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The 1730s

979 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 18th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1730 CE87 entries

  • March 16 – The establishment by Thomas Cresap of Wright's Ferry under the authority of the Province of Pennsylvania becomes the basis for Cresap's War, a nine-year-long conflict also known as the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute; the conflict mainly centers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and York County, Pennsylvania on either bank of the Susquehanna River.
  • December 9 – The first documented notice in North America about freemasonry is published in The Pennsylvania Gazette in an article by its publisher, Benjamin Franklin.
  • December 27 – The Dutch East India Company ends an almost 11-year effort of trying to maintain a colony around Delagoa Bay in southern Africa in modern-day Mozambique. The entire population of the settlement, Fort Lydzammheid (near modern-day Maputo) is evacuated by the ships Snuffelaar, Zeepost and Feyenoord and the group returns to Cape Town.

1731 CE92 entries

  • February 20 – Louise Hippolyte becomes the second woman to serve as Princess of Monaco, the reigning monarch of the tiny European principality, ascending upon the death of her father Prince Antonio. She reigns only nine months before dying of smallpox on December 29.
  • May 10 – The Pacific Fleet of the Russian Navy is established by order of the Empress Anna of Russia, who directs Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev to assume command over the new fleet and to develop Okhotsk as a major port.
  • November 25 – Patrona Halil, an ethnic Albanian and a janissary who instigated a mass uprising in 1730 within the Ottoman Empire that brought Mahmud I to power as the new Sultan, is strangled to death in Mahmud's presence after the rebellion is suppressed.

1732 CE104 entries

  • January 21 – Russia and Persia sign the Treaty of Riascha at Resht. Based on the terms of the agreement, Russia will no longer establish claims over Persian territories.
  • February 9 – The Swedish East India Company begins its profitable first expedition to China, departing Gothenburg on the ship Friedericus Rex Sueciae under the command of Colin Campbell.
  • 8 March – report of a House of Lords committee on the 'state of popery'.

1733 CE87 entries

  • 23 January – first performance of George Frideric Handel's opera Orlando, at the His Majesty's Theatre in London.
  • June 15 – The Danish West India Company buys the island of Saint Croix from France for 750,000 livres.
  • August 19 – In Warsaw as Stanislas Leszczynski appears to be on the verge of being elected King of Poland, Russia, Austria and Saxony sign Löwenwolde's Treaty (named for Russian diplomat Karl Gustav von Löwenwolde), pledging to go to war to place Frederick Augustus, son of the late King Augustus II, on the throne.

1734 CE89 entries

  • January 8 – Salzburgers, Lutherans who were expelled by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salzburg, Austria, in October 1731, set sail for the British Colony of Georgia in America.
  • 29 April – Act prohibits converts from Roman Catholicism to the Church of Ireland from educating their children in the old religion or from becoming Justices of Peace.
  • June 30 – War of the Polish Succession: Russian troops take Gdańsk (German: Danzig), which had been besieged since February 1734, after the failure of a French expedition to relieve the city.

1735 CE102 entries

  • 25 June – Engraving Copyright Act ('Hogarth's Act') takes effect on being given royal assent, the first of a series of copyright protection laws, to protect original engravings against unauthorized copies.
  • August 16 (August 5 old style) – John Peter Zenger of The New York Weekly Journal becomes a symbol of freedom of the press when he is acquitted of seditious libel against William Cosby, the British Governor of the Province of New York. A jury concludes that what Zenger published was true.
  • September 22 – Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, becomes the first British premier to move into London's 10 Downing Street.

1736 CE114 entries

  • April 17 – Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, lays the foundation stone for an obelisk commemorating the Battle of the Boyne (1690) at Oldbridge, County Meath.
  • 17 April - Frederick, Prince of Wales, marries Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace, London.
  • 24 June – Witchcraft Act 1735 comes into effect, introducing penalties for pretending to practice or accusing others of practising witchcraft and repealing those against its supposed actual practice, intended to end legal witch trials in the early modern period in Britain.

1737 CE105 entries

  • June 21 – In Britain, the Theatrical Licensing Act requires plays to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for censorship.
  • June 30 – Russo-Turkish War, 1735-1739: Russian forces under Field Marshal Munnich storm the Ottoman fortress of Ochakov, and take prisoner 4,000 Turks.
  • October 7 – At least 300,000 people are killed when a tropical cyclone strikes the Bay of Bengal in India and modern-day Bangladesh. The storm sends 12 m high waves over the Sundarbans delta, and overflows the Hooghly River.

1738 CE92 entries

  • 1 July – William Champion of Bristol patents a process to distill zinc from calamine using charcoal in a smelter.
  • September 18 – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer (published 1785).
  • 18 September – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer (published 1785).

1739 CE107 entries

  • January 3 – A 7.6 earthquake shakes the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in China killing 50,000 people.
  • February 24 – Battle of Karnal: The army of Iranian ruler Nader Shah defeats the forces of the Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah.
  • 26 September – "Address of the Roman Catholics of Ireland" to George II of Great Britain requesting longer leases.