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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization science religion communications, media literature art theater, film music sports crime agriculture food availability |
The Diet meeting at Regensburg (Ratisbon) January 11 recognizes the Pragmatic Sanction order of Karl VI (see 1731; 1736).
Genoa recovers Corsica from insurgent forces who revolted in 1730, but the Genoese will have to call on the French for help in controlling the island (see 1768).
France's Louis XV takes as his first maitresse-en-titre the comtesse de Mailly (née de Nesle) (see 1725). Poor but not mercenary, she is the same age as the king (22) and loves him with more selfless sincerity than will any of her successors, but her scheming younger sister Pauline soon seduces the susceptible king and becomes pregnant by him. Louis marries Pauline off to the marquis de Vintimille, who removes himself to the provinces right after the ceremony (conjugal love is rare in France and quite unfashionable). While the comtesse de Mailly continues to live at Versailles, Louis buys Pauline the château de Choisy-le-Roi near the Forest of Sénart, furnishing it in silver and gold, but Pauline, after giving birth to a son, is seized with convulsions and dies in agony (her son, who is given the title comte du Lac, will bear such an uncanny resemblance to the king that he will become known as le demi-louis) (see 1734).
Persian forces under the command of the Afshar chief Nadir Kuli take Herat after a hard-fought siege (see 1731); the defenders have demonstrated such courage that Nadir Kuli recruits many of them into his army (see 1736). Russian foreign minister Andrei Ivanovich Osterman is compelled to return some territory to Persia.
Dahomey's king Agaja dies after a 24-year reign in which he has conquered Allada and Ouidah in order to obtain European firearms while expanding his wealth in the profitable slave trade. His successor will reign until 1774 under the name Tebbesu, acquiring additional provinces.
America's Georgia colony has its beginnings in a charter granted by George II to English philanthropists who include James E. Oglethorpe, now 36, for lands between the Altamah and Savannah Rivers. Oglethorpe's parliamentary investigations into penal conditions have led him to advance the idea of establishng an American colony for newly freed and unemployed debtors (see 1733).
Fur trader Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de la Vérendrye, erects a fort on Lake of the Woods (see 1731). He and his three sons are building forts as trading posts where the natives can sell furs (see 1734).
Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), 25, travels 4,600 miles through northern Scandinavia studying plant life (see 1737).
Curaçao's Mikve Israel Synagogue is completed at the Caribbean island's capital of Willemstad and will survive as the oldest in the Western Hemisphere (see Turo, 1763).
Poor Richard's Almanack begins publication at Philadelphia. Primarily an agricultural handbook, it gives sunset and sunrise times, high and low tides, weather predictions, and optimum dates for planting and harvesting. Benjamin Franklin will publish annual editions for 25 years, offering practical suggestions, recipes, advice on personal hygiene, and folksy urgings to be frugal, industrious, and orderly ("God helps those who help themselves," "Remember that time is money," "No nation was ever ruined by trade," "Never leave till tomorrow that which you can do to-day," "You cannot pluck roses without fear of thorns, nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns," "A house without a woman and firelight is like a body without soul or spright," "There are three faithful friends—an old wife, an old dog, and ready money") that are credited to a fictional "Richard Saunders." Circulation will reach 10,000, and colonial housewives will quote it as often as they do their Bibles. (Franklin took as his common-law wife one Deborah Read 2 years ago, being reluctant to marry her because her previous husband, while believed to have died, might turn up, making Deborah's new husband potentially liable for any debts he might have. She will remain his wife until her death in 1774.) Franklin will revolutionize colonial postal service to improve circulation of his Almanack and Pennsylvania Gazette (see 1729). He will double and triple the postal service in some areas, increase the speed of couriers, consolidate roads from Maine to Georgia into what later will be called Route 1, and produce for the crown three times the postal revenues obtained in Ireland.
The Philadelphia Zeitung begins publication in May. Founded by Benjamin Franklin, it is the first foreign-language newspaper in the British colonies.
Nonfiction: Alciphron; or, The Minute Philosopher by George Berkeley, who wrote the work at Newport in the Rhode Island colony, where he went in 1728 after marrying Anne Forster; the couple returned last year to England.
Painting: The Cholmondeley Family by William Hogarth; Kitchen Table with Shoulder of Mutton by Jean-Siméon Chardin.
Sculpture: Fontana di Trevi by Italian sculptor Niccola Salvi at Rome.
Theater: Zara (Zaïre) by Voltaire 8/13 at the Comédie-Française, Paris; London's Theatre Royal in Covent Garden opens 12/7 with the 1700 Congreve comedy The Way of the World.
Playwright-poet-librettist John Gay dies at London December 4 at age 47.
Oratorio: Esther 5/2 at the King's Theatre, London with Anna Maria Strata del Po, music by George Frideric Handel; Strata del Po will be Handel's leading soprano until 1737.
Opera: Acis and Galatea 6/5 at the King's Theatre, with music by George Frideric Handel.
The Philadelphia anglers' club State and Schuylkill established in May for gentlemen and their wives (membership is limited to 30), will be renamed the Fish House Club and become known for its rum-based Fish House Punch.
Bahamas governor and former privateer Woodes Rogers dies at Nassau July 16 at age 53 (approximate), having helped end the era of piracy in the Caribbean.
The average bullocks sold at London's Smithfield cattle market weighs 550 pounds, up from 370 pounds in 1710 (see 1639; 1795). London's beef, pork, lamb, and mutton for the next century and more will come largely from animals raised in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, landed by ship at Holyhead, driven across the Isle of Anglesey, made to swim half a mile across the Menai Straits to the Welsh mainland, and then driven 200 miles to Barnet, a village on the outskirts of London, to be fattened for the Smithfield market. The meat will be generally tough and costly.
Famine strikes western Japan as crops are ruined by an excess of rain and a plague of grasshoppers: 2.6 million go hungry, 12,400 die, more than 15,000 horses and work cattle starve to death in one of the worst of the 130 famines of the Tokugawa shōgunate.
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