March 12 – A steam engine is used in the American colonies for the first time asNew Jersey copper mine owner Arent Schuyler installs aNewcomen atmospheric engine to pump water out of a mineshaft.[1]
March 22 – Britain's House of Commons votes in favor of £1,000,000 of appropriations to expand the British Army and Royal Navy operations in North America.[2]
March 26 – GeneralEdward Braddock and 1,600 British sailors and soldiers arrive atAlexandria, Virginia on transport ships that have sailed up thePotomac River. Braddock, sent to take command of the British forces against the French in North America, commandeers taverns and private homes to feed and house the troops.[3]
May 3 –France dispatches 3,600 troops to protect its Canadian colonies inQuebec from a British invasion, dispatching 2,400 to Quebec city and 1,200 toLouisbourg inNova Scotia, unaware that a squadron of 11 fully armed warships from Britain's Royal Navy had sailed toward Canada on April 27.[4]
May 17 – Spanish missionary Tomas Sanchez and three families establish a settlement on the north side of theRio Grande inNew Spain. Sanchez names itVilla de Laredo. The new settlement is the northernmost part of the colony ofNuevo Santander, founded byJosé de Escandón, 1st Count of Sierra Gorda, which now comprises parts of the Mexican state ofTamaulipas and the U.S. state ofTexas. The portion of Villa de Laredo north of the river later becomes Laredo, Texas; the remaining portion south of the river is later renamed Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.[5]
May 19 – General Braddock hosts Iroquois leaders Scaroyady, Kaghswaghtaniunt and Silver Heels atFort Cumberland, the British Army base in the colony ofMaryland. The three chiefs pledge their alliance with the British in advance of Braddock's expedition into the Ohio Country.[6]
May 24 – France completes the construction ofFort Duquesne, its new base to the west of the British colony of Pennsylvania. The British capture the fort during theFrench and Indian War and rename itFort Pitt. The site, at the junction of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, is nowPittsburgh.[8]
May 30 – General Braddock's troops begin a difficult trek across the heavily woodedAllegheny Mountains from western Maryland into the Ohio country.[9]
Scottish chemistJoseph Black describes his discovery ofcarbon dioxide (fixed air) andmagnesium, in a paper to theMedical Society of Edinburgh. The paper is published in 1756 with the titleExperiments upon Magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other alkaline Substances.[10]
At the entrance of theSaint Lawrence River, a squadron ofRoyal Navy ships, under the command of British AdmiralEdward Boscawen, intercepts the nine French ships dispatched to save Canada; seven of the nine ships are concealed by fog and are able to reach their destination; another of the transports escapes.[4]
July 17 – In a convoy of ships fromGreat Britain, returning to India for theEast India Company, the lead shipDoddington (on her third voyage) wrecks inAlgoa Bay near modern-dayPort Elizabeth in South Africa, losing 247 of its 270 passengers and crew, together with a chest of gold coins fromRobert Clive worth £33,000. In1998, 1,400 coins from the wreck site are offered for sale, and in2002 a portion is given to the South African government. Around twenty survivors of the wreck are eventually able to make safety after an open boat voyage.[12][13]
July 25 – The decision to deport theAcadians is made, during meetings of the Nova Scotia Council meeting inHalifax. From September 1755-June 1763, the vast majority of Acadians are deported to one of the following British Colonies in America:Massachusetts,Connecticut,New York,Pennsylvania,Maryland,Virginia,North Carolina,South Carolina andGeorgia. Contrary to popular belief, no Acadians are sent toLouisiana. Those sent to Virginia are refused and then sent on toLiverpool,Bristol,Southampton andPenryn in England. In 1758 the Fortress of Louisbourg falls and all of the civilian population of Isle Royal (Cape Breton Island) and Isle St. Jean (Prince Edward Island) are repatriated to France. Among them were several thousand Acadians, who had escaped the deportation by fleeing into those areas. Very few Acadians successfully escape the deportation and do so only by fleeing into some of the northern sections of present dayNew Brunswick. The event inspires Longfellow to write the epic poemEvangeline.
September 2 – A powerful hurricane strikes the east coast of the British colony ofNorth Carolina, killing 150 people and sinking five British and colonial merchant ships atPortsmouth Island.[14]
September 6 – TheRussian Academy of Sciences awards its prize for "the best explanation of the true causes of electricity including their theory" to Switzerland'sJohann Euler for his paperDisquisitio de causa physica electricitatis.[15]
September 16 – Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, the new British Minister to Russia, secures an alliance signed by Empress Catherine the Great. The Russian Empire agrees to provide up to 55,000 troops to defend theElectorate of Hanover against invasion byPrussia. At the time, KingGeorge II of Great Britain is also the ruler of the German duchy; the Russian troops are provided in return for an annual payment of £600,000.[18]
September 17 – Jean-Marc Vacheron founds his watch-making companyVacheron Constantin. To this day, Vacheron Constantin is the oldest watchmaker in the world with an uninterrupted watchmaking history since its foundation.[19]
October 12 – Having completed theExpulsion of the Acadians fromSt. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island), the British colonial Governor ofNova Scotia,Charles Lawrence, issues a proclamation that his office will receive proposals from English settlers "for the peopling and cultivating as well of the lands vacated by the French, as every other part of this valuable province."[23]
October 17 – TheMount Katla volcano erupts inIceland and continues ejecting ash for the next 120 days, finally ceasing on February 13. An estimated 1.5 cubickilometers (1.5 billion cubic meters or 53 billion cubic feet) oftephra is discharged by the volcano.[25]
November 1 – More than 40,000 people are killed by the 8.5 magnitudeearthquake in Lisbon,Portuguese Empire. The tremor begins at 9:40 in the morning local time off of the Atlantic coast of Portugal and sends atsunami that strikes the coasts of Portugal, Spain and Morocco.November 1:Lisbon earthquake kills more than 40,000
December 17 –Anton,Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, is dismissed by his opponents on the Ecclesiastical Council and briefly imprisoned for 18 months before being allowed to move to Russia; in 1764, Anton is again made the Georgian Orthodox Church's leader.
^Paul R. Wonning,Colonial American History Stories, 1753–1763: Forgotten and Famous Historical Events (Mossy Feet Books, 2017)
^Rodney Bruce Hall,National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and International Systems (Columbia University Press, 1999) p116
^Philip Smucker,Riding with George: Sportsmanship & Chivalry in the Making of America's First President (Chicago Review Press, 2017)
^abcJonathan R. Dull,The Miracle of American Independence: Twenty Ways Things Could Have Turned Out Differently (University of Nebraska Press, 2015) p22
^Federal Writers' Project,The WPA Guide to Texas: The Lone Star State (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934, reprinted by Trinity University Press, 2013)
^David L. Preston,Braddock's Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2015) p112
^Frank Basil Tracy,The Tercentenary History of Canada: From Champlain to Laurier, MDCVIII-MCMVIII, Volume II (P. F. Collier & Son, 1908) p387
^Stuart P. Boehmig,Images of America: Downtown Pittsburgh (Arcadia Publishing, 2007) p13
^Phillip Papas,Renegade Revolutionary: The Life of General Charles Lee (New York University Press, 2014) p30
^"Black (Joseph)", inBibliotheca Osleriana: A Catalogue of Books Illustrating the History of Medicine and Science by Sir William Osler (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1969) p116
^"North Carolina", inEncyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones, by David Longshore (Infobase Publishing, 2010) p330
^"Hallerstein and Gruber's Scientific Heritage", by Stanislav Joze Juznic, inThe Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (Societat Catalana d'Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, 2012) p358
^David R. Starbuck,The Legacy of Fort William Henry: Resurrecting the Past (University Press of New England, 2014)
^Alfred A. Cave,The French and Indian War (Greenwood, 2004) p115
^Ian Grey,Catherine the Great (New Word City, 2016)
^'Treasures of Vacheron Constantin: A Legacy of Watchmaking since 1755' by Julien Marchenoir
^"Periphery as Center: Slavery, Identity, and the Commercial Press in the British Atlantic, 1704-1755", by Robert E. Desrochers, Jr., inBritish North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. by Stephen Foster (Oxford University Press, 2016)
^Dee Morris and Dora St. Martin,Somerville, Massachusetts: A Brief History (Arcadia Publishing, 2008)
^Harvey M. Feinberg,Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast During the Eighteenth Century (American Philosophical Society, 1989) p108
^Naomi Griffiths,Mason Wade, Acadia and Quebec (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991) p110
^Kevin Kenny,Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment (Oxford University Press, 2011) p71
^Helgi Björnsson,The Glaciers of Iceland: A Historical, Cultural and Scientific Overview (Springer, 2016) pp244-245
