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The 1760s

1,192 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.

1760 CE120 entries

  • February 21–26 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Carrickfergus in the north of Ireland – A force of French troops, under the command of privateer François Thurot, captures and holds the town and castle of Carrickfergus before retiring; the force is defeated (and Thurot killed) in the naval Battle of Bishops Court in the Irish Sea on February 28.
  • June 4 – Expulsion of the Acadians: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia taken from the Acadians.
  • July 3 – A lightning strike causes a major fire at Portsmouth Royal Dockyard in England.

1761 CE116 entries

  • 1 April — The Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire sign a treaty of alliance.
  • 10 November – Protestant "manifesto of intolerance" ("Black Petition") against Roman Catholics signed in Galway.
  • November 26 – A 500-man force from the Army of Spain brings the revolt of Mexico's Maya population to an end, capturing the Yucatan village of Cisteil, killing about 500 of the 2,500 Mayan defenders and losing 40 of their own. The Spaniards arrest 254 people, including Jacinto Canek, who had proclaimed himself as King Canek Montezuma of the Mayas. Canek and eight other rebellion leaders are executed less than three weeks later.

1762 CE126 entries

  • February – Roman Catholic nobility and gentry offer support to King George III in the Seven Years' War in the Iberian Peninsula.
  • May – Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne resigns and is succeeded as Prime Minister by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, the first Scottish Prime Minister of Great Britain; a large number of Newcastle's 'Old Corps Whig' followers are dismissed from public office in the following months in what is known facetiously as the "Massacre of the Pelhamite Innocents".
  • November 3 – According to the preliminaries of peace, signed at Fontainebleau, England is to have, with certain West Indies, Florida, Louisiana, to the Mississippi River (without New Orleans), Canada, Acadia, Cape Breton Island and its dependencies, and the fisheries, subject to certain French interests. Spain is to have New Orleans and Louisiana, west of the Mississippi, with an undetermined Western boundary.

1763 CE110 entries

  • April 23 – The controversial Issue 45 of John Wilkes's satirical newspaper The North Briton is published as a response to a speech four days earlier by King George III praising the end of the Seven Years' War. In what will become a test case for freedom of speech, Wilkes, a member of Parliament, is arrested for libel of the King and imprisoned, then flee to France.
  • October 7 – The Royal Proclamation of 1763 is issued by George III of Great Britain, restricting the westward expansion of British North America, and stabilizing relations with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, by barring white settlement of lands west of the Appalachian Mountains.
  • 7 October – Royal Proclamation of 1763 is made by George III, regulating westward expansion of British North America and stabilizing relations with indigenous peoples of the Americas.

1764 CE119 entries

  • 19 January – John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons for seditious libel for his article criticising King George III in The North Briton; he is in exile in France.
  • April 1 – A solar eclipse occurs. On the same day, the undefeated Thoroughbred racehorse Eclipse, named after the event, is foaled at Keats Gore, near East Ilsley in Berkshire.
  • August 1 – The Treaty of Fort Niagara is signed between Great Britain and 44 North American Indian nations, bring an end to the ongoing war that had started in 1756 with most of the northern Indian tribes. Sir William Johnson appears on behalf of Britain, and principal chiefs appear for the Iroquois Confederacy, Wabash Confederacy, Illini Confederacy, Haudenosaunee, Seneca, Wyandot, Menominee, Algonquin, Nipissing, Ojibwa, Mississaugas, Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, and Onondaga.

1765 CE114 entries

  • January–April – George III suffers a malady, perhaps a first manifestation of bipolar disorder.
  • April 26 – At Saint Petersburg, German engineer Christian Kratzenstein presents to the Russian Academy of Sciences a perfected version of the arithmetical machine originally invented by Gottfried Leibniz. Kratzenstein claims that his machine solves the problem with the Leibniz machine has with calculations above four digits, perfecting the flaw where the machine is "prone to err whenever it is necessary to make a number of 9999 move to 10000", but the machine is not developed further.
  • 12 July – George Grenville is dismissed as Prime Minister by King George III.

1766 CE123 entries

  • January 20 – Burmese–Siamese War: Outside of the walls of the Thailand capital of Ayutthaya, tens of thousands of invaders from Burma (under the command of General Ne Myo Thihapate and General Maha Nawatra) are confronted by Thai defenders led by General Phya Taksin. The defenders are overwhelmed and the survivors take refuge inside Ayutthaya. The siege continues for 15 months before the Burmese attackers collapse the walls by digging tunnels and setting fire to debris. The city falls on April 9, 1767, and King Ekkathat is killed.
  • February – Ferocious wolf attacks occur in France, such as the Beast of Gévaudan or Wolves of Périgord.
  • December 2 – The Law on the Freedom of Printing abolishes censorship in Sweden and guarantees freedom of the press, making Sweden the first country of the world to introduce constitutional protection of press freedom, and to pass wide-ranging freedom of information legislation.

1767 CE117 entries

  • April 7 – Troops of the Burmese Konbaung dynasty sack the Siamese city of Ayutthaya, ending the Burmese–Siamese War (1765–1767) after 15 months, and bringing the four-century-old Ayutthaya Kingdom to an end. King Ekkathat is found dead inside the city walls on April 9.
  • October 12 – At the Foundling Hospital in London, Dr. William Watson becomes the first physician to conduct a controlled clinical trial, selecting 32 boys and girls of similar age who have not yet had smallpox. He divides them into three groups in order to test treatments before inoculation for smallpox, with one group receiving a mixture of mercury and jalap, another senna glycoside, and the third getting no pre-treatment at all.
  • October 28 – A boycott, of 38 types of goods imported from England, is resolved by Boston merchants meeting at Faneuil Hall as a response to the taxes imposed by Great Britain, and one of the first "Buy American" campaigns is started in order to encourage the purchase of items manufactured and produced in the 13 colonies. Copies of the agreement, to be signed by participating merchants, are circulated beyond the Province of Massachusetts Bay to other colonial provinces in New England.

1768 CE125 entries

  • 9 January – Philip Astley stages the first modern circus, with acrobats on galloping horses in London.
  • February 29 – Five days after the signing of the treaty, a group of the szlachta, Polish nobles, establishes the Bar Confederation, to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian influence, and against King Stanisław August Poniatowski.
  • March 17 – Prithvi Singh begins a reign of 10 years as the new Raja of Jaipur (part of the modern-day Indian state of Rajasthan), 12 days after the death of Madho Singh.

1769 CE122 entries

  • May 14 – Charles III of Spain sends Spanish missionaries, who found California missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey, and begin the settlement of California.
  • July 16 – Father Junípero Serra founds Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first of the 21 California missions.
  • August 3 – The party of Gaspar de Portolà becomes the first white group to set foot in the area now known as Santa Monica, California.