Friday My-Town Shoot-out - Historic

I live in the suburban ‘township’ of Pensby on the Wirral peninsula in the UK. It is one of the most photographically boring places in the world. I spend a few weeks of my year on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and usually manage a visit to Exeter at least once a year. Since Pensby is near the historic towns of Liverpool and Chester I have a tremendous choice for my Friday Shoot-outs. But today I am showing a couple of buildings that are nearly in Pensby. They are in the adjacent area of Irby. They are two cottages, one of which was formerly Benty Heath Farm (I think).

This cottage was built in 1732  (apologies that this initially said 1832 because of a typing error).

Some of the things that occurred in 1732, the year this cottage was built:-

Feb 22nd – George Washington, first President of the United States, was born (d. 1799)

Feb 26th - 1st mass celebrated at St Joseph's Church (the first American Catholic church), Philadelphia

March 31st – Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer, was born (d. 1809)

April 5th – Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter, was born (d. 1806)

April 8th – David Rittenhouse, American astronomer, inventor, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman, and public official, was born . (d. 1796)

April 13tg – Frederick North, Lord North, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1792)

Jun 9th - America's Georgia colony had its beginnings in a charter granted by George II to English philanthropists who included James E. Oglethorpe for lands between the Altamah and Savannah Rivers. Oglethorpe's parliamentary investigations into penal conditions had led him to advance the idea of establishng an American colony for newly freed and unemployed debtors.

Aug 1st - Foundation laid for Bank of England.

Sept 16 – A magnitude 5.8 earthquake occurred in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Dec 4th - Playwright-poet-librettist John Gay died in London aged 47.

Dec 7th - The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.

Dec 19th - Benjamin Franklin under the name Richard Saunders began publication of "Poor Rich-ard's Almanack". Primarily an agricultural handbook, it gave sunset and sunrise times, high and low tides, weather predictions, and optimum dates for planting and harvesting. It also offers practical suggestions, recipes, advice on personal hygiene, and folksy urgings to be frugal, industrious, and orderly ("God helps those who help themselves," "Never leave till tomorrow that which you can do to-day," "You cannot pluck roses without fear of thorns, nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns.")

Dec 23rd – Richard Arkwright, English inventor, was born (d. 1792).

Famine struck Western Japan as crops were ruined by an excess of rain and a plague of grasshoppers: 2.6 million went hungry and 12,400 died.

This one was built in 1786

During 1786 the following happened -

May 1 – Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro premieres in Vienna.

May 21 – France's diamond necklace affair ends in the acquittal of Cardinal de Rohan. The comte de La Motte is believed to have escaped to London with the necklace and is condemned in his ab-sence to serve in the galleys for life. The comtesse de La Motte is condemned to be whipped, branded, and locked up in the Salpetrière. Cardinal de Rohan is exiled in disgrace to the abbey of la Chaise-Dieu; Marie Antoinette is disappointed by his acquittal.

Jun 8th - Commercially made ice cream 1st advertised (Mr Hall, NYC)

June 10 – An earthquake-caused landslide dam on the Dadu River gives way, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.

August 1 – Caroline Herschel discovers a comet (the first discovered by a woman).

August 8 – Mont Blanc is climbed for the first time by Dr. Michael-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat.

August 17- David "Davy" Crockett, American frontiersman, was born (d. 1836)

August 17- Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Mother of Queen Victoria, was born (d. 1861)

August 17- Prussia's Friedrich II (the Great) dies at his Sans-Souci Palace in Potsdam at age 72 af-ter a 46-year reign.

September 2 – A hurricane strikes Barbados.

Dec 29th - French Revolution: The Assembly of Notables is convoked

Goethe undertakes his Italian Journey (published in 1817).

Native Americans hold a council at which the Seneca chief Sagoyewatha (né Otetiani), now 28, ar-gues the inevitability of making peace with the new United States

Russia's Catherine the Great begins a second war with the Ottoman Empire

The first ship leaves Britain for Botany Bay, Australia: 820 out of 1,138 aboard are convicts.

Millwright Andrew Meikle develops the first successful threshing machine

If you would like to see what historic features other members of the gang have found please click on this FMTSO link.