VG

Charleston, South Carolina. A large crowd gathers in front of the Charleston Trading Exchange to hear the state governor proclaim independence from Great Britain.

A meteorite crashed in Albareto, Modena; the object was fragmented and sold to various collectors and museums; a small fragment the size of a fist is still preserved at the Department of Geological Sciences in Modena.

Finale Emilia, Bassa Modenese. A bell is added to the Clock Tower. The same bell that was destroyed in the 2012 earthquake became its symbol when, for a few hours, it remained half standing, its clock broken.

Adam Smith: “The Wealth of Nations”

England. Jeremy Bentham publishes “A Fragment on Government,” in which he attacks the notion of the social contract. He says that “the measure of right and wrong is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

Birmingham, England. Inventor James Watt and investor Matthew Boulton give a public demonstration of their new steam engine at the Boomfield coal mine. The idea of using steam was not new, and a steam engine already existed, developed by Englishman Thomas Newcomen, but it consumed

Battle of Quebec City, Canada. Approximately 7:00 a.m. The American assault on the city achieves initial success. However, Morgan pauses and calls a council of war. The population is even friendly and chants “Long live liberty!” But this gives Morgan time to organize.

London. Lord George Germain is installed as head of the American Colonies for Lord North’s government (in office since 1770). He will find himself facing the American Revolution.

Boston. The three English generals—William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne—arrive in Boston and find 6,000 of His Majesty’s soldiers, the finest in Europe, besieged by hordes of poorly armed farmers and ranchers. Two months earlier, the English troops had been repelled and pursued from

American rebels led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold capture Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York. They then advance toward British Canada, preparing for an invasion, believing it to be vulnerable.

Finance develops the practice of negotiating bank bills and issuing banknotes.

Canada. The Quebec Act recognized the rights of French Canadians in British Canada. It also extended the borders of British Canada to the Ohio River, effectively annexing the entire Great Lakes region.

Germany, Pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze discovered the animal species Tardigrada, but its name was given to it in 1776 by Lazzaro Spallanzani. Since 1778, over 1,150 tardigrade species have been identified. They are microscopic animals with a segmented body and eight legs. They are

Beethoven, Hegel, Napoleon, Hillerlin, Wordsworth are born.

Industrial Revolution: James Hargreave’s multiple spinning frame.

The Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, head of the Board of Longitude and a bitter enemy of John Harrison, finished the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris but continued to revise and improve it until his death in 1811; mariners continued to use it until 1815.

James Watt had the idea of keeping the cylinder of his steam engine hot and discharging the used steam into a separate condenser.

At the age of 8, Amadeus Mozart performed in London and Paris where he studied with Johann Christian Bach.

James Watt perfects the steam engine

Second Industrial Revolution. The internal combustion engine and the electric motor.

End of the confrontation between the UK and France in the world: the English win the Seven Years’ War and the French sign the peace treaty in Paris. The English acquire Canada and part of the Mississippi Valley from the French, Florida and the Gulf

Richard Price, a chaplain and mathematician like his predecessor, the Anglican priest and mathematician Thomas Bayes, gives a lecture to the Royal Society reading a work by Bayes entitled “An Essay on the Resolution of a Problem in the Doctrine of Chance” which made Bayes

In The Social Contract, the Swiss Jean Jacques Rousseau questions the legitimacy of any political system that is not based on the general will.

Nuremberg. Industrialization of pencil production as we know it today, by the Faber factory. The invention, however, dates back to 1560, by the Bernacottis.

Tsarina Catherine the Great expands Russia’s territory, power, and prestige. She annexes Poland and Ukraine. Catherine the Great, along with her most famous lover, Grigory Potemkin, aspires to restore the Byzantine Empire.

Immanuel Kant began to engage in philosophy. His early works, in his first twenty years, were traditional and cautious in their approach.

Russia. The monarchy confiscates the Orthodox Church’s large estates, then keeps them for itself.

England. Reign of George III. During his reign, he witnessed the defeat of France in the Seven Years’ War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon, and his defeat at Waterloo. In his final years, he suffered from dementia, which is why

Battle of Quebec: Canada passes from French to English rule

John Harrison completes the H-3 (sea-clock)

Anglo-French clash at Quebec City known as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham during the Seven Years’ War, British troops under General James Wolfe defeat French troops under General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, and Quebec becomes British (Canadian)

Halley’s Comet passes perihelion. Halley had already demonstrated in 1705 that the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 were the same comet, Halley’s Comet. He had predicted its return for 1757 or 1758. In reality, Jupiter and Saturn altered its orbit, delaying its return. Clairaut

To the amazement of (almost) everyone, the Comet that would later be named Halley’s Comet reappears, as predicted in 1705 by Edmond Halley in “Astronomiae cometicae synopsis”.

The tenth edition of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae establishes modern nomenclature

Battle of Plassey: The British take control of India

Benjamin Franklin noted that a teaspoon of oil dissolved in water reduces its ripples and expands to enormous dimensions (several square meters); today we know that it expands, in a tub or pond, until the thickness of the oily layer reaches the size of a

The German Tobias Mayer, based on his tables of lunar occultations, eclipses, lunar positions (compiled in collaboration with the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler) estimates that he can calculate the longitude with an accuracy of half a degree.

Euler focused his fertile attention on the motion of fluids and published Principies generaux du mouvement des fluides (General Principles of Fluid Motion). This was the first coherent attempt to construct a model of a fluid in motion using a partial differential equation.

Ottoman diplomat Ahmed Resmi Efendi sets out from Istanbul for Vienna. This time, the goal is not aggression, siege, or war, but to learn the secrets of Western supremacy. He is accompanied by hundreds of philosophers and technicians. In 1763, he is also sent to

Seven Years’ War between England and France over colonial control, which ended with the Peace of Paris

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg (actually, Amadeus was a name he himself added later).

Johann Chrisostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The first smallpox inoculation (variolation) was introduced to Europe from Tuscany in 1756, although the practice had already been used in Asia for centuries. Later, in 1796, Edward Jenner developed actual vaccination, which used the cowpox virus (vaccine pox) to induce immunity, making it safer.

Adwaita, a giant Aldabra tortoise, is born. She will become the pet of Clive of India, introduced to the Calcutta Zoo in 1876, and will eventually die in March 2006, at the age of approximately 250.

Moscow University Foundation

Immanuel Kant in “Universal History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens” predicts that the Solar System was born from a nebula of material swirling around the Sun.

Immanuel Kant publishes a Theory of Heaven. It follows Newtonian principles but does not recognize the need for divine intervention. He views the universe as a gigantic mechanism that, once set in motion, proceeds autonomously and automatically, without the need for external adjustments.

Immanuel Kant began his career with a series of scientific publications on fire, wind, and earthquakes. In 1755, he published A Theory of the Heavens.

Joseph Black identifies carbon dioxide

German philosopher Immanuel Kant publishes A Universal History of Nature and Theory of Heaven.

Lisbon is destroyed by an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale, which lasts for 7 minutes and is accompanied by several powerful aftershocks, further aggravated by the resulting tsunami; the death toll is 60,000.

Large amounts of sulfur are falling on the Shetland Islands. The day before, there had been a major volcanic eruption in Iceland, 1,000 kilometers away.

French and Indian War: A war in North America (present-day eastern United States and Canada) between the French and the English, resulting in a final British victory in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris and the annexation of all of Canada and Florida. The French

Roger Boscovich discovers that the Moon has no atmosphere.

The British Parliament opens the British Museum, establishing that it will aim for universal access and be free for all.

Euler writes to the Prussian mathematician Christian Goldbach, that he has adopted Fermat’s method of infinite descent to successfully prove the n=3 case of Fermat’s Last Theorem.

The British Empire abandons the Julian calendar in favor of the Gregorian one. This move causes the calendar to shift from September 2nd to September 14th directly.

The Liberty Bell is cast from bronze, a mixture of copper and tin in a ratio of 3 or 4 to 1, which is known to produce the best tone when rung. However, it is also notoriously difficult to work and quite fragile. In fact,

In his Natural History of Norway, Erik Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, describes a huge sea creature known as the Kraken, the size of an island. It can sink a large ship, but the greatest danger comes from the turbulent waters when the monster submerges. The

The British Parliament passes a law punishing the theft of graphite from mines with one year of hard labor, or seven years in Australia. The mines are also patrolled by armed guards. Graphite is highly valuable on the market due to its military use as

Benjamin Franklin uses a kite to demonstrate that lightning is electricity and publishes his results in the book: Experiments and Observations on Electricity

Denis Diderot publishes the 17 volumes of writings and 11 volumes of engravings of the Encyclopédie; Voltaire, the researcher Chevalier de Jaucourt, and Marmontel also collaborate on the publication.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s last work is published (posthumously): he writes the 14 counterpoints and 4 canons of “The Art of Fugue” (BWV1080).

Immanuel Kant, in his treatise “Universal History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens” argues that galaxies in turn aggregate into large clusters of galaxies.

Beginning of the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), mainly due to deforestation, which causes the uncovering of the soil and therefore the oxidation of the humus which in turn emits CO2

Prussia. Kaiser Frederick recognized the strategic importance of the work of the English Quaker Benjamin Robins, “New Principles of Gunnery,” and had it translated into German by Leonhard Euler, himself a brilliant mathematician. Euler improved the original by adding an extensive appendix of tables. A

The literacy rate is 85% in the Netherlands, 50% in England, 35% in Germany, 20% in Italy.

The world’s population stands at one billion. It will triple in two centuries and double again in the next half century.

J. de Vaucanson builds several human-sized mechanical dolls capable of performing musical pieces

Johann Sebastian Bach dies without fame

Jubilee celebrated by Benedict XIV

Leonhard Euler proves a theorem of Fermat on prime numbers (one of 48 published by Fermat’s son): all prime numbers can be divided into two groups: those expressible as (4n+1) and those expressible as (4n-1): the first type is always the sum of two squares,

Jean-Baptiste d’Alambert and Leonhard Euler calculate the motion of the ellipsoidal Earth exactly and derive from it not only the precession of the equinoxes of 25,800 years, as Newton had already done (but already discovered by Hipparchus), but also the nutation of 18 years (discovered

Leeds, England. John Smeaton invents the vacuum pump.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe follows the current of Sturm Und Drang

The French political philosopher Charles-Louis de Secondat, aka Baron Montesquieu, published “The Spirit of the Laws,” which inspired the Founding Fathers of the United States to draft the American Constitution, which protected the spirit of individual liberty. Individual liberty (the freedom to stray, to disobey,

Court patronage: Enlightened despots Frederick the Great in Berlin, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, and Louis XV and XVI in Paris funded academies and gave intellectual impetus to the Enlightenment.

The first double-blind, randomized controlled trial, which later became the norm in medicine: in the Royal Navy, a doctor provided placebos and various experiments with supposed drugs to treat scurvy. The result was that a mixture of lemon and orange juice kept scurvy at bay.

The philosopher La Mettrie, at the court of Frederick the Great, wrote an article entitled “L’homme machine” in which he argued that man is a machine.

Johann-Sebastian Bach wrote the counterpoints of BWV1079: Can Triplex for 6 Voices, or Canonical Variations, also known as the Musical Offering.