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19-inch rack

A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple electronic equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is 19 in wide. The 19 inch dimension includes the edges or ears that protrude from each side of the equipment, allowing the module to be fastened to the rack frame with screws or bolts. Common uses include computer servers, telecommunications equipment and networking hardware, audiovisual production gear, music production equipment, and scientific equipment.

Overview and history
Equipment designed to be placed in a rack is typically described as rack-mount, rack-mount instrument, a rack-mounted system, a rack-mount chassis, subrack, rack cabinet, rack-mountable, or occasionally simply shelf. The height of the electronic modules is also standardized as multiples of 1.75 in or one rack unit or U (less commonly RU). The industry-standard rack cabinet is 42U tall.

The term relay rack appeared first in the world of telephony.

By 1911, the term was also being used in railroad signaling. There is little evidence that the dimensions of these early racks were standardized.

The 19-inch rack format with rack-units of 1.75 in was established as a standard by AT&T around 1922 in order to reduce the space required for repeater and termination equipment in a telephone company central office. The earliest repeaters from 1914 were installed in ad hoc fashion on shelves, in wooden boxes and cabinets. Once serial production started, they were built into custom-made racks, one per repeater. But in light of the rapid growth of the toll network, the engineering department of AT&T undertook a systematic redesign, resulting in a family of modular factory-assembled panels all "designed to mount on vertical supports spaced 19$1/2$ inches between centers. The height of the different panels will vary,... but... in all cases to be a whole multiple of $1 3/4$ inches."

By 1934, it was an established standard with holes tapped for 12-24 screws with alternating spacings of 1.25 in and 0.5 in The EIA standard was revised again in 1992 to comply with the 1988 public law 100-418, setting the standard U as 15.875 mm + 15.875 mm + 12.7 mm, making each U 44.45 mm.

The 19-inch rack format has remained constant while the technology that is mounted within it has changed considerably and the set of fields to which racks are applied has greatly expanded. The 19 in standard rack arrangement is widely used throughout the telecommunication, computing, audio, video, entertainment and other industries, though the Western Electric 23-inch standard, with holes on 1 in centers, is still used in legacy ILEC/CLEC facilities.

Nineteen-inch racks in two-post or four-post form hold most equipment in enterprise data centers, ISP facilities, and professionally designed corporate server rooms, although hyperscale computing typically use wider racks. They allow for dense hardware configurations without occupying excessive floor space or requiring shelving.

Nineteen-inch racks are also often used to house professional audio and video equipment, including amplifiers, effects units, interfaces, headphone amplifiers, and even small-scale audio mixers. A third common use for rack-mounted equipment is industrial power, control, and automation hardware.

Typically, a piece of equipment being installed has a front panel height 1/32 in less than the allotted number of Us. Thus, a 1U rackmount computer is not 1.750 in tall but is 1.719 in tall. If n is number of rack units, the ideal formula for panel height is h = 1.75n − 0.031 for calculating in inches, and h = 44.45n − 0.794 for calculating in millimeters. This gap allows a bit of room above and below an installed piece of equipment so it may be removed without binding on the adjacent equipment.

Fastening
Originally, the mounting holes were tapped with a particular screw thread. When rack rails are too thin to tap, rivet nuts or other threaded inserts can be used, and when the particular class of equipment to be mounted is known in advance, some of the holes can be omitted from the mounting rails.

Threaded mounting holes in racks where the equipment is frequently changed are problematic because the threads can be damaged or the mounting screws can break off; both problems render the mounting hole unusable. Tapping large numbers of holes that may never be used is expensive; nonetheless, tapped-hole racks are still in use, generally for hardware that rarely changes. Examples include telephone exchanges, network cabling panels, broadcast studios and some government and military applications.

The tapped-hole rack was first replaced by clearance-hole (Round Hole, Round Unthreaded Holes, and Versa Rail ) racks. The holes are large enough to permit a bolt to be freely inserted through without binding, and bolts are fastened in place using cage nuts. In the event of a nut being stripped out or a bolt breaking, the nut can be easily removed and replaced with a new one. Production of clearance-hole racks is less expensive.

The next innovation in rack design has been the square-hole rack. Square-hole racks allow boltless mounting, such that the rack-mount equipment only needs to insert through and hook down into the lip of the square hole. Installation and removal of hardware in a square-hole rack is very easy and boltless, where the weight of the equipment and small retention clips are all that is necessary to hold the equipment in place. Older equipment meant for round-hole or tapped-hole racks can still be used, with the use of cage nuts made for square-hole racks.

Structural support
Rack-mountable equipment is traditionally mounted by bolting or clipping its front panel to the rack. Within the IT industry, it is common for network/communications equipment to have multiple mounting positions, including tabletop and wall mounting, so rack-mountable equipment will often feature L-brackets that must be screwed or bolted to the equipment prior to mounting in a 19-inch rack. With the prevalence of 23-inch racks in the Telecoms industry, the same practice is also common, but with equipment having 19-inch and 23-inch brackets available, enabling them to be mounted in existing racks.

A key structural weakness of front-mounted support is the bending stress placed on the mounting brackets of the equipment, and the rack itself. As a result, 4-post racks have become common, featuring a mirrored pair of rear mounting posts. Since the spacing between the front and rear mounting posts may differ between rack vendors and/or the configuration of the rack (some racks may incorporate front and rear rails that may be moved forwards and backward, e.g. APC SX-range racks), it is common for equipment that features 4-post mounting brackets to have an adjustable rear bracket.

Servers and deep pieces of equipment are often mounted using rails that are bolted to the front and rear posts (as above, it is common for such rails to have an adjustable depth), allowing the equipment to be supported by four posts, while also enabling it to be easily installed and removed.

Although there is no standard for the depth of equipment, nor specifying the outer width and depth of the rack enclosure itself (incorporating the structure, doors and panels that contain the mounting rails), there is a tendency for 4-post racks to be 600 mm or 800 mm wide, and for them to be 600 mm, 800 mm or 1010 mm deep. This of course varies by manufacturer, the design of the rack and its purpose, but through common constraining factors (such as raised-floor tile dimensions), these dimensions have become quite common. The extra width and depth enables cabling to be routed with ease (also helping to maintain the minimum bend radius for fiber and copper cables) and deeper equipment to be utilized. A common feature in IT racks is mounting positions for zero-U accessories, such as power distribution units (PDUs) and vertical cable managers and ducts, that utilize the space between the rear rails and the side of the rack enclosure.

The strength required of the mounting posts means they are invariably not merely flat strips but actually a wider folded strip arranged around the corner of the rack. The posts are usually made of steel of around 2 mm thickness (the official standard recommends a minimum of 1.9 mm), or of slightly thicker aluminum.

Racks, especially two-post racks, are often secured to the floor or adjacent building structure so as not to fall over. This is usually required by local building codes in seismic zones. According to Telcordia Technologies Generic Requirements document GR-63-CORE, during an earthquake, telecommunications equipment is subjected to motions that can over-stress equipment framework, circuit boards, and connectors. The amount of motion and resulting stress depends on the structural characteristics of the building and framework in which the equipment is contained and the severity of the earthquake. Seismic racks rated according to GR-63, NEBS Requirements: Physical Protection, are available, with Zone 4 representing the most demanding environment. GR-3108, Generic Requirements for Network Equipment in the Outside Plant (OSP), specifies the usable opening of seismic-compliant 19-inch racks.

Rails (slides)
Heavy equipment or equipment that is commonly accessed for servicing, for which attaching or detaching at all four corners simultaneously would pose a problem, is often not mounted directly onto the rack but instead is mounted via rails (or slides). A pair of rails is mounted directly onto the rack, and the equipment then slides into the rack along the rails, which support it. When in place, the equipment may also then be bolted to the rack. The rails may also be able to fully support the equipment in a position where it has been slid clear of the rack; this is useful for inspection or maintenance of equipment which will then be slid back into the rack. Some rack slides even include a tilt mechanism allowing easy access to the top or bottom of rack-mounted equipment when it is fully extended from the rack.

Slides or rails for computers and other data processing equipment such as disk arrays or routers often need to be purchased directly from the equipment manufacturer, as there is no standardization on such equipment's thickness (measurement from the side of the rack to the equipment) or means for mounting to the rail.

A rails kit may include a cable management arm (CMA), which folds the cables attached to the server and allows them to expand neatly when the server is slid out, without being disconnected.

Computer mounting

Computer servers designed for rack-mounting can include a number of extra features to make the server easy to use in the rack:
 * The sliding rails can lock in various extended positions to prevent the equipment from moving when extended out from the rack for service.
 * The server itself might have locking pins on the sides that just drop into slots on the extended rail assembly, in a manner similar to a removable kitchen drawer. This permits very easy server installation and removal since there is no need for the server to be held in midair while someone fastens each rail to the sides of the server with screws.
 * Some manufacturers of rack-mount hardware include a folding cable tray behind the server, so that the cables are held into a neat and tidy folded channel when inside the rack, but can unfold out into a long strip when pulled out of the rack, allowing the server to continue to be plugged in and operating normally even while fully extended and hanging in mid-air in front of the rack. This piece of equipment thus simplifies maintenance but at the cost of providing a restriction to airflow.
 * Rack-optimized servers might duplicate indicator lights on the front and rear of the rack to help identify a machine needing attention or provide separate identify LED indicators on both sides of the server (which can be turned on in software or by pushing an associated button). Since some configurations permit over fifty 1U servers in a single rack, this provides a simple method to determine exactly which machine is having a problem when at the rear of the rack.
 * A handle may be provided at the rear of the server rails, to help pull or push the server without having to pull on the cables.

When there is a large number of computers in a single rack, it is impractical for each one to have its own separate keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Instead, a KVM switch or LOM software is used to share a single keyboard/video/mouse set amongst many different computers.

Since the mounting hole arrangement is vertically symmetric, it is possible to mount rack-mountable equipment upside-down. However, not all equipment is suitable for this type of mounting. For instance, most optical disc players will not work upside-down because the driving motor mechanism does not grip the disc.

Rack types
19-inch server racks can vary in quality. A standard 19-inch server rack cabinet is typically 42u in height, 600 mm wide, and 36 in deep. This comprises a volume of 974 L, or just under a cubic meter. Newer server rack cabinets come with adjustable mounting rails allowing the user to place the rails at a shorter depth if needed. There are a multitude of specialty server racks including soundproof server racks, air-conditioned server racks, NEMA-rated, seismic-rated, open frame, narrow, and even miniature 19-inch racks for smaller applications. Cabinets are generally sized to be no wider than the standard 24 in floor tiles used in most data centers.

Racks carrying telecom equipment like routers and switches often have extra width to accommodate the many cables on the sides.

Four-post cabinet racks
Four-post racks allow for mounting rails to support the equipment at the front and rear. These racks may be open in construction without sides or doors or may be enclosed by front and/or rear doors, side panels, and tops. Most data centers use four-post racks.

Two-post relay racks
Two-post racks provide two vertical posts. These posts are typically heavy gauge metal or extruded aluminum. A top bar and wide foot connect the posts and allow the rack to be securely attached to the floor and/or roof for seismic safety. Equipment can be mounted either close to its center of gravity (to minimize load on its front panel), or via the equipment's front panel holes. The Relay Racks name comes from early two-post racks which housed telephone relay and switching equipment. Two-post racks are most often used for telecommunication installations.

ATA road case racks

19-inch equipment that needs to be moved often or protected from harsh treatment can be housed in a road case approved by the Air Transport Association of America (ATA), sometimes also referred to as a flight case. Road cases typically have plywood sides laminated with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), extruded aluminum edges, steel corners, handles, and latches. Larger cases typically have wheels for easy transport. Road case racks come in different heights based on the 1U standard and different depths. Non-isolated cases simply mount 19-inch mounting posts inside the case. To protect equipment from shock and vibration road rack cases use an inner and outer case. These cases can be isolated by thick layers of foam or may use spring-loaded shock mounting. Touring musicians, theatrical productions and sound and light companies use road case racks.

Fiberglass-reinforced plastic case racks
In 1965, a durable fiber-reinforced plastic 19-inch rackmount case was patented by ECS Composites and became widely used in military and commercial applications for electronic deployment and operation. Rackmount cases are also constructed of thermo-stamped composite, carbon fiber, and DuPont's Kevlar for military and commercial uses.

Polyethylene molded case racks
Portable rack cases using a rotary-molded polyethylene outer shell are a lower-cost alternative to the more durable ATA-approved case. These cases are marketed to musicians and entertainers for equipment not subject to frequent transportation and rough handling. The polyethylene shell is not fiberglass reinforced and is not rigid. The shape of small cases is maintained by the rack rails and the cover seal extrusions alone. Larger cases are further reinforced with additional plywood or sheet metal. The outer shell is frequently embossed in a self-mating pattern to combat the tendency for stacked cases to deform slightly creating a slope that encourages the upper case to slide off. The cases typically use extruded aluminum bands at the ends of the body with tongue-and-groove mating to like bands for the covers. End covers are typically secured with either a simple draw latch or a rotary cam butterfly latch, named for the shape of the twist handle.

Cooling
There is no standard for airflow and cooling of rack-mounted equipment. A variety of airflow patterns can be found, including front intakes and rear exhausts, as well as side intakes and exhausts. Low-wattage devices may not employ active cooling, but use only passive thermal radiation and convection to dissipate heat.

For rack-mounted computer servers, devices generally intake air on the front and exhaust on the rear. This prevents circular airflows where hot exhaust air is recirculated through an adjacent device and causes overheating.

Although open-frame racks are the least expensive, they also expose air-cooled equipment to dust, lint, and other environmental contamination. An enclosed sealed cabinet with forced air fans permits air filtration to protect equipment from dust.

Large server rooms will often group rack cabinets together so that racks on both sides of an aisle are either front-facing or rear-facing, which simplifies cooling by supplying cool air to the front of the racks and collecting hot air from the rear of the racks. These aisles may themselves be enclosed into a cold air containment tunnel so that cooling air does not travel to other parts of the building where it is not needed or mixes with hot air, making it less efficient. Raised or false floor cooling in server rooms can serve a similar purpose; they permit cooling airflow to equipment through the underfloor space to the underside of enclosed rack cabinets.

A difficulty with forced air fan cooling in rack equipment is that fans can fail due to age or dust. The fans themselves can be difficult to replace. In the case of network equipment, it may be necessary to unplug 50 or more cables from the device, remove the device from the rack, and then disassemble the device chassis to replace the fans.

However, some rack equipment has been designed to make fan replacement easy, using quick-change fan trays that can be accessed without removing the cabling or the device from the rack, and in some cases without turning off the device so that operation is uninterrupted during replacement.

Specifications
The formal standards for a 19 in rack are available from the following:
 * Electronic Industries Alliance EIA-310-D, Cabinets, Racks, Panels, and Associated Equipment, dated September 1992. (Latest Standard Now REV E 1996)
 * Consumer Electronics Association CEA-310-E design requirements for Cabinets, Panels, Racks and Subracks., dated December 14, 2005
 * International Electrotechnical Commission - Multiple documents are available in French and English versions.
 * IEC 60297 Mechanical structures for electronic equipment - Dimensions of mechanical structures of the 482,6 mm (19 in) series
 * IEC 60297-1 Replaced by IEC 60297-3-100
 * IEC 60297-2 Replaced by IEC 60297-3-100
 * IEC 60297-3-100 Part 3-100: Basic dimensions of front panels, subracks, chassis, racks and cabinets
 * IEC 60297-3-101 Part 3-101: Subracks and associated plug-in units
 * IEC 60297-3-102 Part 3-102: Injector/extractor handle
 * IEC 60297-3-103 Part 3-103: Keying and alignment pin
 * IEC 60297-3-104 Part 3-104: Connector dependent interface dimensions of subracks and plug-in units
 * IEC 60297-3-105 Part 3-105: Dimensions and design aspects for 1U chassis
 * IEC 60297-4 Replaced by IEC 60297-3-102
 * IEC 60297-5 Multiple documents, -100, 101, 102, ... 107, replaced by IEC 60297-3-101
 * Deutsches Institut für Normung DIN 41494 - Multiple documents in German but some documents are available in English.
 * DIN 41494 Equipment practices for electronic equipment; mechanical structures of the 482,6 mm (19 inch) series
 * DIN 41494-7 Dimensions of cabinets and suites of racks.
 * DIN 41494-8 Components on front panels; mounting conditions, dimensions
 * DIN IEC 60297-3-100 (see above in IEC section)

A rack's mounting fixture consists of two parallel metal strips (also referred to as posts or panel mounts) standing vertically. The posts are each 0.625 in wide, and are separated by a gap of 17.75 in, giving an overall rack width of 19 in. The posts have holes in them at regular intervals, with both posts matching, so that each hole is part of a horizontal pair with a center-to-center distance of 18.312 in.

The holes in the posts are arranged vertically in repeating sets of three, with center-to-center separations of 0.5 in, 0.625 in, 0.625 in. The hole pattern thus repeats every 1.75 in.

Holes so arranged can either be tapped (usually 10-32 UNF thread, or, less often, 6mm metric) or have square holes for cage nuts.

Rack unit
Racks are vertically divided into regions, 44.45 mm in height. Each region has three complete hole pairs on each side. The holes are centered at 6.35 mm, 22.25 mm, and 38.15 mm from the top or bottom of the region. Such a region is commonly known as a U, for unit, RU for rack unit or, in German, HE, for Höheneinheit. Heights within racks are measured by this unit. Rack-mountable equipment is usually designed to occupy some integer number of U. For example, an oscilloscope might be 4U high. Rack-mountable computers and servers are mostly between 1U and 4U high. A blade server enclosure might require 10U.

Occasionally, one may see fractional U devices such as a 1.5U server or devices that are just 22.5 or 15 cm in width, allowing for 2 or 3 such devices to be installed side by side, but these are much less common.

The height of a rack can vary from a few inches, such as in a broadcast console, to a floor-mounted rack whose interior is 45 rack units (200.2 cm) high. 42U is a common configuration. Many wall-mounted enclosures for industrial equipment use 19-inch racks.

10-inch rack
Some telecommunications and networking equipment is available in a narrower 10-inch format with the same unit height as a standard 19-inch rack.

11-foot frame
Frames for holding rotary-dial telephone equipment such as step by step telephone switches were generally 11 ft high. A series of studies led to the adoption of frames 7 ft high, with modular widths in multiples of 1 ft—most often 2 ft wide.

ETSI rack
The ETSI rack is defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETS 300 119). The distance of the right edge of the right mounting rail to the left edge of the left mounting rail is 535 mm. As 535 mm is very close to 21 inches, these racks are sometimes called 21-inch racks. The gap between the posts is 500 mm. As 19-inch equipment has a maximum width of 17+1/4 in, they can easily be mounted in an ETSI rack by means of an ETSI bracket or adapter plate.

In contrast to the 19-inch standards, ETSI also defined the size of the rack enclosure: the four allowed widths are 150, and two allowed depths are 300 and 600 mm. Hole spacing is 25 mm.

23-inch rack

A 23 in rack is used for housing telephone (primarily), computer, audio, and other equipment though is less common than the 19-inch rack. The size denotes the width of the faceplate for the installed equipment. The rack unit is a measure of vertical spacing and is common to both the 19 and 23-inch racks.

Hole spacing is either on 1 in centers (Western Electric standard), or the same as for 19 in racks (0.625 in spacing).

Open Rack
Open Rack is a mounting system designed by Facebook's Open Compute Project that has the same outside dimensions as typical 19-inch racks (e.g. 600 mm width), but supports wider equipment modules of 547 mm.

OpenVPX
OpenVPX is an industry standard for modules that can be installed in chassis in defense applications. The modules can provide a variety of functions, similarly to equipment in a rack.

Eurorack
Eurorack is a standard generally used in electronic music production to install components of a modular synthesiser, an electronic music instrument. This is achieved with a rack mounting system specific to the standard.

Eurocard
Eurocard is an IEEE standard format for printed circuit board (PCB) cards that can be plugged together into a standard chassis which, in turn, can be mounted in a 19-inch rack. The chassis consists of a series of slotted card guides on the top and bottom, into which the cards are slid so they stand on end, like books on a shelf. At the spine of each card is one or more connectors which plug into mating connectors on a backplane that closes the rear of the chassis. Several standards such as VMEbus (Versa Module Eurocard bus), STEbus, PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation and others were developed, which share goals with Eurocard.

Gallery
Pictures of 19-inch racks

title: 19-inch rack


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1585

January–March

 * January 21 – Robert Nutter, Thomas Worthington, and 18 other Roman Catholic priests are "perpetually banished" from England by order of Queen Elizabeth, placed on the ship Mary Martin of Colchester, and transported to France.
 * February 16 – Pachomius II is deposed by fellow bishops from his position as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and replaced by the Metropolitan of Philippoupolis, Theoleptus II.
 * February 21 – King Johan III of Sweden, widowed since 1583, marries Gunilla Bielke in a ceremony at Västerås, which the King's siblings refuse to attend. The coronation of Queen consort Gunilla takes place the next day. Over the next seven years, she works on changing the Catholic government's attitude towards Protestants.
 * March 10 – The Spanish Army, commanded by Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, obtains the surrender of Brussels after a siege that began the year before.

April–June

 * April 10 – Pope Gregory XIII, known for promulgating the Gregorian calendar within the Roman Catholic nations of the world in 1582, dies after a reign of almost 13 years. A papal conclave is convened 11 days later to elect a successor.
 * April 21 – The papal conclave begins at the Vatican in Rome on Easter Sunday, with only 42 of the 60 cardinals attending. Early voting favors Cardinals Pier Donato Cesi and Guglielmo Sirleto, neither of whom receives a majority.
 * April 24 – Cardinal Felice Piergentile of the church of San Girolamo dei Croati is unanimously elected as the 227th Pope, and takes the regnal name Pope Sixtus V.
 * May 1 – The coronation of Pope Sixtus V takes place in Rome.
 * May 19 – Spain seizes English ships in Spanish ports, precipitating the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604).
 * June 11 – The 9.2 magnitude Aleutian Islands earthquake unleashes a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, killing many people in Hawaii and reportedly striking Japan.
 * June – Toyotomi Hideyoshi begins the invasion of the Japanese island of Shikoku with an army of 113,000 men on 703 ships. The troops are divided into three groups, with 60,000 commanded by Hashiba Hidenaga and Hashiba Hidetsugu toward the provinces of Awa and Tosa; 23,000 under Ukita Hideie at the province of Sanuki; and 30,000 under Kobayakawa Takakage and Kikkawa Motoharu for the province of Iyo.

July–September

 * July 7 – The Treaty of Nemours forces King Henry III of France to capitulate to the demands of the Catholic League, triggering the Eighth War of Religion (also known as the War of the Three Henrys) in France.
 * July 12 – Invasion of Shikoku: The final battle of the invasion, the siege of Ichinomiya Castle, begins.
 * July 29 – Aboard the English ship Tiger, Roanoke expedition leader Ralph Lane negotiates an agreement with the Secotan people, who are represented by Granganimeo, the brother of the Secotan leader, King Wingino. Although the Secotans grant Lane's request to allow the English to live on Roanoke Island, he is told that they will receive no assistance from the natives, because of problems the previous year with Walter Raleigh.
 * August 6 – (11th day of the 7th month of Tenshō 13) Invasion of Shikoku: In Japan, Chōsokabe Motochika surrenders the island of Shikoku to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, after a 26 day siege of the Ichinomiya Castle by 40,000 men.
 * August 8 – English explorer John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in Baffin Island, in his quest for the Northwest Passage.
 * August 14 – Queen Elizabeth I of England agrees to establish a protectorate over the Netherlands.
 * August 17
 * Antwerp, now in Belgium, is captured by Spanish forces commanded by the Duke of Parma. The Duke orders all Protestants to leave the city. As a result, over half of the 100,000 inhabitants flee to the northern provinces. Furthermore, upon hearing of the capture of Antwerp, a relief fleet sent to raise the siege instead blockades the Scheldt River, preventing any and all ships from reaching Antwerp for two centuries. This effectively destroys Antwerp's position as an important trade city and de facto capital of the Dutch provinces. Its position is taken over by various northern cities, most prominently Amsterdam.
 * The Roanoke colonists complete their construction of a fort under the direction of Ralph Lane to make the first permanent English settlement in North America.
 * August 20 – The Treaty of Nonsuch is signed, committing England to support the Dutch Revolt, thus entering the Eighty Years' War.
 * September 11 – In the Ottoman Empire, the rebellion of An-Nasir al-Hasan bin Ali in Yemen is ended when An-Nasir is betrayed and turned over to the Turkish Ottoman governor. An-Nasir spends one year in prison in Sanaa and then brought to Turkey.
 * September 15 – English Catholic priest John Adams is banished from England along with 72 other Catholic priests, and transported by ship to Boulogne in France.
 * September 21 – King Henry IV of Navarre, who is also the heir presumptive to France's King Henry III, is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Sixtus V, who effectively declares that French Catholics are not required to recognize his claim to the throne.

October–December

 * October 15 – In Arnhem in the Netherlands, the siege of IJsseloord is completed after nine days as English and Dutch forces recapture the city from Spanish occupiers.
 * November 18 – In Mexico City, Álvaro Manrique de Zúñiga becomes Viceroy of New Spain after being appointed by King Philip II of Spain.
 * November 27 – A 6.6 magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, and serves a foreshock and a trigger to a deadly 7.9 magnitude earthquake on January 18 that will kill 8,000 people.
 * November 28 – Anglo-Spanish War: The island of Santiago in Cape Verde is captured by Francis Drake.
 * December 1 – Hadim Mesih Pasha is appointed the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire by Sultan Murad III.
 * December 20 – Enraged by the disrespect shown to him by Yousuf Shah Chak, the Mughal Emperor, Akbar, orders the invasion of Kashmir with 5,000 men.

Date unknown

 * The Kingdom of Luba is founded by Kongolo Mwamba in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
 * History of chocolate in Spain: First recorded commercial importation of chocolate to Europe, from Veracruz in Mexico to Seville in Spain.

Births

 * January 5 – Carlo Emanuele Pio di Savoia, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1641)
 * January 6 – Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Savoyard grammarian and man of letters (d. 1650)
 * January 8 – Henriette Catherine de Joyeuse, Duchess of Joyeuse (d. 1656)
 * January 9 – Sir Richard Grosvenor, 1st Baronet, English politician (d. 1645)
 * January 23 – Mary Ward, English Catholic Religious Sister (d. 1645)
 * January 24 – Anna Maria of Solms-Sonnewalde, Countess consort of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (d. 1634)
 * January 27 – Hendrick Avercamp, Dutch painter (d. 1634)
 * January 28 – Domenico II Contarini, Doge of Venice (d. 1675)
 * January 31 – Daniel Schwenter, German Orientalist (d. 1636)
 * February 2
 * Judith Quiney, William Shakespeare's youngest daughter (d. 1662)
 * Hamnet Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's only son (d. 1596)
 * February 25 – Pieter van den Broecke, Dutch merchant (d. 1640)
 * March 2 – John Macias, Spanish Dominican lay brother (d. 1645)
 * March 5
 * Frederick I, Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg, founder of the junior line Hesse-Homburg (d. 1638)
 * John George I, Elector of Saxony (d. 1656)
 * March 6 – Francesco Cornaro, Doge of Venice (d. 1656)
 * March 16 – Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero, Dutch writer (d. 1618)
 * March 22 – Krzysztof Radziwiłł, Polish nobleman (d. 1640)
 * April 6 – Marzio Ginetti, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1671)
 * April 28 – George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich, English soldier and politician (d. 1663)
 * May 1 – Sophia Olelkovich Radziwill, Polish-Lithuanian noble (d. 1612)
 * May 5 – Vincenzo Carafa, Italian Jesuit priest and spiritual writer (d. 1649)
 * May 6 – Guy XX de Laval, French noble (d. 1605)
 * May 12 – John Oglander, English politicians (d. 1655)
 * June 11 – Evert Horn, Swedish soldier (d. 1615)
 * June 13 – Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Peruvian and Paraguayan linguist (d. 1652)
 * June 24 – Johannes Lippius, German theologian, philosopher, composer and music theorist (d. 1612)
 * July 2 – Jean Guiton, French Huguenot ship owner (d. 1654)
 * July 11
 * Nicolaus Hunnius, German theologian (d. 1643)
 * Timothy Turner, British serjeant-at-law (d. 1677)
 * July 26 – Dániel Esterházy, Hungarian noble (d. 1654)
 * August 3 – Sir Thomas Burdett, 1st Baronet, of Bramcote, Sheriff of Derbyshire (d. 1647)
 * August 5 – Jesper Brochmand, Danish bishop (d. 1652)
 * August 25 – Giovanni Biliverti, Italian painter (d. 1644)
 * August 26 – Peter Lauremberg, German writer and professor (d. 1639)
 * September 9 – Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, French statesman and 4th Prime Minister of France (d. 1642)
 * September 15 – Ottavio Vannini, Italian painter (d. 1640)
 * September 26 – Antonio Franco, Italian Catholic bishop, prelate of Santa Lucia del Mela (d. 1626)
 * September 27 – John Strangways, English politician (d. 1666)
 * October 4 – Anna of Tyrol, Holy Roman Empress (d. 1618)
 * October 8 – Heinrich Schütz, German composer (d. 1672)
 * October 10 – Sir Edward Hussey, 1st Baronet, English politician (d. 1648)
 * October 11 – Johann Heermann, German poet, hymn-writer (d. 1647)
 * October 15 – Louis Cappel, French Protestant churchman and scholar (d. 1658)
 * October 28 – Cornelius Jansen, French bishop of Ypres and religious reformer (d. 1638)
 * October – John Ball, English puritan divine (d. 1640)
 * November 1
 * Jan Brożek, Polish mathematician, physician and astronomer (d. 1652)
 * Adriaan Pauw (d. 1653)
 * November 2 – Rudolf von Colloredo, Austrian field marshal (d. 1657)
 * November 5 – Sir John St John, 1st Baronet, English baronet (d. 1648)
 * November 26 – Herman op den Graeff, Dutch bishop (d. 1642)
 * November 30 – Filippo Benedetto de Sio, Italian Catholic prelate, Bishop of Boiano (1641–1651) and Bishop of Caiazzo (1623–1641) (d. 1651)
 * December 3 – Matthew Wren, influential English clergyman (d. 1667)
 * December 4
 * John Cotton, clergyman in England and the American colonies, founder of Boston (d. 1652)
 * December 13 – William Drummond of Hawthornden, Scottish poet (d. 1649)
 * December 16 – Livia della Rovere, Italian noble (d. 1641)
 * December 25 – Christian, Count of Waldeck-Wildungen (1588–1637) (d. 1637)
 * December 31
 * Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Spanish general (d. 1645)
 * Sumitomo Masatomo, Japanese businessman (d. 1652)
 * date unknown
 * Zachary Boyd, Scottish religious writer (d. 1653)
 * Ambrose Barlow, Catholic priest and martyr (d. 1641)
 * Thomas Preston, 1st Viscount Tara, Irish soldier (d. 1655)
 * Lucilio Vanini, Italian free-thinker (d. 1619)
 * Alexander Whitaker, Virginia Colony religious leader (d. 1616)
 * Fang Weiyi, Chinese poet, calligrapher, painter and literature historian (d. 1668)

Deaths

 * January 16 – Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln, English admiral (b. 1512)
 * February 6 – Edmund Plowden, English legal scholar (b. 1518)
 * February 13 – Alfonso Salmeron, Spanish Jesuit biblical scholar (b. 1515)
 * March 10 – Rembert Dodoens, Flemish physician and botanist (b. 1517)
 * April 3 – Thomas Goldwell, English ecclesiastic (b. 1501)
 * April 22 – Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen, Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück and Paderborn (b. 1550)
 * April 10 – Pope Gregory XIII (b. 1502)
 * May 15 – Niwa Nagahide, Japanese warlord (b. 1535)
 * June 4 – Muretus, French humanist (b. 1526)
 * June 18 – Jacques, Duke of Nemours, French nobleman and soldier (b. 1531)
 * June 21 – Henry Percy, 8th Earl of Northumberland, English nobleman and conspirator, suicide (b. 1532)
 * June 19 – Francisco de Holanda, Portuguese artist (b. 1517)
 * June 22 – Simon Sulzer, Swiss theologian (b. 1508)
 * July 6 – Thomas Aufield, English Catholic martyr (b. 1552)
 * July 28 – Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, English nobleman, soldier and politician (b. 1527)
 * c. July? – Shimon Lavi, Sephardi kabbalist (b. 1486)
 * August 5 or August 6 – Yermak Timofeyevich, Cossack leader and explorer of Siberia
 * September 6 – Luca Cambiasi, Italian painter (b. 1527)
 * October 1 – Anne of Denmark, Electress of Saxony (b. 1532)
 * October 19 – Johannes Crato von Krafftheim, German humanist and physician (b. 1519)
 * October 29 – Özdemiroğlu Osman Pasha, Ottoman (Turkish) grand vizier (b. 1526)
 * November 2 – Tachibana Dōsetsu, Japanese daimyō (b. 1513)
 * November 23 – Thomas Tallis, English composer (b. c. 1510)
 * December 27 – Pierre de Ronsard, French poet (b. 1524)
 * November 28 – Hernando Franco, Spanish composer (b. 1532)
 * December 4 – John Willock, Scottish reformer (b. c. 1515)
 * December 22 – Vittoria Accoramboni, Italian noblewoman (b. 1557)
 * approx. date – Qiu Zhu, Chinese painter
 * date unknown
 * Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf, Turkish scientist (b. 1526)
 * Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, Vietnamese administrator, educator, poet, sage and later a saint of the Cao Dai religion (b. 1491)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: 1585


text:
1749

January–March

 * January 3
 * Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont.
 * The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.
 * January 21 – The Teatro Filarmonico, the main opera theater in Verona, Italy, is destroyed by fire. It is rebuilt in 1754.
 * 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.
 * 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).
 * 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
 * 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.

April–June

 * April 14 – British Royal Navy ship HMS Namur is wrecked in a storm near Fort St. David, India, with the loss of 520 lives.
 * 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.
 * May 19 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company 200000 acre (312½ square miles or 810 km2) 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
 * June 4 – A fire in Glasgow leaves 200 families homeless.
 * June 6 – The Conspiracy of the Slaves, which was to have taken place on June 29, is revealed in Malta.

July–September

 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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 of France. The first plate is buried on the banks of the Allegheny River, near a rock with petroglyphs, in what is now Venango County, Pennsylvania.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * September 12 – The first recorded game of baseball is played, by Frederick, Prince of Wales, at Kingston upon Thames in England.
 * 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.
 * 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 Archangelsk. A fourth survivor, Fedor Veriginare, died of scurvy during the six-week voyage home.

October–December

 * 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.
 * 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 of Spain 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * November 9 – Battle of Penfui on Timor: A large Topass army is defeated by a numerically inferior Dutch East India Company.
 * 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."
 * 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".
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * December 30 – Mir Sayyid Muhammad, a grandson of the Shah Suleiman 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 unknown

 * A census is conducted in Finland.
 * The land reform of the Great Partition begins in Sweden, and continues until the 19th century.

Births

 * January 13 – Friedrich Müller, German painter, narrator, lyricist and dramatist (d. 1825)
 * January 16 – Vittorio Alfieri, Italian dramatist (d. 1803)
 * January 24 – Charles James Fox, English politician (d. 1806)
 * January 29 – King Christian VII of Denmark (d. 1808)
 * March 9 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, French politician (d. 1791)
 * March 10 – Lorenzo Da Ponte, Italian librettist (d. 1838)
 * March 23 – Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician, astronomer (d. 1827)
 * March 23 – Ulla von Höpken, Swedish courtier, influential socialite (d. 1810)
 * May 17 – Edward Jenner, English physician (d. 1823)
 * April 11 – Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, French portrait painter (d. 1803)
 * June 15 – Georg Joseph Vogler, German composer (d. 1814)
 * June 19 – Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, French revolutionary (d. 1796)
 * July 16 – Cyrus Griffin, last American President of the Continental Congress (d. 1810)
 * August 24 – Madame Mère (Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte) mother of Napoleon I (d. 1836)
 * August 28 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and politician (d. 1832)
 * September 25 – Abraham Gottlob Werner, German geologist (d. 1817)
 * September 30 – Comte Siméon Joseph Jérôme, French jurist and politician (d. 1842)
 * October 25 – Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, Swedish ambassador (d. 1802)
 * November 3 – Daniel Rutherford, Scottish physician, chemist and botanist (d. 1819)
 * November 17 – Nicolas Appert French inventor (d. 1841)
 * November 23 – Edward Rutledge, American statesman (d. 1800)
 * December 2 – Elisabeth Berenberg, German banker (d. 1809)
 * December 17 – Domenico Cimarosa, Italian composer (d. 1801)
 * December 24 – Karl Gottfried Hagen, German chemist (d. 1829)
 * December 25 – Samuel Jackson Pratt (known as Courtney Melmoth), English writer, poet and actor (d. 1814)
 * date unknown – Charlotte Melmoth, British & American actress (d. 1823)

Deaths

 * February 1 – Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, youngest daughter of Louis XIV (b. 1677)
 * February 8 – Jan van Huysum, Dutch painter (b. 1682)
 * February 11 – Philip Livingston, American politician (b. 1686)
 * April 14 – Balthasar Denner, German artist (b. 1685)
 * May 11 – Catharine Trotter Cockburn, English novelist, dramatist, and philosopher (b. 1674)
 * May 28 – Pierre Subleyras, French painter (b. 1699)
 * June 18 – Ambrose Philips, English poet (b. 1675)
 * July 1 – William Jones, Welsh mathematician (b. 1675)
 * July 12
 * Charles de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor of New France (b. c.1671)
 * George Carpenter, 2nd Baron Carpenter of England (b. 1702)
 * July 23 – Ingeborg i Mjärhult, Swedish soothsayer (b. 1665)
 * August 13 – Johann Elias Schlegel, German critic, poet (b. 1719)
 * August 29 – Matthias Bel, Hungarian pastor, polymath (b. 1684)
 * September 10 – Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician, physicist (b. 1706)
 * September 14 – Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, English soldier, politician (b. 1675)
 * October 4 – Baron Franz von der Trenck, Austrian soldier (b. 1711)
 * October 9 – Luís da Cunha, Ambassador of Portugal (b. 1662)
 * November 14 – Maruyama Gondazaemon, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1713)
 * November 19 – Carl Heinrich Biber, German violinist and composer (b. 1681)
 * December 4 – Claudine Guérin de Tencin, French salon holder (b. 1682)
 * December 5 – Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, French-Canadian explorer and trader (b. 1685)
 * December 19 – Francesco Antonio Bonporti, Italian priest and composer (b. 1672)
 * December 25 – John Lindsay, 20th Earl of Crawford, British Army general (b. 1702)
 * date unknown – Maria Oriana Galli-Bibiena, Italian painter (b. 1656)

title: 1749


text:
1748

January–March

 * January 12 – Ahmad Shah Durrani captures Lahore.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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 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.

April–June

 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * June 1
 * A fire in Moscow kills 482 people and destroys 5,000 buildings.
 * 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).

July–September

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

October –December

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

Date unknown

 * Leonhard Euler publishes Introductio in analysin infinitorum, an introduction to pure analytical mathematics, in Berlin.
 * 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 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences makes Eva Ekeblad its first female member.
 * Construction of the Sveaborg fortification begins near Helsinki.
 * The ruins of Pompeii are rediscovered.
 * Louis XV of France 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%.

Births

 * January 19 – Antonio Carnicero, Spanish painter (d. 1814)
 * February 2 – Adam Weishaupt, German founder of the Order of the Illuminati (d. 1811)
 * February 15 – Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher (d. 1832)
 * February 22 – Timothy Dexter, American businessman (d. 1806)
 * February 27 – Anders Sparrman, Swedish naturalist (d. 1820)
 * March 5
 * William Shield, English violinist, composer (d. 1829)
 * Jonas C. Dryander, Swedish botanist (d. 1810)
 * March 8 – William V, Prince of Orange (d. 1806)
 * March 10 – John Playfair, Scottish scientist (d. 1819)
 * April 12 – Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist (d. 1836)
 * April 13 – Joseph Bramah, English inventor, locksmith (d. 1814)
 * April 27
 * Pierre-Louis Ginguené, French author (d. 1816)
 * Adamantios Korais, Greek scholar (d. 1833)
 * May 3 – Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, French cleric, constitutional theorist (d. 1836)
 * May 7 – Olympe de Gouges, French playwright (d. 1793)
 * May 10 – Louis Pierre Vieillot, French ornithologist (d. 1830)
 * May 28 – Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (d. 1825)
 * June 30 – Jacques Dominique, comte de Cassini, French astronomer (d. 1845)
 * August 8 – Johann Friedrich Gmelin, German naturalist (d. 1804)
 * August 9 – Bernhard Schott, German music publisher (d. 1809)
 * August 30 – Jacques-Louis David, French painter (d. 1825)
 * October 7 – King Charles XIII of Sweden (Charles II of Norway) (d. 1818)
 * October 13 – Johann Dominicus Fiorillo, German painter, art historian (d. 1821)
 * November 11 – King Charles IV of Spain (d. 1819)
 * November 13 – William Chalmers, Swedish merchant (d. 1811)
 * December 9 – Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist (d. 1822)
 * December 14 – William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire (d. 1811)
 * date unknown
 * Gioacchino Navarro, Maltese priest and poet (d. 1813)
 * James Sayers, English caricaturist (d. 1823)
 * Timur Shah, Afghan king (d. 1793)
 * Thomas Holloway, English portrait painter, engraver (d. 1827
 * Stylianos Vlasopoulos, Greek judge, writer (d. 1822)

Deaths

 * January 1 – Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (b. 1667)
 * January 16 – Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1684)
 * February 18 – Otto Ferdinand von Abensberg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (b. 1677)
 * March 7 – Élisabeth Thérèse de Lorraine, French noblewoman, Princess of Epinoy by marriage (b. 1664)
 * March 14 – George Wade, British military leader (b. 1673)
 * March 23 – Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist and composer (b. 1684)
 * April 8 – Empress Xiaoxianchun of Qing dynasty (b. 1712)
 * April 12 – William Kent, English architect (b. c. 1685)
 * April 16 – Muhammad Shah, Mughal emperor of India (b. 1702)
 * May 12 – Thomas Lowndes, British astronomer (b. 1692)
 * May 17 – Henri, Duke of Elbeuf, member of the House of Lorraine (b. 1661)
 * June 16 – Jean Philippe d'Orléans, illegitimate son of future French regent Philippe d'Orleans (b. 1702)
 * June 28 – Marretje Arents, Dutch rebel leader (b. 1712)
 * August 27 – James Thomson, Scottish poet (b. 1700)
 * September 6 – Edmund Gibson, English jurist (b. 1669)
 * September 10 – Mother Ignacia del Espíritu Santo, Filipino founder of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary (b. 1663)
 * September 12 – Anne Bracegirdle, English actress (b. c. 1671)
 * September 21 – John Balguy, English philosopher (b. 1686)
 * November 25 – Isaac Watts, English hymn writer (b. 1674)
 * December 2 – Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, English politician (b. 1662)

title: 1748


text:
1747

January–March

 * January 31 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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. After a seven day trial of impeachment in the House of Lords and the verdict of guilt, Fraser is sentenced on the same day to be hanged, drawn and quartered; King George alters Fraser's punishment to beheading, which is carried out publicly on April 9.

April–June

 * 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.
 * 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–September

 * July 2 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Lauffeld: France defeats the combined armies of Hanover, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
 * August 15 – Great Britain, Russia and the Dutch Republic sign the Convention of Saint Petersburg (1747).
 * August 24 – Seyyid Abdullah Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Cyprus, becomes the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and serves until 1750.
 * 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.
 * September 21 – A hurricane in the Caribbean Sea sinks 11 British ships, most of them off the coast of Saint Kitts.

October–December

 * October 1 – On the 7th day of Shawwal, 1160 A.H., Pashtun chieftains in Kandahar, meeting in a special council (a loya jirga) vote to make Ahmad Shah Durrani their leader in Afghanistan and beginning the Durrani Empire.
 * 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
 * October 24 – A Caribbean Sea hurricane sweeps across Saint Kitts, sinking 12 British freighters and one from France.
 * 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 17–19 – The Knowles Riot breaks out in Boston, Massachusetts, protesting impressment into the British Royal Navy,.
 * November 22 – End of Second Stadtholderless period: Prince William IV of Orange becomes stadtholder of all the United Provinces.
 * 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.
 * 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
 * December 27 – The Parliament of Great Britain amends its Naturalisation Act of 1740 to extend recognition to all non-Anglican Protestant denominations in its colonies.

Date unknown

 * James Lind's experiment begins to prove 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.

Births

 * January 10 – Abraham-Louis Breguet, Swiss horologist, inventor (d. 1823)
 * January 15 – John Aikin, English doctor and writer (d. 1822)
 * January 19 – Johann Elert Bode, German astronomer (d. 1826)
 * February 21 – Eugenio Espejo, Ecuadorian scientist (d. 1795)
 * February 28 – Justin Morgan, American horse breeder and composer (d. 1798)
 * May 5 – Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1792)
 * May 7 – Judith van Dorth, Dutch Orangist (d. 1799)
 * June 23 – Michele Troja, Italian physician (d. 1827)
 * July 2 – Rose Bertin, French fashion designer (d. 1813)
 * July 6 – John Paul Jones, American naval captain (d. 1792)
 * September 9 – Thomas Coke, first American Methodist Bishop (d. 1814)
 * October 8 – Jean-François Rewbell, French politician (d. 1807)
 * September 12 – Caleb Brewster, Patriot spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1827)
 * December 12 – Anna Seward, English writer (d. 1809)
 * December 31 – Gottfried August Bürger, German poet (d. 1794)
 * date unknown
 * François Tourte, French musical instrument maker (d. 1835)
 * Francis Salvador, American patriot (d. 1776)
 * Anne Pépin, Senegalese Signara (d. 1837)
 * Grigory Shelikhov, Russian merchant (d. 1795)

Deaths

 * January 2 – Lord George Graham, Royal Navy officer and MP (b. 1715)
 * January 16 – Barthold Heinrich Brockes, German poet (b. 1680)
 * January 26 – Willem van Mieris, Dutch painter (b. 1662)
 * March 2 – Margravine Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, German noble (b. 1713)
 * March 14 – Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, German aristocrat and general (b. 1661)
 * March 16 – Christian Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst, father of Catherine II of Russia (b. 1690)
 * March 23 – Claude Alexandre de Bonneval, French soldier (b. 1675)
 * April 2 – Johann Jacob Dillenius, German botanist (b. 1684)
 * April 3 – Francesco Solimena, Italian painter (b. 1657)
 * April 7 – Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Prussian field marshal (b. 1676)
 * April 9 – Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, Scottish clan chief (b. c. 1667)
 * April 14 – Jean-Frédéric Osterwald, Swiss Protestant pastor (b. 1663)
 * May 9 – John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair, Scottish soldier and diplomat (b. 1673)
 * May 28 – Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, French writer (b. 1715)
 * May 31 – Andrei Osterman, Russian statesman (b. 1686)
 * June 8 – Alan Brodrick, 2nd Viscount Midleton, English cricketer (b. 1702)
 * June 17 – Avdotya Chernysheva, Russian noble, lady in waiting (b. 1693)
 * June 19
 * Nader Shah, Persian leader (b. 1688)
 * Alessandro Marcello, Italian composer (b. 1669)
 * July 9 – Giovanni Bononcini, Italian composer (b. 1670)
 * October 7 – Giulia Lama, Italian painter (b. 1681)
 * October 9 – David Brainerd, American missionary (b. 1718)
 * October 10 – John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. c. 1674)
 * October 4 – Amaro Pargo, Spanish corsair (b. 1678)
 * November 17 – Alain-René Lesage, French writer (b. 1668)
 * December 2 – Vincent Bourne, English classical scholar (b. 1695)

title: 1747


text:
1746

January–March

 * January 8 – The Young Pretender Charles Edward Stuart occupies Stirling, Scotland.
 * January 17 – Battle of Falkirk Muir: British Government forces are defeated by Jacobite forces.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * February 22 – Brussels, at the time part of the Austrian Netherlands, surrenders to France's Marshal Maurice de Saxe.
 * 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.

April–June

 * 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.
 * 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.
 * June 16 – Battle of Piacenza: Austrian forces defeat French and Spanish troops.
 * June 18 – Samuel Johnson is contracted to write his A Dictionary of the English Language.
 * June 29 – Catherine of Ricci (b. 1522) is canonized.

July–September

 * 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. He and three fellow priests are put to death two years later, on October 28, 1748.
 * July 9 – King Philip V of Spain dies, after a reign of more than 45 years. His oldest living son succeeds him, as King Ferdinand VI.
 * 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).
 * 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).
 * 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–December

 * October 11 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Rocoux: The French army defeats the allied Austrian, British, Hanoveran and Dutch army in Rocourt.
 * October 22 – The College of New Jersey is founded in Princetown, New Jersey. In 1896, it is renamed Princeton University.
 * October 28 – An earthquake demolishes Lima and Callao, in Peru.
 * 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.
 * 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 unknown

 * Eva Ekeblad reports her discovery, of how to make flour and alcohol from potatoes, to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
 * The town of Vilkovo (Odes'ka oblast', Ukraine) is founded.
 * 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.
 * 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".

Births

 * January 4 – Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father of the United States (d. 1813)
 * January 12 – Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss pedagogue (d. 1827)
 * January 24 – King Gustav III of Sweden (d. 1792)
 * February 4 – Tadeusz Kościuszko, Polish general and nationalist (d. 1817)
 * February 5 – Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, American politician and soldier (d. 1825)
 * March 3 – Izabela Czartoryska, Polish magnate princess (d. 1835)
 * March 7 – André Michaux, French botanist (d. 1802)
 * March 30 – Francisco Goya, Spanish painter (d. 1828)
 * April 4 – John Andrews, American clergyman, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania (d. 1813)
 * May 9 – Gaspard Monge, French mathematician and geometer (d. 1818)
 * June 3 – James Hook, English composer (d. 1827)
 * July 3 – Henry Grattan, Irish politician (d. 1820)
 * July 16 – Giuseppe Piazzi, Italian astronomer (d. 1826)
 * July 23 – Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish military leader, aids the United States in its quest for independence in the American Revolutionary War (d. 1786)
 * July 30 – Louise du Pierry, French astronomer (d. 1807)
 * September 28 – Sir William Jones, English philologist (d. 1794)
 * October 7 – William Billings, American composer (d. 1800)
 * November 27 – Robert R. Livingston, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (d. 1813)
 * December 29 – Saverio Cassar, Gozitan priest and rebel leader (d. 1805)
 * date unknown
 * Hong Liangji, Chinese scholar, statesman, political theorist and philosopher
 * Isaac Swainson, English botanist (d. 1812)
 * Victor d'Hupay, French philosopher and writer (d. 1818)
 * Ekaterina Kozitskaya, Russian industrialist (d. 1833)
 * Ebenezer Pemberton, American educator (d. 1835)

Deaths

 * February 4 – Robert Blair, Scottish poet and cleric (b. 1699)
 * February 8 – Anton Josef Kirchweger, German writer
 * February 26 – Thomas Watson, 3rd Earl of Rockingham, British politician (b. 1715)
 * February 28 – Hermann von der Hardt, German historian (b. 1660)
 * March 18 – Grand Duchess Anna Leopoldovna of Russia, regent of Russia (b. 1718)
 * March 20 – Nicolas de Largillière, French painter (b. 1656)
 * April 29 – William Flower, 1st Baron Castle Durrow, Irish politician (b. 1685)
 * May 6 – William Tennent, Scottish-American theologian (b. 1673)
 * May 13 – James Drummond, 3rd Duke of Perth, British noble (b. 1713)
 * May 22 – Thomas Southerne, Irish playwright (b. 1660)
 * June 14 – Colin Maclaurin, Scottish mathematician (b. 1698)
 * July 2 – Thomas Baker, English antiquarian (b. 1656)
 * July 9 – King Philip V of Spain (b. 1683)
 * July 28 – John Peter Zenger, American printer, whose court case advanced freedom of the press in the American colonies (b. 1697)
 * July 30 – Francesco Trevisani, Italian painter (b. 1656)
 * August 6 – Christian VI, King of Denmark and Norway (b. 1699)
 * August 8 – Francis Hutcheson, Irish philosopher (b. 1694)
 * September 25 – St George Gore-St George, Irish politician (b. 1722)
 * October 2 – Josiah Burchett, English Secretary of the Admiralty (b. c. 1666)
 * November 14 – Georg Steller, German naturalist (b. 1709)
 * December 6 – Lady Grizel Baillie, Scottish poet (b. 1665)
 * December 8 – Charles Radclyffe, British politician and rebel, by beheading after being convicted of treason against the Crown (b. 1693)

title: 1746


text:
1745

January–March

 * 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 at Munich
 * January 8 – The Quadruple Alliance treaty is signed at Warsaw by Great Britain, Austria, the Dutch Republic and the Duchy of Saxony.
 * January 20 – Less than two weeks after the disastrous Battle of Amberg leaves Bavaria undefended, the electorate's ruler (and Holy Roman Emperor) Karl VII Albrecht 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.
 * 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.
 * 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 Felipe V. The Dauphin never takes the throne, dying in 1765, eight years before the death of his father.
 * 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.
 * 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.

April–June

 * 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
 * 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.
 * April 22 – Having recently turned 18, Bavaria's ruler Maximilian III 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
 * April 29 – The heavily-armed 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 not warned of the impending attack
 * May 11 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Fontenoy: French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army, including the Black Watch.
 * June 4 – Battle of Hohenfriedberg: In the battle that earned him the descriptor of "Frederick the Great", King Frederick II of Prussia decisively defeats the Austrian and Saxon armies, effectively ending the Second Silesian War.
 * June 16 – King George's War: The British capture Cape Breton Island in North America from the French.

July–September

 * July 9 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Melle:  The French are victorious in an engagement against the Pragmatic Allies.
 * July 15 – French army occupies Ghent after Fall of Ghent
 * August 6 (July 26 Old Style) – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place in Surrey, England.
 * August 19 – The Jacobite rising of 1745 begins at Glenfinnan, Scotland, where Charles Edward Stuart raises his standard.
 * September 1 – Catherine the Great marries Peter III of Russia, in Saint Petersburg.
 * September 11 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Jacobites enter Edinburgh; six days later, Charles Edward Stuart proclaims his father James Francis Edward Stuart, as James VIII of Scotland.
 * 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.
 * September 14 – Madame de Pompadour is officially presented, at the court of Louis XV of France.
 * September 16 – Jacobite rising of 1745 – "Canter of Coltbrigg": The British 13th and 14th Dragoons flee the Jacobites, near Edinburgh.
 * September 21 – Battle of Prestonpans: British Government forces are defeated by the Jacobites in Scotland.
 * September 30 – In Battle of Soor Prussian army wins over Austrian and Saxons armies.

October –December

 * October 4 – Francis is crowned as the new Holy Roman Emperor
 * October 8 – The Empress Elizabeth of Russia agrees to provide the Electorate of Saxony aid in its war against Prussia, but the agreement comes too late
 * October 11 – At Köslin (now 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.
 * 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
 * November 1 – Pope Benedict XIV issues the encyclical Vix pervenit, referred to in English as "On Usury and Other Dishonest Profit", condemning the charging of interest on loans as a sin against the Roman Catholic Church
 * November 8 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Charles Edward Stuart, known popularly as "Bonnie Prince Charlie", crosses from Scotland into England for the first time since beginning his quest to place his father on the English throne as the pretender King James III. Charles arrives at Longtown in 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
 * November 23 – In Battle of Hennersdorf Prussian army wins against Saxons army.
 * 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 (now Schuylerville, New York), burning the fort and surrounding buildings to the ground, and killing 15 people. Another 103 survivors are taken prisoner.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * December 18 – Jacobite rising of 1745 – Clifton Moor Skirmish: The Jacobites are victorious, in the last action between two military forces on English soil.
 * December 23 – Jacobite rising of 1745 – Battle of Inverurie: The Jacobites are victorious over British royal troops.
 * December 25 – The Treaty of Dresden gives Prussia full possession of Silesia.
 * December 28 – For 5 days, fire destroys buildings in Istanbul.

Births

 * c. January – Isaac Titsingh, Dutch scholar, merchant-trader and ambassador (d. 1812)
 * January 1 – Anthony Wayne, United States Army officer, statesman and member of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1796)
 * January 6 – Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, French inventor (d. 1799)
 * January 7 – Johan Christian Fabricius, Danish zoologist (d. 1808)
 * January 9 – Caleb Strong, American politician (d. 1819)
 * February – Samuel Hearne, English explorer, fur-trader, author, and naturalist (d. 1792)
 * February 2 – Hannah More, English religious writer, Romantic poet and philanthropist (d. 1833)
 * February 18 – Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist (d. 1827)
 * February 20 – Henry James Pye, English poet (d. 1813)
 * February 21 – Olof Tempelman, Swedish architect (d. 1816)
 * March 4
 * Charles Dibdin, English composer (d. 1814)
 * Kazimierz Pułaski, American Revolutionary War general (d. 1779)
 * March 10 – John Gunby, Maryland soldier in the American Revolutionary War (d. 1807)
 * March 25 – John Barry, officer in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War and later in the United States Navy (d. 1803)
 * April 6 – Thomas Peters, Dutch supercentenarian (d. 1857)
 * April 20 – Philippe Pinel, French physician (d. 1826)
 * July 8 – Sara Banzet, French educator and diarist (d. 1774)
 * July 13 – Robert Calder, British naval officer (d. 1818)
 * August 20 – Francis Asbury, American Methodist Bishop (d. 1816)
 * August 30 – Johann Hieronymus Schröter, German astronomer (d. 1816)
 * September 4 – Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Russian rabbi and founder of Chabad (d. 1812)
 * September 16 – Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, Russian field marshal (d. 1813)
 * November 13 – Valentin Haüy, French educator, founder of the first school for the blind (d. 1822)
 * December 2 – Queen Jeongsun, Korean regent (d. 1805)
 * December 15 – Johann Gottfried Koehler, German astronomer (d. 1801)
 * December 24 – William Paterson, American politician and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1806)
 * date unknown
 * Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, Peruvian indigenous rebel leader (d. 1781)
 * Gim Hongdo (Danwon), Korean painter (d. 1806)
 * Robert H. Harrison, American jurist and lieutenant colonel of the Continental Army (d. 1790)
 * Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), slave, abolitionist, author (d. 1797)

Deaths

 * January 16 – Josiah Franklin, English-born American businessman, father of Benjamin Franklin (b. 1657)
 * January 20 – Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1697)
 * February 23 – Joseph Effner, German architect (b. 1687)
 * February 26 – Henry Scudamore, 3rd Duke of Beaufort, English nobleman (b. 1707)
 * March 27 – Tommaso Crudeli, Florentine free thinker imprisoned by the Roman Inquisition (b. 1702)
 * March 18 – Robert Walpole, first Prime Minister of Great Britain (b. 1676)
 * May 9 – Tomaso Antonio Vitali, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1663)
 * May 22 – François-Marie, 1st duc de Broglie, French military leader (b. 1671)
 * September 30 – Sir John Baird, 2nd Baronet, British politician (b. 1686)
 * October 19 – Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish writer (b. 1667)
 * October 22 – Isaac Greenwood, American mathematician (b. 1702)
 * November 16 – James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, exiled Irish statesman and soldier (b. 1665)
 * December 8 – Étienne Fourmont, French orientalist (b. 1683)
 * December 19 – Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (b. 1684)
 * December 23 – Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bohemian composer (b. 1679)
 * date unknown – Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie, Swedish-born salonnière (b. 1695)

title: 1745


text:
1744

January–March

 * 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.
 * January 24 – The Dagohoy rebellion in the Philippines begins, with the killing of Father Giuseppe Lamberti.
 * February 22–23 – Battle of Toulon: The British fleet is defeated by a joint Franco-Spanish fleet.
 * February 27 – Violent storms frustrate a planned French invasion of Britain.
 * March 1 (approximately) – The Great Comet of 1744, one of the brightest ever seen, reaches perihelion.
 * 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.
 * March 15 – France declares war on Great Britain.

April–June

 * April – The Female Spectator (a monthly) is founded by Eliza Haywood in England, the first periodical written for women by a woman.
 * April 2 – The first Rules of golf are drawn up at Leith, for the first golf competition.
 * April 27 – Siege of Villafranca (1744): A joint French and Spanish force defeats Britain and Sardinia.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * June 13 – Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin is named as the new Chancellor of the Russian Empire by the Empress Elizabeth.
 * 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.
 * 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.

July–September

 * July 8 – The Royal Navy privateer Somerset capsizes and sinks in the Bristol Channel, killing 86 of the 97 crew.
 * July 19 – Battle of Casteldelfino: France defeats the Kingdom of Sardinia.
 * July 29 – Nader Shah lays siege to the Ottoman citadel of Kars.
 * August 12 – Battle of Velletri in the Kingdom of Naples: Spanish-Neapolitan forces defeat those of the Archduchy of Austria.
 * September 30 – Battle of Madonna dell'Olmo: France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia.

October–December

 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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 unknown

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

Births

 * February 6 – Pierre-Joseph Desault, French anatomist and surgeon (d. 1795)
 * February 23 – Mayer Amschel Rothschild, German banker, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty (d. 1812)
 * May 19 – Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen of George III of Great Britain (d. 1818)
 * May 21 – Samuel Ireland, British author and engraver (d. 1800)
 * May 31 – Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor (d. 1817)
 * July 20 – Joshua Clayton, American politician (d. 1798)
 * August 1 – Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French naturalist (d. 1829)
 * August 16 – Pierre Méchain, French astronomer (d. 1804)
 * August 25 – Johann Gottfried Herder, German writer (d. 1803)
 * September 25 – King Frederick William II of Prussia (d. 1797)
 * date unknown
 * Marie Barch, Danish ballerina (d. 1827)
 * Marie-Louise-Adélaïde Boizot, French engraver (d. 1800)

Deaths

 * January 11 – James Hamilton, 7th Earl of Abercorn (b. 1686)
 * January 22 – Pierre Lepature, French artist (b. 1659)
 * January 23 – Giambattista Vico, Italian philosopher and historian (b. 1668)
 * January 26 – Ludwig Andreas von Khevenhüller, Austrian field marshal (b. 1683)
 * February 11 – Hedvig Taube, mistress to King Frederick I of Sweden (b. 1714)
 * February 14 – John Hadley, English mathematician (b. 1682)
 * March 3 – Jean Barbeyrac, French jurist (b. 1674)
 * March 4 – John Anstis, English herald (b. 1669)
 * April 25 – Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer (b. 1701)
 * May 25 – Charles Edzard, Prince of East Frisia (b. 1716)
 * May 30 – Alexander Pope, English writer (b. 1688)
 * June 29
 * André Campra, French composer (b. 1660)
 * John Eames, English academic (b. 1686)
 * June 30 – Januarius Maria Sarnelli, Italian Roman Catholic priest and blessed (b. 1702)
 * July – Mihai Racoviță, Prince of Moldavia and Prince of Wallachia (b. c. 1660)
 * August 9 – James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, English patron of the arts (b. 1673)
 * August 13 – John Cruger, Dutch-born Mayor of New York (b. 1678)
 * August 26 – William Byrd II, prominent planter from Virginia (b. 1674)
 * September 28 – Princess Thérèse of France, daughter of Louis XV of France (b. 1736)
 * October 10 – Johann Heinrich Schulze, German professor and polymath (b. 1687)
 * October 18 – Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, English friend of Anne, Queen of Great Britain (b. 1660)
 * October 31 – Leonardo Leo, Italian composer (b. 1694)
 * December 8 – Marie Anne de Mailly-Nesle, French mistress of King Louis XV (b. 1717)
 * December 23 – Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans, duchess and regent of Lorraine (b. 1676)
 * date unknown – Catherine Jérémie, French-Canadian botanist (b. 1644)

title: 1744