colonists to provide better housing for British soldiers upon demand, is passed. June 16–17 – English explorer James Cook becomes the first European to sight (and name) Palmerston Island in the South Pacific Ocean. June 20 (June 9 O.S.) – Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774): Battle of Kozludzha – The Imperial Russian Army, led by Alexander Suvorov, routs numerically superior Ottoman Empire forces. June 22 – The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Quebec Act, setting out rules of governance for the colony of Quebec in British North America, enlarging its territory as far south as Ohio and granting freedom of religion for Roman Catholics. July–September July 21 – Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca with Russian victory, ending six years of war. The treaty gives Russia the right to intervene in Ottoman politics, to protect its Christian subjects. August 1 – The element oxygen is discovered for the third (and last, so far) time – the second quantitatively, following the somewhat earlier work of Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1771–1772) by Joseph Priestley, who publishes the fact in 1775, and so names the element (and usually gets all the credit, because his work was published first). August 6 – Ann Lee and the Shakers arrive in America and settle in New York. September 1 – Powder Alarm: Thomas Gage, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, orders British soldiers to remove gunpowder from a magazine, causing Patriots to prepare for war. September 4 – English explorer James Cook becomes the first European to sight (and name) the island of New Caledonia in Melanesia. September 5 – The First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia. September 15 – Yemelyan Pugachev, leader of Pugachev's Rebellion against Russia by the Yaik Cossacks, is betrayed by his own men after returning to Yaitsk (now Oral, Kazakhstan). September 21 – George Mason and George Washington found the Fairfax County Militia Association, a military unit independent of British control. September 29 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's semi-autobiographical epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) (written January–March) is published anonymously in Leipzig, Germany; it is influential in the Sturm und Drang movement and Romanticism. October–December October 10 Dunmore's War – Battle of Point Pleasant: Cornstalk is forced to make peace with Dunmore at the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, ceding Shawnee land claims south of the Ohio (modern Kentucky) to Virginia.