Events

• February 23 - First performance of Handel's Orlando, in London
• June 9 - James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of Georgia. [1]
• December 7 - The original Covent Garden Theatre Royal (now the Royal Opera House) is opened
• Genoa regains Corsica
• 139 members of the Paris Parlement are exiled by order of the King, but are eventually triumphant over the Crown, and secure their recall in December
• Cobalt discovered

Births

• January 24 - Pierre de Beaumarchais, French writer (d. 1799)
• February 22 - George Washington, later 1st President of the United States (d. 1799)
• March 31 - Joseph Haydn, composer (d. 1809)
• April 5 - Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter (d. 1806)
• October 6 - Nevil Maskelyne, English Astronomer Royal (died 1811)
• December 6 - Warren Hastings, British administrator (d. 1818)
• December 23 - Richard Arkwright, English inventor (d. 1792)
• Abbas III , Shah of Persia 1732-36
• Jacques Necker, French politician (d. 1804)
• Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter (d. 1806)

Deaths

• December 4 - John Gay, English poet and dramatist (born 1685)
• Emperor Reigen of Japan
• July 16 - Woodes Rogers, First Royal Governor of the Bahamas