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Austrian armies drive French and Bavarian troops out of Bavaria as the War of the Austrian Succession continues in Europe (see 1742). Britain's 59-year-old George II personally leads a 50,000-man allied Pragmatic army of British, Austrian, Hessian, and Hanoverian troops that defeats 70,000 French June 27 in the Battle of Dettingen on the north bank of the Main some 70 miles east of Frankfurt; the Dutch Republic throws in its lot with Britain in alliance with Austria's Maria Theresa, who makes an alliance with Saxony (see 1744).
The emperor Karl VII takes refuge at Frankfurt.
A treaty signed at Abo (later Turku) August 17 gives Russia a strip of southern Finland that includes the cities of Vilmanstrand and Frederikshamn (see 1742). Russian troops are to be allowed to occupy Sweden until the Swedes install Adolf Frederik of Holstein-Gotthorp-Eutin as king (see 1744).
John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll, dies at his native Petersham, Surrey, October 4 at age 75.
War resumes between Persia and the Ottoman Empire.
The Kachhawa maharajah Sawai Jai Singh II dies at age 55 after a momentous 44-year reign in which he has expanded his Rajputani realm, built the walled city of Jaipur, and expanded knowledge of astronomy. Three of his 31 wives and many of his concubines throw themselves on his funeral pyre at Getore in Brahamuri, where a marble cenotaph is erected to his memory.
Jurist Cornelis van Bynkershoek dies at The Hague April 16 at age 69.
Pierre, South Dakota, has its beginnings March 30 as Louis-Joseph and François Vérendrye place a lead tablet bearing that date on a nearby site while returning from the west to rejoin their father, Pierre G. de Varennes, sieur de la Vérendrye (see 1742). They claim the country for France, but the Sioux will soon kill Vérendrye's eldest son; a nephew and a Roman Catholic priest will also die at the hands of the tribesmen; and French authorities will criticize Vérendrye for failing to find the western sea (see 1749). The lead tablet will be discovered in 1913 (see Pierre, 1880).
Commodore George Anson, Royal Navy, refits his flagship H.M.S. Centurion at Macao off the coast of China, having lost all of his other ships (see 1742). He leaves Macao April 19 with a crew of 227 that includes 23 men recruited at Macao, catches sight June 20 of the 42-gun Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora del Cobadonga bound from Acapulco to Manila, gives chase, loses two dead and 16 wounded in a 2½-hour engagement before capturing his quarry near the Philippines (the Spanish admiral and 47 of his men are killed, 83 wounded), takes 492 prisoners and appropriates 1 million Spanish dollars plus 500 pounds of native silver. Anson proceeds to Guangzhou (Canton), sells the galleon for what later will be reckoned at $6,000, and heads for home December 15 (see 1744).
The Dutch East India Company founded in 1594 remains richer and more powerful than its slightly younger British counterpart.
Traité de dynamique by French mathematician-philosopher Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, 25, advances the theory that internal forces constitute by themselves a system of equilibrium that as a whole is statically equivalent to the system of external forces. He will apply d'Alembert's principle next year to the theory of equilibrium and the motion of fluids.
Naturalist-mathematician Charles-Marie de La Condamine quits the scientific expedition that brought him to South America 8 years ago and leaves Quito on a journey to the mouth of the Amazon that will take him 4 months, during which time he will make ethnographic observations.
Théorie de la Figure de la Terre by French mathematician Alex Claude Clairaut, 30, reports the results of a mathematical investigation of the shape of the earth according to hydrostatic principles.
Astronomer Edmond Halley dies at Greenwich, London, January 14 at age 85, having planned a project to observe and time the transit of Venus from observation points around the world (knowing the distance between these points will make it possible to calculate more accurately the scale of the solar system; see exploration [Cook], 1768); geologist John Strachey dies at Greenwich June 11 at age 72.
Russia has pogroms that kill thousands of Jews.
German schoolboy Moses Mendelssohn, 14, arrives at Berlin from Dessau and finds that the city has 333 Jewish families and a total of fewer than 2,000 Jews, tolerated only because they are economically useful but restricted in where they can live, how much they can move about, excluded from public service, forbidden to engage in certain trades, barred from guilds, taxed excessively, and subject to expulsion when it pleases the authorities. The son of a Torah scribe, Mendelssohn is penniless. He struggles to master the language and other skills needed to become a scholar, but he will succeed in his efforts and strive to assimilate Jews with other Berliners (see 1781).
"Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England" by Boston Congregationalist minister Charles Chauncy opposes the emotional revivalism of Jonathan Edwards at Northampton with theological liberalism (see 1741). The battle of pamphlets will continue until Edwards's death early in 1758.
The University of Erlangen opens formally November 4 in Brandenburg, having started as an academy at Bayreuth. Riots between students and the Bayreuth garrison have led to its being moved.
Nonfiction: Vida by mathematician-writer Diego de Torres Villaroel, now 50, is a true story written in the style of a picaresque novel.
Fiction: The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great by Henry Fielding.
Poetry: Ann Boleyn to Henry the Eighth by Cambridge University poet William Whitehead, 28; The Sorrowing of Turtledove (Den sörjande Turdufvan) by Swedish feminist Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, 25, whose Platonist clergyman husband, Jacob Fabricius, has died at an early age, leaving her desolated.
Painting: Marriage à la Mode (six scenes) by William Hogarth; The Triumph of Flora by Giambattista Tiepolo; St. Giovanni Nepomuceno Confessing to the Queen of Bohemia by Italian painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi, now 78: Madame Boucher by François Boucher. Painter Alexandre-François Desportes dies at Paris April 20 at age 81; Nicolas Lancret at Paris September 14 at age 53.
Theater: Mérope by Voltaire 2/20 at the Comédie-Française, Paris.
Opera: Samson 2/18 at London's Drury Lane Theatre, with English comedic actress Kitty Clive (née Catherine Raftor), 31, creating the role of Dalila, music by George Frideric Handel.
Oratorio: Samson 3/23 at London's Covent Garden, with Mrs. Cibber in the role of Mica, music by G. F. Handel.
English prizefight promoter Jack Broughton draws up rules for boxing that will govern the "sport" until 1838 (see Figg, 1734), but fisticuffs will for more than a century remain a low amusement comparable to bear baiting, with bareknuckle contestants allowed to butt, gouge, and kick their opponents (see Cribb, 1807).
Dresden's Frauenkirche is completed after 17 years of construction to baroque designs by the late architect and master builder George Baehr, who died in March 1738 at age 72; it will survive until the early 1940s.
Moët and Chandon has its beginnings in a champagne business founded at Epernay by French entrepreneur Claude Moët, whose firm will become France's largest champagne producer, bottling the bubbly beverage in splits (or nips—6½ ounces), pints (13 ounces), bottles (or quarts, 26 ounces), magnums (two quarts, 52 ounces), jeroboams (double magnums, 104 ounces), rheoboams (six quarts, 156 ounces), methuselahs (eight quarts, 208 ounces, or 1.65 gallons), salmanazars (12 quarts, 312 gallons, or 2.44 gallons), balthazars (16 quarts, 416 ounces, or 3.3 gallons), and nebuchadnezzars (20 quarts, 520 ounces, or 4.07 gallons) (see Dom Perignon, 1699; royal edict, 1735).
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