1752 CE

In the British Empire, it was the only year with 355 days: the 11 days from 3 to 13 September were dropped when the Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar.

In the 1750s, the 18th century.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 1 – The British Empire (except Scotland, which had changed New Year's Day to January 1 in 1600) adopts today as the first day of the year as part of adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which is completed in September: today is the first day of the New Year under the terms of last year's Calendar Act of the British Parliament.source
  • February 29 – Alaungpaya, a village chief in Upper Burma, founds the Konbaung Dynasty; by the time of his death 8 years later, he will have unified the whole country.source
  • 17 March – the Parliament of Great Britain passes an act to bestow estates forfeited by Jacobites to the Crown and to use the revenue to develop the Scottish Highlands.Scotlandsource
  • 17 March – Parliament passes a bill to bestow estates forfeited by Jacobites to the Crown and to use the revenue to develop the Scottish Highlands.United Kingdomsource
  • April 6 – Spanish Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, a province that now comprises most of the American state of New Mexico, begins the first peace negotiations with the indigenous Comanche tribe after inviting tribal representatives to his home in Taos. As a sign of good faith, he unconditionally releases the four Comanche prisoners of war held at Taos. One of the released Comanches reports to his father, Chief Guanacante, about the hospitality extended to him during his imprisonment, and more meetings take place in July and in the autumn.source
  • June 13 – The Treaty of Logstown is signed by representatives of the Iroquois Confederation, Lenape and Shawnee leaders, and commissioners from Virginia, headed by Joshua Fry. Christopher Gist and William Trent represent the Ohio Company. The treaty grants control over lands south and east of the Ohio River to the English, along with permission to build a fort on the site of what is now Pittsburgh.source
  • August 3 – Edward Cornwallis, the British Governor of Nova Scotia, is recalled to Britain after being unsuccessful in pressuring Nova Scotia's Acadian population to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown or to face expulsion. His replacement, Peregrine Hopson, is more lenient with the Acadians but is reassigned less than two years later.source
  • November 8 – British Governor Hopson of Nova Scotia and French Governor General of New France, the Marquis Duquesne, agree to a free exchange of deserters from each other's armies in Canada, with the understanding that neither side will execute a deserter once returned.source
  • 10 November – Holmestrand received city rights.Norwaysource
  • The Riksdag of the Estates introduce a reform in which the Privy Council Chancellery is henceforth to be elected without the participation of the monarch.Swedensource
  • Henry Pelham, Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, converts all outstanding issues of redeemable government stock into one bond, Consolidated 3.5% Annuities (consols), in order to reduce the coupon (interest rate) paid on the government debt.United Kingdomsource
  • Sir John Glynne, 6th Baronet, builds New Hawarden Castle.Walessource

Conflict & Security

  • March 23 – Ava, capital of the Kingdom of Burma, is sacked by Hanthawaddy Kingdom, led by King Binnya Dala.source
  • April 12 – The Kingdom of Afghanistan, under the rule of Ahmad Shah Durrani, recaptures the city of Lahore four years after its capture by the Sikhs of Punjab.source
  • 14 June – Robert Clive forces the surrender of French troops in the aftermath of the Siege of Trichinopoly in India.United Kingdomsource
  • French kill Miami chief, fortify the Ohio Valley region with forts from Lake Erie to the forks of the Ohio River.Canadasource
  • Harri Llwyd – Hymnau ar Amryw YstyriaethauWalessource

Exploration & Expansion

  • 1 May – commissioners for the promotion of inland navigation in Ireland are incorporated.Irelandsource
  • August 21 – A group of Scottish Presbyterians who had fled to America from Scotland held the first Covenanter communion in the 13 American colonies, meeting in New Kingstown, Pennsylvania.source
  • August 25 – The first group of the United Brethren church, commonly called the Moravians, leaves Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on a mission to find 100,000 acres of land on which to build "Villages of the Lord" for German emigres to settle upon in America; after a 450 mile journey, they arrive in Edenton, North Carolina on September 10 and eventually purchase the Wachovia Tract, a set of lands in the western North Carolina colony.source
  • November 22 – "Father Le Loutre's War", the war between the British Canadian colonists of Nova Scotia and the indigenous Mi'kmaq (Micmac) tribe halts temporarily when a peace treaty is signed between the warring parties at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Governor Hopson, accompanied by former Governor Cornwallis, signs on behalf of the British and Chief Kopit (Jean-Baptiste Cope), the Sakamaw of the Mi'kmaq, signs on behalf of his people.source
  • Rev. Richard Pococke makes an extended tour of Ireland.Irelandsource
  • Howell Harris founds the Teulu Trefeca ("The Trefeca family")Walessource
  • A turnpike road opens between Wrexham and Shrewsbury.Walessource

Religion & Belief

  • January – The castrum doloris of Louise in Christiansborg Chapel.Denmarksource
  • March 18 – The electors of the Republic of Venice (which includes not only a large part of northern Italy around the city of Venice, but portions of Eastern Europe along the Adriatic Sea) elect Francesco Loredan as their new executive, the Doge. Loredan's election comes 11 days after the death of the previous Doge, Pietro Grimani, but is not announced until after Easter Sunday.source
  • 28 August – Belfast Charitable Society, established to open the poorhouse which will become Clifton House, Belfast, first meets.Irelandsource
  • 9 November – Richard Trevor becomes Bishop of Durham.Walessource
  • c. July – Methodist church opens in Whitefriar Street, Dublin.Irelandsource
  • The Church of Ireland Bishoprics of Killaloe and Kilfenora are united under the Bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora.Irelandsource
  • John Evans – Some Account of the Welch Charity SchoolsWalessource
  • The first Methodist chapel in Caernarfonshire is built on land adjoining Tŷ-mawr farm, Bryncroes.Walessource

Technology & Infrastructure

  • July 30 – The first of the Kronstadt canals, conceived by Peter the Great and designed to link two of the harbors of the Russian city, is completed and opened to maritime traffic.source
  • La Corne began a three-year appointment as the western commander of the poste de l'Ouest.Canadasource
  • Pollok House near Glasgow, designed by William Adam is built.Scotlandsource
  • The village of Luncarty is established by William Sandeman to house his employees.Scotlandsource

Science & Discovery

  • February 23 – Messier 83 (M83), the "Southern Pinwheel Galaxy" and the first to be cataloged outside the "Local Group" of galaxies nearest to Earth's galaxy, the Milky Way, is discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille. Lacaille, who observes M83 during a research voyage in the Southern Hemisphere, is the first to identify the body as a nebulous object rather than a star. M83, 15 million light-years away, is the most distant object to be identified up to that time.source
  • May 10 – At Marly-la-Ville in France, physicist Thomas-François Dalibard successfully conducts the kite experiment proposed by Benjamin Franklin in the 1750 book Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity.source
  • Adam Smith transfers to professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow.Scotlandsource
  • John Parry – A Collection of Welsh, English & Scotch AirsWalessource

Health & Medicine

  • February 10 – Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States, and the first to offer medical treatment to the mentally ill, admits its first patients at a temporary location in Philadelphia.source
  • The first modern hospital, Serafimerlasarettet, is founded.Swedensource
  • Foundation of what will become the Manchester Royal Infirmary as a cottage hospital in Garden Street, Manchester, by Charles White (surgeon).United Kingdomsource

Crime & Justice

  • February 27 – The Virginia Assembly passes a law making maiming a felony, in response to the practice of gouging.source
  • 14 May – Appin Murder: Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure ("The Red Fox"), 44, who has recently been dispossessing members of the Jacobite Clan Stewart of Appin, is shot in the back in the wood of Lettermore between Ballachulish and Kentallen. The chief suspect, Alan Breck Stewart, having fled to France, James Stewart of the Glen is found guilty "in art and part" (as an accessory to the crime) at Inveraray by a judge and jury entirely from Clan Campbell and hanged on 8 November at Cnap a' Chaolais above the narrows at Ballachulish.Scotlandsource
  • 1 June – Murder Act 1751 comes into effect, providing that the bodies of hanged murderers should suffer public dissection or (for men) hanging in the gibbet.United Kingdomsource
  • Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel Kidnapped is inspired by the Appin Murder case.Scotlandsource

Disasters & Accidents

  • June 3 – A fire destroys 13,000 houses in Moscow in the Russian Empire, only 11 days after a May 23 fire destroyed 5,000 homes; by June 6, two-thirds of the city has been damaged or destroyed.source
  • June 21 – Pickawillany (now Piqua, Ohio), the capital of the Miami Indian nation, is attacked and burned by Odawa, Ojibwe and French soldiers under the command of Odawa War Chief Charles Michel de Langlade.source

Climate & Environment

  • July 30 - An earthquake occurred in Edirne and affected the region all the way to Bulgaria.source
  • November 3 – A hurricane destroys the Spanish settlement on Florida's Santa Rosa Island, leaving only two buildings standing; the remaining residents decide to move from the barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico and to start a settlement on the nearby mainland and construct the Presidio San Miguel de Panzacola, which later forms the nucleus of the city of Pensacola, Florida.source
  • An earthquake occurs in Southern Iceland.Icelandsource

Culture & Society

  • 1 January – the British Empire (except Scotland, which had changed New Year's Day to 1 January in 1600) adopts today as the first day of the year as part of adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which is completed in September: today is the first day of the New Year under the terms of last year's Calendar Act.United Kingdomsource
  • March 23 – The Halifax Gazette, the first Canadian newspaper, is published.source
  • 23 March – Canada's first newspaper, the weekly Halifax Gazette, is published.Canadasource
  • April 12 – The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Spain's Royal Academy of the Fine Arts, is formally established in Spain, eight years after first being proposed to King Fernando VI by Jeronimo Antonio Gil as a small school in Madrid. The foundation of the Royal Academy is considered by historians to be "an essential step in modernizing Spain" during the Spanish Enlightenment.source
  • April 13 – The oldest property insurance company in the United States, "Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire", holds its organizational meeting at the courthouse in Philadelphia to elect a board of directors, largely through the efforts of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, has been advertising the meeting since February 18, with a notice that "All persons inclined to subscribe to the articles of insurance of houses from fire, in or near this city, are desired to appear at the Court-house, where attendance will be given, to take in their subscriptions, every seventh day of the week, in the afternoon, until the 13th of April next, being the day appointed by the said articles for electing twelve directors and a treasurer." The property insurance company is still in existence more than 250 years later.source
  • April 22 – Adam Smith, appointed the year before as a professor of logic, is unanimously elected by the faculty of the University of Glasgow to be the new Professor of Moral Philosophy "on the express condition that he would content himself with the emoluments of the Logic Professorship until 10 October", in that the 1751-1752 salary budgeted for the job has already been distributed to faculty members who had substituted for the previous moral philosophy professor, Thomas Craigie; from April to October, Smith's remuneration for teaching moral philosophy is limited to fees paid directly to him by his students (a half guinea per semester for the public class, and a guinea per semester for the private class). Smith's lectures on ethics are first published in 1759 in his work The Theory of Moral Sentiments.source
  • 5 June – Frances, mother of Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Baronet, purchases the Mathafarn estate on her son's behalf.Walessource
  • June – Benjamin Franklin reportedly carries out his famous kite experiment, duplicating experiments that show that lightning and electricity are the same. According to Franklin, lightning strikes the kite that he is flying during a thunderstorm and produces sparks identical to what he has previously generated artificially in a Leyden jar. However, the report of his experiment is not made until October 19, in Franklin's newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, leading 20th century researchers to doubt that he conducted the experiment, if at all, until sometime after September 28, when he had written in the Gazette about other such experiments, and that he was making a claim that he had conceived the experiment independently.source
  • July 1 – In Istanbul, Divitdar Mehmed Emin Pasha is dismissed from his position as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmud I. The Sultan appoints Çorlulu Ali Pasha as the new Grand Vizier.source
  • 8 July – The wedding of Frederick V and Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.Denmarksource
  • September 2 of Julian calendar (Wednesday) (September 13 "New Style")– Great Britain and the British Empire use the Julian calendar for the last time and adopt the Gregorian calendar, making the next day Thursday, September 14 in the English-speaking world. A newspaper at the time notes the next day that "Altho' we have more than once, for the Information of our Readers, publish'd some Accounts of the Alteration of the Style, which took Place this Day, agreeable to a late Act of Parliament, in all his Majesty's Dominions in Europe, Asia, Africa and America" and notes that "The Supputation of the Year began on the first Day of January last, and for the future the first Day of that Month will be stiled the first Day of every Year in all Accounts whatsoever, which Supputation or Reckoning never took Place before this Year in any Courts of Law until the 25th Day of March", and adds, "This Day, had not this Act passed, would have been the 3rd of September, but is now reckoned the 14th, eleven nominal Days being omitted."source
  • December 5 – The first presentation of a Shakespearean play in America is performed when a company of players stages The Merchant of Venice in Williamsburg, Virginia.source
  • 3–13 September inclusive – these dates are omitted from the calendar in Great Britain and Ireland as part of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, correcting the discrepancy between Old Style and New Style dates, under terms of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.Irelandsource
  • Seminarium Lapponicum established in Trondheim, a school for preparing teachers to teach in Sami language.Norwaysource
  • 3–13 September – these dates are omitted from the calendar in Britain as part of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar to correct the discrepancy between Old Style and New Style dates.Scotlandsource
  • The spinning schools which had been established through the 1739 reform are given government support, and medals are created for spinning mistresses to encourage the textile industry.Swedensource

Births

Deaths

  • January 14 – Devasahayam Pillai, beatified Indian Catholic (born 1712)source
  • January 16 – Francis Blomefield, English topographer (born 1705)source
  • February 10 – Henriette of France, daughter of King Louis XV (born 1727)source
  • March 14 – Shō Kei, the ruler of Okinawa Island and the Ryukyu Kingdom, dies at the age of 41 after a reign that began when he was 13 years old. He is succeeded by his 12-year-old son, Shō Boku, who reigns for 42 years.source
  • April 29 – Matthew Michell, English politician (born 1705)source
  • April – A quarryman is killed in an attempted raid on a granary at Caernarfon.Walessource
  • May 23 – William Bradford, British-born printer (born 1663)source
  • June 16 – Joseph Butler, English priest, theologian (born 1692)source
  • June 16 – Giulio Alberoni, Italian cardinal (born 1664)source
  • July 29 – Peter Warren, British admiral (born 1703)source
  • August 22 – William Whiston, English mathematician (born 1667)source
  • 22 August – William Whiston, mathematician (born 1667)United Kingdomsource
  • 30 August – Christian Ludvig von Plessen, statesman and landowner (born 1676 in Mecjkenburg)Denmarksource
  • September 1 – Jacopo Amigoni, Italian painter (born 1675)source
  • November 2 – Johann Albrecht Bengel, German scholar (born 1687)source
  • November 6 – Ralph Erskine, Scottish minister (born 1685)source
  • December 3 – Henri-Guillaume Hamal, Walloon musician and composer (born 1685)source
  • Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel de la Jonquière, Marquis de la Jonquière, governor general of New France, on 17 March (born 1685)Canadasource