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 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 ==