George Stevenson was born in a small village near Newcastle, a city in northern England. Many unusual things happened that year. That year, British Commander-in-Chief Kang Hua gave up Yorktown, the last British stronghold in the United States, and surrendered to Washington, the leader of the War of Independence. In the same year, British astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus, the first big planet discovered by human beings after the invention of the telescope.