Scheele produces phosphoric acid in 1777 by the action of nitric acid on phosphorus.

As Turkish power has continued to decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the living conditions of the Macedonian Christians have deteriorated.

Greek influence has increased, the Slavic liturgy has been banned, and schools and monasteries teach Greek language and culture.

The Ottoman Empire eliminates the autocephalous Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the archbishopric of Ohrid in 1777; because of such actions, the Slavic Macedonians begin to despise Greek ecclesiastical domination as much as they loathe Turkish political oppression.

The personal attacks on the French queen's character cause her to plunge further into the costly diversions of buying her dresses from Rose Bertin and gambling, simply to enjoy herself.

On one famed occasion, she plays for three days straight with players from Paris, straight up until her twenty-first birthday.

She has also begun to attract various male admirers whom she accepts into her inner circles, including the baron de Besenval, the duc de Coigny, and Count Valentin Esterházy.

Marie Antoinette has been given free rein to renovate the Petit Trianon, a small château on the grounds of Versailles, which Louis had given to her as a gift on August 15, 1774; she concentrates mainly on horticulture, redesigning the garden in the English fashion, which in the previous reign had been an arboretum of introduced species, and adding flowers.

Although the Petit Trianon had been built for Louis's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, it becomes associated with Marie Antoinette's perceived extravagance.

With the "English garden", Marie Antoinette and her court adopt the English dress of indienne, of percale or muslin, breaking the tradition of costume at the court at Versailles that had prevailed for more than a decade.

Rumors circulate that she has plastered the walls with gold and diamonds.

Her lady-in-waiting Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan replies to such rumors that the queen visits the workshops of the village in a simple dress of white percale with a gauze scarf and a straw hat.

Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist, first classifies sulfur as an element in 1777.

Elector Maximilian III Joseph dies in 1777, ending the direct line of the Wittelsbachs; his successor to the Duchy of Bavaria is the Elector Palatine Charles IV Theodore of the Sulzbach line.

Charles, duke of Zweibrucken, heir presumptive of the Elector Palatine, protests the cession of Lower Bavaria to Austria by Charles Theodore’s secret treaty with Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, in exchange for which he is to receive the Austrian Netherlands.

Maximilian's consort Maria Anna Sophia of Saxony opens negotiations with Prussia to secure Bavaria's independence and the succession of the Wittelsbach branch Palatinate Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld in Bavaria after Charles Theodore's death.

Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, Prussian First Minister under Frederick the Great, believes that Austria's acquisitions in Bavaria would rebalance the gain of Silesia to Prussia three decades earlier, thus reestablishing Austria's hegemony in German-speaking lands and undermining Prussia's own position.

He therefore constructs an alliance with Saxony and both countries declares war on Austria in July 1788, ostensibly to defend the rights of Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken, Charles Theodore's heir, and thus initiating the War of Bavarian Secession.

The code duello, adopted at the Clonmel Summer Assizes as the form for pistol duels in Ireland, is quickly denounced but nevertheless widely adopted throughout the English-speaking world.