An old system of long-life insurance. The most infamous one was imposed on a couple of thousand rich families about this time. Each paid in a sum and recieved the interest income divided among the payees.
As each beneficiary dies off the others split up his share. Eventually one very old widow got the enitre interest income.
Of course the trick is the Government paid the interest on the sum, but never had to pay off the principal.
The first hit that Google returns for “tontine” is a page which states that the tontine was introduced (under that name) in 1653. (The original page doesn’t seem to be available; here’s the Google cache of it.)
Building on Chefguy’s idea: maybe that was when the term “The United States of America” was first introduced in formal diplomatic communications? (I would think, based on the wording of the question, that it has to be something at a national or governmental level, rather than something done by a private French individual such as Lavoisier.)
In Sept of 1778 the French introduced a law making the use but not possession of soap a guillotining offence, also incorporated in the law was something to the effect that washing your hair with anything other than water from an open sewer was also unpatriotic.
Seriously now…I believe it was the champagne glass supposedly modelled on one of Marie Antoinettes tits, and mighty small tits she had
It would be a cruel sort of hoax though, given that the OP told us the prize is tickets to a Blue concert. The answer ought to be one a twelve-year-old girl (or a parent/older sibling of one) should be able to figure out.
Lavoisier published his treatise on combustion (debunking the Phlogiston theory) in 1778. (Speech the treatise was based on was given in 1775 to a more limited audience.)
Does 1777 have to be a year. Could it not be a section of, say, the Criminal Code (or whatever the hell the call it . . ) - obviously doesn’t have to be the CC, just using that as an example ?
