January–June

• April – The New York Slave Insurrection, a plot to set fire to New York City, is discovered.^[1]
• April 10 – An Austrian army is defeated by Prussian troops of Frederick the Great in the Battle of Mollwitz.
• May – Vitus Bering sets out from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, to map the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
• May – Spain wins an impressive victory over Great Britain in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias.
• June 25 – Maria Theresa of Austria is crowned Queen Regnant of Hungary in Bratislava.

July–December

• July 8 – Jonathan Edwards repeats his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sermon at Enfield, Connecticut.
• July 15 – Alexei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska, and sends some men aboard his ship ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.
• August 4–5 – War of Jenkins' Ear – Invasion of Cuba: British Admiral Edward Vernon captures Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, which he renames Cumberland Bay, but which his forces are forced to abandon on December 9.
• August 10 – Raja Marthanda Varma of Travancore defeats the Dutch East India Company in the Battle of Colachel, ending the Dutch colonial rule in India.

• November 25–26 – Franco-Bavarian troops commanded by Maurice of Saxony storm Prague.
• December 6 – Elizabeth of Russia becomes czarina, after a palace coup.
• December 19 – Vitus Bering dies during his expedition, east of Siberia.
• December 25 – Anders Celsius develops his own thermometer scale, Centigrade, the predecessor of the Celsius scale.

Date unknown

• Stemmatographia by Hristofor Zhefarovich, regarded as the first Serbian and Bulgarian secular printed book, is printed in Vienna.
• The population of China reaches c. 143 million.
• The Royal Order of Scotland is founded.

Births

• January 14 – Benedict Arnold, American Revolutionary War general, traitor (d. 1801)
• January 27 – Hester Thrale, Welsh diarist (d. 1821)
• February 7 – Henry Fuseli, Swiss painter and writer (d. 1825)

• March 13 – Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1790)
• March 17 – William Withering, British physician (d. 1799)
• March 20 – Jean Antoine Houdon, French sculptor (d. 1828)
• April 14 – Emperor Momozono of Japan (d. 1762)
• April 17 – Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1811)
• May 13 – Ingeborg Akeleye, Norwegian noble known for her love life (d. 1800)
• May 23 – Andrea Luchesi, Italian composer (d. 1801)
• June 11 – Joseph Warren, American Patriot, physician (d. 1775)
• September 22 – Peter Simon Pallas, German zoologist (d. 1811)
• October 4 – Edmond Malone, Irish scholar (d. 1812)
• October 18 – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French general, author (d. 1803)
• October 24 – Johann August von Starck, German pastor (d. 1816)
• November 15 – Johann Kaspar Lavater, Swiss physiognomist (d. 1801)
• Date unknown – Nikolaos Koutouzis, Greek painter, poet and priest (d. 1813)
  • Catherine Antonovna of Brunswick, German-Russian noble (d. 1807)

Deaths

• January 15 – Ramon Despuig, Spanish-born 67th Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller (b. 1670)
• February 13 – Johann Joseph Fux, Austrian composer (b. 1660)
• February 21 – Jethro Tull, British agriculturist (b. 1674)
• March 16 – Eleonora Luisa Gonzaga, Tuscan princess (b. 1686)
• March 17 – Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French poet (b. 1671)
• March 31 – Pieter Burmann the Elder, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1668)
• April 10 – Celia Fiennes, English travel writer (b. 1662)
• May 21 – Henry Dawnay, 2nd Viscount Downe, Irish peer (b. 1664)
• May 24 – Lord Augustus FitzRoy, Royal Navy officer during the (b. 1716)
• May 25 – Daniel Ernst Jablonski, German theologian (b. 1660)
• June 14 – Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg, German noble (b. 1714)
• June 18 – François Pourfour du Petit, French anatomist, ophthalmologist and surgeon (b. 1664)
• July 3 – Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine, Sardinian queen consort (b. 1711)

• July 28 – Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer (b. 1678)
• August 4 – Andrew Hamilton, American lawyer (b. 1676)
• August 31 – Johann Gottlieb Heineccius, German jurist (b. 1681)
• September 7 – Blas de Lezo, Spanish admiral (b. 1689)
• September 28 – Edward Bayly, Irish politician (b. 1684)
• November 18 – Stephen Delancey, major colonial New York figure (b. 1663)
• November 24 – Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (b.1688)
• December 14 – Charles Rollin, French historian (b. 1661)
• December 19 – Vitus Bering, Danish-born explorer (b. 1681)
• December 21 – Bernard de Montfaucon, French Benedictine monk (b. 1655)
• December 31 – Andrew Archer, English politician (b. 1659)

References