1764 in Great Britain

• Monarch – George III • Prime Minister – George Grenville (Whig) ==Events==

• 19 January – John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons for seditious libel for his article criticising King George III in The North Briton; he is in exile in France. • 5 April – Parliament passes the Sugar Act. • 19 April – the Currency Act passed which prohibits the American colonies from issuing paper currency of any form. where he composes his Symphony No. 1. • August – protests begin in Boston, Massachusetts against Britain's colonial policies. • Industrial Revolution: James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny. • Holkham Hall, Norfolk, completed in the Palladian style by William Kent. • Landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown is appointed Chief Gardener at the royal palace of Hampton Court; redesigns the gardens of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire; and works at Broadlands in Hampshire. • The rock pillar called "Lot's Wife" amongst The Needles off the Isle of Wight collapses into the sea during a storm. ==Publications==

• James Ridley's pastiche Oriental stories The Tales of the Genii (supposedly translated by Sir Charles Morell from Persian). • Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel (supposedly translated by William Marshal from Italian). ==Births==

• Early – James Smithson, mineralogist, chemist and benefactor (died 1829) • February – George Duff, Scottish naval officer (died 1805) • 13 March – Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1845) • 1 April – Eclipse, racehorse (died 1789) • 3 April – John Abernethy, surgeon (died 1831) • 29 April – Ann Hatton, née Kemble, novelist (died 1838) • 2 May – Robert Hall, Baptist minister (died 1831) • 4 May – Joseph Carpue, surgeon (died 1846) • 5 May – Robert Craufurd, Scottish general (killed at Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo (1812)) • 25 May – John Mason Good, writer (died 1827) • 19 June – Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, author and statesman (died 1848) • 21 June – Sidney Smith, admiral (died 1840) • 5 July – Daniel Mendoza, boxer (died 1836) • 9 July – Ann Radcliffe, née Ward, novelist (died 1823) • 27 July – John Thelwall, radical (died 1834) • 17 September – John Goodricke, astronomer (died 1786) • 25 September – Fletcher Christian, sailor and mutineer (died 1793 in Pitcairn Islands) • October – William Symington, Scottish mechanical engineer and steamboat pioneer (died 1831) • 3 December – Mary Lamb, writer and matricide (died 1847) • Approximate date – Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish explorer of northern Canada (died 1820) ==Deaths==

• 6 March – Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor (born 1690) • 17 March • William Oliver, physician (born 1695) • George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, astronomer (born c. 1696) • 15 April – John Immyns, attorney and lutenist (born c. 1700) • 29 June – Ralph Allen, businessman and politician (born 1693) • 7 July – William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, politician (born 1683) • 2 September – Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal (born 1700) • 23 September – Robert Dodsley, writer (born 1703) • 2 October – William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, Prime Minister (born 1720) • 26 October – William Hogarth, painter and satirist (born 1697) • 4 November – Charles Churchill, poet and satirist (born 1732) ==See also==