Frederick William, as prince of Prussia in…

A Russian captain in Kamchatka leads Kōdayū's people to Okhotsk.

British sailors mutiny on the HMS Bounty in 1789, setting Captain Bligh and others adrift in the Pacific.

Philip King prevents a mutiny early in 1789, when some of the convicts plan to take him and other officers prisoner, and escape on the next boat to arrive.

While commandant on Norfolk Island, King has formed a relationship with the female convict Ann Inett—their first son, born on January 8, 1789, is named Norfolk. (He will go on to become the first Australian-born officer in the Royal Navy and the captain of the schooner Ballahoo.)

Arabanoo dies of smallpox, which he calls galgalla, on May 18, 1789, after only six months among the settlers.

He is buried in the garden of the government building.

Colonel David Collins will say his death was "to the great regret of everyone who had witnessed how little of the savage was found in his manner, and how quickly he was substituting in its place a docile, affable, and truly amiable deportment".

European disease often precedes European settlers, even before their arrival in local districts.

A smallpox epidemic is recorded in Sydney in 1789, which wipes out about half the Indigenous Australians around Sydney: having no immunity, an estimated two thousand die.

It then spreads well beyond the then limits of European settlement, including much of southeastern Australia.

A disastrous smallpox epidemic breaks out in 1789, killing up to seventy percent of the Indigenous people of the Sydney region.

Based on information recorded in the journals of some members of the First Fleet, it has been surmised that the Aborigines of the Sydney region had never encountered the disease before and lacked immunity to it.

Unable to understand or counter the sickness they often flee, leaving the sick with some food and water to fend for themselves.

As the clans flee the epidemic it consequently spreads further along the coast and into the hinterland.

This has a disastrous effect on Aboriginal society; with many of the productive hunters and gathers dead, those who survive  the initial outbreak begin to starve.

Lieutenant William Bradley records the first indications of the severity of the disaster that had struck the Aboriginal population of Sydney when he describes his shock at the small number of them to be seen on the harbor and its shores compared with previous times.

The British had not seen smallpox in anyone among themselves before the outbreak.

Although there had been fears about the health of some of the convicts on the First Fleet, these had been subsequently dismissed by Surgeon-General John White who believed they were suffering from "slight inflammatory complaints".

The origin of the smallpox epidemic is controversial, and it has been speculated that the surgeons on board the First Fleet brought vials of smallpox matter and either accidentally or intentionally released it as a "biological weapon".

Christopher Warren, writing in Journal of Australian Studies in 2014, will conclude that British marines were most likely to have spread smallpox, possibly without informing Governor Phillip but will concede in his conclusion that "today's evidence only provides for a balancing of probabilities and this is all that can be attempted." (Warren, Christopher (March 2014). "Smallpox at Sydney Cover - who, when and why?" (PDF). Journal of Australian Studies Vol.38 No.1. International Australian Studies Association. Retrieved November 3, 2017.)

British naval officer William Bligh, in the company of eighteen loyal crew members set adrift in an open boat following the mutiny on his ship, HMS Bounty, skillfully navigates more than thirty-six hundred miles (fifty-eight hundred kilometers) to Timor, charting part of the northeast coast of New Holland (Australia) en route.

The Russians operating in Moldavia and along the Black Sea also massacre the captured Turkish inhabitants of Jassy (Iasi) and Chocim (Khotin).

The Japanese castaways, after staying temporarily in Yakutsk, are introduced by the captain to Erik Laxmann, who assists Kōdayū's and his crew in Irkutsk.

Joseph II had returned to Vienna in November 1788 with ruined health, and is a dying man during 1789.

The concentration of his troops in the east gives the discontented Belgians an opportunity to revolt.

In Hungary, the nobles are in all but open rebellion, and in his other states, there are peasant risings and a revival of particularistic sentiments.

He decrees in 1789 that all peasant labor obligations must be converted into cash payments, but these policies are violently rejected by both the nobility and the peasants,  since their barter economy lacks money.

He had also abolished the death penalty in 1787, and this reform will remain until 1795.