1740s

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	17th century – 18th century – 19th century
Decades:	1710s 1720s 1730s – 1740s – 1750s 1760s 1770s
Years:	1740 1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749
Categories:	Births – Deaths – Architecture Establishments – Disestablishments

This is a list of events occurring in the 1740s, ordered by year.

January–June

• February 20 – The North Carolina General Assembly incorporates the town of Newton as Wilmington, North Carolina, named for Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington, and patron of Royal Governor Gabriel Johnston.
• May 31 – Frederick II comes to power in Prussia upon the death of his father, Frederick William I.

July–December

• August 1 – The song Rule, Britannia! is first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales.
• August 17 – Pope Benedict XIV succeeds Pope Clement XII as the 247th pope.
• October 9 – The Dutch East India Company massacres 5,000–10,000 Chinese inhabitants of Batavia.
• October 20 – Maria Theresia of Austria inherits the Habsburg hereditary dominions (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and present-day Belgium). However, her succession to the Holy Roman Empire is contested widely because she is a woman.
• November – Hertford College, Oxford, is founded for the first time.
• December 16 – Frederick II of Prussia invades the Habsburg possession of Silesia, starting the War of the Austrian Succession.

Date unknown

• By an act of the Parliament of Great Britain, alien immigrants (including Huguenots and Jews) in the colonies receive British nationality.
• Enfield, North Carolina, is founded.
• Adam Smith enters Balliol College, Oxford.
• George Whitefield founds the Bethesda Orphanage.
• University of Pennsylvania is founded.
• Spain begins construction on Fort Matanzas in the Matanzas Inlet, approximately 15 miles (24 km) south of St. Augustine, Florida.
• Annual British iron production reaches 17,000 tons.

January–June

• April – The New York Slave Insurrection, a plot to set fire to New York City, is discovered.
• April 10 – The Austrian army attacks troops of Frederick the Great at Mollwitz.
• May – Vitus Bering sets out from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to map the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
• June 25 – Maria Theresa of Austria is crowned Queen Regnant of Hungary in Bratislava.

July–December

• July 15 – Alexei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends some men aboard in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.
• August 10 – Battle of Colachel: The Raja of Travancore defeats a Dutch East India Company naval expedition.
• December 6 – Elizabeth of Russia becomes czarina after a palace coup.
• December 19 – Vitus Bering dies in his expedition east of Siberia.
• December 25 – Anders Celsius develops his own thermometer scale, Centigrade the predecessor of the Celsius scale.

Date unknown

• Prague is occupied by French-Bavarian armies.
• 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.

January–June

April 13: Handel's Messiah.

• January 24 – Charles VII Albert becomes Holy Roman Emperor
• February 16 – Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.
• April 13 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio The Messiah is first performed in Dublin, Ireland.
• May 17 – Frederick the Great's army defeats Austrians in Chotusitz; later Austria cedes Silesia to Prussia.
• May 25 – A battle is fought at Sahay.
• July 7 Invasion of Georgia - English Colony of Georgia was attacked by Montiano of the Spanish Army. Locals of the colony repel the attempt.

July–December

• December 2 – The Pennsylvania Journal first appears in print in the United States.

Date unknown

• Daniel le Pelley succeeds Nicolas le Pelley as Seigneur of Sark.
• The Kingdom of Prussia captures Jihlava.
• Christian Goldbach formulates Goldbach's conjecture.
• Colin Maclaurin publishes his Treatise on Fluxions.
• Anders Celsius proposes the Celsius temperature scale (see 1741).
• James Bradley succeeds Edmond Halley as Astronomer Royal.
• Henry Fielding publishes Joseph Andrews.
• John Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret becomes Secretary of State for the Northern Department in Great Britain.
• The rigging of the Chippenham by-election causes a political scandal in Great Britain.
• William Pulteney is created as 1st Earl of Bath in Great Britain.
• Robert Walpole is elevated to the peerage and thus moves from the House of Commons of Great Britain to the House of Lords, effectively ending his reign as Prime Minister of Great Britain (see February 16, above).
• The University of Erlangen is founded.
• The Lopukhina Conspiracy arises at the Russian court.
• Molde, Norway becomes a city.
• Construction starts on the Foundling Hospital in London.
• Eisenach, Germany builds its Stadtschloss (city castle).
• In Peru, Juan Santos takes the name Atahualpa II and begins an ill-fated rebellion against the Spanish rule.
• The Afghan tribes unite as a monarchy.
• 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 that time.
• Spain completes the construction of Fort Matanzas in the Matanzas Inlet, approximately 15 miles (24 km) south of St. Augustine, Florida.
• Rome decrees that Roman ceremonial practice in Latin (not in Chinese) is to be the law for Chinese missions.

January–June

• February 14 – Henry Pelham becomes British Prime Minister.
• February 21 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Samson premieres in London .
• March 2 – Battle of La Guaira: a British expeditionary fleet under Sir Charles Knowles is defeated by the Spanish.
• May 10 – In New France, Governor 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.
• June 16 – Battle of Dettingen in Bavaria: King George II of Great Britain leads his own troops, the last British king to do so.

July–December

• August 7 – Russia and Sweden sign the Treaty of Åbo.
• September 11 – Natalia Lopukhina is flogged in front of the Twelve Collegia building in Saint Petersburg.
• September 13 – The Treaty of Worms is signed between Great Britain, Austria, and Sardinia.
• November 5 – Coordinated scientific observations of the transit of Mercury are organized by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle.

January–June

• January 24 – The Dagohoy Rebellion begins with the killing of Father Giuseppe Lamberti.
• February 22–February 23 – Battle of Toulon: The British fleet is defeated by a Franco-Spanish fleet.
• March 1 (approximately) – The Great Comet of 1744, one of the brightest ever seen, reaches perihelion
• March 15 – France declares war on Great Britain.
• April 20 – Battle of Villafranca (1744): A joint French and Spanish force defeats Britain and Sardinia.
• June 28 – Catherine the Great is received into the Russian Orthodox Church.

July–December

• July 19 – Battle of Casteldelfino: France defeats the Kingdom of Sardinia.
• September 30 – Battle of Madonna dell'Olmo: France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Date unknown

• The third French and Indian War, known as King George's War, breaks out at Port Royal, Nova Scotia.
• The First Saudi State is founded by Mohammed Ibn Saud.
• Prague is occupied by Prussian armies.

January–June

May 11: Battle of Fontenoy.

• May 11 – War of Austrian Succession: Battle of Fontenoy – French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army including the Black Watch.
• June 4 – Frederick the Great destroys the Austrian army at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg.

July–December

• July 26 – The first recorded women's cricket match took place near Guildford, England
• August 19 – The '45 Jacobite Rising begins at Glenfinnan.
• September 12 – Francis I is elected Holy Roman Emperor with the support of his wife, Maria Theresia of Austria. He is the successor of Charles VII Albert of Bavaria, an enemy of Habsburg, who died on January 20 of this year.
• September 14 – Madame de Pompadour is officially presented in the court of Louis XV of France.
• September 21 – Battle of Prestonpans: British Government forces are defeated.
• December 4 – The Jacobite Army reaches Derby; two days later it begins retreat.
• December 19 The Jacobite army led by Bonnie Prince Charlie; on retreat from Derby, was defeated by the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Clifton Moor near Penrith, Cumberland.
• December 25 – The Treaty of Dresden gives Prussia full possession of Silesia.
• December 28 – For 5 days, fire destroys buildings in Istanbul.

January–June

• January 8 – Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling.
• January 17 – Battle of Falkirk: British Government forces are defeated by Jacobite forces.
• April 16 – The Battle of Culloden, the final pitched battle fought on British soil, brings an end to the Jacobite Rising.
• June – Samuel Johnson is contracted to write his A Dictionary of the English Language.
• June 16 – Battle of Piacenza: Austrian forces defeat French and Spanish troops.
• June 29 – Catherine of Ricci (b. 1522) is canonized.

July–December

• August 1 – The wearing of the kilt is banned in Scotland by the Dress Act (Note: the actual effective date of the Dress Act was August 1, 1747, not 1746 – see the text at Dress Act).
• August 18 – Two of the four rebellious Scottish lords, Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmeniro, are beheaded in the Tower (Lord Lovat was executed in 1747).
• 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
• October 22 – The College of New Jersey is founded (it becomes Princeton University in 1896).
• October 28 – An earthquake demolishes Lima and Callao, in Peru.

Date unknown

• The town of Vilkovo (Odes'ka oblast', Ukraine) is founded.
• Royal Colony of North Carolina Governor Gabriel Johnston moves to the province's largest and most prosperous city of New Bern. As a result, New Bern replaces Edenton as the capital of North Carolina (a title it holds until Raleigh is established in 1792).
• Publication of Charles Batteux's Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe in Paris, putting forward for the first time the idea of "les beaux arts": "the fine arts".

January–June

April 9: Lord Lovat.

• January 31 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.
• February 11 – A combined French and Indian force, commanded by Captain Nicholas Antoine Coulon de Villiers, attacks British troops at Grand Pré, Nova Scotia.
• April 9 – The Scottish Jacobite Lord Lovat is beheaded by axe on Tower Hill, London, for high treason (the last man to be executed in this way in Britain).
• May 14 – War of the Austrian Succession – First battle of Cape Finisterre: The British Navy defeats a French fleet.
• June 9 – Emperor Momozono ascends to the throne of Japan, succeeding Emperor Sakuramachi.
• 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.

July–December

James Lind & scurvy.

• July 2 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Lauffeld: France defeats the combined armies of Hanover, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
• October
  • Thomas Herring is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
  • Following the capture of Kandahar, Ahmad Shah Durrani is chosen by a Loya jirga as first leader of the Durrani Empire, predecessor of Afghanistan.
• October 25 – War of the Austrian Succession – Second battle of Cape Finisterre: The British Navy again defeats a French fleet.
• November 9 – Rioters in Amsterdam demand governmental reform.
• November 22 – Prince William IV of Orange becomes stadtholder of all the provinces of the United Provinces.
• December 16 – Canter of Coltbrigg – The 13th and 14th Dragoons flee the Jacobites of Charles Edward Stuart.

Date unknown

• James Lind discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.
• 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.
• Samuel Johnson begins work on A Dictionary of the English Language in London.

January–June

• January 12 – Ahmad Shah Durrani captures Lahore.
• March 11 – In battle near Manupur (15 km northwest of Sirhind), Mughal forces under Prince Ahmad Shah Bahadur are victorious against Ahmad Shah Durrani.
• March 28 – A fire in the City of London causes over a million pounds worth of damage.
• April – Maastricht is conquered by Maurice de Saxe.
• April 24 – War of the Austrian Succession: A congress assembles at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) with the intent to conclude the war.

July–December

• August – The Camberwell Beauty butterfly is named after specimens found at Camberwell in London.
• September 24 – Shah Rukh becomes ruler of Greater Khorasan.
• 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 unknown

• Leonhard Euler publishes Introductio in analysin infinitorum.
• Montesquieu publishes De l'Esprit des lois.
• Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock publishes the first three cantos of his epic poem Der Messias in hexameters (anonymously) in Bremer Beiträge (Leipzig).
• Adam Smith begins to deliver public lectures in Edinburgh.
• The building of Sveaborg begins near Helsinki.
• Henry Fielding organizes the forerunner of the Bow Street Runners in London (8 men at first).
• The ruins of Pompeii are discovered.
• Louis XV of France authorizes a 5% income tax on every individual regardless of social status; the Parlement of Paris protests.

January–June

• January 3 – Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont.
• April 27 – The first official performance of George Frideric Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks finishes early due to the outbreak of fire.
• May 19 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks of the Ohio River.

July–December

July 10: Halifax.

• July 9 – The naval settlement of Halifax, Nova Scotia is founded as the British answer to Louisbourg.

Date unknown

• While in debtor's prison, John Cleland writes Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure).

Deaths

• October 19,1745(in Ireland)- Johnathon Swift-Irish satyrist born in 1667.Most notable for writing Gullivers Travels in 1726.

In Fiction

• The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy is set in the late 1740s.