1751
1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760
Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce technology science medicine literature art music marine resources agriculture food and drink population |
Sweden's Frederik I of Hesse-Cassel dies at Stockholm April 5 at age 75 after a 31-year reign and is succeeded by his wife's cousin Adolf Frederik of Oldenberg-Holstein-Gottorp, 41, who has married a sister of Prussia's Friedrich II (the Great) and will reign until 1771 as Adolf Fredrik.
France's Louis XV mourns the loss of his first mistress, Mme. de Mailly, who dies in April at age 41. Since leaving Versailles she has atoned for her youthful wantonness with the king by devoting herself to charitable works, and she is found to be wearing a hair shirt and to have left instructions that she be buried in a potter's field.
Dutch stadtholder Willem IV dies at The Hague October 22 at age 40 after a 4-year reign and is succeeded by his 3-year-old son, who will reign until 1795 as Willem V.
The former Japanese shōgun Yoshimune Tokugawa dies at Edo July 12 at age 66.
British and Indian forces under Robert Clive in southeast India seize Arcot, capital of the Carnatic, August 31. A 26-year-old former East India Company clerk, Clive began his military career 3 years ago; he resists a 53-day siege by superior French forces, driving them off November 5 in the first serious challenge to France's hegemony in the subcontinent (see 1756).
British statesman-writer Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, dies at his native Battersea, London, December 12 at age 73.
Georgetown is founded on the Maryland shore of the Potomac River. The new port is named in honor of Britain's George II (see 1790).
The British consol (Consolidated Funds) is created by a consolidation of government securities, chiefly annuities, into a single national-debt issue—a consolidated annuity with no maturity that is considered to be a safe investment (see Rothschild, 1815).
French-born Huguenot Augustine Courtauld dies in Britain at age 65 (approximate). His son George will introduce silk throwing into Essex to launch a textile empire that will become world famous.
Mathematician-military engineer Benjamin Robins dies at Madras, India, July 29 at age 44; watchmaker George Graham at London November 20 at age 77 (approximate), having perfected the cylinder escapement and dead-beat escapement to give his watches an accuracy never before achieved.
Experiments and Observations on Electricity by Benjamin Franklin is published at London using terms such as armature, battery, charge, condenser, conductor, plus, minus, positive, and negative that will come into universal use (see 1747). Franklin's work theorizes that electricity is a single fluid that flows from one body to another; it establishes his reputation as an important scientist (see kite, 1752).
Système de la Nature by Pierre de Maupertuis challenges the "proof" of spontaneous generation offered by John Needham in 1748. Maupertuis also challenges orthodox ovist genetic theories. He postulates a theory of monstres par défaut et par excés that anticipates the later discovery of supernumerary or missing chromosomes, and expands on his 1745 critique of ovist theories by observing that offspring reveal characteristics present in both parents, a fact well known to livestock breeders, and pointing out that ovist theories cannot explain the periodic recurrence of six-fingered hands in members of a certain Berlin family nor explain albinism in blacks.
German physicist A. Croustedt isolates nickel.
English physician Robert Whytt, 37, shows that only a segment of the spinal cord is necessary for a reflex action and draws explicit distinction between voluntary and involuntary motion. He pioneers the study of reflexes as a distinct branch of physiology.
Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers appears in its first volume in April at Paris. Editor-in-chief Denis Diderot has rejected the idea of simply translating Ephraim Chambers's 1728 Cyclopaedia and has enlisted the help of mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert, the essayist baron de Montesquieu, and others who give accuracy and transparency precedence over industrial secrecy and religious conformity. The Church and monarchy will find some of its entries "subversive" and objectionable. The Encyclopédie will be suppressed, but publication will be continued on a clandestine basis (see 1772).
Nonfiction: Le Siècle de Louis XIV by Voltaire: "The history of the greatest rulers is often only a recital of mistakes" (XI).
Philosopher-physician Julien Offray de La Mettrie dies at Berlin November 11 at age 42.
Fiction: The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett; Amelia by Henry Fielding, who calls gin "poison."
Poetry: "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray: "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,/ The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,/ The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,/ And leaves the world to darkness and to me . . ."; "Full many a gem of purest ray serene/ The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear./ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air"; "Scribleriad" by London-born poet Richard Owen Cambridge, 34, is a mock-epic work that satirizes false learning.
Painting: La Toilette de Vénus by François Boucher; Gin Lane (engraving) by William Hogarth, who satirizes the excesses of drinking among London's lower classes. Japanese ukiyoe painter Sukenobu Nishikawa dies at age 80.
Florence-born dancer Gaétan (or Gaetano) (Apolline Baldassare) Vestris, 22, is appointed soloist of the Paris Opéra ballet ensemble, beginning a 30-year career in which his talent will be matched only by his conceited airs.
At least 60 New England vessels are engaged in whaling ventures (see 1712; 1775).
George Washington visits Barbados with his brother Lawrence, who requires a warm climate to recover from an illness (see 1741). Now 19, young George samples tropical fruits, notably "agovado" (avocado) pears that he notes are abundant and the most popular local fruit, and shaddock (grapefruit; see 1696), but writes in his diary that "none pleases my taste as do's the pine [pineapple]."
Pennsylvania farmer-naturalist John Bartram, 52, describes Native American cookery in Observations . . . made by John Bartram in his travels from Pensilvania to . . . Lake Ontario, published at London. Bartram has farmed for 13 years at Kingessing, outside Philadelphia.
The British government sharply increases the tax on gin and tightens regulations for the sale of gin in licensed premises (see 1736). A substantial rise in the price of grain also raises the price of spirits, forcing the poor to switch to beer, coffee, and tea. Porter (see 1722) will sell in London for three-pence per quart until 1761, and the price will not reach four-pence until 1799.
Worcester Royal Porcelain Company has its beginnings in an English crockery firm founded June 4 by Dr. John Wall and potter William Davis to take over Benjamin Lund's Bristol factory, started 3 years ago. Dr. Wall will perfect soapstone porcelain, basing his work on the expertise of his workmen. His company's blue china teapots, cups, and saucers, with an underglaze Chinoiserie design, are made from a paste containing soapstone (steatite), and by the 1760s the designs will be modeled on those of Meissen and Sèvres as well as those from China (see 1788; Cookworthy, 1754).
"So vast is the Territory of North America that it will require many Ages to settle it fully," writes Benjamin Franklin, "and, till it is fully settled, Labour will never be cheap here, where no Man continues long a Labourer for others, but gets a Plantation of his own" (see 1755; Jefferson, 1782).
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