1730s

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	17th century – 18th century – 19th century
Decades:	1700s 1710s 1720s – 1730s – 1740s 1750s 1760s
Years:	1730 1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737 1738 1739
Categories:	Births – Deaths – Architecture Establishments – Disestablishments

This is a list of events occurring in the 1730s, ordered by year.

January–June

• January 29 – Anna Ivanovna (Anna of Russia) becomes tsarina, following the death of her cousin, Tsar Peter II.
• May 15 – Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, retires from his role in the government of Great Britain, leaving Robert Walpole as sole and undisputed leader of the Cabinet (i.e., prime minister). In the new Walpole Ministry, Sir William Strickland, 4th Baronet, becomes Secretary at War, and Henry Pelham is Paymaster of the Forces. Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington briefly becomes Lord Privy Seal.
• Establishment of Wright's Ferry under the authority of the Province of Pennsylvania triggers Cresap's War – a nine year long conflict also known as the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute – the conflict mainly centered in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and York County, Pennsylvania on either banks of the Susquehanna River.

July–December

• July 8 – 1730 Valparaiso earthquake in Chile.
• July 12 – Pope Clement XII succeeds Pope Benedict XIII as the 246th pope.
• September 17 – Mahmud I (1730–1754) succeeds Ahmed III (1703–1730) as Ottoman Emperor.

Date unknown

• The Glasite sect is formed.

January–June

• March 16 – The Treaty of Vienna is signed between the Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic and Spain.
• April 2 – The town of Raynham, Massachusetts in Bristol County is entered as a new town by the governor and court of Massachusetts, New England, America.

Date unknown

• John Bevis observes the Crab Nebula for the first time.
• Royal Colony of North Carolina Governor George Burrington asks the North Carolina General Assembly to pass an act establishing a town on the Cape Fear River, in what is seen as a political move to shift the power away from the powerful Cape Fear plantation class. The town is laid out in 1733 and incorporated as Wilmington in 1740.
• English Captain Charles Gough rediscovers Gough Island in the South Atlantic.
• Laura Bassi becomes the first official female university teacher on being appointed professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna at the age of 21.
• The Royal Theatre of Mantua (Italy) is built by Ferdinando Galli Bibiena.
• Benjamin Franklin starts the Library Company of Philadelphia.

January–June

• June 9 – James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of Georgia.

July–December

• August – Mikhail Gvozdev in the Sviatoi Gavriil makes the first known crossing of the Bering Strait, from Cape Dezhnev to Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska.
• September 16 – The magnitude 5.8 Montreal earthquake occurs in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
• December 7 – The original Covent Garden Theatre Royal (now the Royal Opera House) is opened.

Date unknown

• Genoa regains Corsica.
• A total of 139 members of the Paris Parliament are exiled by order of the King, but eventually triumph over the Crown, and secure their recall in December.
• The United Secession Church is formed in Scotland.

January–June

• February 12 – British colonist James Oglethorpe founds Savannah, Georgia.
• March – Molasses Act passed by Parliament of Great Britain, which aided in the negative opinions of the British by American Colonists.
• April – Royal Colony of North Carolina Commissioners John Watson, Joshua Grainger, Michael Higgins and James Wimble plan the town of New Carthage (which would eventually become Wilmington, North Carolina on the east side of the Cape Fear River).
• May 29 – The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves is upheld at Quebec.

July–December

• July 30 – The first Freemasons lodge opens in what will become the United States of America.
• October 5 – The election of Augustus III to succeed his father as King of Poland sparks the War of the Polish Succession.

January–June

• January 8 – Salzburgers, Lutherans who were expelled by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salzburg, Austria, in October 1731, set sail for the British Colony of Georgia, in America.
• March 12 – Salzburgers arrive at the mouth of the Savannah River, in the British Colony of Georgia.
• June 17 – French troops take Philippsburg, but the Duke of Berwick is killed.
• June 21 – In Montreal, New France, a black slave known by the French name of Marie-Joseph Angélique is tortured then hanged by the French authorities for allegedly setting a fire that destroyed part of the city.
• June 30 – War of the Polish Succession: Russian troops take Gdańsk (German: Danzig), which had been besieged since February 1734. Gdańsk is captured after the failure of a French expedition to relieve the city.

July–December

• November 5 – The Dzików Confederation is created in Poland.

January–June

• January 2 – Alexander Pope's poem Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot published in London.
• January 8 – George Frideric Handel's opera Ariodante premieres at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London.
• April 13 – Emperor Sakuramachi accedes to the throne of Japan.
• April 16 – Alcina, George Frideric Handel's Italian opera, premieres at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London.
• May 22 – George Hadley publishes the first explanation of the trade winds.

July–December

• July 11 – Pluto (not known at this time) enters a fourteen year period inside the orbit of Neptune, which will not recur until 1979.
• August 14 – Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger is not acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he published was true.
• October – War of the Polish Succession: A preliminary peace, ratified in 1738, is concluded.
• October 18 – The Qianlong Emperor succeeds Yongzheng and begins a 60-year-long reign of the Qing Dynasty.

Date unknown

Carolus Linnaeus

• Linnaeus publishes his Systema Naturae.
• Russo-Turkish War, 1735-1739: Russian forces fail to occupy the Crimea due to rasputitsa.
• A shipbuilding industry begins in Mumbai.
• Leonhard Euler solves the Basel problem, first posed by Pietro Mengoli in 1644, and the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem.
• The King's Highway (Charleston to Boston) is completed.
• Quebec: Construction begins on the Chemin du roy between Quebec and Montreal.
• Augusta, Georgia, is founded.
• Cobalt is discovered and isolated by Georg Brandt.

January–June

• January 26 – Stanislaus I of Poland abdicates his throne.
• February 12 – Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor marries Maria Theresa of Austria, ruler of the Habsburg Empire.
• April – The Genbun era begins in Japan. The era of Kyōhō Reforms ends.
• March 8 – Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran.
• April 14 – The Porteous Riots erupt in Edinburgh after the execution of smuggler Andrew Wilson, when town guard Captain John Porteous orders his men to fire at the crowd. Porteous is arrested later.

May 26: Battle of Ackia.

• May 8 – Frederick, Prince of Wales, marries Augusta of Saxe-Gotha.
• May 26 – Battle of Ackia: British and Chickasaw Native Americans defeat French troops.
• June 8 – Leonhard Euler writes to James Stirling describing the Euler–Maclaurin formula, providing a connection between integrals and calculus.
• June 19 – French Academy of Sciences expedition led by Pierre Louis Maupertuis, with Anders Celsius, begins work on measuring a meridian arc in the Torne Valley of Finland.

July–December

• July – Russo-Turkish War, 1735-1739: Russian forces under Peter Lacy storm the Ottoman fortress of Azov.
• September 7 – An Edinburgh crowd drags John Porteous out of his cell in Tolbooth Prison and lynches him.
• December 7 – Ben Franklin builds the first volunteer fire company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Date unknown

Leonhard Euler.

• Real Arissona, namesake of the U.S. state Arizona, is founded in what is now that state.
• Neustrelitz becomes the capital of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
• Bushehr is founded in Persia.
• The Belgrade fortress is completed.
• George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, becomes the first Field Marshal of Great Britain.
• A fire in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg burns 2000 houses.
• Fifty-three houses in the English town of Stony Stratford are consumed by fire.
• One of the earliest records of use of a Bathing machine is made at Scarborough in England.
• Charles Marie de La Condamine, with François Fresneau Gataudière, makes the first scientific observations of rubber, in Ecuador.
• Leonhard Euler produces the first published proof of Fermat's "little theorem".
• Sir Isaac Newton's Method of Fluxions (1671), describing his method of differential calculus, is first published (posthumously) and Thomas Bayes publishes a defense of its logical foundations (anonymously).
• Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab writes the Kitab at-tawhidt, marking the beginning of Wahhabism.
• The Haidamakas raid the shtetl of Pavoloch, killing 35.

January–June

• May 28 – The planet Venus passes in front of Mercury. The event is witnessed during the evening hours by the amateur astronomer John Bevis at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. As of 2006, it is still the only such planet/planet occultation that has been directly observed.
• June 21 – In Britain the Theatrical Licensing Act requires plays to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for censorship.
• June 30 – Russo-Turkish War, 1735-1739: Russian forces under Field Marshal Munnich storm the Ottoman fortress of Ochakov and take prisoner 4,000 Turks.

July–December

• July – Austria enters the Russo-Turkish War.
• September 20 – Runner Edward Marshall completes his journey in the Walking Purchase, forcing the cession of 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km²) of Lenape-Delaware tribal land to the Pennsylvania Colony.
• October – The first national stage in Sweden opens when the play Den Svenska Sprätthöken is performed in the native language, by the first native actors, on the stage of Bollhuset in Stockholm.
• October 7 – A tropical cyclone strikes Bengal, India killing approximately 300,000.
• October 16 – An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 9.3 occurs off the shore of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Tsunamis up to 60m (200 ft) high followed in the Pacific ocean.
• November 4 – The Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, is inaugurated in Naples, Italy.

Date unknown

• Benjamin Franklin creates the Philadelphia Police Force – the first city-paid force.
• The Georg August University of Göttingen is founded.
• The direct male line of the Medici family becomes extinct with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
• Richmond, Virginia is founded.
• Our Lady of Guadalupe is designated the patron saint of Mexico City.
• The oldest existing English language newspaper in the world, The (Belfast) News Letter, is founded in Ireland.
• Lancaster County Prison, Lancaster, Pennsylvania is first constructed in response to the seven violent years preceding of the ongoing Cresap's War in the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute and war.

January–June

• February 4 – Court Jew Joseph Suss Oppenheimer is executed in Württemberg.
• April 15 – Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, premieres in London.
• May 24 – John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.

July–December

• Sept 18 – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer. Published 1785.
• November 18 – The Treaty of Vienna is ratified.

Date unknown

• Russo–Turkish War (1735–1739): The Russian army fails to cross the Dniester. They are decimated by plague.
• China's Qing government announces that all western businessmen have to use the Cohong in Guangzhou to trade.
• The excavation of Herculaneum, a Roman city buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, begins.
• Stanisław Leszczyński receives Lorraine in exchange for renouncing the Polish throne.
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis publishes Sur la figure de la terre, which 'confirms Newton's view that the earth is a spheroid slightly flattened at the poles'.
• Franz Ketterer invents the cuckoo clock.
• Jacques de Vaucanson presents the world's first automaton, The Flute Player, to the French Academy of Sciences.

January–June

• January 1 – Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
• February 24 – Battle of Karnal: The army of Iranian ruler Nader Shah defeats the forces of the Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah.
• March 20 – Nader Shah occupies Delhi in India and sacks the city, stealing the jewels of the Peacock Throne, including the Koh-i-Noor.
• June 2 – The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is founded in Stockholm.

July–December

• September 9 – The Stono Rebellion erupts near Charleston.
• September 18 – The Treaty of Belgrade brings the Russo-Turkish War (1735–1739) to an end.
• October 3 – The Treaty of Niš is signed.
• October 17 – The Foundling Hospital is created in London by royal charter.
• October 23 – War of Jenkins' Ear: Great Britain declares war on Spain.
• November 21 – The British capture the South American silver exporting town of Portobelo from the Spanish.

Date unknown

• The first Bible in Estonian is published.
• Ecuador becomes a part of New Granada.
• 84,000 farmers revolt in the province of Iwaki.

Births

• February 22, 1732-George Washington-Considered the father of the U.S..Was born in the Virginia Colony.First president of the United States from 1789-1797.Became commander-in-chief of the army in May 1775.George crossed the Potomac River.He died in 1799.