date: August 17

text: August 17 – Accompanied by 10 French Army observers, Choctaw Indians from the French Louisiana territory cross the Tombigbee River and raid Chickasaw Indian towns in Georgia. Over three days, the attackers lose 50 men, the Chickasaw defenders about 25. For permitting the attack, the French Louisiana governor, the Sieur de Bienville, is summoned back to Paris.


date: August 19

section: Conflict & Security

text: August 19 – A British fleet led by Commodore William Martin enters the harbor of Naples with three warships, two frigates, and four bomb vessels, and sends a message giving the King Charles VII of Naples (the future King Charles III of Spain) 30 minutes to agree to withdraw Neapolitan troops from the Spanish Army. Don Carlos agrees and ends the threat of a Spanish foothold in Italy.

source_section: Events › July–September


date: August 20

text: August 20 – The Swedish-Russian War effectively ends as 17,000 Swedish troops surrender in Finland at Helsingfors (Helsinki).


date: August 27

section: Exploration & Expansion

text: August 27 – George Anson, captain of HMS Centurion, arrives with his seriously ill crew at the island of Tinian (now U.S. territory as one of the Northern Mariana Islands) and saves his mission.


date: September 5

text: September 5 – The 46 survivors of Russia's Great Northern Expedition return to Petropavlovsk after having been shipwrecked on an island in the Bering Strait ten months earlier. They had completed the building of a new ship from the wreckage of the St Pyotr on August 21. Edward Heawood, "A History of Geographical Discovery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries"


date: January 24

section: Religion & Belief

text: January 24 – Charles VII becomes Holy Roman Emperor.

source_section: Events › January–March


text: Daniel le Pelley succeeds Nicolas le Pelley, as Seigneur of Sark.

source_section: Events › Date unknown


text: The Roman Catholic church decrees that Roman ceremonial practice in Latin (not in Chinese) is to be the law for Chinese missions.


section: Technology & Infrastructure

text: Molde, Norway, becomes a city.


text: Spain completes the construction of Fort Matanzas in the Matanzas Inlet, approximately 15 mi km south of St. Augustine, Florida.


text: Eisenach, Germany builds its Stadtschloss (city castle).


date: June 7

section: Science & Discovery

text: June 7 – Christian Goldbach first describes Goldbach's conjecture ("Every even number is the sum of two primes") in a letter to fellow mathematician Leonhard Euler.

source_section: Events › April –June


section: Health & Medicine

text: August 17 – Irish author and poet Dean Jonathan Swift is declared by a court to be "of unsound mind and memory" and confined to home treatment for the remaining three years of his life.


date: September 16

text: September 16 – Construction starts on the Foundling Hospital in London.


section: Crime & Justice

text: The Lopukhina Conspiracy arises at the Russian court.


date: June 20

section: Disasters & Accidents

text: June 20 – İzmir, formerly the ancient Greek city of Smyrna, is destroyed by fire.


date: February 12

section: Culture & Society

text: February 12 – John Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret becomes Secretary of State for the Northern Department in Great Britain.


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Henry Fielding publishes his picaresque novel Joseph Andrews anonymously in London when "the first edition... reached the bookstalls" in the city.


date: March 29

text: March 29 – Acting in his capacity of Grand Duke of Lithuania, Poland's King Stanisław August Poniatowski issues a proclamation allowing Jews in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius to live anywhere except for two public streets, the Pilies street and the Galves Street.


date: April 13

text: April 13 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio The Messiah is first performed, in Dublin, Ireland in aid of local charities.


date: July 14

text: July 14 – William Pulteney is created 1st Earl of Bath in Great Britain.


text: August 19 – Voltaire's controversial play Fanatacism, or Mahomet the Prophet is first performed, in Paris, to a theatre audience filled with French nobility.


date: November 13

text: November 13 – The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters is founded.

source_section: Events › October–December


date: December 2

text: December 2 – The Pennsylvania Journal first appears in the United States.


text: Anders Celsius publishes his proposal for a centigrade temperature scale originated in 1741.


text: The University of Erlangen is founded in Bavaria.


text: Charles Jervas's English translation of Don Quixote is published posthumously. Through a printer's error, the translator's name is printed as 'Charles Jarvis', leading the book to forever be known as the Jarvis translation. It is acclaimed as the most faithful English rendering of the novel made up to this time.


text: Colin Maclaurin publishes his Treatise on Fluxions.


date: January 8

section: Births

text: January 8 – Philip Astley, English circus organizer (d. 1814)

source_section: Births


date: March 14

text: March 14 – Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, Iranian king (d. 1797)


date: April 28

text: April 28 – Henry Dundas, British statesman (d. 1811)


date: May 6

text: May 6 – Jean Senebier, Swiss pastor, botanist (d. 1809)


date: June 26

text: June 26 – Arthur Middleton, American politician (d. 1787)


date: June 28

text: June 28 – William Hooper, American statesman (d. 1790)


date: July 21

text: July 21 – John Cleves Symmes, American statesman (d. 1814)


date: July 27

text: July 27 – Nathanael Greene, American general (d. 1786)


date: September 14

text: September 14 – James Wilson, American politician, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1798)


date: October 6

text: October 6 – Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian poet (d. 1785)


date: November 5

text: November 5 – Richard Cosway, English artist (d. 1821)


date: December 9

text: December 9 – Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist (d. 1785)


date: December 16

text: December 16 – Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Prussian general (d. 1819)


date: December 26

text: December 26 (bapt.) – George Chalmers, Scottish antiquarian (d. 1825)


date: January 1

section: Deaths

text: January 1 – Peregrine Bertie, 2nd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, English statesman (b. 1686)

source_section: Deaths


date: January 14

text: January 14 – Edmond Halley dies; James Bradley succeeds him as Astronomer Royal of Great Britain.


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Charles Rivington, English publisher (b. 1688)


date: April 15

text: April 15 – Samuel Shute, Governor of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire (b. 1662)


date: May 26

text: May 26 – Pylyp Orlyk, Ukrainian Zaporozhian Cossack starshina, diplomat (b. 1672)


date: June 18

text: June 18 – John Aislabie, British politician (b. 1670)


date: July 2

text: July 2 – Robert Petre, 8th Baron Petre, British peer, renowned horticulturist (b. 1713)


date: July 19

text: July 19 – William Somervile, English poet (b. 1675)


date: July 23

text: July 23 – Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, known as mother of Methodism. (b. 1669)


date: July 30

text: July 30 – Nicholas Roosevelt (1658–1742), Dutch-American politician (b. 1658)


date: August 14

text: August 14 – Maria van Lommen, Dutch gold- and silversmith and guild member (b. 1688)


date: August 25

text: August 25 – Carlos Seixas, Portuguese composer (b. 1704)


date: September 18

text: September 18 – Vincenzo Ludovico Gotti, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1664)


date: November 20

text: November 20 – Melchior de Polignac, French diplomat (b. 1661)


date: January 8

section: Geopolitics & Diplomacy

text: January 8 – King Augustus III of Poland, acting in his capacity as Elector of Saxony, signs an agreement with Austria, pledging help in war in return for part of Silesia to be conveyed to Saxony.


date: January 23

text: January 23 – With mediation by France, Sweden and Russia begin peace negotiations at Åbo (Turku) to end the Russo-Swedish War. By August 17, Sweden cedes all of its claims to southern Finland.


date: July 28

text: July 28 – France and the Allies of Britain conclude a treaty to provide care for each other's wounded.


date: July 31

text: July 31 – At a summit in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the British colonies of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania conclude a treaty with the Six Nations, conceding that the member tribes are entitled to the territory west of the Appalachian mountains and north of the Ohio River.


date: August 18

text: August 18 (August 7 Old Style) – Russia and Sweden sign the Treaty of Åbo.


date: August 27

text: August 27 – Henry Pelham becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.


date: September 13

text: September 13 – The Treaty of Worms is signed between Great Britain, Austria and Sardinia.


date: March 2

text: March 2 – A British expeditionary fleet under Sir Charles Knowles is defeated by the Spanish in the Battle of La Guaira.


date: May 9

text: May 9 – Austrian army defeats the Bavarian army in the Battle of Simbach.

source_section: Events › April–June


date: May 30

text: May 30 – The Dalecarlian rebellion (1743) breaks out in Sweden.


date: June 27

text: June 27 (June 16 O.S.) – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Dettingen in Bavaria: British forces, in alliance with those of Hanover and Hesse, defeat a French army under the duc de Noailles; King George II of Great Britain (and Elector of Brunswick) leads his own troops, the last British king to do so.


date: August 24

text: August 24 – The War of the Hats: The Swedish army surrendered to the Russians in Helsinki, ending the war and starting Lesser Wrath.


date: October 23

text: October 23 – After almost six weeks, Nader Shah of Persia lifts the siege of Mosul.


date: January 1

text: January 1 – The Verendrye brothers, probably Louis-Joseph and François de La Vérendrye, become the first white people to see the Rocky Mountains from the eastern side (the Spanish conquistadors had seen the Rockies from the west side).


date: January 12

text: January 12 – The Verendryes, and two members of the Mandan Indian tribe, reach the foot of the mountains, near the site of what is now Helena, Montana.


date: April 2

text: April 2 – The Verendrye brothers bury a tablet claiming the Great Plains of North America for King Louis XV of France. A schoolgirl in Pierre, South Dakota, unearths the tablet 170 years later on February 16, 1913.


date: April 9

text: April 9 – The Verendrye brothers make the first contact since 1722 between Europeans and the Sioux Indians, whom they refer to as Les Gens de la Fleche Collee ("the people of the sheathed arrow").


date: May 10

text: May 10 – In New France, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville ends his final term (multiple times over 43 years) as Governor of colonial French Louisiana, which he helped colonize; he is succeeded by the Marquis de Vaudreuil (for the next 10 years) and returns to France.


date: October 19

text: October 19 – Louis Maria Colons, one of nine French Canadians who had attempted to colonize territory in what is now New Mexico, is executed for attempting to persuade the Pueblo Indians to rise up against the Spanish colonial government.


date: December 3

text: December 3 – Ecuadorian scientist Pedro Vicente Maldonado departs from Brazil in order to purchase the most state-of-the-art equipment for the French Geodesic Mission


date: January 16

text: January 16 – Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury turns his effects over to King Louis XV, 13 days before his death on January 29.


date: April 1

text: April 1 – Pope Benedict XIV issues a new bill, barring agreements by spouses not to appeal annulments of marriages


date: April 3

section: Economy & Finance

text: April 3 – Prithvi Narayan Shah becomes the new King of the Gorkha Kingdom and begins a campaign to unify the 54 different principalities in the Himalayas under his rule as part of the unification of Nepal


text: Capodimonte porcelain is first manufactured, in Naples.

source_section: Events › Undated


date: July 23

text: July 23 – James Oglethorpe departs from Georgia to England and returns there in September.


date: October 21

text: October 21 – Benjamin Franklin's view of a lunar eclipse from Philadelphia is spoiled by a rainstorm; several days later, he learns that residents of Boston received the same storm hours after the eclipse, demonstrating that weather moves from west to east.


date: November 5

text: November 5 – Coordinated scientific observations of the transit of Mercury are organized by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle.


date: December 9

text: December 9 – At Haarlem, Dutch astronomer Dirk Klinkenberg becomes the first to observe the Great Comet of 1744. Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux discovers it independently on December 13. Both scientists are given credit for its discovery


date: July 20

text: July 20 – Lord Anson captures the Philippine galleon Nuestra Señora de Covadonga and its treasure of 1,313,843 Spanish dollars at Manila along with a treasure of 2 1/2 million dollars, and proceeds back toward Mexico, then returns to Britain in 1744


text: Probable date – The last wolf in Scotland is shot, in Killiecrankie.


date: April 13

text: April 13 – The British East India Company ship Princess Louisa is wrecked off the coast of Maio Island in the Cape Verde Islands, killing 49 of her 179 crew.


date: July 13

text: July 13 – All 276 people on board the Dutch East India Company ship Hollandia drown after the ship strikes a rock off of the Isles of Scilly in England near Cornwall. The wreckage is located in 1971.


section: Climate & Environment

text: January 12 – An earthquake strikes the Philippines


date: February 21

text: February 21 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Samson, premieres in London.


date: April 18

text: April 18 – The trustees of the English Province of Georgia vote to inaugurate public schools in the corporate territory.


date: September 11

text: September 11 – Russian noble Natalia Lopukhina is flogged in front of the Twelve Collegia building in Saint Petersburg, bringing a conclusion to the "Lopukhina Affair" plotted by France and the Duchy of Holstein.


date: December 10

text: December 10 – King Louis XV of France informs King Philip V of Spain of his intent to try to restore the House of Stuart to the throne of the United Kingdom. James Francis Edward Stuart was briefly the Crown Prince of England and Scotland until his father, King James II, was deposed in 1688 and, as Pretender to the Throne, would become King James III if the attack, planned for January 1, 1744 succeeds.


date: December 11

text: December 11 – Princess Louise of Great Britain, daughter of King George II, weds Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark and Norway.


date: January 25

text: January 25 – Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, German philosopher (d. 1819)


date: February 13

text: February 13 – Sir Joseph Banks, British naturalist and botanist (d. 1820)


date: February 14

text: February 14 – George Morgan, American merchant and Indian agent (d. 1810)


date: February 28

text: February 28 – René Just Haüy, French "father of modern crystallography" (d. 1822)


date: March 28

text: March 28 (March 17 O.S.) – Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, Russian princess, courtier and patron of the arts and sciences (d. 1810)


date: March

text: March – Joseph Brant, Mohawk leader (d. 1807)


date: April

text: April – Etta Palm d'Aelders, Dutch-French feminist (d. 1799)


date: May 14

text: May 14 – Louis Lebègue Duportail French military leader in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1802)


date: May 17

text: May 17 – Seth Warner American revolutionary hero (d. 1784)


date: May 20

text: May 20 – Toussaint Louverture, Haitian rebel (d. 1803)


date: May 24

text: May 24 – Jean-Paul Marat, French revolutionary, doctor and scientist (d. 1793)


date: June 2

text: June 2 – Alessandro Cagliostro, Italian Freemason (d. 1795)


date: June 3

text: June 3 – José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa, Spanish viceroy of Peru (d. 1821)


date: September 17

text: September 17 – Marquis de Condorcet, French mathematician, philosopher, and political scientist (d. 1794)


date: January 3

text: January 3 – Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Italian architect/painter (b. 1657)


date: January 29

text: January 29 – Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, chief minister of France under Louis XV (b. 1653)


date: February 18

text: February 18 – Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, last of the Medicis (b. 1667)


date: March 14

text: March 14 – Jean-Paul Bignon, French priest and man of letters (b. 1662)


date: April 12

text: April 12 – Augustine Washington, father of the future first President of the United States (b. 1694)


date: April 15

text: April 15 – Eiler Hagerup, Norwegian Roman Catholic bishop (b. 1685)


date: May 10

text: May 10 – Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal and Munster (b. 1667)


date: June 16

text: June 16 – Louise Françoise, Princess of Condé, eldest daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan (b. 1673)


date: July 3

text: July 3 – As a concession to Russia, Sweden's parliament ratifies the election of Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, a great-grandson of King Charles XI, to be heir to the throne of Sweden. Adolphus becomes king on the death of King Frederick on April 5, 1751, marking the end of the Hesse-Kassel dynasty and the start of the dynasty of the Holstein-Gottorp that will rule Sweden from 1751 to 1818


date: August 5

text: August 5 – John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, English statesman and writer (b. 1696)


date: August 30

text: August 30 – Henry Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge, British politician (b. 1663)


date: September 21

text: September 21 – Jai Singh II, King of Amber-Juiper, India (b. 1688)


date: October 4

text: October 4 – John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll, Scottish soldier (b. 1678)


date: December 27

text: December 27 – Hyacinthe Rigaud, French painter (b. 1659)


date: May 22

text: May 22 – The Union of Germany is proclaimed in Frankfurt Frederick II of Prussia, as articles of union are signed between Prussia, Hesse-Kassel and the Rhineland Palatinate.


date: October 25

text: October 25 – The Massachusetts General Court, colonial legislature for the Massachusetts Bay Province, approves an incentive for the killing of enemy Indians, authorizing the payment of 100 Massachusetts pounds for the scalping of a Mi'kmaq or Maliseet Indian, and 50 for the scalps of women or children.


date: December 18

text: December 18 – Queen Maria Theresa of Austria issues a proclamation to rid Bohemia of its Jewish residents, with the Jews to leave Prague over the next two weeks, and then to depart from Bohemia entirely in 1745.


date: January 24

text: January 24 – The Dagohoy rebellion in the Philippines begins, with the killing of Father Giuseppe Lamberti.


date: February 22

text: February 22–23 – Battle of Toulon: A British fleet fights a Franco-Spanish fleet; the battle is tactically inconclusive but results in a strategic success for the allies.


date: February 27

text: February 27 – Violent storms frustrate a planned French invasion of Britain.


date: March 15

text: March 15 – France declares war on Great Britain.


date: April 27

text: April 27 – Siege of Villafranca (1744): A joint French and Spanish force defeats Britain and Sardinia.


date: May 24

text: May 24 – After receiving the news from Europe that Great Britain and France are at war, the French Army at Louisbourg attacks the British settlement at Fort William Augustus at Canso, Nova Scotia and forces its surrender.


date: July 19

text: July 19 – Battle of Casteldelfino: France defeats the Kingdom of Sardinia.


date: July 29

text: July 29 – Nader Shah lays siege to the Ottoman citadel of Kars.


date: August 12

text: August 12 – Battle of Velletri in the Kingdom of Naples: Spanish-Neapolitan forces defeat those of the Archduchy of Austria.


date: September 30

text: September 30 – Battle of Madonna dell'Olmo: France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia.


date: October 19

text: October 19 – William Shirley, the British colonial Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, announces the declaration of war against the Miꞌkmaq and Maliseet Indian tribes.


date: November 1

text: November 1 – Second Silesian War: The Prussian Army, under the command of Field Marshal Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, begins the bombardment of Prague. The Bohemian capital surrenders after two weeks.


text: The third French and Indian War, known as King George's War, breaks out at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.


text: October 25 – Spanish explorers Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan y Santacilla complete their mission of exploration and depart from the Peruvian seaport of Callao for a return to Spain.


date: May 11

text: May 11 – Russia's treasury begins an effort to reduce the number of copper five-kopeck pieces (20 of which equal a Russian ruble) by declaring that it will buy them back at a ruble for every 20 until August 1, after which kopecks would be redeemed at a ruble for every 25; then at the rate of 33 for a ruble on October 1, and 50 for a ruble on and after August 28, 1746.


date: March 1

text: March 1 (approximately) – The Great Comet of 1744, one of the brightest ever seen, reaches perihelion.


date: April

text: April – The Female Spectator (a monthly) is founded by Eliza Haywood in England, the first periodical written for women by a woman.


date: June 15

text: June 15 – Commodore George Anson's voyage around the world concludes after four years as HMS Centurion returns to England at Spithead and Anson is greeted as a hero.


date: October 12

text: October 12 – The creator of binomial nomenclature for the identification of plant and animal species, Carl Linnaeus, is selected as president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, succeeding the late Anders Celsius, who had devised the centigrade measurement of temperature.


date: January 6

text: January 6 – The Royal Navy ship Bacchus engages the Spanish Navy privateer Begona, and sinks it; 90 of the 120 Spanish sailors die, but 30 of the crew are rescued.


date: March 13

text: March 13 – The British ship Betty capsizes and sinks off of the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) near Anomabu. More than 200 people on board die, although there are a few survivors.


date: July 8

text: July 8 – The Royal Navy privateer Somerset capsizes and sinks in the Bristol Channel, killing 86 of the 97 crew.


date: October 4

text: October 4 – In one of the greatest disasters for the Royal Navy, HMS Victory sinks in a storm in the English Channel, killing 1,100 sailors and officers it had been bringing back from Gibraltar to England, including Admiral John Balchen. The wreck will be located 264 years later, in January, 2009.


date: April 2

text: April 2 – The first Rules of golf are drawn up at Leith, for the first golf competition.


date: June 13

text: June 13 – Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin is named as the new Chancellor of the Russian Empire by the Empress Elizabeth.


date: June 28

text: June 28 – At the age of 15, Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Empress of Russia, is received into the Russian Orthodox Church after converting from the Lutheran faith. Upon her conversion to the Russian Orthodox religion, she is given the name Yekaterina (Catherine). In 1762, she takes the throne as the Empress Catherine II, later known as Catherine the Great.


text: Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, sequel to Tommy Thumb's Song Book, containing the oldest version of many well-known and popular rhymes, is published in London.


date: February 6

text: February 6 – Pierre-Joseph Desault, French anatomist and surgeon (d. 1795)


date: February 23

text: February 23 – Mayer Amschel Rothschild, German banker, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty (d. 1812)


date: May 19

text: May 19 – Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen of George III (d. 1818)


date: May 21

text: May 21 – Samuel Ireland, British author and engraver (d. 1800)


date: May 31

text: May 31 – Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor (d. 1817)


date: July 20

text: July 20 – Joshua Clayton, American politician (d. 1798)


date: August 1

text: August 1 – Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French naturalist (d. 1829)


date: August 16

text: August 16 – Pierre Méchain, French astronomer (d. 1804)


date: August 25

text: August 25 – Johann Gottfried Herder, German writer (d. 1803)


date: September 25

text: September 25 – King Frederick William II of Prussia (d. 1797)


date: October 13

text: October 13 – Henrik Johan Nauckhoff, Swedish admiral


text: Marie Barch, Danish ballerina (d. 1827)


text: Marie-Louise-Adélaïde Boizot, French engraver (d. 1800)


date: January 11

text: January 11 – James Hamilton, 7th Earl of Abercorn (b. 1686)


date: January 23

text: January 23 – Giambattista Vico, Italian philosopher and historian (b. 1668)


date: January 26

text: January 26 – Ludwig Andreas von Khevenhüller, Austrian field marshal (b. 1683)


date: February 11

text: February 11 – Hedvig Taube, mistress to King Frederick I of Sweden (b. 1714)


date: March 4

text: March 4 – John Anstis, English herald (b. 1669)


date: June 30

text: June 30 – Januarius Maria Sarnelli, Italian Roman Catholic priest and blessed (b. 1702)


date: July

text: July – Mihai Racoviță, Prince of Moldavia and Prince of Wallachia (b. c. 1660)


date: August 9

text: August 9 – James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, English patron of the arts (b. 1673)


date: August 26

text: August 26 – William Byrd II, prominent planter from Virginia (b. 1674)


date: September 28

text: September 28 – Princess Thérèse of France, daughter of Louis XV (b. 1736)


date: October 10

text: October 10 – Johann Heinrich Schulze, German professor and polymath (b. 1687)


date: October 18

text: October 18 – Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, English friend of Anne, Queen of Great Britain (b. 1660)


date: December 8

text: December 8 – Marie Anne de Mailly-Nesle, French mistress of King Louis XV (b. 1717)


date: December 23

text: December 23 – Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans, duchess and regent of Lorraine (b. 1676)


date: January 8

text: January 8 – The Quadruple Alliance treaty is signed at Warsaw by Great Britain, Austria, the Dutch Republic and the Duchy of Saxony.


date: April 22

text: April 22 – Having recently turned 18, Bavaria's ruler Maximilian III Joseph agrees to sign the Treaty of Füssen with Austria, withdrawing Bavaria from further participation in the War of the Austrian Succession, and agreeing to support Austria's candidate for the next Holy Roman Emperor.


date: December 25

text: December 25 – The Treaty of Dresden gives Prussia full possession of Silesia.

source_section: Events › October –December


date: January 7

text: January 7 – War of the Austrian Succession: The Austrian Army, under the command of Field Marshal Károly József Batthyány, makes a surprise attack at Amberg and the winter quarters of the Bavarian Army, and scatters the Bavarian defending troops, then captures the Bavarian capital of Munich.


date: February 22

text: February 22 – The ruling white colonial government on the island of Jamaica foils a conspiracy by about 900 black slaves, who had been plotting to seize control and to massacre the white residents.


date: April 15

text: April 15 – War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Pfaffenhofen – The Austrian Army drives the French Army out of Bavaria, forcing the Electorate of Bavaria to withdraw from the war.


date: April 29

text: April 29 – The French Navy frigate Renommée approaches the French colony of Nova Scotia, after having been dispatched to warn French forces at Louisbourg of the impending attack by British American forces. However, the Massachusetts privateer HMS Shirley Galley, commanded by John Rous, attacks the Renommée and forces it to sail away. The command at Louisbourg is thus not warned of the impending attack.


date: May 11

text: May 11 – War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Fontenoy – French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army, including the British 42nd Regiment of Foot, also known as Black Watch.


date: June 4

text: June 4 – Second Silesian War: Battle of Hohenfriedberg – In the battle that earns him the descriptor of "Frederick the Great", King Frederick II of Prussia decisively defeats the armies of Austria and Saxony.


date: June 16

text: June 16 – King George's War: The British capture Cape Breton Island in North America from the French.


date: July 9

text: July 9 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Melle: The French are victorious in an engagement against the Pragmatic Allies.


date: July 15

text: July 15 – Fall of Ghent: The French army occupies Ghent.


date: September 16

text: September 16 – Jacobite rising of 1745: "Canter of Coltbrigg" – The British 13th and 14th Dragoons flee the Jacobites near Edinburgh.


date: September 21

text: September 21 – Battle of Prestonpans: British Government forces are defeated by the Jacobites in Scotland.


date: September 30

text: September 30 – Battle of Soor (Second Silesian War): Frederick the Great's Prussian army is victorious over the forces of Austria and Saxony.


date: October 8

text: October 8 – The Empress Elizabeth of Russia agrees to provide the Electorate of Saxony with aid in its war against Prussia, but the agreement comes too late.


date: October 14

text: October 14 – In Amritsar in India's Punjab region, the Sikh parliament (the Sarbat Khalsa) votes for a major reorganization of the Sikh nation's army, the Dal Khalsa, with 25 cavalry regiments and support troops under the command of General Nawab Kapur Singh.


date: November 23

text: November 23 – Battle of Hennersdorf (Second Silesian War): The Prussian army defeats that of Saxony.


date: November 28

text: November 28 – King George's War: A combined force of troops from the French Army and of the Wabanaki Confederacy (Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki and Penobscot tribes) destroys the British American settlement at Fort Saratoga (modern Schuylerville, New York), burning the fort and surrounding buildings to the ground, and killing 15 people. Another 103 survivors are taken prisoner.


date: December 4

text: December 4 – Jacobite rising of 1745: The Scottish Jacobite army reaches as far south as Derby in England, causing panic in London; two days later it begins to retreat.


date: December 17

text: December 17 – Two days after Prussian troops rout the Saxons at the Battle of Kesselsdorf, the Saxon capital of Dresden falls to Prussia's King Frederick the Great.


date: December 18

text: December 18 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Clifton Moor Skirmish – The Jacobites are victorious in the last action between two military forces on English soil.


date: December 23

text: December 23 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Battle of Inverurie – The Jacobites are victorious over British royal troops.


date: April 4

text: April 4 (March 24, old style) – Under the command of British Army General William Pepperrell, the first 4,300 American colonists in the New England Army depart Boston to liberate the French North American colony of Nova Scotia. The flotilla of 80 military transports and 18 armed escorts is scattered by a storm, but the first troops disembark at Canso, Nova Scotia, on April 15 and begin training while waiting for the arrival of the Royal Navy squadron commanded by Admiral Peter Warren.


date: March 1

text: March 1 – Augustus III, the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, declares his candidacy to become the next Holy Roman Emperor, but loses in September to Francis, Duke of Tuscany.


date: October 4

text: October 4 – Francis is crowned as the new Holy Roman Emperor.


date: November 1

text: November 1 – Pope Benedict XIV issues the encyclical Vix pervenit, referred to in English as "On Usury and Other Dishonest Profit", to the bishops of Italy, condemning the charging of interest on loans as a sin against the Roman Catholic Church.


date: October 11

text: October 11 – At Köslin (modern Koszalin in Poland) Prussian scientist Ewald Georg von Kleist independently invents the first electrical capacitor to store and discharge electricity. The invention, commonly called the Leyden jar is later credited to a subsequent inventor Pieter van Musschenbroek.


date: November 8

text: November 8 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Charles Edward Stuart crosses from Scotland into England for the first time. He arrives at Longtown, Cumbria, and spends the night at a nearby village, the Riddings, then leads his army south along the right bank of the River Eden the next day.


date: February 27

text: February 27 – Pierre Bouguer appears before the French Academy of Sciences to deliver his report of the data gathered in the French Geodesic Mission, including the first precise measurement of the Earth's circumference. His determination that the circumference is 24854.85 mi and that the distance from the pole to equator is roughly 6214 mi eventually leads to the Academy's calculation of the metre and the metric system.


date: August 6

text: August 6 (July 26 Old Style) – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place in Surrey, England.


date: December 28

text: December 28 – For 5 days, fire destroys buildings in Istanbul.


date: August 19

text: August 19 – The Jacobite rising of 1745 begins at Glenfinnan in Scotland, where Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") raises his standard in a campaign to enforce his father James Francis Edward Stuart (the "Old Pretender")'s claim to be King James III of England.


date: September 1

text: September 1 – Catherine the Great marries Peter III of Russia, in Saint Petersburg.


date: September 11

text: September 11 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Jacobites enter Edinburgh; six days later, Charles Edward Stuart proclaims his father as James VIII of Scotland.


date: September 14

text: September 14 – Madame de Pompadour is officially presented at the court of Louis XV.


date: January 1

text: January 1 – Anthony Wayne, United States Army officer, statesman and member of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1796)


date: February 2

text: February 2 – Hannah More, English religious writer, Romantic poet and philanthropist (d. 1833)


date: February 24

text: February 24 – Fyodor Ushakov, a Russian Saint and Admiral (d. 1817)


date: February

text: February – Samuel Hearne, English explorer, fur-trader, author, and naturalist (d. 1792)


date: March 4

text: March 4 – Kazimierz Pułaski, American Revolutionary War general (d. 1779)


date: March 10

text: March 10 – John Gunby, Maryland soldier in the American Revolutionary War (d. 1807)


date: March 25

text: March 25 – John Barry, officer in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War and later in the United States Navy (d. 1803)


date: April 1

text: April 1 – Robert H. Harrison, American jurist and lieutenant colonel of the Continental Army (d. 1790)


date: April 20

text: April 20 – Philippe Pinel, French physician (d. 1826)


date: April 29

text: April 29 – Oliver Ellsworth, American founding father and 3rd Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (d. 1807)


date: August 20

text: August 20 – Francis Asbury, American Methodist Bishop (d. 1816)


date: September 4

text: September 4 – Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Russian rabbi and founder of Chabad (d. 1812)


date: September 16

text: September 16 – Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, Russian field marshal (d. 1813)


date: December 24

text: December 24 – William Paterson, American politician and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1806)


date: January 16

text: January 16 – Josiah Franklin, English-born American businessman, father of Benjamin Franklin (b. 1657)


date: January 20

text: January 20 – Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1697)


text: January 20 – Less than two weeks after the disastrous Battle of Amberg leaves Bavaria undefended, the electorate's ruler (and Holy Roman Emperor) Charles VII dies from gout at the age of 47, leaving the duchy without an adult to lead it. His 17-year-old son, Maximilian III Joseph, signs terms of surrender in April.


date: February 23

text: February 23 – The royal wedding of the crown prince of France takes place at Versailles: the Dauphin Louis Ferdiand, eldest son of King Louis XV, is united in marriage to Princess Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, daughter of King Philip V. The Dauphin never takes the throne, dying in 1765, eight years before the death of his father.


date: February 26

text: February 26 – Henry Scudamore, 3rd Duke of Beaufort, English nobleman (b. 1707)


date: March 27

text: March 27 – Tommaso Crudeli, Florentine free thinker imprisoned by the Roman Inquisition (b. 1702)


date: May 9

text: May 9 – Tomaso Antonio Vitali, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1663)


date: May 22

text: May 22 – François-Marie, 1st duc de Broglie, French military leader (b. 1671)


date: September 12

text: September 12 – Francis I, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, is elected Holy Roman Emperor by the nine prince-electors of the Empire (from Bavaria, Bohemia, Brandenburg, Cologne, Hanover, Mainz, the Palatinate, Saxony and Trier) with the support of his wife, Maria Theresa. He is the successor of Charles VII Albert of Bavaria, an enemy of the House of Habsburg, who died on January 20 of this year.


date: September 30

text: September 30 – Sir John Baird, 2nd Baronet, British politician (b. 1686)


date: November 16

text: November 16 – James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, exiled Irish statesman and soldier (b. 1665)


date: December 8

text: December 8 – Étienne Fourmont, French orientalist (b. 1683)


date: December 19

text: December 19 – Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (b. 1684)


date: December 23

text: December 23 – Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bohemian composer (b. 1679)


text: Gabriel Johnston, British Governor of the Province of North Carolina, moves to New Bern, the province's largest. New Bern replaces Edenton as the capital of North Carolina until Raleigh is established in 1792.


date: January 8

text: January 8 – The Young Pretender Charles Edward Stuart occupies Stirling, Scotland.


date: January 17

text: January 17 – Battle of Falkirk Muir: British Government forces are defeated by Jacobite forces.


date: February 19

text: February 19 – Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, issues a proclamation offering an amnesty to participants in the Jacobite rebellion, directing them that they can avoid punishment if they turn their weapons in to their local Presbyterian church.


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Brussels, at the time part of the Austrian Netherlands, surrenders to France's Marshal Maurice de Saxe.


date: March 10

text: March 10 – Zakariya Khan Bahadur, the Mughal Empire's viceroy administering Lahore (in what is now Pakistan), orders the massacre of the city's Sikh people.


date: April 16

text: April 16 – The Battle of Culloden in Scotland, the final pitched battle fought on British soil, brings an end to the Jacobite rising of 1745.


date: May 27

text: May 27 – The three Scottish leaders of the Jacobite uprising— the Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and Lord Lovat— are imprisoned for treason in the Tower of London, where they are held by the British government until their execution. Boyd and Balmerino are beheaded in August, while Fraser is not put to death until April 1747.


date: June 16

text: June 16 – Battle of Piacenza: Austrian forces defeat French and Spanish troops.


date: August 18

text: August 18 – Two of the four rebellious Scottish lords, Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerinoch, are beheaded in the Tower of London (Lord Lovat is executed in 1747).


date: October 11

text: October 11 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Rocoux: The French army defeats the allied Austrian, British, Hanoveran and Dutch army in Rocourt.


date: November 4

text: November 4 – Anwaruddin Khan, the Nawab of the Arcot State in South India, is driven back by the Captain Louis Paradis of the French Army after he and 10,000 soldiers attempt to drive the French back out of Madras.


date: December 5

text: December 5 – Rallied by a teenage boy, Giovanni Battista Perasso (nicknamed Balilla"), the citizens of the Republic of Genoa rise up against the Austrian occupying troops and the collaborator Military Governor, the Genoese Marquis of Botta d'Adorno. By December 11, the Austrian soldiers are driven from the Italian city-state, but return a few months later.


date: June 18

text: June 18 – Samuel Johnson is contracted to write his A Dictionary of the English Language.


date: June 29

text: June 29 – Catherine of Ricci (b. 1522) is canonized.


date: July 3

text: July 3 – Father Joachim Royo, the last of the five Spanish Catholic missionaries to Fuzhou in China, is captured by Chinese authorities, after having spent three decades defying orders to not evangelize.


text: The town of Vilkovo (Odes'ka oblast', Ukraine) is founded.


text: Eva Ekeblad reports her discovery, of how to make flour and alcohol from potatoes, to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.


date: August 1

text: August 1 – The wearing of the kilt is banned in Scotland by the Dress Act, which comes into force one year later, on August 1, 1747.


date: October 28

text: October 28 – An earthquake demolishes Lima and Callao, in Peru.


date: February 1

text: February 1 – Jagat Singh II, the ruler of the Mewar Kingdom, inaugurates his Lake Palace on the island of Jag Niwas in Lake Pichola, in what is now the state of Rajasthan in northwest India.


date: September 20

text: September 20 – Bonnie Prince Charlie flees to the Isle of Skye from Arisaig, after the unsuccessful Jacobite rising of 1745, marked by the Prince's Cairn on the banks of Loch nan Uamh.


date: October 22

text: October 22 – The College of New Jersey is founded in Princetown, New Jersey. In 1896, it is renamed Princeton University.


text: Charles Batteux's Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe is published in Paris, putting forward for the first time the idea of "les beaux arts": "the fine arts".


date: January 4

text: January 4 – Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father of the United States (d. 1813)


date: January 12

text: January 12 – Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss pedagogue (d. 1827)


date: February 4

text: February 4 – Tadeusz Kościuszko, Polish general and nationalist (d. 1817)


date: February 25

text: February 25 – Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, American politician and soldier (d. 1825)


date: March 3

text: March 3 – Izabela Czartoryska, Polish magnate princess (d. 1835)


date: March 7

text: March 7 – André Michaux, French botanist (d. 1802)


date: March 30

text: March 30 – Francisco Goya, Spanish painter (d. 1828)


date: April 4

text: April 4 – John Andrews, American clergyman, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania (d. 1813)


date: May 9

text: May 9 – Gaspard Monge, French mathematician and geometer (d. 1818)


text: July 3 – Henry Grattan, Irish politician (d. 1820)


date: July 16

text: July 16 – Giuseppe Piazzi, Italian astronomer (d. 1826)


date: July 23

text: July 23 – Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish military leader, aids the United States in its quest for independence in the American Revolutionary War (d. 1786)


date: September 28

text: September 28 – Sir William Jones, English philologist (d. 1794)


date: November 27

text: November 27 – Robert R. Livingston, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (d. 1813)


date: February 26

text: February 26 – Thomas Watson, 3rd Earl of Rockingham, British politician (b. 1715)


date: March 18

text: March 18 – Grand Duchess Anna Leopoldovna of Russia, regent of Russia (b. 1718)


date: March 20

text: March 20 – Nicolas de Largillière, French painter (b. 1656)


date: April 29

text: April 29 – William Flower, 1st Baron Castle Durrow, Irish politician (b. 1685)


date: May 13

text: May 13 – James Drummond, 3rd Duke of Perth, British noble (b. 1713)


date: May 22

text: May 22 – Thomas Southerne, Irish playwright (b. 1660)


date: June 14

text: June 14 – Colin Maclaurin, Scottish mathematician (b. 1698)


date: July 28

text: July 28 – John Peter Zenger, American printer, whose court case advanced freedom of the press in the American colonies (b. 1697)


date: July 30

text: July 30 – Francesco Trevisani, Italian painter (b. 1656)


date: August 6

text: August 6 – Christian VI, King of Denmark and Norway (b. 1699)


date: August 8

text: August 8 – Francis Hutcheson, Irish philosopher (b. 1694)


date: October 2

text: October 2 – Josiah Burchett, English Secretary of the Admiralty (b. c. 1666)


date: November 14

text: November 14 – Georg Steller, German naturalist (b. 1709)


date: December 8

text: December 8 – Charles Radclyffe, British politician and rebel, by beheading after being convicted of treason against the Crown (b. 1693)


date: June 9

text: June 9 – Emperor Momozono ascends to the throne of Japan, succeeding Emperor Sakuramachi.


date: July 23

text: July 23 – Ahmad Shah Durrani establishes the Durrani Empire after being elected by Pashtun chieftains in a jirga at Naderabad, laying the foundation for modern Afghanistan.


date: August 15

text: August 15 – Great Britain, Russia and the Dutch Republic sign the Convention of Saint Petersburg (1747).


date: December 27

text: December 27 – The Parliament of Great Britain amends its Naturalisation Act 1740 to extend recognition to all non-Anglican Protestant denominations in its colonies.


date: February 11

text: February 11 – King George's War: A combined French and Indian force, commanded by Captain Nicolas Antoine II Coulon de Villiers, attacks and defeats British troops at Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia.


date: March 7

text: March 7 – Juan de Arechederra the Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines, combines his forces with those of Sultan Azim ud-Din I of Sulu to suppress the rebellion of the Moros in the Visayas.


date: April 9

text: April 9 – The Scottish Jacobite Lord Lovat is beheaded at Tower Hill, London, for high treason. He was the last person in Britain to be beheaded, although beheading would not be formally abolished until more than 200 years later.


date: May 14

text: May 14 – War of the Austrian Succession – First battle of Cape Finisterre: The British Navy defeats a French fleet.


date: July 2

text: July 2 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Lauffeld: France defeats the combined armies of Hanover, Great Britain and the Netherlands.


date: September 13

text: September 13 – The Netherlands city of Bergen op Zoom falls to the Army of France after a 70 day siege during the War of the Austrian Succession.


date: October 25

text: October 25 – War of the Austrian Succession – Second battle of Cape Finisterre: The British Navy again defeats a French fleet.


date: November 17

text: November 17–19 – The Knowles Riot breaks out in Boston, Massachusetts, protesting impressment into the British Royal Navy.


date: November 22

text: November 22 – End of Second Stadtholderless period: Prince William IV of Orange becomes stadtholder of all the United Provinces.


text: War of the Austrian Succession: Spanish troops invade and occupy the coastal towns of Beaufort and Brunswick in the Royal Colony of North Carolina, during what becomes known as the Spanish Alarm. They are later driven out by the local militia.


date: June 24

text: June 24–October 14 – The English ships Dobbs galley and California, under Captains William Moore and Francis Smith, explore Hudson Bay, discovering there is no Northwest Passage by this route.


date: August 24

text: August 24 – Seyyid Abdullah Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Cyprus, becomes the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and serves until 1750.


date: December 7

text: December 7 – Benjamin Franklin forms the Pennsylvania Associators, the first militia in the colony of Pennsylvania, which had no standing militia because of its foundation by pacifistic Quakers.


text: Samuel Johnson begins work on A Dictionary of the English Language in London.


date: January 31

text: January 31 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.


text: James Lind's experiment begins to prove that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.


date: March 19

text: March 19 – Simon Fraser, the 79-year old Scottish Lord Lovat, is convicted of high treason for being one of the leaders of the Jacobite rising of 1745 against King George II of Great Britain and attempting to place the pretender Charles Edward Stuart on the throne.


date: September 21

text: September 21 – A hurricane in the Caribbean Sea sinks 11 British ships, most of them off the coast of Saint Kitts.


date: October 24

text: October 24 – A Caribbean Sea hurricane sweeps across Saint Kitts, sinking 12 British freighters and one from France.


date: December 13

text: December 13 – The ordeal of the Maryland freighter sloop Endeavour begins when the ship departs Annapolis for the West Indies and encounters a hurricane. With its masts and rigging torn away, the ship drifts for six months before finally ending up at the island of Tiree off the coast of Scotland


date: November 9

text: November 9 – Rioters in Amsterdam demand governmental reform.


date: January 10

text: January 10 – Abraham-Louis Breguet, Swiss horologist, inventor (d. 1823)


date: January 15

text: January 15 – John Aikin, English doctor and writer (d. 1822)


date: January 19

text: January 19 – Johann Elert Bode, German astronomer (d. 1826)


date: February 21

text: February 21 – Eugenio Espejo, Ecuadorian scientist (d. 1795)


date: February 28

text: February 28 – Justin Morgan, American horse breeder and composer (d. 1798)


date: May 7

text: May 7 – Judith van Dorth, Dutch Orangist (d. 1799)


date: June 23

text: June 23 – Michele Troja, Italian physician (d. 1827)


date: July 2

text: July 2 – Rose Bertin, French fashion designer (d. 1813)


date: July 6

text: July 6 – John Paul Jones, American naval captain (d. 1792)


date: September 9

text: September 9 – Thomas Coke, first American Methodist Bishop (d. 1814)


date: September 12

text: September 12 – Caleb Brewster, Patriot spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1827)


date: October 8

text: October 8 – Jean-François Rewbell, French politician (d. 1807)


date: December 12

text: December 12 – Anna Seward, English writer (d. 1809)


date: December 31

text: December 31 – Gottfried August Bürger, German poet (d. 1794)


date: January 26

text: January 26 – Willem van Mieris, Dutch painter (b. 1662)


date: March 14

text: March 14 – Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, German aristocrat and general (b. 1661)


date: March 16

text: March 16 – Christian Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst, father of Catherine the Great (b. 1690)


date: April 3

text: April 3 – Francesco Solimena, Italian painter (b. 1657)


date: April 7

text: April 7 – Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Prussian field marshal (b. 1676)


date: April 9

text: April 9 – Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, Scottish clan chief (b. c. 1667)


date: May 9

text: May 9 – John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair, Scottish soldier and diplomat (b. 1673)


date: May 28

text: May 28 – Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, French writer (b. 1715)


date: June 17

text: June 17 – Avdotya Chernysheva, Russian noble, lady in waiting (b. 1693)


date: October 4

text: October 4 – Amaro Pargo, Spanish corsair (b. 1678)


date: October 9

text: October 9 – David Brainerd, American missionary (b. 1718)


date: October 10

text: October 10 – John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. c. 1674)


date: October 21

text: October 21 – King George II transfers Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York, to become the new Archbishop of Canterbury, three days after the death of John Potter


date: November 17

text: November 17 – Alain-René Lesage, French writer (b. 1668)


date: April 24

text: April 24 – A congress assembles at Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen), with the intent to conclude the War of the Austrian Succession. The treaty is signed on October 18.


date: June 1

text: June 1 – José de Escandón is designated by the Viceroy of New Spain as the first Royal Governor of Nuevo Santander. The area covered by the Viceroyalty's new province is now part of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and the part of the U.S. state of Texas south of the Guadalupe River (including San Antonio and Corpus Christi).


date: October 18

text: October 18 – War of the Austrian Succession: The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle is signed to end the war. Great Britain obtains Madras, in India, from France, in exchange for the fortress of Louisbourg in Canada.


date: December 4

text: December 4 – Austria and Spain sign a second treaty to settle the War of the Austrian Succession, and Austria agrees to remove its troops from Modena and Genoa.


text: Louis XV breaks his promise to eliminate the income tax, after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the war. The Parlement of Paris protests, so he reduces the tax to 5%.


date: January 12

text: January 12 – Ahmad Shah Durrani captures Lahore.


date: January 27

text: January 27 – A fire at the prison and barracks at Kinsale, in Ireland, kills 54 of the prisoners of war housed there. An estimated 500 prisoners are safely conducted to another prison.


date: March 11

text: March 11 – In battle near Manupur (15 km mi northwest of Sirhind), Mughal forces under Prince Ahmad Shah Bahadur are victorious against Ahmad Shah Durrani.


date: April 15

text: April 15 – The Siege of the Dutch fortress of Maastricht is started by the French under the command of Maurice de Saxe as part of the War of the Austrian Succession. The fortress falls on May 7 after a little more than three weeks.


date: May 10

text: May 10 – As word arrives that the Dutch Republic has agreed to return control of Maastricht to France, the French Army's leader of the siege, Count Löwendal, marches through the opened city gates with his troops and accepts its surrender.


date: October 12

text: October 12 – War of Jenkins' Ear – Battle of Havana: a British Caribbean squadron engages a Spanish squadron based near Havana.


date: February 7

text: February 7 – The San Gabriel mission project begins with the founding of the first Roman Catholic missions further northward in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in what is now central Texas. On orders of the Viceroy, Juan Francisco de Güemes, Friar Mariano Marti establish the San Francisco Xavier mission at a location on the San Gabriel River in what is now Milam County. The mission, located northeast of the future site of Austin, Texas, is attacked by 60 Apache Indians on May 2, and San Xavier is abandoned after a few years.


date: July 29

text: July 29 – Royal Navy Admiral Edward Boscawen arrives at the coast of southeastern India with 28 ships, to defend Fort St. David from attacks by armies of French India. Historian Francis Grose later writes that Boscawen had brought the largest fleet "ever seen together in the East Indies", with nine ships of the line, two frigates, a sloop, and two tenders" and 14 ships of the British East India Company. Altogether, Boscawen has 3,580 sailors under his command. He then launches an offensive to destroy the French fort at Pondicherry and drive France from the subcontinent.


date: August 26

text: August 26 – The first Lutheran Church body in America is founded at a conference in Philadelphia, organized by German-born evangelist Henry Muhlenberg and attended by pastors of orthodox and pious Lutheran communities. The two groups agree to create a common liturgy to govern public worship.


date: November 22

text: November 22 – The Electorate of Hanover (now occupied by most of the northwestern German state of Niedersachsen or Lower Saxony) issues a decree banishing all adherents of the Moravian Church.


text: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock publishes the first three cantos of his epic poem Der Messias in hexameters (anonymously), in Bremer Beiträge (Leipzig).


text: Construction of the Sveaborg fortification begins near Helsinki.


text: Adam Smith begins to deliver public lectures in Edinburgh.


date: August

text: August – The Camberwell beauty butterfly is named after specimens found at Camberwell in London.


text: Montesquieu publishes De l'esprit des lois.


text: Leonhard Euler publishes Introductio in analysin infinitorum, an introduction to pure analytical mathematics, in Berlin.


text: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences makes Eva Ekeblad its first female member.


text: The ruins of Pompeii are rediscovered.


date: March 25

text: March 25 – A fire in the City of London starts at Change Alley in Cornhill and continues for two days. Dr. Samuel Johnson later writes, "The conflagration of a city, with all its turmoil and concominant distress, is one of the most dreadful spectacles which this world can afford to human eyes". Another history notes more than a century later that "the fire led to a great increase in the practice of fire insurance", after the blaze causes more than £1,000,000 worth of damage.


text: June 1 – A fire in Moscow kills 482 people and destroys 5,000 buildings.


date: September 24

text: September 24 – Shah Rukh becomes ruler of Greater Khorasan.


date: February 2

text: February 2 – Adam Weishaupt, German founder of the Order of the Illuminati (d. 1811)


date: February 15

text: February 15 – Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher (d. 1832)


date: February 22

text: February 22 – Timothy Dexter, American businessman (d. 1806)


date: March 5

text: March 5 – William Shield, English violinist, composer (d. 1829)


date: March 10

text: March 10 – John Playfair, Scottish scientist (d. 1819)


date: April 12

text: April 12 – Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist (d. 1836)


date: April 13

text: April 13 – Joseph Bramah, English inventor, locksmith (d. 1814)


date: April 27

text: April 27 – Adamantios Korais, Greek scholar (d. 1833)


date: May 3

text: May 3 – Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, French cleric, constitutional theorist (d. 1836)


date: May 7

text: May 7 – Olympe de Gouges, French playwright (d. 1793)


date: June 30

text: June 30 – Jacques Dominique, comte de Cassini, French astronomer (d. 1845)


date: August 30

text: August 30 – Jacques-Louis David, French painter (d. 1825)


date: October 7

text: October 7 – King Charles XIII of Sweden (Charles II of Norway) (d. 1818)


date: December 9

text: December 9 – Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist (d. 1822)


date: January 1

text: January 1 – Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (b. 1667)


date: February 18

text: February 18 – Otto Ferdinand von Abensberg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (b. 1677)


date: March 7

text: March 7 – Élisabeth Thérèse de Lorraine, French noblewoman, Princess of Epinoy by marriage (b. 1664)


date: March 14

text: March 14 – George Wade, British military leader (b. 1673)


date: March 23

text: March 23 – Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist and composer (b. 1684)


date: April 8

text: April 8 – Empress Xiaoxianchun of Qing dynasty (b. 1712)


text: April 12 – William Kent, English architect (b. c. 1685)


date: May 17

text: May 17 – Henri, Duke of Elbeuf, member of the House of Lorraine (b. 1661)


date: June 16

text: June 16 – Jean Philippe d'Orléans, illegitimate son of future French regent Philippe d'Orleans (b. 1702)


date: August 27

text: August 27 – James Thomson, Scottish poet (b. 1700)


date: September 10

text: September 10 – Mother Ignacia del Espíritu Santo, Filipino founder of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary (b. 1663)


date: September 12

text: September 12 – Anne Bracegirdle, English actress (b. c. 1671)


date: November 25

text: November 25 – Isaac Watts, English hymn writer (b. 1674)


date: December 2

text: December 2 – Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, English politician (b. 1662)


date: January 3

text: January 3 – Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont.


date: May 19

text: May 19 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company 200000 acre (312½ square miles or 810 km 2 ) of land north of the Ohio River, encompassing most of the modern U.S. state of Ohio and part of West Virginia. The grant is conditioned on the Company being able to attract 100 European families every year, for seven years, to move to the area occupied by Indian tribes, and to build a fort to protect them


date: August 2

text: August 2 – Irish-born trader George Croghan, unaware of the recent British grant of land in the Ohio River valley to the Ohio Company, purchases 200,000 acres of much of the same land from the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, dealing directly with "the three most important Iroquois chiefs resident in that area, in return for an immense quantity of Indian goods." The deal takes place at the Iroquois capital of Onondaga, near present-day Syracuse, New York.


date: September 5

text: September 5 – A delegation of 33 members of the Catawba Indian nation and 73 from the Cherokee nation arrive in Charleston, South Carolina, to discuss a peace treaty with South Carolina's provincial governor, James Glen.


date: October 16

text: October 16 – At Falmouth, a part of the British Province of Massachusetts Bay that would later be the site of Portland, Maine, a peace treaty is signed between representatives of Massachusetts Bay and 19 sagamores and tribal chiefs of the Wabanaki Confederacy (encompassing the Penobscot, Kennebec, Odanak and Wôlinak tribes of the Abenaki Indians), temporarily settling territorial disputes in Maine during King George's War.


text: The land reform of the Great Partition begins in Sweden, and continues until the 19th century.


date: March 6

text: March 6 – A "corpse riot" breaks out in Glasgow after a body disappears from a churchyard in the Gorbals district. Suspicion falls on anatomy students at the Glasgow Infirmary "had raised a dead body from the grave and carried it to the college" for dissection. The city guard intervenes after a mob of protesters begins breaking windows at random buildings, but groups of citizens begin to make regular patrols of church graveyards


date: June 6

text: June 6 – The Conspiracy of the Slaves, which was to have taken place on June 29, is revealed in Malta.


date: August 3

text: August 3 – The Battle of Ambur is fought in south India as the Second Carnatic War begins between the French-supported troops of Chanda Sahib of the Mughal Empire and the British-supported defenders of the Arcot State, led by its 77-year old Nawab, Anwaruddin Khan. After marching outside of the walls of Arcot to confront Chanda Sahib and Joseph Dupleix's 4,000 troops, Anwaruddin Khan's numerically superior force is routed and he is killed in the battle.


date: September 23

text: September 23 – Grand Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope, of the Miꞌkmaq Indian nation in Canada, declares war against the British Empire after the building of the fort at Halifax, Nova Scotia and begins hostilities by taking 20 British hostages at Canso.


date: November 9

text: November 9 – Battle of Penfui on Timor: A large Topass army is defeated by a numerically inferior Dutch East India Company.


date: December 30

text: December 30 – Mir Sayyid Muhammad, a grandson of the Shah Suleiman I of Persia, overthrows Shahrokh Shah to become the Shah of Persia, and briefly restores the Safavid dynasty as Suleiman II; his reign ends less than three months later, on March 20, when Kurdish tribesmen restore Shahrokh to the throne.


date: July 9

text: July 9 – The British naval fort at Halifax is founded on mainland Nova Scotia as a defense against the New France Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, less than 100 mi away.


text: August 3 – French explorer Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville, commissioned by New France to explore the Ohio Territory claimed by both France and Britain, buries the first of six engraved lead markers claiming the land for King Louis XV. The first plate is buried on the banks of the Allegheny River, near a rock with petroglyphs, in what is now Venango County, Pennsylvania.


date: August 15

text: August 15 – Four Russian sailors— Aleksei Inkov, Khrisanf Inkov, Stepan Sharapov and Fedor Verigin— are rescued after having been marooned on the Arctic Ocean island of Edgeøya for more than six years. They are the only survivors of a crew of 14 whose koch had been blown off course in May 1743 and then broken up by ice. The four are returned home on September 28.


date: August 19

text: August 19 – At a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas (then a part of the New Spain province of Nuevo Santander), four Apache chiefs and Spanish colonial officials and missionaries literally "bury the hatchet", placing weapons of war into a pit and covering it as a symbol that the Apaches and the Spaniards will fight no further war against each other.


date: October 19

text: October 19 – Two months after Pierre Céloron begins his inspection of the Ohio territory on behalf of France, Christopher Gist starts his survey of the lands along the right bank of the Ohio River on behalf of the British grant to the Ohio Company.


date: December 7

text: December 7 – Father Junípero Serra begins his missionary work in the New World, 100 days after departing on a voyage from Spain and a day after his arrival at Veracruz in Mexico. During the period from 1769 to 1782, Serra will be the founder of nine missions in the Province of Las Californias, including the sites around which future California cities will be built, including Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá in 1769 and Mission San Francisco de Asís in 1776.


date: October 4

text: October 4 – What is later described as "the least examined yet most influential" of clerical reforms, by the Spanish Bourbon monarchs of the 18th century, begins when King Ferdinand VI approves a royal cédula, removing control of the Roman Catholic parishes of Latin America from religious orders. Henceforward, jurisdiction over parishioners in the archdioceses of Lima, Mexico City and Bogotá is with the secular clergy.


date: December 1

text: December 1 – Sultan Azim ud-Din I, recently forced to flee to Manila after being driven from the throne of Sultanate of Sulu elsewhere in the Philippine Islands, announces his intention to convert from Sunni Islam to become baptized as a Christian within the Roman Catholic Church. He changes his name to Fernando after being baptized.


text: A census is conducted in Finland.


date: April 27

text: April 27 – The first official performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks in London finishes early, due to the outbreak of fire. The piece had been composed by Handel to commemorate the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748.


date: November 24

text: November 24 – The Province of South Carolina House of Assembly votes to free African-American slave Caesar Norman, and to grant him a lifetime pension of 100 British pounds per year, in return for Caesar's agreement to share the secret of his antidote for poisonous snake venom. Caesar then makes public his herbal cure of juice from Plantago major (the common plantain) and Marrubium vulgare (horehound), combined with "a leaf of good tobacco moistened with rum".


date: October 2

text: October 2 – Edward Cornwallis, the British Governor of Nova Scotia, commands his militia and local citizens "to annoy, distress, take or destroy the Savage commonly called Micmac, wherever they are found" and promises a reward of ten guineas (21 British shillings) for every Mi'kmaq scalp brought in.


date: April 14

text: April 14 – British Royal Navy ship HMS Namur is wrecked in a storm near Fort St. David, India, with the loss of 520 lives.


date: June 4

text: June 4 – A fire in Glasgow leaves 200 families homeless.


date: January 3

text: January 3 – The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.


date: January 21

text: January 21 – The Teatro Filarmonico, the main opera theater in Verona, Italy, is destroyed by fire. It is rebuilt in 1754.


date: February 28

text: February 28 – Henry Fielding's comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is published in London. Also this year, Fielding becomes magistrate at Bow Street, and first enlists the help of the Bow Street Runners, an early police force (eight men at first).


date: February

text: February – The second part of John Cleland's erotic novel Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) is published in London. The author is released from debtors' prison in March.


date: March 17

text: March 17 – At London's Covent Garden, composer George Frideric Handel conducts the first performance of his new oratorio, Solomon. More than 250 years later, an instrumental from Solomon, "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba"; will be featured in the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening ceremony.


date: August 7

text: August 7 – Mary Musgrove Bosomworth, a woman of mixed British and Creek Indian ancestry, presents herself as Coosaponakeesa, Queen of the Creek Indians and marches with 200 Creek Indians into the town of Savannah, Georgia. During her confrontation with British colonial authorities, she and her husband Thomas Bosomworth demand payment of "nearly twenty-five thousand dollars" in compensation for property taken from the Creek Indians, before the British authorities determine that she doesn't have the authority to speak for the tribe.


date: September 12

text: September 12 – The first recorded game of baseball is played, by Frederick, Prince of Wales, at Kingston upon Thames in England.


date: November 12

text: November 12 – In response to the increasing number of starving people moving into Paris from rural parts of France, King Louis XV issues an ordinance that "all the beggars and vagabonds who shall be found either in the streets of Paris, or in churches or church doorways, or in the countryside around Paris, of whatever age or sex, shall be arrested and conducted into prisons, to stay there as long as shall be necessary."


date: December 5

text: December 5 – French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau premieres his new opera, Zoroastre, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris, but the first version is not a success. After five years of rewriting, Rameau will revive Zoroastre on January 19, 1756 and the opera will continue to be performed more than two centuries later.


date: January 16

text: January 16 – Vittorio Alfieri, Italian dramatist (d. 1803)


date: January 24

text: January 24 – Charles James Fox, English politician (d. 1806)


date: January 29

text: January 29 – King Christian VII of Denmark (d. 1808)


date: March 9

text: March 9 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, French politician (d. 1791)


date: March 10

text: March 10 – Lorenzo Da Ponte, Italian librettist (d. 1838)


date: March 23

text: March 23 – Ulla von Höpken, Swedish courtier, influential socialite (d. 1810)


text: March 23 – Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician, astronomer (d. 1827)


date: April 11

text: April 11 – Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, French portrait painter (d. 1803)


date: July 16

text: July 16 – Cyrus Griffin, last American President of the Continental Congress (d. 1810)


date: August 24

text: August 24 – Madame Mère (Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte) mother of Napoleon I (d. 1836)


date: October 25

text: October 25 – Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, Swedish ambassador (d. 1802)


date: November 3

text: November 3 – Daniel Rutherford, Scottish physician, chemist and botanist (d. 1819)


date: December 17

text: December 17 – Domenico Cimarosa, Italian composer (d. 1801)


date: December 25

text: December 25 – Samuel Jackson Pratt (known as Courtney Melmoth), English writer, poet and actor (d. 1814)


date: February 1

text: February 1 – Françoise Marie de Bourbon, youngest daughter of Louis XIV (b. 1677)


date: February 8

text: February 8 – Jan van Huysum, Dutch painter (b. 1682)


date: February 11

text: February 11 – Philip Livingston, American politician (b. 1686)


date: April 14

text: April 14 – Balthasar Denner, German artist (b. 1685)


date: May 11

text: May 11 – Catharine Trotter Cockburn, English novelist, dramatist, and philosopher (b. 1674)


date: July 12

text: July 12 – George Carpenter, 2nd Baron Carpenter of England (b. 1702)


text: July 12 – Charles de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor of New France (b. c.1671)


date: August 29

text: August 29 – Matthias Bel, Hungarian pastor, polymath (b. 1684)


date: September 10

text: September 10 – Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician, physicist (b. 1706)


date: September 14

text: September 14 – Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, English soldier, politician (b. 1675)


date: September 28

text: September 28 – Three Russian survivors of the shipwreck on Edgeøya return to their homeland after more than six years, as the ship Nikolai i Andrei brings them to the port of Arkhangelsk. A fourth survivor, Fedor Veriginare, died of scurvy during the six-week voyage home.


date: December 5

text: December 5 – Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, French-Canadian explorer and trader (b. 1685)


date: December 19

text: December 19 – Francesco Antonio Bonporti, Italian priest and composer (b. 1672)


text: December 25 – John Lindsay, 20th Earl of Crawford, British Army general (b. 1702)


text: Confucian scholars try to ensure their capacity in the royal court of China. They are massacred by the eunuchs.

source_section: Events › By place › Asia


text: Avidius Cassius fails in seeking support for his rebellion and is assassinated by Roman officers. They sent his head to Aurelius, who persuades the Senate to pardon Cassius's family.

source_section: Events › By place › Roman Empire


text: Marcus Aurelius suppresses a revolt of Avidius Cassius, governor of Syria, after the latter proclaims himself emperor.


text: The end of the Bucolic War in Egypt.

source_section: Events › By place › Egypt


text: M. Sattonius Iucundus, decurio in Colonia Ulpia Traiana, restores the Thermae of Coriovallum (modern Heerlen). There are sources that state this happened in the 3rd century.


text: Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius and his wife Faustina, is named Caesar.


text: Zhou Yu, Chinese general, strategist (d. 210)


text: Ammonius Saccas, Egyptian philosopher (d. 242)


text: Yang Xiu, Chinese official, adviser (d. 219)


text: Sun Ce, Chinese general, warlord (d. 200)


text: Pope Pontian (approximate date) of the Catholic Church (d. 235)


date: January 14

text: January 14 – Pontianus of Spoleto, Christian martyr (b. 156)


text: Concordius of Spoleto, Christian martyr (approximate date)


text: Avidius Cassius, Roman general, usurper (b. AD 130)


text: Vettius Valens, Greek astrologer, writer (b. AD 120)


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


date: January 13

text: January 13 – The Treaty of Madrid between Spain and Portugal authorizes a larger Brazil than had the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, which originally established the boundaries of the Portuguese and Spanish territories in South America.


text: April 14 – A group of enslaved West African, bound for the Americas, successfully overpowers the crew of the British slaver ship Snow Ann, imprisons the survivors, and then navigates the vessel back to Cape Lopez in Gabon. Upon regaining their freedom, the rebels leave the survivors on the Gabonese coast.


date: June 24

text: June 24 – Parliament passes Britain's Iron Act, designed to restrict American manufactured goods by prohibiting additional ironworking businesses from producing finished goods. At the same time, import taxes on raw iron from America are lifted in order to give British manufacturers additional material for production. By 1775, the North American colonies have surpassed England and Wales in iron production and have become the world's third largest producer of iron.


date: July 31

text: July 31 – José I takes over the throne of Portugal from his deceased father, João V. King José Manuel appoints the Marquis of Pombal as his Chief Minister, who then strips the Inquisition of its power.


date: August 8

text: August 8 – In advance of the Province of Georgia changing in status from a corporate-owned American settlement to a British colony, Royal Assent is given to an act that lifts the province's ban on slavery; effective January 1, "it shall and may be lawful to import or bring Black Slaves or Negroes in to the Province of Georgia of America and to keep and to use the same therein".


date: October 5

text: October 5 – Treaty of Madrid: Spain and Great Britain sign a treaty temporarily eliminating their hostility over their colonies in North and South America. In addition to both sides dropping their claims for damages against each other, Spain agrees to pay the South Sea Company £100,000 for damage claims.


date: December 25

text: December 25 – Prussia and Russia break off diplomatic relations after the Russians refuse to stop assisting the Electorate of Saxony. Five years later, the two Empires fight the Seven Years' War.


text: Galley slavery is abolished in Europe.


date: April 7

text: April 7 – Maveeran Alagumuthu Kone, a polygar in Tamil Nadu, raises slogans and launches a rebellion against Company rule in India due to his opposition to the East India Company's tax collection policies.


date: April 25

text: April 25 – The Acadian settlement in Beaubassin, Nova Scotia, is burnt by the French army, and the population is forcibly relocated, after France and Great Britain agree that the Missaguash River should be the new boundary between peninsular British Nova Scotia and the mainland remnant of French Acadia (now New Brunswick).


date: June 29

text: June 29 – An attempt in Lima to begin a native uprising against Spanish colonial authorities in the Viceroyalty of Peru is discovered and thwarted. One of the conspirators, Francisco Garcia Jimenez, escapes to Huarochirí and kills dozens of Spaniards on July 25.


date: September 30

text: September 30 – Crispus Attucks, an enslaved African-American who will later become the first person killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770, escapes from the Framingham, Massachusetts estate of slaveowner William Brown. In an unsuccessful attempt to recapture the fugitive, Brown runs an advertisement on October 2 in the Boston Gazette, but Attucks eludes recapture.


date: December 29

text: December 29 – Two physicians in Jamaica, Dr. John Williams and Dr. Parker Bennet, fight a duel "with swords and pistols" after having had an argument the day before about the treatment of bilious fever. Both are mortally wounded during the fight.


date: February 15

text: February 15 – After Spain and Portugal agree that the Uruguay River will be the boundary line between the two kingdoms' territory in South America, the Spanish Governor orders the Jesuits to vacate seven Indian missions along the river (San Angel, San Nicolas, San Luis, San Lorenzo, San Miguel, San Juan and San Borja).


date: April 13

text: April 13 – Dr. Thomas Walker and five other men (Ambrose Powell, Colby Chew, William Tomlinson, Henry Lawless and John Hughes) cross through the Cumberland Gap, a mountain pass through the Appalachian Mountains, to become the first white people to venture into territories that had been inhabited exclusively by various Native American tribes. On April 17, Walker's party continues through what is now Kentucky and locates the Cumberland River, which Walker names in honor of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland.


date: July 9

text: July 9 – Traveller Jonas Hanway leaves St. Petersburg to return home, via Germany and the Netherlands. Later the same year, Hanway reputedly becomes the first Englishman to use an umbrella (a French fashion).


text: The King of Dahomey has income of 250,000 pounds from the overseas export of enslaved people.


date: April 14

text: April 14 – The Viceroy of New Spain, Juan Francisco de Güemes, issues a notice to the missionaries in Nuevo Santander (which includes parts of what are now the U.S. state of Texas, including San Antonio, and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas) to work peacefully to convert the indigenous Karankawa people to Roman Catholicism.


date: November 18

text: November 18 – Westminster Bridge is officially opened in London.


text: Britain produces c. 2% of the entire world's output of industrial goods, before the Industrial Revolution begins.


date: March 20

text: March 20 – The first number of Samuel Johnson's The Rambler appears.


date: August 20

text: August 20 – French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, by way of the Foreign Minister, the Marquis de Puisieulx and Netherlands ambassador to Paris Mattheus Lestevenon, sends a letter that ultimately persuades the States-General of the Dutch Republic to allow and partially finance Lacaille's stellar trigonometry mission to the Cape of Good Hope. The expedition departs Lorient on October 21.


date: March 5

text: March 5 – The Murray-Kean Company, a troupe of actors from Philadelphia, gives the first performance of a play announced in advance in a newspaper, presenting Richard III at New York City's Nassau Street Theatre.


date: May 16

text: May 16 – Two weeks after police in Paris arrest six teenagers for gambling in the suburb of Saint-Laurent, rioting breaks out when a rumor spreads that plainclothes policemen are hauling off small children between the ages of five and ten years old, in order to provide blood to an ailing aristocrat. Over the next two weeks, rioting breaks out in other sections of Paris. Police are attacked, including one who is beaten to death by the mob, until order is restored and police reforms are announced.


date: November 11

text: November 11 – A riot breaks out in Lhasa after the murder of the regent of Tibet.


text: Maruyama Okyo paints The Ghost of Oyuki.


date: January 24

text: January 24 – A fire in Istanbul destroys 10,000 homes.


date: July 11

text: July 11 – Halifax, Nova Scotia is almost completely destroyed by fire.


date: June 19

text: June 19 – At a time when mountain climbing is still relatively uncommon, Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson scale their first peak, the 4892 foot high Icelandic volcano, Hekla.


date: October 14

text: October 14 – The Louvre Museum is created in Paris four years after art critic Lafond de Saint-Yenne calls on the King to allow the display of the royal art collection to the general public. Abel-François Poisson, the Marquis de Marigny, arranges for the display of 110 of the Crown's paintings at the Palais du Luxembourg.


date: December 3

text: December 3 – What is described later as "The first documented presentation of a musical in New York" takes place one block east of Broadway, at the Nassau Street Theatre, when a resident company of actors stages The Beggar's Opera.


text: Hannah Snell reveals her sex to her Royal Marines compatriots.


text: January 24 – Helen Gloag, Scottish-born enslaved Empress of Morocco (d. 1790)


date: April 17

text: April 17 – François de Neufchâteau, French statesman, intellectual figure (d. 1828)


date: April

text: April – Joanna Southcott, British religious fanatic (d. 1814)


date: May 2

text: May 2 – John André, British Army officer of the American Revolutionary War (d. 1780)


date: May 20

text: May 20 – Stephen Girard, French-American banker, fourth richest American of all time (d. 1831)


date: May 23

text: May 23 – Adamson Tannehill, American general and politician (d. 1820)


date: May 31

text: May 31 – Karl August von Hardenberg, Prussian politician (d. 1822)


date: July 9

text: July 9 – Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d'Orléans, last princess of Condé (d.1822)


date: July 25

text: July 25 – Henry Knox, military officer of the Continental Army and later the United States Army, 1st United States Secretary of War (d. 1806)


date: September 26

text: September 26 – Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood, British admiral (d. 1810)


date: October 7

text: October 7 – Abraham Woodhull, Patriot spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1826)


date: October 31

text: October 31 – Leonor de Almeida Portugal, 4th Marquise of Alorna, Portuguese painter and poet (d. 1839)


date: November 7

text: November 7 – Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg, German poet (d. 1819)


date: November 10

text: November 10 – Tipu Sultan, Sultan of Mysore (d. 1799)


date: January 23

text: January 23 – Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Italian historian and scholar (b. 1672)


date: February 7

text: February 7 – Algernon Seymour, 7th Duke of Somerset (b. 1684)


date: March 29

text: March 29 – James Jurin, British mathematician, doctor (b. 1684)


date: May 28

text: May 28 – Emperor Sakuramachi of Japan (b. 1720)


date: June 15

text: June 15 – Marguerite de Launay, baronne de Staal, French author (b. 1684)


date: July 15

text: July 15 – Vasily Tatishchev, Russian statesman, ethnographer (b. 1686)


date: July 28

text: July 28 – Conyers Middleton, English minister (b. 1683)


date: August 8

text: August 8 – Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, English aristocrat, philanthropist and cricket patron (b. 1701)


date: August 12

text: August 12 – Rachel Ruysch, Dutch painter (b. 1664)


date: October 3

text: October 3 – James MacLaine, Irish highwayman (b. 1724)


date: October 16

text: October 16 – Sylvius Leopold Weiss, German composer, lutenist (b. 1687)


date: November 1

text: November 1 – Gustaaf Willem van Imhoff, Dutch Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (b. 1705)


date: December 1

text: December 1 – Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, German mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer (b. 1671)


date: December 16

text: December 16 – Nasir Jang Mir Ahmad, son of Turkic noble Nizam-ul-Mulk (b. 1712)


date: January 1

text: January 1 – As the Province of Georgia undergoes the transition from a trustee-operated territory to a Crown colony, the prohibition against slavery is lifted by the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America. At the time, the Black population of Georgia is approximately 400 people, who had been kept in slavery in violation of the law. By 1790, the enslaved population of Georgia increases to over 29,000 and to 462,000 by 1860.


date: June 14

text: June 14 – The colony of South Carolina reverses a 10-year-old law that had imposed a tax of 100 pounds sterling on the purchase of imported African slaves, and reduces the tax to £10. The move effectively restores the slave trade to the colony.


date: October 22

text: October 22 – William V, Prince of Orange, the three-year-old son of the late William IV, becomes the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. During his minority, his mother, Princess Anne, acts as regent until her death in 1759. Upon becoming of age in 1766, he will have a corrupt reign as the Republic's head of state until the office is abolished on February 23, 1785.


date: November 29

text: November 29 – The Cherokee nation signs a treaty with British colonial authorities at the close of the two-week Charlestown Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, with Governor James Glen signing an agreement with Cherokee war chiefs led by the "Old Skiagunsta" of Keowee, the Raven of Hiwasee, Old Caesar of Chatuga and Kittagusta of Joree.


date: January 13

text: January 13 – For the first time, the American colony in Georgia has an elected legislature after having been administered by a corporate Board of Trustees since its founding in 1732. The original Georgia Assembly meets in Savannah with 16 representatives as the colony prepares to become a British colonial province. After electing Francis Harris as the Speaker of the unicameral Assembly, the delegates successfully ask the Trustees not to surrender control of Georgia to the neighboring Province of South Carolina.


date: January 18

text: January 18 – In the aftermath of the Lhasa riot of 1750, Chinese General Ban Di arrives at the capital of Tibet on behalf of the Qianlong Emperor and the seven imprisoned leaders of the rebellion are turned over to his custody by the 7th Dalai Lama, Keizang Gyatzo. General Ban Di guides the interrogation under torture of rebel leader Lobsang Trashi and, after five days orders the beheading and dismemberment of the seven rebels.


date: February 14

text: February 14 – At Lakkireddipalle in southeastern India, the new Nizam of Hyderabad, Subhadar Muzaffar Jang, leads an invasion of cavalry against the small kingdom of Kurnool and is confronted by its monarch, the Nawab Bahadur Khan. The Subhadar and the Nawab order their soldiers to stand down and then engage in hand-to-hand combat, during which the Nawab "thrust[s] a spear into the Subhadar's brain" before he is "himself hacked to pieces."


text: July 28 – Battle of Kirkhbulakh: The Kingdom of Kartli defeats a large army of the Tabriz Khanate, under Erekle II.


date: October 27

text: October 27 – The Hōreki period begins in Japan.


date: November 14

text: November 14 – The 50-day long siege of the British fort of Trichinopoly (now Tiruchirappalli) in southern India is broken when the defenders use musket fire to force a stampede of the elephants of the French-backed troops of Chanda Sahib.


date: November 17

text: November 17 – The Pima Revolt begins in the area that now includes the Mexican state of Sonora and the U.S. state of Arizona, as Pima Indian leader Luis Oacpicagigua carries out the massacre of 18 Spanish settlers at Oacpicagigua's home in Sáric. The rebellion, which takes the lives of more than 100 Spaniards, is ended on March 18 after Governor Diego Ortiz Parilla permits the rebels to surrender for imprisonment.


date: December 3

text: December 3 – Battle of Arnee in India (Second Carnatic War): A British East India Company–led force under Robert Clive defeats and routs a much larger Franco-Indian army, under the command of Raza Sahib, at Arni.


date: February 16

text: February 16 – English poet Thomas Gray first publishes Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, anonymously in The Magazine of Magazines. The poem becomes more popularly known as "Gray's Elegy".


text: 1751–1775 – 13 per cent of appointees to audiencias in the Spanish Empire are Creoles.


text: Adam Smith is appointed professor of logic.


text: Ferdinando Galiani publishes the first modern economic analysis, Della Moneta.


text: In the University of Glasgow (Scotland):


date: May 11

text: May 11 – The Pennsylvania Hospital, first hospital in the American colonies, is chartered in Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania legislature, which grants the right to Benjamin Franklin and to Dr. Thomas Bond.


text: November 17 – Future United States President George Washington becomes seriously ill with smallpox while he and his older brother Lawrence are visiting the island of Barbados during an epidemic Washington, 19 years old, survives the virus but is bedridden for almost a month.


text: The Medical School is founded.


date: February 18

text: February 18 – As the Governor of French Louisiana, Pierre de Rigaud, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, issues the first police regulations for New Orleans in an attempt to combat crime in that city.


date: July 31

text: July 31 – Fire destroys 1,000 houses in Stockholm.


date: January 7

text: January 7 – The University of Pennsylvania, conceived 12 years earlier by Benjamin Franklin and its other trustees to provide non-denominational higher education "to train young people for leadership in business, government and public service". rather than for the ministry, holds its first classes as "The Academy and Charitable School in the Province of Pennsylvania" in Philadelphia.


date: March 25

text: March 25 – For the last time, New Year's Day is legally on March 25, in England and Wales and "in all his Majesty's Dominions in Europe, Asia, Africa and America" due to the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. The months of January 1751, February 1751 and most of March 1751 did not exist in British territories: those months were recorded as the last three of 1750 according to the Old Style dating system; the equivalent months a year later were recorded as the first three of 1752 under the New Style system.


date: April 19

text: April 19 – The Qianlong Emperor of China visits the southern capital of Nanjing for the first time, bringing with him 3,000 staff and 6,690 horses and stays for four days.


date: April 29

text: April 29 – The sport of cricket is first played in the American colonies, as a team of New Yorkers plays against a team of Englishmen and defeats them, 167 to 80, in a match in Greenwich Village. Tom Melville, The Tented Field: A History of Cricket in America (Popular Press, 1998) p5


date: May 27

text: May 27 (May 13 Old Style) – Adoption of the Gregorian calendar: Royal assent is given to An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use (the "Calendar Act") passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, introducing the Gregorian Calendar, correcting the eleven-day difference between Old Style and New Style dates and making 1 January legally New Year's Day from 1752 in the British Empire. It is largely promoted by George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield.


date: June 28

text: June 28 – The first volume of Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, often referred to as le Encyclopédie, is published


date: August 13

text: August 13 – The Academy and College of Philadelphia, predecessor to the private University of Pennsylvania, opens its doors, with Benjamin Franklin as president.


date: September 13

text: September 13 – Kalvária Banská Štiavnica in the Kingdom of Hungary is completed.


date: November 26

text: November 26 – Adolf Frederick is formally crowned as the King of Sweden. The coronation ceremony takes place almost eight months after he assumed the throne.


date: December 14

text: December 14 – The Theresian Military Academy is founded in Wiener Neustadt, Austria.


text: Zand Iran is established by Karim Khan Zand.


text: Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus publishes his Philosophia Botanica, the first textbook of descriptive systematic botanical taxonomy, and the first appearance of his binomial nomenclature.


date: February 15

text: February 15 – Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, German painter (d. 1829)


date: February 20

text: February 20 – Johann Heinrich Voss, German poet (d. 1826)


date: March 1

text: March 1 – Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis of Puységur, French mesmerist (d. 1825)


date: March 16

text: March 16 – James Madison, fourth President of the United States (d. 1836)


date: April 5

text: April 5 – Marie-Aimée Lullin, Swiss entomologist (d. 1822)


date: May 7

text: May 7 – Stephen Badlam, American artisan and military officer (d. 1815)


date: May 24

text: May 24 – Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy, King of Sardinia (d. 1819)


date: June 4

text: June 4 – John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (d. 1838)


date: June 17

text: June 17 – Joshua Humphreys, American naval architect (d. 1838)


date: July 11

text: July 11 – Caroline Matilda, British princess, queen consort of Denmark (d. 1775)


date: July 30

text: July 30 – Maria Anna Mozart ("Nannerl"), Austrian musician and composer, sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (d. 1829)


date: September 1

text: September 1 – Emanuel Schikaneder, German dramatist, actor and singer (d. 1812)


date: September 5

text: September 5 – François Joseph Westermann, French Revolutionary leader, general (d. 1794)


date: October 30

text: October 30 – Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish dramatist, politician (d. 1816)


date: January 20

text: January 20 – John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, English politician (b. 1665)


date: February 7

text: February 7 – Albert Borgard, Danish artillery and engineer officer (b. 1659)


date: March 21

text: March 21 – Johann Heinrich Zedler, German publisher (b. 1706)


date: March 24

text: March 24 – János Pálffy, Hungarian field marshal, Palatine (b. 1664)


date: March 29

text: March 29 – Thomas Coram, English sea captain, philanthropist (b. c. 1668)


date: March 31

text: March 31 – Frederick, Prince of Wales, heir-apparent to the British throne, dies of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 44 after a game of cricket. His 12-year-old son, Prince George, becomes the heir-apparent and will later become King George III. Frederick's widow Augusta of Saxe-Gotha becomes Dowager Princess of Wales.


text: April 5 – Sweden's King Frederick I dies at the age of 74 (March 25 on the Julian calendar, which remains in effect in Sweden and Finland until 1753), after a reign of 31 years, bringing an end to the rule of Sweden by the House of Hesse because he has no legitimate heirs. Prince Adolf Frederick of the House of Holstein-Gottorp, who had been elected as the crown prince in 1743, becomes the new King.


date: April 19

text: April 19 – Peter Lacy, Irish-born Russian field marshal (b. 1678)


date: June 20

text: June 20 – Adriaan Valckenier, Dutch Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (1737–1741) (b. 1695)


date: August 30

text: August 30 – Christopher Polhem, Swedish scientist (b. 1661)


date: October 22

text: October 22 – William IV, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic (b. 1711)


date: October 26

text: October 26 – Philip Doddridge, English nonconformist religious leader (b. 1702)


date: December 12

text: December 12 – Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, English statesman, philosopher (b. 1678)


date: December 19

text: December 19 – Louise of Great Britain, queen of Frederick V of Denmark (b. 1724)


date: January 1

text: January 1 – The British Empire (except Scotland, which had changed New Year's Day to January 1 in 1600) adopts today as the first day of the year as part of adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which is completed in September: today is the first day of the New Year under the terms of last year's Calendar Act of the British Parliament.


date: February 29

text: February 29 – Alaungpaya, a village chief in Upper Burma, founds the Konbaung Dynasty; by the time of his death 8 years later, he will have unified the whole country.


date: April 6

text: April 6 – Spanish Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, a province that now comprises most of the American state of New Mexico, begins the first peace negotiations with the indigenous Comanche tribe after inviting tribal representatives to his home in Taos. As a sign of good faith, he unconditionally releases the four Comanche prisoners of war held at Taos. One of the released Comanches reports to his father, Chief Guanacante, about the hospitality extended to him during his imprisonment, and more meetings take place in July and in the autumn.


date: June 13

text: June 13 – The Treaty of Logstown is signed by representatives of the Iroquois Confederation, Lenape and Shawnee leaders, and commissioners from Virginia, headed by Joshua Fry. Christopher Gist and William Trent represent the Ohio Company. The treaty grants control over lands south and east of the Ohio River to the English, along with permission to build a fort on the site of what is now Pittsburgh.