the authority for the establishment of the first New South Wales (ie Australian) Courts of Criminal and Civil Jurisdiction.
- May 13 - Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England with eleven ships full of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.
- May 14 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates begin to meet to write a new Constitution for the United States.
- May 25 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates begin to convene a Constitutional Convention intended to amend the Articles of Confederation. However, a new Constitution for the United States was eventually produced. George Washington presided over the Convention.
- May - Orangist troops attack Vreeswijk, Harmelen and Maarssen. Civil war starts in the Netherlands.
- June 6 - Franklin College, named for Benjamin Franklin, opens in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It later merges with Marshall College to become Franklin and Marshall College.
- June 20 - Oliver Ellsworth moves at the Federal Convention that the government be called the United States.
- June 28 - Princess Wilhelmina of Orange, sister of Frederick, the king of Prussia, is captured by patriots and taken to Goejanverwellesluis, and not allowed to travel to the Hague.
July - December
- July 13 - The U.S. Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance establishing governing rules for the Northwest Territory. It also establishes procedures for the admission of new states and limits the expansion of slavery.
- July 15 - Lord's cricket ground is established and the MCC incorporated.
- August 27 - Launching a forty-five-foot steam powered craft on the Delaware River, John Fitch demonstrates the first US patent for his design.
- September 13 - Prussian troops enter the Netherlands. Within a few weeks 40,000 Patriots (out of a population of 2,000,000) went into exile in France (and learned from observation the ideals of the French Revolution).
- September 17 - United States Constitution is adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
- October 1 - Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792: Alexander Suvorov, though sustaining a wound, routs the Turks in the Battle of Kinburn.
- October 27 - the first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, was published in a New York paper.
- October 29 - Premiere of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte) in the Estates Theatre in Prague.
- December 7 - Delaware ratifies the Constitution and becomes the first U.S. state.
- December 8 - The Mission La Purisima Concepcion is founded by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, becoming the eleventh mission in the California mission chain.
- December 12 - Pennsylvania becomes the second U.S. state.
- December 18 - New Jersey becomes the third U.S. state.
Undated
Births
Deaths
- February 13
- April 1 - Floyer Sydenham, English classical scholar (b. 1710)
- April 2 - Thomas Gage, British general (b. 1719)
- May 10 - William Watson, English physician and scientist (b. 1715)
- May 28 - Leopold Mozart, Austrian composer (b. 1719)
- June 20 - Karl Friedrich Abel, German composer (b. 1723)
- July 4 - Charles de Rohan, prince de Soubise, Marshal of France (b. 1715)
- August 1 - Alphonsus Liguori, Italian founder of the Redemptionist order (b. 1696)
- October 7 - Henry Muhlenberg, German-born founder of the U.S. Lutheran Church (b. 1711)
- November 3 - Robert Lowth, English bishop and grammarian (b. 1710)
- November 15 - Christoph Willibald Gluck, German composer (b. 1714)
- December 18 - Francis William Drake, British admiral and Governor of Newfoundland (b. 1724)
- December 18 - Soame Jenyns, English writer (b. 1704)
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