March 14 » Admiral Sir John Byng is executed by firing squad aboard HMSMonarch for breach of the Articles of War.
May 6 » English poet Christopher Smart is admitted into St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, beginning his six-year confinement to mental asylums.
May 6 » The end of Konbaung–Hanthawaddy War, and the end of Burmese Civil War (1740–1757).
June 23 » Battle of Plassey: Three thousand British troops under Robert Clive defeat a 50,000-strong Indian army under Siraj ud-Daulah at Plassey.
November 5 » Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.
December 31 » Empress Elizabeth I of Russia issues her ukase incorporating Königsberg into Russia.
Day of death January 28, 1779
The temperature on January 28, 1779 was about 2.0 °C. Wind direction mainly south-southeast. Weather type: betrokken mist. Source: KNMI
January 11 » Ching-Thang Khomba is crowned King of Manipur.
February 14 » James Cook is killed by Native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.
May 13 » War of the Bavarian Succession: Russian and French mediators at the Congress of Teschen negotiate an end to the war. In the agreement Austria receives the part of its territory that was taken from it (the Innviertel).
June 16 » Spain declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Great Siege of Gibraltar begins.
September 28 » American Revolution: Samuel Huntington is elected President of the Continental Congress, succeeding John Jay.
October 18 » American Revolutionary War: The Franco-American Siege of Savannah is lifted.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Charles Olson, "Olson's Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/olsons-tree/P21077.php : accessed January 4, 2026), "William Johnson (1757-1779)".
Copy warning
Genealogical publications are copyright protected. Although data is often retrieved from public archives, the searching, interpreting, collecting, selecting and sorting of the data results in a unique product. Copyright protected work may not simply be copied or republished.
Please stick to the following rules
Request permission to copy data or at least inform the author, chances are that the author gives permission, often the contact also leads to more exchange of data.
Do not use this data until you have checked it, preferably at the source (the archives).
State from whom you have copied the data and ideally also his/her original source.