date: August 3

text: 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.


date: November 8

section: Geopolitics & Diplomacy

text: 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_section: Events › October–December


date: March 23

section: Conflict & Security

text: March 23 – Ava, capital of the Kingdom of Burma, is sacked by Hanthawaddy Kingdom, led by King Binnya Dala.

source_section: Events › January–March


date: April 12

text: 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_section: Events › April–June


date: August 21

section: Exploration & Expansion

text: 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_section: Events › July–September


date: August 25

text: August 25 – The first group of the United Brethren church, commonly called the Moravians, leaves Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on a mission to find 100000 acre 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.


date: November 22

text: 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.


date: July 30

section: Technology & Infrastructure

text: 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.


date: February 23

section: Science & Discovery

text: 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.


date: May 10

text: 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.


date: February 10

section: Health & Medicine

text: 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.


date: February 27

section: Crime & Justice

text: February 27 – The Virginia Assembly passes a law making maiming a felony, in response to the practice of gouging.


date: June 3

section: Disasters & Accidents

text: 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.


date: June 21

text: 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.


section: Climate & Environment

text: July 30 - An earthquake occurred in Edirne and affected the region all the way to Bulgaria.


date: November 3

text: 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.


section: Culture & Society

text: March 23 – The Halifax Gazette, the first Canadian newspaper, is published.


text: 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.


date: July 1

text: 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.


date: December 5

text: 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.


date: January 1

section: Births

text: January 1 – Betsy Ross, American entrepreneur, creator of the American flag (d. 1836)

source_section: Births › January


date: January 18

text: January 18 – John Nash, English architect (d. 1835)


date: January 19

text: January 19 – James Morris III, Continental Army officer from Connecticut (d. 1820)


date: January 31

text: January 31 – Gouverneur Morris, American diplomat, politician (d. 1815)


date: February 26

text: February 26 – James Winchester, American general and politician (d. 1826)

source_section: Births › February


text: February 27 – William Linn, American President of Queen's College) (d. 1808)


date: May 4

text: May 4 – John Brooks (governor), Massachusetts doctor, military officer, governor (d. 1825)

source_section: Births › May


date: May 29

text: May 29 – Charles Whitworth, 1st Earl Whitworth, British diplomat (d. 1825)


date: June 13

text: June 13 – Fanny Burney, English novelist, diarist (d. 1840)

source_section: Births › June


date: June 27

text: June 27 – Hannah Mather Crocker, American essayist, advocate of women's rights in America (d. 1829)


date: July 14

text: July 14 – Andreas Joseph Hofmann, German philosopher and revolutionary (d. 1849)

source_section: Births › July


date: August 13

text: August 13 – Queen Marie Caroline of Naples and Sicily (d. 1814)

source_section: Births › August


date: November 19

text: November 19 – George Rogers Clark, American soldier, officer and explorer (d. 1818)

source_section: Births › November


date: November 29

text: November 29 – Jemima Wilkinson, American preacher (d. 1819)


date: January 14

section: Deaths

text: January 14 – Devasahayam Pillai, beatified Indian Catholic (b. 1712)

source_section: Deaths


date: January 16

text: January 16 – Francis Blomefield, English topographer (b. 1705)


date: February 10

text: February 10 – Henriette of France, daughter of King Louis XV (b. 1727)


date: March 14

text: 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.


date: March 18

text: 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.


date: May 3

text: May 3 – Samuel Ogle, British provincial Governor of Maryland (b. 1694)


date: May 23

text: May 23 – William Bradford, British-born printer (b. 1663)


date: June 16

text: June 16 – Joseph Butler, English priest, theologian (b. 1692)


text: June 16 – Giulio Alberoni, Italian cardinal (b. 1664)


date: July 29

text: July 29 – Peter Warren, British admiral (b. 1703)


date: August 22

text: August 22 – William Whiston, English mathematician (b. 1667)


date: November 2

text: November 2 – Johann Albrecht Bengel, German scholar (b. 1687)


date: November 27

text: November 27 – William Digby, 5th Baron Digby, English politician, baron (b. 1661)


date: December 3

text: December 3 – Henri-Guillaume Hamal, Walloon musician and composer (b. 1685)


date: April 16

text: April 16 – The Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753 is passed by Britain's House of Lords, permitting Jewish immigrants to England to become naturalized citizens "without receiving the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper". The bill, introduced by George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax, passes the House of Commons on May 22.


date: May 22

text: May 22 – The Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753 passes the House of Commons and later receives royal assent from King George II.


date: June 6

text: June 6 – The Parliament of Great Britain passes Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act "for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage" in England and Wales. King George II adjourns Parliament the next day; the act comes into effect on March 25, 1754.


date: July 7

text: July 7 – The Parliament of Great Britain's Jewish Naturalization Act receives royal assent, allowing naturalization to Jews; it is repealed in 1754.


date: August 7

text: August 7 – The Unity of Brethren, a branch of the Moravian Church, receives a grant the Wachovia Tract, 99985 acre km2 of land (approximately 157 square miles), in western North Carolina, for the benefit of German-speaking immigrants to America. The area now includes Winston-Salem, North Carolina.


date: August 21

text: August 21 – After receiving a series of warnings about incursions into land claimed by the Crown Colony of Virginia (from the colony's Lieutenant Governor, Robert Dinwiddie), the cabinet of British Prime Minister Henry Pelham votes to send a warning to Britain's colonial governors "to prevent, by Force, These and any such attempts" to encroach on their lands "that may be made by the French, or by the Indians in the French interest." Britain's Secretary of State for the Southern Department, the Earl of Holderness, sends the circular order on August 28.


date: November 24

text: November 24 – José Alfonso Pizarro completes more than four years as the Spanish Viceroy of New Granada (which comprises modern-day Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador) and is succeeded by José Solís Folch de Cardona.


date: September 3

text: September 3 – Tanacharison, a chief of the Oneida people tribe that is one of the "Six Nations" of the Iroquois Confederacy, meets with French officers who have come into the Ohio and Allegheny region and warns them not to advance further into the Iroquois territory.


date: October 31

text: October 31 – Virginia Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie commissions 21-year-old militia Major George Washington to dissuade the French from occupying the Ohio Country.


date: September 18

text: September 18 – Britain's Board of Trade sends a directive to the colonial and provincial governors of Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania ordering them to send delegates to a summit meeting with the Iroquois Confederacy. The message instructs the governors that King George II has ordered "a Sum of Money to be issued for Presents to the Six Nations of Indians" and ordering New York's Governor George Clinton "to hold an Interview with them for delivering these Presents, for burying the Hatchet, and for renewing the Covenant Chain with them."


text: Robert Wood publishes The ruins of Palmyra; otherwise Tedmor in the desart in English and French, making the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra known to the West.

source_section: Events › Date unknown


section: Religion & Belief

text: James Lind writes A Treatise of the Scurvy.


date: August 6

text: August 6 – Russian scientist Georg Richmann becomes the first person to be electrocuted by his own equipment after he uses an insulated, but improperly grounded, lightning rod in an attempt to gather data on a thunderstorm. Richmann also becomes the first victim of ball lightning during his scientific experiment, in an attempt to replicate the experiments of American Benjamin Franklin.


text: The Cramer family starts a brewing operation at Warstein in North Rhine-Westphalia, originating the Warsteiner brand.


date: March 1

text: March 1 – Sweden adopts the Gregorian calendar, by skipping the 11 days difference between it and the Julian calendar, and letting February 17 be followed directly by March 1.


date: November 25

text: November 25 – The Russian Academy of Sciences announces a competition among chemists and physicists to provide "the best explanation of the true causes of electricity including their theory", with a deadline of June 1, 1755 (on the Julian calendar used in Russia, June 12 on the Gregorian calendar used in Western Europe and the New World).


date: November 12

text: November 12 – Spain's King Fernando VI issues a set of 25 regulations and restrictions for theatrical performances, including a requirement that the directors of the acting troupes "take the greatest care that the necessary modesty is preserved" and that the actors should be reminded that chastity requires that "indecent and provocative" dances should be avoided.


date: January 29

text: January 29 – After a month's absence, Elizabeth Canning returns to her mother's home in London and claims that she was abducted; the following criminal trial causes an uproar.


date: January 3

text: January 3 – King Binnya Dala of the Hanthawaddy Kingdom orders the burning of Ava, the former capital of the Kingdom of Burma.


text: November 12 – A fire destroys the Emperor's Palace in Moscow.


date: May 1

text: May 1 – Species Plantarum is published by Linnaeus (adopted by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature as the formal start date of the scientific classification of plants).


date: June 7

text: June 7 – The British Museum is established in London, by Act of Parliament.


date: February 12

text: February 12 – François-Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers, French admiral (d. 1798)

source_section: Births


date: March 8

text: March 8 – William Roscoe, English writer (d. 1831)


date: March 9

text: March 9 – Jean-Baptiste Kléber, French general (d. 1800)


date: March 26

text: March 26 – Benjamin Thompson, American physicist and inventor (d. 1814)


date: April 3

text: April 3 – Simon Willard, American horologist (d. 1848)


date: April 28

text: April 28– Franz Karl Achard, German chemist, physicist and biologist (d. 1821)


date: May 13

text: May 13 – Lazare Carnot, French general, politician and mathematician (d. 1823)


date: June 5

text: June 5 – Johann Friedrich August Göttling, German chemist (d. 1809)


date: July 9

text: July 9 – William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock, British admiral, Governor of Newfoundland (d. 1825)


date: September 10

text: September 10 – John Soane, English architect (d. 1837)


date: October 27

text: October 27 – Jean-Baptiste de Lavalette, French general (d. 1794)


date: November 6

text: November 6 – Jean-Baptiste Breval, French composer (d. 1823)


date: November 25

text: November 25 – Robert Townsend, member of the Culper Spy Ring (d. 1838)


date: December 3

text: December 3 – Samuel Crompton, English inventor (d. 1827)


date: January 11

text: January 11 – Sir Hans Sloane, Irish-born physician and collector (b. 1660)


date: January 14

text: January 14 – George Berkeley, Irish-born philosopher and bishop (b. 1685)


date: January 23

text: January 23 – Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, French royal princess, saloniste (b. 1676)


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Eleonore of Löwenstein-Wertheim, German countess (b. 1686)


date: May 23

text: May 23 – Franciszka Urszula Radziwiłłowa, Polish dramatist (b. 1705)


date: June 7

text: June 7 – Archibald Cameron of Locheil, last Scottish Jacobite to be executed for treason (b. 1707)


date: June 10

text: June 10 – Joachim Ludwig Schultheiss von Unfriedt, German architect (b. 1678)


date: August 6

text: August 6 – Georg Wilhelm Richmann, Russian physicist (struck by lightning) (b. 1711)


date: August 19

text: August 19 – Balthasar Neumann, German architect and military engineer (b. 1687)


date: October 12

text: October 12 – Sir Danvers Osborn, 3rd Baronet, British politician and governor of the Province of New York (b. 1715)


date: October 26

text: October 26 – Margareta von Ascheberg, Swedish land owner, countess and acting regimental colonel (b. 1671)


date: November 10

text: November 10 – Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais, French naval officer and governor of Isle de France (Mauritius) (b. 1699)


date: December 4

text: December 4 – Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, English architect (b. 1694)


date: December 25

text: December 25 – Godolphin Arabian, Yemeni-foaled English thoroughbred stallion (b. c. 1724)


date: June 19

text: June 19 – The Albany Congress of seven northern colonies proposes an American Union.


date: August 17

text: August 17 – Pennsylvania becomes the first of the British colonies to address Benjamin Franklin's Albany Plan for an inter-colonial union. With Franklin absent from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's House of Representatives votes against to not consider the Plan at all, and to not refer it to the next legislative session for debate.


date: November 28

text: November 28 – Denmark establishes the Renteskirverkontor, an office within the Chamber of Finance, to oversee the colonial affairs of the Danish West Indies (Dansk Vestindien). Peder Mariager, who had been a minor official of the Danish West Indies Company, becomes the first administrator. The colony, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix later is purchased by the United States from Denmark and is now the U.S. Virgin Islands.


date: December 26

text: December 26 – Massachusetts becomes the third colony (after Pennsylvania and Connecticut) to reject the Albany Plan for an inter-colonial union, voting 48 to 31 to postpone consideration of the union question indefinitely.


text: Surveyor William Churton lays out what will become the seat of Orange County, North Carolina. The town is named Corbin Town for Francis Corbin, a member of the North Carolina governor's council. Corbin Town is renamed Childsburgh in 1759, and finally Hillsborough in 1766.


text: February 22 – Expecting an attack by Portuguese-speaking militias in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the indigenous Guarani people residing in the Misiones Orientales stage an attack on a small Brazilian Portuguese settlement on the Rio Pardo in what is now the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The attack by 300 Guarani soldiers from the missions at San Luis, San Lorenzo and San Juan Bautista is repelled with a loss of 30 Guarani and is the opening of the Guarani War


date: February 25

text: February 25 – Guatemalan Sergeant Major Melchor de Mencos y Varón departs the city of Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala with an infantry battalion to fight British pirates that are reportedly disembarking on the coasts of Petén (modern-day Belize), and sacking the nearby towns.


date: April 30

text: April 30 – Battle of San Felipe and the Cobá Lagoon: Guatemalan Sergeant Mayor Melchor de Mencos y Varón and his troops defeat the British pirates.


date: May 28

text: May 28 – French and Indian War: Battle of Jumonville Glen – The war begins when George Washington, 22, leads a company of militia from the Colony of Virginia, in an ambush on a force of 35 French Canadians.


date: July 3

text: July 3 – French and Indian War – Battle of Fort Necessity: George Washington surrenders Fort Necessity to French Capt. Louis Coulon de Villiers, the only surrender in Washington's military career.


text: August 19 – Lieutenant Colonel George Washington is forced to confront his first mutiny as 25 members of his Virginia militia refuse to obey orders from their officers. Washington, who is attending church services at the time, quickly suppresses the rebellion and the mutineers are imprisoned before more join.


date: August 30

text: August 30 – New Hampshire settlers Susannah Willard Johnson and her family are taken hostage by the Abenaki Indians during an attack near Charlestown. Nine months pregnant at the time of their capture, Johnson gives birth two days later to a child, whom she names Elizabeth Captive Johnson. For the next two years, the family is held for ransom in Canada before she is released. In 1796, she will recount the story in a popular memoir, A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Johnson.


date: November 29

text: November 29 – Karim Khan Zand, the King of Persia (now Iran) recaptures the city of Shiraz from Afghan warlord Azad Khan Afghan, who had taken control of much of central Iran since 1749.


date: September 11

text: September 11 – Anthony Henday, an English explorer, becomes the first white man to reach the Canadian Rockies, after climbing a ridge above the Red Deer River near what is now Innisfail, Alberta.


date: October 24

text: October 24 – China's Qianlong Emperor reverses a longstanding policy that barred Chinese subjects from ever returning to China if they remained out of the country for more than three years.


date: December 13

text: December 13 – Osman III succeeds his brother Mahmud I as Ottoman Emperor; he will rule until his death in 1757.


text: St. Florian's Martyr Greek Catholic Church, Budapest is built.


date: January 28

text: January 28 – Horace Walpole, in a letter to Horace Mann, coins the word serendipity.


text: Marian apparition at Las Lajas in Colombia.


date: September 2

text: September 2 – A powerful earthquake strikes Constantinople shortly after 9 o'clock in the evening. A Scottish physician, Mordach Mackenzie, reports in a letter that the tremor damaged or destroyed numerous buildings and comments, "Some say there were 2000 people destroyed by this calamity, in the town and suburbs; some 900; and others reduce them to 60, who, by what I have seen, are nearer the truth."


date: March 25

text: March 25 – The Clandestine Marriages Act 1753 comes into force in England and Wales, placing marriage in that jurisdiction on a statutory basis for the first time.


date: May 14

text: May 14 – The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews is founded in Scotland.


date: July 17

text: July 17 – Classes begin at Columbia University, founded on October 31 as King's College by royal charter of King George II of Great Britain. The college is originally located in Lower Manhattan in the Province of New York. Instruction is suspended in 1776, and the school reopens in 1784 as Columbia College. With the college's growth in the 19th century, it is renamed Columbia University in 1896.


date: October 31

text: October 31 – What will become Columbia University is chartered as "a College in the Province of New York... in the City of New York in America... named King's College", with the charter submitted by New York's colonial governor, James De Lancey.


date: January 15

text: January 15 – Jacques Pierre Brissot, French politician (d. 1795)


text: January 15 – Richard Martin, Irish founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (d. 1834)


date: February 2

text: February 2 – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, French politician (d. 1838)


date: February 17

text: February 17 – Nicolas Baudin, French explorer (d. 1803)


date: March 4

text: March 4 – Benjamin Waterhouse, American physician, medical professor (smallpox vaccine pioneer) (d. 1846)


date: March 17

text: March 17 – Madame Roland (Jeanne Marie Manon Philipon), French politician (d. 1793)


date: March 23

text: March 23 – Baron Jurij Vega, Slovenian mathematician, physicist and artillery officer (d. 1802)


date: May 23

text: May 23 – William Drennan, Irish physician, poet and radical politician (d. 1820)


date: June 18

text: June 18 – Anna Maria Lenngren, Swedish poet, feminist and cultural figure (d. 1817)


date: August 9

text: August 9 – Pierre Charles L'Enfant, French architect (d. 1825)


date: August 21

text: August 21 – William Murdoch, Scottish inventor (d. 1839)


date: October 20

text: October 20 – James Hillhouse, American politician and congressman from Connecticut, 1791 until 1810 (d. 1832)


date: December 15

text: December 15 – Usman dan Fodio, Nigerian Islamic theologian (d. 1817)


date: December 24

text: December 24 – George Crabbe, English poet (d. 1832)


date: January 16

text: January 16 – Edward Trelawny, British governor of Jamaica 1738–1752 (b. 1699)

source_section: Deaths › January–June


date: January 28

text: January 28 – Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian dramatist and writer (b. 1684)


text: February 2 – William Benson, English architect and self-serving Whig place-holder (b. 1682)


date: March 6

text: March 6 – Henry Pelham, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1694)


date: March 9

text: March 9 – Alexander Brodie, Scottish clan chief and politician (b. 1697)


date: March 22

text: March 22 – Samuel Bourn the Younger, English dissenting minister (b. 1689)


date: April 5

text: April 5 – Lord Archibald Hamilton, Scottish officer of the Royal Navy (b. 1673)


date: April 9

text: April 9 – Christian Wolff, German philosopher, mathematician, scientist (b. 1679)


text: May 23 – John Wood, the Elder, English architect (b. 1704)


date: August 2

text: August 2 – John Waller, American politician who served in the House of Burgess in 1714 (b. 1673)

source_section: Deaths › July–December


date: August 14

text: August 14 – Maria Anna of Austria, Archduchess of Austria and Queen consort of Portugal (b. 1683)


date: October 10

text: October 10 – Dorothea Krag, Danish General Postmaster and noble (b. 1675)


date: October 13

text: October 13 – Mahadhammaraza Dipadi, last king of Toungoo dynasty of Burma (Myanmar), 1733–1752 (b. 1714)


date: November 27

text: November 27 – Abraham de Moivre, French mathematician (b. 1667)


date: February 13

text: February 13 – Treaty of Giyanti: The kingdom of Mataram on Java is divided in two, creating the sultanate of Yogyakarta and the sunanate of Surakarta.


text: March 22 – Britain's House of Commons votes in favor of £1,000,000 of appropriations to expand the British Army and Royal Navy operations in North America.


date: August 10

text: August 10 – The Expulsion of the Acadians begins, with the Bay of Fundy Campaign.


date: October 11

text: October 11 – In west Africa, officials of the Dutch West India Company sign a peace agreement with officials of the Ashanti Empire at Elmina. In return for an annual tribute in gold, the Ashanti maintain peaceful relations with the Europeans in the Dutch Gold Coast colony and the Dutch maintain their settlement at Fort Coenraadsburg. The area is now part of the Central Region of Ghana.


date: October 12

text: October 12 – Having completed the Expulsion of the Acadians from St. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island), the British colonial Governor of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, issues a proclamation that his office will receive proposals from English settlers "for the peopling and cultivating as well of the lands vacated by the French, as every other part of this valuable province."


date: November 18

text: November 18 – The Corsican Constitution is adopted by Corsican representatives, at the Consulta generale di Corte.


date: March 26

text: March 26 – General Edward Braddock and 1,600 British sailors and soldiers arrive at Alexandria, Virginia on transport ships that have sailed up the Potomac River. Braddock, sent to take command of the British forces against the French in North America, commandeers taverns and private homes to feed and house the troops.


date: April 2

text: April 2 – A naval fleet, led by Commodore William James of the East India Company, captures Tulaji Angre's fortress Suvarnadurg from the Marathas.


date: May 3

text: May 3 – France dispatches 3,600 troops to protect its Canadian colonies in Quebec from a British invasion, dispatching 2,400 to Quebec city and 1,200 to Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, unaware that a squadron of 11 fully armed warships from Britain's Royal Navy had sailed toward Canada on April 27.


date: May 22

text: May 22 – The Province of Massachusetts Bay sends 2,000 troops to supplement other British Army and colonial forces in Acadia; the troops anchor at Chignecto Bay on June 1.


date: May 24

text: May 24 – France completes the construction of Fort Duquesne, its new base to the west of the British colony of Pennsylvania. The British capture the fort during the French and Indian War and rename it Fort Pitt. The site, at the junction of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, is now Pittsburgh.


date: May 30

text: May 30 – General Braddock's troops begin a difficult trek across the heavily wooded Allegheny Mountains from western Maryland into the Ohio country.


date: June 5

text: June 5 – At the entrance of the Saint Lawrence River, a squadron of Royal Navy ships, under the command of British Admiral Edward Boscawen, intercepts the nine French ships dispatched to save Canada; seven of the nine ships are concealed by fog and are able to reach their destination; another of the transports escapes.


date: June 16

text: June 16 – After a two-week siege, the French commander of Fort Beauséjour in North America surrenders to the British, marking the end of "Father Le Loutre's War".


date: June 23

text: June 23 – Most of the French troops dispatched to Canada arrive at Quebec, along with the new Governor General of New France, Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnial.


date: September 8

text: September 8 – French and Indian War – Battle of Lake George: French Army troops, led by Jean Erdman, Baron Dieskau, and Canadian colonists, led by Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, drive south into Britain's New York province. They are met by British Army troops under General William Johnson being supplemented by 200 Mohawk troops led by the Mohawk war chief, Theyanoguin. After Theyanouguin and other Mohawks are killed in the battle, the clan matrons of the Mohawk nation forbid the men from participating in the war against the French until a French defeat seems certain.


date: September 16

text: September 16 – Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, the new British Minister to Russia, secures an alliance signed by Empress Catherine the Great. The Russian Empire agrees to provide up to 55,000 troops to defend the Electorate of Hanover against invasion by Prussia. At the time, King George II of Great Britain is also the ruler of the German duchy; the Russian troops are provided in return for an annual payment of £600,000.


date: October 16

text: October 16 – The Penn's Creek massacre is carried out against white settlers who have moved into the Susquehanna Valley in the Pennsylvania colony, in territory also claimed by the Delaware Indians. The Delawares attack the Penn's Creek village, located near what is now Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, and kill 25 of the 26 men, women and children living there.


date: May 17

text: May 17 – Spanish missionary Tomas Sanchez and three families establish a settlement on the north side of the Rio Grande in New Spain. Sanchez names it Villa de Laredo. The new settlement is the northernmost part of the colony of Nuevo Santander, founded by José de Escandón, 1st Count of Sierra Gorda, which now comprises parts of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and the U.S. state of Texas. The portion of Villa de Laredo north of the river later becomes Laredo, Texas; the remaining portion south of the river is later renamed Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.


date: May 19

text: May 19 – General Braddock hosts Iroquois leaders Scaroyady, Kaghswaghtaniunt and Silver Heels at Fort Cumberland, the British Army base in the colony of Maryland. The three chiefs pledge their alliance with the British in advance of Braddock's expedition into the Ohio Country.


date: July 9

text: July 9 – French and Indian War – Braddock Expedition: British troops and colonial militiamen are ambushed and suffer a devastating defeat inflicted by French and Indian forces. During the battle, British General Edward Braddock is mortally wounded. Colonel George Washington survives.


date: November 25

text: November 25 – King Ferdinand VI of Spain grants the Religious of the Virgin Mary in the Philippines royal protection.


date: December 17

text: December 17 – Anton, Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, is dismissed by his opponents on the Ecclesiastical Council and briefly imprisoned for 18 months before being allowed to move to Russia; in 1764, Anton is again made the Georgian Orthodox Church's leader.


text: Construction of St Ninian's Church, Tynet, Scotland, the country's oldest surviving post-Reformation Roman Catholic clandestine church, is completed.


text: Construction of the Puning Temple complex in Chengde, China is completed, during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor.


date: March 12

text: March 12 – A steam engine is used in the American colonies for the first time as New Jersey copper mine owner Arent Schuyler installs a Newcomen atmospheric engine to pump water out of a mineshaft.


date: September 17

text: September 17 – Jean-Marc Vacheron founds his watch-making company Vacheron Constantin. To this day, Vacheron Constantin is the oldest watchmaker in the world with an uninterrupted watchmaking history since its foundation. 'Treasures of Vacheron Constantin: A Legacy of Watchmaking since 1755'


text: Wolsey, the clothes manufacturer, is established in Leicester, England; the business celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2005.


date: September 6

text: September 6 – The Russian Academy of Sciences awards its prize for "the best explanation of the true causes of electricity including their theory" to Switzerland's Johann Euler for his paper Disquisitio de causa physica electricitatis.


text: The brine shrimp Artemia salina is first described, in Linnaeus' Systema Naturæ.


date: July 17

text: July 17 – In a convoy of ships from Great Britain, returning to India for the East India Company, the lead ship Doddington (on her third voyage) wrecks in Algoa Bay near modern-day Port Elizabeth in South Africa, losing 247 of its 270 passengers and crew, together with a chest of gold coins from Robert Clive worth £33,000. In 1998, 1,400 coins from the wreck site are offered for sale, and in 2002 a portion is given to the South African government. Around twenty survivors of the wreck are eventually able to make safety after an open boat voyage.


date: December 2

text: December 2 – The second Eddystone Lighthouse off the coast of England is destroyed by fire.


date: September 2

text: September 2 – A powerful hurricane strikes the east coast of the British colony of North Carolina, killing 150 people and sinking five British and colonial merchant ships at Portsmouth Island.


date: October 17

text: October 17 – The Mount Katla volcano erupts in Iceland and continues ejecting ash for the next 120 days, finally ceasing on February 13. An estimated 1.5 cubic kilometers (1.5 billion cubic meters or 53 billion cubic feet) of tephra is discharged by the volcano.


date: November 1

text: November 1 – More than 40,000 people are killed by the 8.5 magnitude earthquake in Lisbon, Portuguese Empire. The tremor begins at 9:40 in the morning local time off of the Atlantic coast of Portugal and sends a tsunami that strikes the coasts of Portugal, Spain and Morocco.


date: November 18

text: November 18 – The 1755 Cape Ann earthquake occurs in the vicinity of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, causing extensive damage.


date: January 23

text: January 23 (O. S. January 12, Tatiana Day, nowadays celebrated on January 25) – Moscow University is established.


date: April 15

text: April 15 – A Dictionary of the English Language is published by Samuel Johnson (he had begun the work nine years earlier, in 1746).


date: June 5

text: June 5 – Scottish chemist Joseph Black describes his discovery of carbon dioxide (fixed air) and magnesium, in a paper to the Medical Society of Edinburgh. The paper is published in 1756 with the title Experiments upon Magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other alkaline Substances.


date: October 25

text: October 25 – Yirmisekizzade Mehmed Said Pasha becomes the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, the fifth person to serve as the Empire's Vizier in 1755.


date: February 2

text: February 2 – Uriah Tracy, American politician and congressman from Connecticut, 1793 until 1807 (d. 1807)


date: February 5

text: February 5 – Caroline Müller, Danish operatic mezzo-soprano, actress and dancer (d. 1826)


date: February 21

text: February 21 – Anne Grant, Scottish poet (d. 1838)


date: March 24

text: March 24 – Rufus King, American lawyer, politician and diplomat (d. 1827)


date: April 3

text: April 3 – Simon Kenton, American frontiersman, Revolutionary Militia General (d. 1836)


date: April 10

text: April 10 – Samuel Hahnemann, German founder of homeopathy (d. 1843)


date: April 11

text: April 11 – James Parkinson, English surgeon, apothecary, geologist, palaeontologist and political activist (d. 1824)


date: April 16

text: April 16 – Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, French painter (d. 1842)


date: June 6

text: June 6 – Nathan Hale, American Revolutionary War captain, writer and patriot (d. 1776)


date: June 15

text: June 15 – Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, French chemist (d. 1809)


date: September 13

text: September 13 – Oliver Evans, American inventor, engineer and businessman (d. 1819)


date: November 2

text: November 2 – Marie Antoinette, Queen Consort of France (d. 1793)


date: November 17

text: November 17 – Charles Manners-Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1828)


date: December 3

text: December 3 – Gilbert Stuart, American painter from Rhode Island (d. 1828)


date: February 10

text: February 10 – Montesquieu, French writer (b. 1689)


date: February 11

text: February 11 – Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei, Italian archaeologist (b. 1675)


date: March 2

text: March 2 – Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, French writer (b. 1675)


date: March 7

text: March 7 – Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man (b. 1663)


date: April 30

text: April 30 – Jean-Baptiste Oudry, French painter (b. 1686)


date: June 26

text: June 26 – Iyasu II, Emperor of Ethiopia (b. c. 1723)


date: June 27

text: June 27 – Iyoas I becomes the new Emperor of Ethiopia upon the death of his father, Iyasu II


date: July 13

text: July 13 – Edward Braddock, British general (b. c. 1695)


date: September 2

text: September 2 – Princess Marie Zéphyrine of France, sister of Louis XVI (b. 1750)


date: September 8

text: September 8 – Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, Canadian military commander (b. 1701)


text: September 8 – Hendrick Theyanoguin, Mohawk Council leader killed in the Battle of Lake George (b. c. 1691)


text: September 13 – Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye, French-Canadian explorer (b. 1714)


date: October 16

text: October 16 – Gerard Majella, Italian Roman Catholic lay brother and saint (b. 1725)


date: October 22

text: October 22 – Elisha Williams, American rector of Yale College (b. 1694)


date: January 16

text: January 16 – The Treaty of Westminster is signed between Great Britain and Prussia, guaranteeing the neutrality of the Electorate of Hanover, controlled by King George II of Great Britain.


date: April 1

text: April 1 – Yirmisekizzade Mehmed Said Pasha resigns as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. He is replaced by Köse Bahir Mustafa Pasha, who has been Grand Vizier from 1752 to 1755.


date: October 14

text: October 14 – An "Agreement of Friendship and Trade" is signed by Sultan Osman III and King Frederick V. Denmark appoints an extraordinary representative to the Ottoman Empire.


date: February 7

text: February 7 – Guaraní War: The leader of the Guaraní rebels, Sepé Tiaraju, is killed in a skirmish with Spanish and Portuguese troops.


text: February 10 – The massacre of the Guaraní rebels in the Jesuit reduction of Caaibaté takes place in Brazil after their leader, Noicola Neenguiru, defies an ultimatum to surrender by 2:00 in the afternoon. On February 7, Neenguiru's predecessor Sepé Tiaraju has been killed in a brief skirmish. As two o'clock arrives, a combined force of Spanish and Portuguese troops makes an assault on the first of the Seven Towns established as Jesuit missions. Defending their town with cannons made out of bamboo, the Guaraní suffer 1,511 dead, compared to three Spaniards and two Portuguese killed in battle.


date: April 12

text: April 12 – Siege of Fort St Philip begins when the French under Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, land near Port Mahón on Menorca and besiege the British garrison here in a prelude to the Seven Years' War.


date: May 17

text: May 17 – The Seven Years' War formally begins, when Great Britain declares war on France.


date: May 20

text: May 20 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Minorca – The British fleet under John Byng is defeated by the French under Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière.


date: June 20

text: June 20 – A garrison of the British Army in India is imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta.


date: June 22

text: June 22 – The Coup of 1756, an attempted coup d'état planned by Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden, to abolish the rule of the Riksdag of the Estates and reinstate absolute monarchy in Sweden with the support of the Hovpartiet, is exposed and subdued.


date: June 29

text: June 29 – Seven Years' War: Siege of Fort St Philip at Port Mahón: The British garrison in Menorca surrenders to the French after two months' siege by the Duke of Richelieu.


date: August 14

text: August 14 – Seven Years' War: French and Indian War – Fort Oswego falls to the French.


date: August 29

text: August 29 – King Frederick the Great of Prussia invades Saxony, beginning the Third Silesian War within the Seven Years' War on the European continent.


text: September 2 – Abu l-Hasan Ali I, Bey of Tunis is forcibly removed after 23 years as the ruler of the North African emirate by his cousins, who are avenging the overthrow and execution of their father, Husayn in 1735. Hasan Ali surrenders to the rebels and is imprisoned in Algiers, then executed on September 22 on orders of the new Bey of Tunis, Muhammad I ar-Rashid.


date: October 1

text: October 1 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Lobositz – Frederick defeats an Austrian army under Marshal Maximilian Ulysses, Reichsgraf von Browne.


date: November 16

text: November 16 – Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle, is forced to resign as Prime Minister of Great Britain after the British lose the Battle of Minorca to the French. The office of Prime Minister remains vacant for eight months with William Pitt and the Duke of Devonshire leading the cabinet.


date: December

text: December – Seven Years' War – French and Indian War: Militias of the Royal Colony of North Carolina build a fort on the province's western frontier to protect it against natives allied with the French. The fort is named Fort Dobbs in honor of North Carolina Governor Arthur Dobbs, who persuaded the North Carolina legislature to fund the construction a year earlier.


text: The first chocolate-candy factory begins operations in Germany.


text: The town of Gus-Khrustalny is established in Russia, with the setting up of a crystal glass factory.


date: January 27

text: January 27 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born in Salzburg, Austria, to Anna Maria and Leopold Mozart.


date: December 14

text: December 14 – Rev. John Home's tragedy Douglas is performed for the first time in Edinburgh, with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the local church presbytery, who summon Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended its representation. However, it fails in its early promise to set up a new Scottish dramatic tradition.


text: King Frederick the Great of Prussia forces his country's peasants to grow the unpopular and obscure potato.


date: March 17

text: March 17 – St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in New York City for the first time (at the Crown and Thistle Tavern).


date: June 25

text: June 25 – The Marine Society is founded in London, the world's oldest seafarers' charity.


date: July 30

text: July 30 – Bartolomeo Rastrelli presents the newly built Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo to Empress Elizabeth of Russia and her court.


text: Leopold Mozart publishes his book on his method for learning to play the violin, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.


date: February 20

text: February 20 – Angelica Schuyler Church, American socialite, daughter of Genl.Philip Schuyler, sister to Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (d. 1814)


date: March 3

text: March 3 – William Godwin, English writer (d. 1836)


date: March 4

text: March 4 – Sir Henry Raeburn, Scottish painter (d. 1823)


date: May 10

text: May 10 – Singu Min, king of Myanmar (k. 1782)


date: May 18

text: May 18 – Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, Hungarian-born court councillor, minister to Czar Alexander I of Russia (d. 1839)


date: May 27

text: May 27 – King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria (d. 1825)


date: May 31

text: May 31 – Abbé Faria, Luso-Goan Catholic monk, student of hypnotism (d. 1819)


date: June 6

text: June 6 – John Trumbull, American painter (d. 1843)


date: June 20

text: June 20 – Joseph Martin Kraus, German-Swedish composer (d. 1792)


date: August 29

text: August 29 – Heinrich Graf von Bellegarde, Austrian field marshal, statesman (d. 1845)


date: September 7

text: September 7 – Willem Bilderdijk, Dutch author (d. 1831)


date: September 13

text: September 13 – Benedikte Naubert, German writer (d. 1819)


date: September 23

text: September 23 – John Loudon McAdam, Scottish engineer, road-builder (d. 1836)


date: December 7

text: December 7 – John Littlejohn, British-American sheriff and Methodist preacher (d. 1836)


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Akdun, Chinese Manchu statesman (b. 1685)


date: February 25

text: February 25 – Eliza Haywood, English actress, writer (b. 1693)


date: April 4

text: April 4 – Marie Sophie de Courcillon, French noblewoman and Duchess of Rohan-Rohan, Princess of Soubise by marriage (b. 1713)


date: April 10

text: April 10 – Giacomo Antonio Perti, Italian composer (b. 1661)


date: April 18

text: April 18 – Jacques Cassini, French astronomer (b. 1677)


date: July 1

text: July 1 – Giambattista Nolli, Italian architect (b. 1701)


date: July 24

text: July 24 – George Vertue, English engraver, antiquary (b. 1684)


date: September 8

text: September 8 – Jonathan Nichols, Jr., Rhode Island colonial deputy governor (b. 1712)


date: September 22

text: September 22 – Abu l-Hasan Ali I, ruler of Tunisia (b. 1688)


date: October 15

text: October 15 – William Grimston, 1st Viscount Grimston, Irish noble (b. 1684)


date: October 26

text: October 26 – Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière, governor of New France (b. 1693)


date: October 28

text: October 28 – Charles Somerset, 4th Duke of Beaufort (b. 1709)


date: December 8

text: December 8 – William Stanhope, 1st Earl of Harrington, English statesman, diplomat (b. c. 1690)


date: December 11

text: December 11 – Maria Amalia, Holy Roman Empress (b. 1701)


date: February 2

text: February 2 – At Versailles in France, representatives of the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire enter into an alliance against Prussia, with each nation pledging 80,000 troops. Other clauses to the treaty, not disclosed to the public, commit Austria to pay Russia one million rubles per year during the war to pay for the expenses of 24,000 of the Russian troops, and two million rubles upon the conquest of Silesia (a Prussian province that had been seized from Austria in 1746).


date: February 9

text: February 9 – The Nawab and General Clive sign the Treaty of Alinagar, with Bengal compensating the British East India Company for its losses and pledging respect for British control of India.


date: March 21

text: March 21 – Sweden signs an alliance treaty with France and Austria in the multinational effort to remove King Frederick the Great, even though Queen Consort Ulrika of Sweden is Frederick's sister. Sweden agrees to contribute 25,000 troops to the French and Austrian force.


date: May 1

text: May 1 – France and Austria sign a second Treaty of Versailles, committing France to sending an additional 105,000 troops to the war against Prussia, and to pay expenses to Austria at the rate of 12 million florins annually.


date: June 25

text: June 25 – The Duke of Devonshire resigns as Prime Minister of Great Britain after being unable to conduct governmental affairs without William Pitt.


date: July 2

text: July 2 – The Duke of Newcastle is asked to form a new government of Great Britain and fills the office of Prime Minister of Great Britain, after his forced resignation eight months earlier. Pitt is recalled to conduct Britain's foreign and military affairs and given greater control.


date: December 24

text: December 24 – The Pratt-Yorke opinion distinguishes British overseas territories acquired by conquest from those acquired by private treaty: while the Crown of Great Britain enjoys sovereignty over both, only the property of the former is vested in the Crown.


date: December 30

text: December 30 – James Abercrombie replaces James Mure-Campbell, 5th Earl of Loudoun as supreme commander in the British American colonies. Abercrombie is replaced himself, after failing to take the fort at Ticonderoga.


text: Nam tiến, the southward expansion of the territory of Vietnam into the Indochina Peninsula, is concluded.


date: January 2

text: January 2 – Seven Years' War: The British East India Company Army, under the command of Robert Clive, captures Calcutta, India.


date: January 5

text: January 5 – Robert-François Damiens makes an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Louis XV of France, who is slightly wounded by the knife attack. Damiens is executed on March 28.


date: January 17

text: January 17 – Ahmad Shah Durrani leads his Afghan forces to sack Delhi during his invasions of India.


date: February 5

text: February 5 – The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, leads an attempt to retake Calcutta from the British. With just 1,900 soldiers and sailors, but superior cannon power, General Robert Clive forces the Nawab's much larger force into a retreat. The British sustain 194 casualties, but the Bengalis suffer 1,300.


date: February 23

text: February 23 – A revolt against the government of King Joseph I of Portugal takes place in the city of Porto. After the riot's suppression, the King's minister, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, orders harsh punishments against the perpetrators, carried out in October.


date: March 23

text: March 23 – The British East India Company takes control of Chandannagar and forces out the French Indian administrators.


date: March 28

text: March 28 – Robert-François Damiens is tortured, then dismembered and his remains burned in public for his January 5 assassination attempt on King Louis XV of France, the last person in France to suffer this punishment.


date: April 21

text: April 21 – Battle of Reichenberg: Marshal Augustus William von Bevern enters Bohemia with a Prussian army (some 15,000 men). In Reichenberg he encounters the Austrians under the command of General Christian Moritz von Königsegg. Von Bevern defeats the Austrian troops and captures large quantities of supplies. He continues his advance on Prague.


date: May 6

text: May 6 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Prague – Frederick the Great defeats an Austrian army, and begins to besiege the city.


date: June 18

text: June 18 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Kolín – Frederick is defeated by an Austrian army under Marshal Daun, forcing him to evacuate Bohemia.


date: June 23

text: June 23 – Battle of Plassey: 3,000 troops serving with the British East India Company under Robert Clive defeat a 50,000 strong Indian army under Siraj ud-Daulah with the help of Mir Jafar, at Plassey in India, marking the first victory of the East India Company over India, which lasts until 1857.


text: June 25 – The 1755 rebellion against the Chinese Empire by Mongolian Oirat Prince Amursana is met by a Chinese army of 10,000 attackers against Amursana's 2,500 man force at their capital at Bor Tal. The rebels hold out until July 17.


date: August 3

text: August 3–9 – French and Indian War: A French army under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm forces the English to surrender Fort William Henry. The French army's Indian allies slaughter the surviving men, women and children.


date: August 11

text: August 11 – In the Battle of Delhi, the capital city of the Mughal Empire is retaken by Maratha Empire leader Raghunathrao from Najib ad-Dawlah, who flees to refuge in the royal palace, the Red Fort.


date: August 30

text: August 30 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf – A Prussian army under Hans von Lehwaldt is defeated by the Russian army under Marshal Stepan Apraksin.


date: September 6

text: September 6 – The life of Najib ad-Dawlah is spared by Raghunathrao upon the intercession of General Malhar Rao Holkar. Najib and his family are permitted to leave the Fort along with most of their property, and the Emperor Alamgir II is restored to the Mughal throne as a nominal ruler.


date: September 13

text: September 13 – Pomeranian War: A column of troops from Sweden begins the surprise invasion of Prussia, setting up a pontoon bridge across the Peene River that marks the boundary between Swedish Pomerania and northern Prussia. After crossing at Loitz in the early morning hours, the troops march 10 km and begin the occupation of the undefended Prussian town of Demmin. Hours later, another Swedish infantry regiment charges across the border into the Prussian town of Anklam, where the city gate had been left open.


date: September 23

text: September 23 – The "Raid on Rochefort" is carried out as a pre-emptive strike by Great Britain to neutralize France's Arsenal de Rochefort before the French Navy can carry out plans to invade England. Led by Royal Navy Admiral Edward Hawke, HMS Neptune and six other vessels sail in and capture the Île-d'Aix and its battery of cannons, effectively blocking the departure of any ships from the mouth of the Charante river.


date: October 24

text: October 24 (10 Safar 1171 A.H.) – 1757 Hajj caravan raid: Bedouin warriors of the Bani Sakher confederacy conduct a massive assault against a caravan of thousands of Muslim travelers who are on their way back to Damascus after the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The attack, made at Hallat Ammar after the group has been resupplied at Tabuk, leads to the annihilation of 20,000 of the pilgrims. Those who are not killed outright die later in the desert from thirst and starvation. According to one Arabic source, the largest attack takes place on October 24.


date: October 31

text: October 31 – News of the massacre of Muslim pilgrims first reaches Damascus; the Ottoman officials who had been in charge of protecting the pilgrimage are executed by beheading.


date: November 5

text: November 5 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Rossbach – Frederick defeats the French-Imperial army under the Duc de Soubise and Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen, forcing the French to withdraw from Saxony.


date: November 22

text: November 22 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Breslau – An Austrian army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine defeats the Prussian army of Wilhelm of Brunswick-Bevern, and forces the Prussians behind the Oder.


date: December 5

text: December 5 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Leuthen – Frederick defeats Prince Charles's Austrian army, in what is generally considered the Prussian king's greatest tactical victory.


date: December 14

text: December 14 – Battle of Khresili: King Solomon I of Imereti defeats the Ottoman army and an allied faction of nobles, in what becomes western Georgia.


date: February 22

text: February 22 – King Frederick V of Denmark issues an order to create a Lutheran mission for African slaves at the Danish West Indies (the modern-day United States Virgin Islands) at St. Croix.


date: April 17

text: April 17 – The Spanish mission of Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá is founded by Spanish missionary families on the banks of the San Saba River near modern-day Menard, Texas. Less than two years later, the European settlement is destroyed by the native Comanche Indians who lives in the area.


date: October 4

text: October 4 – Bearing British flags, two French privateers sail up the Gambia River and attempt to capture the British fort on James Island, but their ruse is discovered the next day before they can stage their attack. The two ships are captured by the Royal Navy after retreating


text: Robert Wood publishes The ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Coelosyria in English and French, making the ancient city of Baalbek, Syria known to the West.


date: January 12

text: January 12 – Koca Ragıp Pasha becomes the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, and administers the office for seven years until his death in 1763.


text: Emanuel Swedenborg claims to have witnessed the Last Judgment occurring in the spiritual world.


text: A firman (decree) of Ottoman sultan Osman III (d. October 30) preserves the division of ownership and responsibilities of various Christian holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem (e.g. the former's Church of the Holy Sepulchre); this becomes established as the Status Quo in international law.


date: April 16

text: April 16 – The works of astronomer Galileo Galilei espousing heliocentrism are removed (with the approval of Pope Benedict XIV) from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum list of books banned by Roman Catholic Church, along with "all books teaching the earth's motion and the sun's immobility". Other works of heliocentrists Galileo, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Diego de Zúñiga and Paolo Foscarini remain on the list.


date: December 6

text: December 6 – In Buddhist tradition, Jigme Lingpa discovers the Longchen Nyingthig terma through a meditative vision, which brings him to Boudhanath. The Longchen Nyingtig is a popular cycle of teachings in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism.


date: March 30

text: March 30 – The Rigshospitalet, national hospital of Denmark, is founded at Copenhagen.


date: February 3

text: February 3 – French artist Robert Picault begins the rescue of the frescoes at the King's Chamber of the Palace of Fontainebleau before architect Ange-Jacques Gabrel begins renovations.


date: October 14

text: October 14 – Of the 478 people arrested, and 442 (including 50 women and young boys) convicted, for their roles in the Porto riot in February, 13 men and one woman are hanged; afterwards, their bodies are then quartered, and the severed limbs are publicly displayed on spikes. Another 49 men and 10 women are exiled to Portuguese colonies in Africa and India, and the other convicts are either flogged, imprisoned, or pressed into service rowing galley ships.


date: October 16

text: October 16 – Seven Years' War: Raid on Berlin – Hungarian raiders (3,400 horseman) under Count András Hadik plunder Berlin. He demands that the city council pay a ransom of 200,000 thalers and a dozen pairs of gloves for Empress Maria Theresa. The Hungarians leave the Prussian capital after they received messages about a Prussian relief force under Prince Dietrich von Anhalt-Dessau, marching towards Berlin.


date: April 29

text: April 29 – Inside the house at Stratford-upon-Avon in England known as Shakespeare's Birthplace, a bricklayer, identified only as "Mosely", re-tiling the roof, discovers a supposed pro-Catholic testament of John Shakespeare, father of William Shakespeare, more than 150 years after the elder's death. The finding starts "what remains one of the most controversial topics in Shakespeare studies" because of disagreements over its authenticity and date.


date: January 16

text: January 16 – Richard Goodwin Keats, British admiral, Governor of Newfoundland (d. 1834)


date: February 20

text: February 20 – John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, English philanthropist (d. 1834)


date: April 9

text: April 9 – Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, British admiral (d. 1833)


date: May 25

text: May 25 – Louis-Sébastien Lenormand, French chemist, physicist and inventor (d. 1837)


date: May 30

text: May 30 – Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1844)


date: June 22

text: June 22 – George Vancouver, British explorer (d. 1798)


date: July 20

text: July 20 – Garsevan Chavchavadze, Georgian diplomat, politician (d. 1811)


date: August 9

text: August 9 – Elizabeth Schuyler, wife of Alexander Hamilton, co-founder of New York's first orphanage (d. 1854)


text: August 9 – Thomas Telford, Scottish-born civil engineer, architect (d. 1834)


date: September 6

text: September 6 – Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, French soldier, statesman (d. 1834)


date: October 21

text: October 21 – Charles-Pierre Augereau, Marshal of France and duc de Castiglione (d. 1816)


date: November 1

text: November 1 – Antonio Canova, Italian sculptor (d. 1822)


date: November 28

text: November 28 – William Blake, English poet and artist (d. 1827)


date: December 30

text: December 30 – Sebastián Kindelán y O'Regan, Spanish colonial governor (d. 1826)


date: January 9

text: January 9 – Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientist, man of letters (b. 1657)


date: March 14

text: March 14 – John Byng, British admiral (executed) (b. 1704)


date: March 28

text: March 28 – Robert-François Damiens, French domestic servant, executed for the attempted assassination of Louis XV (b. 1715)


date: April 4

text: April 4 – Spencer Phips, Acting governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay (b. 1685)


date: May 6

text: May 6 – Maximilian Ulysses Count Browne, Austrian field marshal (b. 1705)


date: June 28

text: June 28 – Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, queen consort of Frederick William I (b. 1687)


date: July 2

text: July 2 – Siraj ud-Daulah, the last independent ruler of Bengal of undivided India (b. 1733)


date: July 23

text: July 23 – Domenico Scarlatti, Italian composer (b. 1685)


date: August 30

text: August 30 – Bulleh Shah, Sufi poet (b. 1680)


date: September 24

text: September 24 – Aaron Burr Sr., President of Princeton University (b. 1716)


date: October 17

text: October 17 – René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French scientist (b. 1683)


date: October 30

text: October 30 – Osman III dies, and is succeeded as Ottoman Sultan by Mustafa III.


date: November 10

text: November 10 – King Abdallah IV of Morocco dies and is succeeded by his son, who takes the throne as King Mohammed III and reigns until 1790.


date: December 11

text: December 11 – Colley Cibber, English poet laureate, actor-manager (b. 1671)


date: January 22

text: January 22 – Russian troops under the command of William Fermor invade East Prussia and capture Königsberg with 34,000 soldiers; although the city is later abandoned by Russia after the Seven Years' War ends, the city again comes under Russian control in 1945 during World War II and is now named Kaliningrad.


date: April 29

text: April 29 – Battle of Cuddalore: A British fleet under Sir George Pocock engages the French fleet of Anne Antoine, Comte d'Aché indecisively near Madras.


date: May 21

text: May 21 – Seven Years' War – French and Indian War: Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by members of the Lenape Nation.


date: June 8

text: June 8 – Seven Years' War – French and Indian War: Siege of Louisbourg: James Wolfe's attack at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, commences.


date: June 9

text: June 9–10 – Spanish-Barbary Wars – Battle of Cape Palos: a Spanish squadron of three ships of the line defeats a Barbary squadron made up of a ship of the line and a frigate.


date: June 23

text: June 23 – Seven Years' War – Battle of Krefeld: Anglo-Hanoverian forces under Ferdinand of Brunswick defeat the French.


date: June 30

text: June 30 – Seven Years' War – Battle of Domstadtl: Austrian forces under Ernst Gideon von Laudon and Joseph von Siskovits rout an enormous convoy with supplies for the Prussian army, guarded by strong troops of Hans Joachim von Zieten.


date: July 6

text: July 6 – Seven Years' War – Battle of Bernetz Brook: British troops defeat the French.


date: July 8

text: July 8 – Seven Years' War: French and Indian War: French forces hold Fort Carillon against the British at Ticonderoga, New York.


date: July 25

text: July 25 – Seven Years' War – French and Indian War: The island battery at Fortress Louisbourg is silenced, and all French warships are destroyed or taken.


date: August 3

text: August 3 – Seven Years' War – Battle of Negapatam: Off the coast of India, Admiral Pocock again engages d'Aché's French fleet, this time with more success.


date: August 25

text: August 25 – Seven Years' War – Battle of Zorndorf: Frederick halts the Russian army of Count Wilhelm Fermor near the Oder.


date: August 27

text: August 27 – Seven Years' War – British troops under the command of Colonel John Bradstreet capture Fort Frontenac (near the site of what is now Kingston, Ontario) from the French.


date: September 3

text: September 3 – Távora affair: Joseph I of Portugal survives an assassination attempt.


date: September 14

text: September 14 – Seven Years' War – French and Indian War: Battle of Fort Duquesne: A British attack on Fort Duquesne (modern-day Pittsburgh) is defeated.


date: October 14

text: October 14 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Hochkirch: Frederick loses a hard-fought battle against the Austrians under Marshal Leopold von Daun, who besieges Dresden.


date: November 25

text: November 25 – Seven Years' War: French and Indian War: French forces abandon Fort Duquesne to the British, who then name the area Pittsburgh.


text: Marquis Gabriel de Lernay, a French officer captured during the Seven Years' War, establishes a military lodge in Berlin, with the help of Baron de Printzen, master of The Three Globes Lodge at Berlin, and Philipp Samuel Rosa, a disgraced former pastor.


date: February 22

text: February 22 – A fleet of 158 British Royal Navy warships, under the command of Admiral Edward Boscawen, departs from Plymouth toward North America in an effort to conquer the French Canadian territories of New France. Many of the sailors die of nutritional deficiencies along the way, including the scurvy that kills 26 of the crew of HMS Pembroke, captained by future world explorer James Cook on his first long voyage.


text: The French build the first European settlement in what becomes Erie County, New York, at the mouth of Buffalo Creek.


text: July 6 – Pope Clement XIII succeeds Pope Benedict XIV, as the 248th pope.


section: Economy & Finance

text: J. R. Geigy, predecessor of Novartis, a global pharmaceutical brand, founded in Basel, Switzerland.


text: Okadaya (岡田屋), predecessor of AEON, a multiple retailer group, founded in Yokkaichi, Japan.


date: January 1

text: January 1 – Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) publishes in Stockholm the first volume (Animalia) of the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, the starting point of modern zoological nomenclature, introducing binomial nomenclature for animals to his established system of Linnaean taxonomy. Among the first examples of his system of identifying an organism by genus and then species, Linnaeus identifies the lamprey with the name Petromyzon marinus. He introduces the term Homo sapiens. (Date of January 1 assigned retrospectively.)


date: December 25

text: December 25 – Halley's Comet is sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch, confirming Edmund Halley's 1705 prediction of its periodicity.


date: January 20

text: January 20 – At Cap-Haïtien in Haiti, former slave turned rebel François Mackandal is executed by the French colonial government by being burned at the stake.


date: March 16

text: March 16 – Members of the Comanche Nation loot and destroy the Spanish Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá (near modern-day Menard, Texas) and kill eight of the people there, including the mission leader, Father Alonso Giraldo de Terreros.


date: December 13

text: December 13 – The ship Duke William sinks in the North Atlantic, with the loss of over 360 lives, while deporting Acadians from Prince Edward Island to France.


text: A fire destroys parts of Christiania, Norway.


text: Rudjer Boscovich publishes his atomic theory, in Theoria philosophiae naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in nalura existentium.


date: January 9

text: January 9 – George Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland, born Viscount Trentham, British politician and landowner (d. 1833)


date: February 1

text: February 1 – David Ochterlony, Massachusetts-born general with the East India Company (d. 1825)


date: February 10

text: February 10 – Amalia Holst, German writer, intellectual and feminist (d. 1829)


date: March 9

text: March 9 – Franz Joseph Gall, German pioneering neuroanatomist (d. 1828)


date: April 23

text: April 23 – Alexander Cochrane, British Royal Navy officer (d. 1832)


text: April 23 – Philip Gidley King, British Royal Navy officer, colonial administrator (d. 1808)


date: May 6

text: May 6 – Maximilien Robespierre, French revolutionary (d. 1794)


date: August 24

text: August 24 – Thomas Picton, British soldier, colonial governor (k. 1815)


date: September 9

text: September 9 – Alexander Nasmyth, Scottish portrait and landscape painter (d. 1840)


date: September 21

text: September 21 – Christopher Gore, U.S. lawyer, politician (d. 1827)


text: September 21 – Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, French linguist, orientalist (d. 1838)


date: September 25

text: September 25 – Maria Anna Thekla Mozart called Marianne, known as Bäsle ("little cousin"), cousin of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (d. 1841)


date: October 16

text: October 16 – Noah Webster, U.S. lexicographer (d. 1843)


date: November 14

text: November 14 – William Bradley, British Royal Navy officer and cartographer (d. 1833)


date: February 23

text: February 23 – Jonathan Edwards, the famed English theologian who had assumed the presidency of what is now Princeton University only a week earlier, sets an example for students and faculty by publicly receiving an inoculation against smallpox. Unfortunately, the vaccine contains live smallpox; Edwards develops the disease and dies on March 22 at the age of 54.


date: March 22

text: March 22 – Jonathan Edwards, American minister (b. 1703)


date: June 9

text: June 9 – Antonio de los Reyes Correa, Puerto Rican soldier (b. c. 1665)


date: July 7

text: July 7 – Marthanda Varma, Rani of Attingal (b. 1706)


date: August 27

text: August 27 – Barbara of Portugal, Princess of Portugal and Queen of Spain (b. 1711)


date: October 12

text: October 12 – Richard Molesworth, 3rd Viscount Molesworth, British field marshal (b. 1680)


date: October 14

text: October 14 – Wilhelmine of Prussia, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia (b. 1709)


text: October 14 – James Francis Edward Keith, Scottish soldier and Prussian field marshal (b. 1696)


date: October 20

text: October 20 – Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, British politician (b. 1706)


date: November 22

text: November 22 – Richard Edgcumbe, 1st Baron Edgcumbe, English politician (b. 1680)


date: December 5

text: December 5 – Johann Friedrich Fasch, German composer (b. 1688)


date: December 12

text: December 12 – Françoise de Graffigny, French lettrist (b. 1695)


date: December 17

text: December 17 – Charles Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, Anglo-Irish noble (b. 1671)


text: Hyder Ali and his Sepoy capture Bangalore from "Khande Rao of the Maratha Confederacy". (Part of the Seven Years' War).

source_section: Deaths › Date unknown


date: January 27

text: January 27 – Battle of Río Bueno: Spanish forces, led by Juan Antonio Garretón, defeat indigenous Huilliches of southern Chile.


date: February 16

text: February 16 – The Comte de Lally (Thomas Lally) ends the French Army's two-month siege of the British Indian fort at Madras and retreats.


date: April 13

text: April 13 – Seven Years' War – Battle of Bergen: A French army defeats Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick in Hesse.


date: May 10

text: May 10 – The Macedonian Hussar Regiment is formed and starts to assist the Russian Empire in the Seven Years' War.


date: June 4

text: June 4 – After arriving at Canada, the Royal Navy fleet sails out of British-controlled Halifax toward the St. Lawrence River to prepare the invasion of French Quebec.


date: June 26

text: June 26 – After their fleet finishes navigation of the St. Lawrence and arriving at the Île d'Orléans, British troops go ashore on France's North American territory and begin the siege of Quebec City.


date: July 25

text: July 25 – Seven Years' War (French and Indian War): In Canada, British forces capture Fort Niagara from the French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouillé.


date: July 26

text: July 26–27 – Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) – Battle of Ticonderoga: At the southern end of Lake Champlain, French forces withdraw from Fort Carillon, which is taken by the British under General Amherst, and renamed Fort Ticonderoga.


date: August 1

text: August 1 – Battle of Minden: Anglo–Hanoverian forces under Ferdinand of Brunswick defeat the French army of the Duc de Broglie, but due to the disobedience of the English cavalry commander Lord George Sackville, the French are able to withdraw unmolested.


date: August 12

text: August 12 – Battle of Kunersdorf: Frederick the Great is rebuffed in bloody assaults, by the combined Austro–Russian army of Pyotr Saltykov and Ernst von Laudon. This is one of Frederick's greatest defeats.


date: August 18

text: August 18 – Battle of Lagos: The British fleet of Edward Boscawen defeats a French force under Commodore Jean-François de La Clue-Sabran off the Portuguese coast.


date: September 10

text: September 10 – Battle of Pondicherry: An inconclusive naval battle is fought off the coast of India, between the French Admiral d'Aché and the British under George Pocock. The French forces are badly damaged and sail home, never to return.


date: September 13

text: September 13 – Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) – Battle of the Plains of Abraham: Quebec falls to British forces, following General James Wolfe's victory just outside the city. Both the French Commander (the Marquis de Montcalm) and the British General Wolfe are fatally wounded.


date: November 20

text: November 20 – Battle of Quiberon Bay: The British fleet of Sir Edward Hawke defeats a French fleet under Marshal de Conflans, near the coast of Brittany. This is the decisive naval engagement of the Seven Years' War – after this, the French are no longer able to field a significant fleet.

source_section: Events › October–December


date: November 21

text: November 21 – Battle of Maxen: The Austrian army of Marshal von Daun cuts off and forces the surrender of a Prussian force, under Friedrich von Finck.


date: November 29

text: November 29 – Alamgir II, the Mughal Emperor of India, is assassinated in a conspiracy orchestrated by his Prime Minister, Imad-ul-Mulk. The Shah Alam II, a grandson of the 17th century Emperor Aurangzeb, is made the new Mughal Emperor.


date: February 17

text: February 17 – "The greatest fleet that had ever put out for America" departs from Portsmouth with 250 ships

source_section: Events › January–March


date: September 14

text: September 14 – Carrington Bowles publishes A Journey Through Europe, a board game designed by John Jefferys, the earliest board game whose designer's name is known.


text: The town of Egedesminde (modern Aasiaat) is founded in Greenland.


date: January 11

text: January 11 – In Philadelphia, the first American life insurance company is incorporated.


date: March 4

text: March 4–November 20 – Étienne de Silhouette serves as Controller-General of France and attempts major financial reforms.


date: May 1

text: May 1 – Josiah Wedgwood founds the Wedgwood pottery in England.

source_section: Events › April–June


date: October 16

text: October 16 – Smeaton's Tower, John Smeaton’s Eddystone Lighthouse off the coast of South West England, is first illuminated.


text: English clockmaker John Harrison produces his "No. 1 sea watch" (H4), the first successful marine chronometer.


text: Madame du Coudray publishes Abrégé de l'art des accouchements (The Art of Obstetrics), and the French government authorizes her to carry her instruction "throughout the realm" and promises financial support.


date: June 15

text: June 15 – The first vascular surgery in history is performed by a Dr. Hallowell (whose first name has been lost) at Newcastle upon Tyne in England, who uses suture repair rather than a tying off with a ligature to repair an aneurysm on a patient's brachial artery. The case is reported in 1761 by Dr. Richard Lambert in the paper "A new technique of treating an aneurysm", published in the journal Medical Observations and Inquiries. The new procedure of reconstructing a damaged artery replaces the practice of ligation that had risked the amputation of a limb or organ failure.


date: January 13

text: January 13 – Távora affair: The Távora family is executed, following accusations of the attempted regicide of Joseph I of Portugal.


text: Churton Town, the Orange County, North Carolina county seat laid out in 1754, is renamed Childsburgh, in honor of North Carolina attorney general Thomas Child. It is later renamed Hillsborough in 1766.


date: July 19

text: July 19 – The Great Stockholm Fire 1759 breaks out at Södermalm in Stockholm, Sweden.

source_section: Events › July–September


date: October 18

text: October 18 – A fire destroys the Macedonian city of Salonika, reducing 4,000 houses to ashes.


text: Fire destroys 250 houses in Stockholm.


date: October 30

text: October 30 – Near East earthquakes of 1759: The first event in an earthquake doublet occurs to the north of the Sea of Galilee, with a surface wave magnitude of 6.6 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII–IX (Severe–Violent). About 2,000 are killed in Safed.


date: November 25

text: November 25 – Near East earthquakes of 1759: The second and stronger event in an earthquake doublet occurs to the east of Beirut, with a surface wave magnitude of 7.4 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), destroying all the villages in the Beqaa Valley.


date: January 6

text: January 6 – George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.


date: January 15

text: January 15 – Voltaire's satire Candide is published simultaneously in five countries.


text: January 15 – The British Museum opens at Montagu House in London after six years of development.


date: December 6

text: December 6 – The Germantown Union School (later called Germantown Academy), America's oldest nonsectarian day school, is founded.


date: December 31

text: December 31 – The Guinness Brewery is leased by Arthur Guinness in St. James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland, for the brewing of Guinness.


text: The Kew Gardens are established in England by Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the mother of George III.


text: Adam Smith publishes his Theory of Moral Sentiments, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures.


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Claude Lecourbe, French general (d. 1815)


date: April 22

text: April 22 – James Freeman, first clergyman in America to call himself a Unitarian (d. 1835)


date: April 27

text: April 27 – Mary Wollstonecraft, English feminist author (d. 1797)


date: May 15

text: May 15 – Maria Theresia von Paradis, Austrian musician, composer (d. 1824)


date: May 21

text: May 21 – Joseph Fouché, French statesman (d. 1820)


date: June 21

text: June 21 – Alexander J. Dallas, American statesman and financier (d. 1817)


date: June 25

text: June 25 – William Plumer, American lawyer, Baptist lay preacher, and politician (d. 1850)


date: August 24

text: August 24 – William Wilberforce, British abolitionist (d. 1833)


date: September 10

text: September 10 – Lemuel Cook, American Revolutionary War veteran, centenarian (d. 1866)


date: October 25

text: October 25 – Sophie Marie Dorothea of Württemberg, empress of Paul I of Russia (d. 1828)


text: October 25 – William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1834)


date: October 26

text: October 26 – Georges Danton, French Revolutionary leader (d. 1794)


date: November 10

text: November 10 – Friedrich Schiller, German writer (d. 1805)


date: November 23

text: November 23 – Felipe Enrique Neri, legislator and colonizer of Texas (d. 1820)


date: February 9

text: February 9 – Louise Henriette of Bourbon, Duchess of Orléans, mother of Philippe Égalité (b. 1726)


date: February 12

text: February 12 – Ali II ibn Hussein becomes the new Ruler of Tunisia upon the death of his brother, Muhammad I ar-Rashid. Ali reigns for 23 years until his death in 1782.


date: February 27

text: February 27 – Jacob Theodor Klein, German scholar (b. 1685)


date: March 11

text: March 11 – John Forbes, British general (b. 1707)


date: July 6

text: July 6 – William Pepperrell, English colonial soldier (b. 1696)


date: July 27

text: July 27 – Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, French mathematician (b. 1698)


date: August 16

text: August 16 – Eugene Aram, English philologist and murderer, hanged (b. 1704)


date: September 13

text: September 13 – James Wolfe, British general (b. 1727)


date: September 14

text: September 14 – Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, French general (b. 1712)


date: October 10

text: October 10 – Granville Elliott, Army General, British military expert, working for Britain and Palatine forces (b. 1713)


date: October 27

text: October 27 – Konstancja Czartoryska, Polish noblewoman politician (b. 1700)


date: November 14

text: November 14 – Grégoire Orlyk, Ukrainian-born French Lieutenant General (b. 1702)


date: December 6

text: December 6 – Princess Louise-Élisabeth of France, daughter of King Louis XV (b. 1727)


date: December 10

text: December 10 – Shah Jahan III is installed as the puppet ruler of India's Mughal Empire eleven days after the death of Alamgir II, but is removed after a reign of only ten months.


date: December 23

text: December 23 – Marcus Aurelius and Commodus enter Rome after a campaign north of the Alps, and receive a triumph for their victories over the Germanic tribes.

source_section: Events › By place › Roman Empire


date: November 27

text: November 27 – Emperor Marcus Aurelius grants his son Commodus the rank of Imperator, and makes him Supreme Commander of the Roman legions.


text: The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius is made. It is now kept at Museo Capitolini in Rome (approximate date).


text: Ma Chao, Chinese general and warlord (d. 222)


text: Fa Zheng, Chinese nobleman and adviser (d. 220)


text: Liu Bian, Chinese emperor of the Han dynasty (d. 190)


text: Marcus Macrinius Avitus Catonius Vindex, Roman politician


text: Faustina the Younger, Roman empress (b. AD 130)


date: January 28

text: January 28 – Benning Wentworth creates the New Hampshire Grant of Pownal, Vermont.


date: April 3

text: April 3 – Great Britain and Prussia agree to begin peace negotiations to end the Seven Years' War.


date: April 29

text: April 29 – Representatives of the remaining Penobscot Indian tribes in Maine and New Brunswick make peace with the British at Fort Pownal in Newfoundland.


date: June 19

text: June 19 – The British create Cumberland County and Lincoln County in Maine.


date: July 19

text: July 19 – A formal request is made to the Spanish government, to allow the founding of the later city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.


text: Western countries pay 3,000,000 ounces of silver for Chinese goods.


date: January 9

text: January 9 – Battle of Barari Ghat: Afghan forces defeat the Marathas.


date: January 22

text: January 22 – Seven Years' War – Battle of Wandiwash, India: British general Sir Eyre Coote is victorious over the French under the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau.


date: February 21

text: 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.


date: February 27

text: February 27 – Seven Years' War: French and Indian War & Anglo-Cherokee War – Cherokee natives attack a North Carolina militia stationed at Fort Dobbs, in the western part of the province. The attack is repelled by the militia, under the command of General Hugh Waddell.


date: April 7

text: April 7 – 'Tacky's War', a slave rebellion, begins in Jamaica and lasts for 18 months. During the uprising, 60 white residents are killed and more than 400 black rebels die in the suppression of the revolt. Another 500 are deported to British Honduras.


date: April 10

text: April 10 – France's Minister of the Navy Nicolas René Berryer finally receives permission to send ships to assist French forces at Quebec, and a fleet of six ships under the command of Captain François Chenard de la Giraudais of the departs Bordeaux, albeit too late to prevent the loss of New France to the British.


date: April 11

text: April 11 – The Burmese Army, under the command of King Alaungpaya, reaches the outskirts of Siam's capital, Ayutthaya, but then retreats rather than laying siege to the city.


date: April 20

text: April 20 – France's Marshal François Gaston de Lévis departs from Montreal up the St. Lawrence River with 7,000 troops on a plan to retake Quebec City from the British.


date: April 26

text: April 26 – Marshal Lévis and his troops land at Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, adjacent to Quebec City, and prepares to lay siege to the British occupying force.


date: April 27

text: April 27 – British Army Brigadier General James Murray marches a force of 3,500 men toward Saint-Augustin to confront Marshal Lévis and the French Army.


date: April 28

text: April 28 – British defenders and the French Army clash at the Battle of Sainte-Foy to determine the future control of Quebec. General Murray is forced to retreat after the British suffer 259 deaths and 845 wounded, while the French under Marshal Lévis suffer 193 deaths and 640 wounded.


date: May 16

text: May 16 – Three British Royal Navy ships under the command of Commodore Robert Swanton on arrive to break the siege of Quebec before Marshal Lévis can recapture the city from the British.


date: June 11

text: June 11 – Robert Rogers and his Rangers launch a strike from Lake Champlain against French military posts along the Richelieu River – they strike at Fort Sainte Thérèse and destroy the settlement.


date: June 22

text: June 22 – Britain's Captain John Byron, commanding HMS Fame, locates France's Captain Giraudais but runs aground on June 25 before it can attack.


date: July 8

text: July 8 – Seven Years' War: French and Indian War – Battle of Restigouche: The British defeat French forces, in the last naval battle in New France.


date: July 31

text: July 31 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Warburg – The Anglo-Hanoverian army of Ferdinand of Brunswick storms Warburg, with a heroic role being played by the English commander Lord Granby.


date: August 30

text: August 30 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Legnica – By a series of brilliant maneuvers, Frederick the Great manages to defeat the Austrian army of Marshal Laudon before it can unite with that of Marshal Daun.


date: September 8

text: September 8 – Seven Years' War: Jeffery Amherst and his British troops capture Montreal from the French, effectively bringing Canada completely under British control.


date: October 9

text: October 9 – Seven Years' War: Russian troops enter Berlin.


date: October 16

text: October 16 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Kloster-Kamp – Ferdinand of Brunswick is beaten back from the Rhine by a French army.


date: November 3

text: November 3 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Torgau – In another extremely hard battle, Frederick defeats Daun's Austrians, who withdraw across the Elbe.


date: November 29

text: November 29 – French Army Colonel François-Marie Picoté de Belestre formally surrenders Detroit to British Army Major Robert Rogers, and the British Union Jack is raised over Fort Detroit.


date: December 6

text: December 6 – The siege of Pondicherry, a stronghold of France in India, is begun by British Army Lieutenant General Eyre Coote. The French commander, General Thomas Lally, is finally forced to surrender Pondicherry to the British on January 15, 1761.


date: December 18

text: December 18 – In the wake of Tacky's War by African-born rebels, the Assembly of the British colony of Jamaica outlaws the African religious practice of obeah, with penalties ranging from banishment from the colony to execution. The legislation specifically bans use of contraband associated with obeah, including "animal blood, feathers, parrots' beaks, dogs' teeth, alligators' teeth, broken bottles, grave dirt, rum, and eggshells".


date: May 17

text: May 17 – Captain Giraudais's French fleet reaches the Gaspé Peninsula of northeast Quebec and captures seven British merchant ships, but Giraudais learns that the British have already preceded him up the St. Lawrence River and diverts to Chaleur Bay at Newfoundland.


date: June 4

text: June 4 – Expulsion of the Acadians: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia taken from the Acadians.


date: August 21

text: August 21 – The church (later cathedral) of Our Lady of Candlemas of Mayagüez (Puerto Rico) is founded, establishing the basis for the founding of the city in the following month.


date: September 18

text: September 18 – The town (later city) of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, is founded.


text: approximate date – Abu Dhabi is founded.


date: April 30

text: April 30 – Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli presents a paper at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris in which "a mathematical model was used for the first time to study the population dynamics of infectious disease."


date: April 22

text: April 22 – Belgian entertainer Joseph Mervin is said to have given the first demonstration of roller skates, in a performance at the Carlisle House in London, but the stunt ends in disaster.


date: February 15

text: February 15 – The British Royal Navy ship HMS Royal Katherine runs aground off Bolt Head in England, with the loss of 699 lives.


date: March 20

text: March 20 – The Great Fire of Boston, Massachusetts, destroys 349 buildings and marks the biggest conflagration in the American colonies up to this time.


date: April 12

text: April 12 – Two of six French ships run into a British blockade led by Britain's Admiral Edward Boscawen. Of the remaining four, one sinks before it can reach North America.


date: July 3

text: July 3 – A lightning strike causes a major fire at Portsmouth Royal Dockyard in England.


date: October 5

text: October 5 – The wedding of Princess Isabella of Parma and Prince Joseph of Austria takes place at Hofburg Palace's Redoute Hall (Redoutensaele), at the former imperial palace in Vienna.


text: Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée opens a school for deaf education in Paris which becomes the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, the world's first free school for the deaf; Thomas Braidwood establishes Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb in Edinburgh, the first school for the deaf in Britain.


date: January 11

text: January 11 – Zofia Potocka, Greek slave courtesan, agent for Russia and Polish noble (d. 1822)


date: March 5

text: March 5 – Marie-Adélaïde de La Touche-Limouzinière, French aristocrat, counter-revolutionary and combatant in the War of the Vendée (d. 1794)


date: March 28

text: March 28 – Thomas Clarkson, English abolitionist (d. 1846)


date: May 10

text: May 10 – Johann Peter Hebel, German poet (d. 1826)


date: May 28

text: May 28 – Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais, French politician, general (d. 1794)


date: June 12

text: June 12 – Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai, French novelist, playwright, journalist, politician and diplomat (d. 1797)


date: August 22

text: August 22 – Pope Leo XII, (b. Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiore Girolamo Nicola Sermattei della Genga), Italian priest (d. 1829)


date: September 14

text: September 14 – Luigi Cherubini, Italian composer (d. 1842)


date: September 30

text: September 30 – Michele Cachia, Maltese architect and military engineer (d. 1839)


date: October 17

text: October 17 – Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, French economist, political theorist (d. 1825)


date: October 31

text: October 31? – Hokusai, born Katsushika Tokitarō, Japanese Edo period artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker (died 1849)


date: November 21

text: November 21 – Joseph Plumb Martin, American Revolutionary soldier and narrative author (d. 1850)


date: November 24

text: November 24 – Fabian Wrede, Swedish field marshal (d. 1824)


date: December 17

text: December 17 – Deborah Sampson, first American female soldier (d. 1827)


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Anna Magdalena Bach, accomplished German singer, second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach (b. 1701)


date: April 3

text: April 3 – John Rous, Royal Navy officer during King George's War and the Seven Years' War (b. 1702)


date: April 6

text: April 6 – Charlotte Charke, British actor and writer (b. 1713)


date: April 18

text: April 18 – Mary Alexander, influential colonial-era merchant in New York City (b. 1693)


date: May 5

text: May 5 – Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, English murderer (hanged) (b. 1720)


date: May 9

text: May 9 – Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, German religious and social reformer (b. 1700)


date: May 10

text: May 10 – Christoph Graupner, German composer (b. 1683)


date: May 11

text: May 11 – King Alaungpaya of Burma dies during a retreat from Ayutthaya after stopping at the village of Kinywa while en route to Martaban. His son Naungdawgyi becomes the new King of Burma.


date: May 15

text: May 15 – King Alaungpaya of Burma (b. 1711)


date: May 22

text: May 22 – Israel ben Eliezer aka Baal Shem Tov, Polish-born mystical rabbi, founder of Hasidic Judaism (b. 1698)


date: May 30

text: May 30 – Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, German duchess (b. 1712)


date: July 13

text: July 13 – Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania's ambassador to the Iroquois Confederacy (b. 1696)


date: September 17

text: September 17 – George Bowes, English coal proprietor, Member of Parliament (b. 1701)


date: October 15

text: October 15 – Nicolas d'Assas, captain of the French regiment of Auvergne (b. 1733)


date: April 1

text: April 1 – The Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire sign a new treaty of alliance.


date: August 11

text: August 11 – Two years after his marriage to Martha Custis and his move to Mount Vernon, American military officer and politician George Washington advertises a reward in the Maryland Gazette for the capture of four fugitive slaves who ran away from him: Cupid, Peros, Jack and Neptune, claiming in the gazette that they had escaped "without the least suspicion, provocation, or difference with anybody".


date: August 29

text: August 29 – Cherokee chief Attakullakulla and British Army officer Major James Grant meet at Fort Prince George in the Province of South Carolina and begin negotiations to end the Anglo-Cherokee War.


date: September 19

text: September 19 – Slavery in Portugal is abolished.


date: October 30

text: October 30 – Colonel Henry Bouquet issues the first proclamation against Anglo-American settlement on Indian lands in America.


date: November 19

text: November 19 – A separate peace treaty is signed between the Cherokee Indians and the Colony of Virginia, bringing the Anglo-Cherokee War to a close.


text: The Halifax Treaties are concluded between the various bands of the Miꞌkmaq, other First Nations people and the British in Halifax, Nova Scotia, notably in the Burying the Hatchet ceremony on June 25.


text: In Dutch Guyana, a "state" formed by escaped slaves signs a treaty with the local governor.


date: January 14

text: January 14 – Third Battle of Panipat: In India, the armies of the Durrani Empire from Afghanistan, led by Ahmad Shah Durrani and his coalition decisively defeat the Maratha Confederacy, killing over 100,000 Maratha soldiers and civilians in battle and in a subsequent massacre, regaining territory lost by the Mughal Empire and restoring the Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam II, to the throne in Delhi as the nominal ruler.


date: January 16

text: January 16 – In India, the Siege of Pondicherry ends as the British Empire captures Pondichéry from the French colonial empire.


date: October 1

text: October 1 – Austrian field marshal Ernst Gideon von Laudon captures the Prussian town of Schweidnitz (now Świdnica in Poland) during the Seven Years' War.


date: November 26

text: 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.


date: December 16

text: December 16 – Seven Years' War: After four months of siege, the Russians under Pyotr Rumyantsev take the Prussian fortress of Kolberg.


text: Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory opens in the midlands of England.


text: Faber-Castell Company is founded by Kasper Faber in Nuremberg, Germany.


date: July 17

text: July 17 – The first section of the Bridgewater Canal is opened, for the transportation of coal from local mines to Manchester.


date: November 7

text: November 7 – The New London Harbor Light is first lit to guide ships into the Connecticut harbor; the lighthouse, only the fourth to be built has been in continuous operation for more than 250 years.


date: June 6

text: June 6 – (May 26 old style); A transit of Venus occurs, and is observed from 120 locations around the Earth. In his observations by telescope at St. Petersburg, Mikhail Lomonosov notes a ring of light around the planet's silhouette as it begins the transit, and becomes the first astronomer to discover that the planet Venus has an atmosphere.