Events 
 January 11 – In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first American life insurance company is incorporated.
 January 13 – The Távora family is executed following the accusation of attempted regicide on Joseph I of Portugal
 January 15 – The British Museum opens
 April 13 – a French army defeats Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick at Brunswick
 June 27 – British Troops under Jeffrey Amherst take Fort Ticonderoga
 July 25 – Seven Years' War (French and Indian War): In Canada, British forces capture Fort Niagara from French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouillé.
 August 1 – Battle of Minden – Anglo-Hanoverian forces under Ferdinand of Brunswick defeat the French army of the Duc de Broglie, but due to the disobedience of the English cavalry commander Lord George Sackville, the French are able to withdraw unmolested.
 August 10 – Ferdinand VI of Spain dies and is succeeded by his half-brother Charles III. Charles resigns the thrones of Naples and Sicily to his third son, Ferdinand IV.
 August 12 – Battle of Kunersdorf – Frederick the Great is rebuffed in bloody assaults on the combined Austro-Russian army of Peter Soltikov and Gideon von Loudon. This is one of Frederick's greatest defeats.
 August 18 – Battle of Lagos – The British fleet of Edward Boscawen defeats a French force under Commodore de la Clue off the Portuguese coast.
 September 10 – Battle of Pondicherry – An inconclusive naval battle is fought off the coast of India between the French Admiral d'Aché and the British under George Pocock. The French forces are badly damaged and returned home, never to return.
 September 13 – Seven Years' War (French and Indian War): Quebec falls to British forces following General Wolfe's victory in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham just outside the city. Both the French Commander (the Marquis de Montcalm) and the British General James Wolfe are fatally wounded.
 November 20 – Battle of Quiberon Bay – The English fleet of Sir Edward Hawke defeats a French fleet under Marshal de Conflans near the coast of Brittany. This is the decisive naval engagement of the Seven Years' War – after this, the French are no longer able to field a significant fleet.
 November 21 – Battle of Maxen – the Austrian army of Marshal von Daun cuts off and foces the surrender of a Prussian force under Friedrich von Finck.
 December 6 – The Germantown Union School (now called "Germantown Academy"), America's oldest nonsectarian day school, is founded.
 George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis
 Adam Smith publishes Theory of Moral Sentiments, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures
 Publication of Voltaire's Candide
 The town of Egedesminde (modern Aasiaat) is founded in Greenland.
 Guinness Brewery founded in Dublin.

 January 25 – Robert Burns, Scottish poet (d. 1796)
 April 27 – Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist writer (d. 1797)
 May 28 – William Pitt the Younger, statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1806)
 August 24 – William Wilberforce, British abolitionist (d. 1833)
 October 25 – William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1834)
 November 10 – Friedrich Schiller, German writer (d. 1805)

 April 14 – George Frideric Handel, German composer (b. 1685)
 August 10 – King Ferdinand VI of Spain (b. 1713)

 

nv:1751 – 1800