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   Date  Event(s)
1742 
1743 
1744 
1745 
1746 
1747 
1748 
1749 
  • 1749: Great Britain - Deaths among women 1 in 41, children 1 in 15 during period to 1758
1750 
  • 1750: Great Britain - The grapefruit was first described by Griffith Hughes as the 'forbidden fruit' of Barbados
  • 1750: Scotland - Royal Infirmaries are founded in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen
  • 1750: Great Britain - Tea-drinking begins to rival alcohol-drinking
  • 1750: Great Britain - Population of England and Wales estimated at 6.5 million
  • 1750: Great Britain - During period to 1780 English countryside takes on today's familiar apearance as accelerated enclosure produces small fields surrounded by hedges, fences and walls
10 1751 
  • 1751: British North America - Benjamin Franklin published Experiments and Observations on Electricity after several years of experiments done with several friends. In this book Franklin suggested an experiment to prove that lightning is a large-scale electrical discharge, a task which later he took upon himself, using a kite. This led to the invention of the lightning rod.
  • 1751: Great Britain - Death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. His son, Prince George, becomes heir to the throne
11 1752 
12 1753 
  • 1753: Great Britain - Parliament passes the Naturalization of Jews Act
  • 1753: Great Britain - James Lind (1716-1794) Scottish Navy physician, publishes Treatise on Scurvy; Sir Gilbert Blane, Scottish Naval surgeon, enforces strict rules regarding cleanliness, improves health, lifespan of sailors
13 1754 
  • 1754: Great Britain - First royal troops disembark in India; Takes 4.5 days to travel London to Manchester
  • 1754: France - Antoine Beauvilliers was born. He was a French chef who founded the first luxury restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres.
14 1755 
15 1756 
16 1757 
17 1758 
18 1759 
19 1760 
20 1761 
  • 1761: Great Britain - Laurence Sterne publishes the enigmatic Tristram Shandy
  • 1761: Great Britain - Jonas Hanway and David Porter begin campaign on behalf of child chimney sweeps, achieve protective legislation in 1788
  • 1761: Pondicherry, India - Pondicherry captured, French power destroyed
  • 1761: Great Britain - William Pitt the elder resigns over King and advisors not permitting further conflict with France and ally Spain
  • 1761: Great Britain - River power reaches saturation point, Duke of Bridgewater cuts Worsley Canal, thereby halving price of coal in Manchester
  • 1761: Great Britain - Englishman John Harrison invents the navigational clock or marine chronometer for measuring longitude.
  • 1761: Great Britain - Various municipalities secure Private Acts by which money can be raised ('rates') to pay for public improvements, such as paving and lighting in period to 1765
21 1762 
  • 1762: Great Britain - John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, 'created' the Sandwich. This Englishman was said to have been fond of gambling and, during a 24 hour gambling streak, he instructed a cook to prepare his food in such a way that it would not interfere with his game. The cook presented him with sliced meat between two pieces of toast. Perfect! This meal required no utensils and could be eaten with one hand, leaving the other free to continue the game.
  • 1762: Great Britain - The Earl of Bute is appointed Prime Minister. He becomes very unpopular and employs a bodyguard
  • 1762: France - Académie Francaise recognises term millionaire
  • 1762: Great Britain - Spain declares war on Britain; Britain gains West Indian islands from French, Cuba and Manila from Spanish
22 1763 
23 1764 
24 1765 
  • 1765: Great Britain - Rockingham ministry. The American Stamp Act raises taxes in the colonies in an attempt to make their defence self-financing
  • 1765: Great Britain - Earliest known children's pop-up book
  • 1765: France - The very first pâté de foie gras (goose liver paste) is said to have been created in Strasbourg by a Norman chef named Jean-Joseph Close. (Although the technique for producing foie gras goes back as far as the ancient Egyptians)
  • 1765: Paris, France - M. Boulanger opens the first restaurant, by that name
25 1766 
  • 1766: Great Britain - Chatham ministry. Repeal of the American Stamp Act
  • 1766: Great Britain - Priestley discovers Law of Inverse Squares (electricity), Louis XV convulses with laughter when line of monks leap into air as electric shock is administered
  • 1766: France - Louis, Marquis de Cussy was born. French gastronome, a friend of Grimod de la Reyniere, who stated that Cussy had invented 366 different ways to prepare chicken. Cussy wrote Les Classiques de la table.
26 1767 
27 1768 
  • 1768: Great Britain - Grafton ministry. The Middlesex Election Crisis occurs.
  • 1768: Great Britain - General election, reformer Wilkes elected as member for Middlesex amid scenes of jubilation; Royal Academy (painting) founded
28 1769 
  • 1769: Great Britain - James Watt patented a new type of steam engine with a separate condensing chamber and an air pump to bring steam into the chamber and equipped it with a simple 'governor' for safety: if the engine started to go too fast, the power would be automatically cut back. He coined the term horsepower and later loaned his name to the unit of power, or work done per unit of time
  • 1769: Great Britain - Captain James Cook's first voyage to explore the Pacific begins
  • 1769: Great Britain - Richard Arkwright develops the water-powered spinning frame
29 1770 
30 1771 
31 1772 
32 1773 
33 1774 
34 1775 
35 1776 
  • 1776: England - Common Sense published by Tom Paine
  • 1776: Great Britain - Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, advanced the idea that businesses survive through successful trading in pursuit of their self-interest, and that the resulting equilibrium was not by design.
  • 1776: Great Britain - Wilkes introduces bill for universal male suffrage
  • 1776: Great Britain - David Bushnell invents a submarine.
  • 1776: Great Britain - Edward Gibbon authors Decline and Fall of Roman Empire in period to 1788
  • 4 Jul 1776: USA - The American Congress passes their Declaration of Independence from Britain.
36 1777 
37 1778 
38 1779 
  • 1779: Great Britain - The rise of Wyvill's Christopher Wyvill's radical Yorkshire Association Movement
39 1780 
40 1781 
  • 1781: Great Britain - Frederick William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus by its movement, although at the time he supposed it to be a comet
  • 1781: Great Britain - Matthew Boulton and James Watt produce an improved steam engine with rotary motion achieving significant impact - it means that manufacturers are no longer restricted to site with natural power (i.e., water, wood for charcoal)
  • 17 Oct 1781: USA - The Americans obtain a great victory of British troops at the Siege of Yorktown
41 1782 
  • 1782: Ireland - Ireland obtains short-lived parliament
  • 22 Mar 1782: Great Britain - Lord North's government collapses
42 1783 
43 1784 
44 1785 
45 1786 
  • 1786: Great Britain - The Eden commercial treaty with France is drawn up
  • 1786: Pennsylvania, USA - John Fitch invents a steamboat.
46 1787 
  • 1787: Windsor, Great Britain - In Windsor Great Park, King George III alights from carriage and addresses oak tree as King of Prussia, but eventually recovers from this attack of dementia; first colonies in Australia, first iron boat launched
47 1788 
  • 1788: Great Britain - Time to travel from London to Manchester reduced from 4.5 days to 28 hours
  • 22 Jan 1788: Great Britain - Birth of Lord Byron (died 1824)
48 1789 
  • 1789: France - French Revolution, Louis XVI, many aristocrats and others executed, France declares war on European monarchies
  • 1789: France - The guillotine is invented.
  • 1789: Great Britain - The French Revolution sounded the death knoll toward elaborate and affected dress and hairdos. The powdered wig and towering women's hair styles passed from fashion. Simpler, more practical clothes emerged. Boys wore the skeleton suit, often with a comfortable open collar, and by the end of the century with plebian long trousers.
  • 1789: USA - Thomas Jefferson brought a pasta making machine back with him when he returned to America after serving as ambassador to France.
  • 1789: Switzerland - Dr. Pierre Ordinaire creates an absinthe elixir
  • 30 Apr 1789: USA - George Washington first president of the United States 1789-1797.
49 1790 
50 1791 
51 1792 
  • 1792: Italy - Volta discovered he could arrange metals in a series in such a way that chemical energy is converted into electrical energy; that is, two dissimilar metals are submerged in an electrolyte and connected by an circuit and thereby exchange electrons. By 1800, he had invented the so-called voltaic cell, a pile of such metals 'consisting of pairs of silver and zinc disks separated by pieces of moist cardboard'
  • 1792: Great Britain - Coal gas is used for lighting for the first time. Mary Wollstonecraft publishes her Vindication of the Rights of Women
  • 1792: Great Britain - Cartwright invents steam-powered weaving loom
  • 1792: Great Britain - The first ambulance.
52 1793 
  • 1793: Great Britain - Economic depression
  • 1793: Great Britain - Speculative 'Canal Bubble' bursts
  • 1793: Great Britain - Board of Agriculture formed to popularise new methods and machinery
  • 1793: Great Britain - Britain becomes foremost world trader during period to 1815
  • 1793: Great Britain - Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin which efficiently separates cotton fibers from the seeds, allowing one person to do a job once done by 50 people. This profoundly changes the economics of raising cotton, revitalizing slavery in the American South.
  • 1 Feb 1793: Great Britain - France declares war on Britain
53 1794 
  • 1794: Great Britain - Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather, proposed that 'warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament...possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering those improvements by generation to its posterity.'
  • 1794: Great Britain - Metric system introduced in France
  • 1794: Great Britain - More lower-class radicalism, Habeas Corpus suspended again, instigators charged with treason, in Scotland found guilty and transported
  • 1794: Great Britain - Welshman Philip Vaughan invents ball bearings.
  • 1794: Great Britain - Total of 40,000 British troops die in West Indies in war with France over two year period
  • 1 Jun 1794: Great Britain - Howe defeats French fleet at Ushant
54 1795 
55 1796 
  • 1796: Great Britain - Edward Jenner investigated the folk tale that milk maids were immune to small pox, the virus variola major, and in a brief series of experiments confirmed that exposure to cow pox, the virus vaccinia, rendered immunity
  • 1796: Italy - General Napoleon Bonaparte appears on scene, attacks Austrian armies
  • 1796: Ceylon - British conquer Ceylon
56 1797 
  • 1797: Europe - All Europe makes peace with France save Britain, sea battle off Cape St. Vincent (off Spanish coast), Jervis and Nelson (then Captain) utterly defeat big French and Spanish fleet
  • 1797: Great Britain - Royal Navy sailors at Spithead and the Nore mutiny over deplorable conditions
  • 1797: USA - John Adams president of the USA 1797-1801.
  • 1797: Great Britain - A British inventor, Henry Maudslay invents the first metal or precision lathe.
  • 1797: Great Britain - Wittemore patents a carding machine.
  • 1797: Great Britain - John Hetherington in London develops the top hat.
  • 1797: Great Britain - Major Dubied purchased the formula for an 'absinthe elixir' and together with his son, Henri-Louis Pernod sets up an absinthe factory in Switzerland.
57 1798 
58 1799 
59 1800 
60 1801 
  • 1801: UK - The first British Census is undertaken
  • 1801: UK - Population of England and Wales now 10 million, Great Britain estimated at 11 million, biggest increases in North and West Midlands, London now 1 million plus, Manchester 137,201, Glasgow and Edinburgh 100,000 plus, England has 8 towns larger than 50,000, 6 of them in the North; Lord Dundas travels on Scottish canal in small steamboat - beginning of steamboat travel
  • 1801: UK - Tripolitan War 1801-1805. Barbary Wars: also fought in 1815. United States vs Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli 1801-1805.
  • 1801: USA - Thomas Jefferson president of the USA 1801-1809.
61 1802 
62 1803 
63 1804 
64 1805 
65 1806 
66 1807 
67 1808 
  • 1808: Peninsular War to drive the French out of Spain (until 1814)
  • 1808: Portugal - Battle of Vimeiro is a British victory; British casualties less than 40,000 dead
68 1809 
69 1810 
70 1811 
  • 1811: UK - Depression caused by Orders of Council.
  • 1811: UK - George III's illness leads to his son, the Prince of Wales, becoming Regent
  • 1811: UK - Ned Ludd leads rioters who smash machinery, burn factories, followers known as Luddites
  • 1811: UK - Birth rate falls all over England during the next 20 years
71 1812 
72 1813 
73 1814 
74 1815 
  • 1815: Europe - Peace is established in Europe at the Congress of Vienna.
  • 1815: UK - The Corn Laws are passed by Parliament to protect British agriculture from cheap imports
  • 1815: UK - Start of two-year commercial boom in Britain
  • 1815: UK - England has now 2600 miles of canals, 500 in Scotland and Ireland; China clippers take 109 days to sail 15000 miles from Canton to English Channel; Britain's population estimated at 13 million; Britain imports 82 million pounds of raw cotton, by 1860 1000 million pounds; coal output 16 million tons (30 miillion by 1835, 50 million by 1848)
  • 1815: UK - Sir Humphry Davy invents the miner's lamp.
  • 1815: UK - Over the next fifteen years, five new states are founded along Mississippi Valley, mostly due to people fleeing Depression; more go to Canada, as many as 20,000 some years, frequently Scots
  • Mar 1815: Elba, France - Napoleon escapes, leads French in war once more
  • 18 Jun 1815: Belgium - Duke of Wellington trounces the French at Waterloo with timely help of Blucher (Prussia)
75 1816 
76 1817 
77 1818 
78 1819 
79 1820 
80 1821 
81 1822 
  • 1822: France - First prototype Espresso machine
  • 1822: Ireland - Famine in Ireland prompts migration to US and Canada
82 1823 
83 1824 
84 1825 
85 1826 
86 1827 
87 1828 
88 1829 
89 1830 
90 1831 
91 1832 
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93 1834 
94 1835 
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96 1837 
97 1838 
98 1839 
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101 1842 
102 1843 
103 1844 
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105 1846 
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107 1848 
108 1849 
  • 1849: USA - Zachary Taylor president of the USA 1849-1850. Zachary Taylor died while in office.
  • 1849: UK - Walter Hunt invents the safety pin.
109 1850 
  • 1850: USA - American Joel Houghton invented the first dishwasher. He made it out of wood, and gave it a hand-turned wheel that splashed water on the dishes inside. It didn't really work, but it did get the first 'dishwasher' patent
  • 1850: UK - First machine-made paper bag
  • 1850: UK - Mines Inspectorate created, helps protect adult male mine workers
  • 1850: USA - Millard Fillmore president of the USA 1850-1853. Vice president under Zachary Taylor, he was sworn in as president after Taylor's death.
110 1851 
  • 1851: UK - The Great Exhibition is staged in Hyde Park. Thanks to Prince Albert, it is a great success
  • 1851: UK - Window tax abolished
  • 1851: USA - Patent for sewing machine issued to Isaac Singer
  • 1851: UK - British Census shows 10,736,000 females, 8,155,000 of whom were aged 10 and older, largest occupational group domestic service workers, 905,000, 145,000 washerwomen, 55,000 charwomen (cleaners), 272,000 in cotton industry, 113,000 in woolen industry, 140,000 in lace, hosiery and linen
  • 1851: Europe - First submarine cable, Dover to Calais
  • 1851: London, UK - Reuters opens news agency
  • 1851: Africa - Livingstone's explorations begin
  • 1851: Australia - Population of Australia rises from 405,000 in 1851 to 1,168,000 in 1861
  • Sep 1851: Melbourne, Australia - Gold fever - 19,000 immigrants land in one month, for the whole year 94,664, seven times as many as 1851
111 1852 
112 1853 
113 1854 
114 1855 
  • 1855: UK - John Snow, investigating London's piped water supply, showed graphically that cholera could be transmitted by water from a particular pump.
  • 1855: UK - Palmerston's first government comes to power
115 1856 
116 1857 
117 1858 
118 1859 
119 1860 
120 1861 
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127 1868 
128 1869 
129 1870 
130 1871 
131 1872 
  • 1872: UK - Secret voting is introduced for elections
  • 1872: UK - Parliament passes the Scottish Education Act
  • 1872: USA - A.M. Ward issues the first mail-order catalog.
  • 1872: UK - J.S. Risdon patents the metal windmill.
  • 1872: UK - Period to 1896 sees three economic slumps and two recoveries, said to be due to imported foodstuffs from US depressing Britain's agricultural business
  • 1872: USA - Levi Strauss discovered rugged trousers for miners made out of sturdy brown canvas. Once this resource was exhausted, he turned to denim, which he dyed blue to become what is known now as blue jeans
132 1873 
133 1874 
134 1875 
  • 1875: UK - Benjamin Disraeli purchases a controlling interest for Britain in the Suez Canal.
  • 1875: UK - Parliament passes R.A. Cross's Conservative social reforms
  • 1875: UK - Collapse of British agriculture due to cheap grain from US, wheat acreage falls by nearly a million acres
135 1876 
136 1877 
137 1878 
138 1879 
139 1880 
  • 1880: UK - William Gladstone establishes his second Liberal government
  • 1880: South Africa - The first Anglo-Boer War begins
  • 1880: UK - British forests now decimated except for bits of the New Forest and the Forest of Dean.
  • 1880: UK - Number of agricultural labourers reduced by about 100,000 in last 10 years
  • 1880: UK - Englishman John Milne invents the modern seismograph.
  • 1880: UK - The British Perforated Paper Company invents a form of toilet paper.
140 1881 
141 1882 
142 1884 
143 1885 
144 1886 
145 1887 
146 1888 
147 1889 
148 1890 
  • 1890: UK - Starting this decade, women's clothing becomes less voluminous, lawn tennis takes place of croquet as means of meeting opposite sex, bicycle becomes fashionable
149 1891 
150 1892 
151 1893 
  • 1893: USA - Whitcomb L. Judson invented the zip to help a friend with a stiff back who could not bend over to do up his shoes
  • 1893: UK - Second Irish Home Rule Bill fails to pass the House of Lords
  • 1893: New Zealand - First nation to grant women the right to vote
  • 1893: France - Car number plates introduced
  • 1893: USA - Grover Cleveland president of the USA 1893-1897.
152 1894 
  • 1894: UK - Rosebery takes power with his minority Liberal government
153 1895 
154 1896 
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158 1900 
159 1901 
160 1902 
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167 1909 
168 1910 
169 1911 
170 1912 
  • 1912: North Sea - The Sinking of the Titanic: 1,515 people lose their lives.
  • 1912: UK - Parachutes Invented
  • 1912: UK - Piltdown Man, the 'Missing Link,' Discovered but later revealed as a fraud
  • 1912: SOS Accepted as Universal Distress Signal
  • 1912: UK - Motorized movie cameras invented, and replaced hand-cranked cameras.
  • 1912: UK - The first tank patented by Australian inventor De La Mole.
  • 1912: USA - Clarence Crane created Life Savers candy
171 1913 
  • 1913: USA - Leo Baekeland invented a plastic laminate, known as Bakelite, and later as Formica
  • 1913: Detroit, MI, USA - First assembly line introduced in Ford automobile factory
  • 1913: New York, NY, USA - The Armory Show, an international display of some 1600 works of modern art, and one of the more important U.S. art exhibitions ever held, opens at the 69th-regiment armory. It arouses public curiosity, generates sensational news coverage, and helps change the direction of American art
  • 1913: USA - Personal Income Tax introduced
  • 1913: Washington, DC, USA - Woodrow Wilson president 1913-1921.
  • 1913: UK - The crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne.
  • 1913: USA - The Merck Chemical Company patented what is now known as ecstasy.
  • 1913: USA - Mary Phelps Jacob invents the bra
  • 1913: USA - Gideon Sundback invents the modern zipper.
172 1914 
173 1915 
174 1916 
175 1917 
176 1918 
  • 1918: UK - Influenza Epidemic
  • 1918: Russia - Czar Nicholas II and his family are killed
  • 1918: UK - Summer:Great Influenza Epidemic begins, reaches height end of year, new outbreak first quarter of 1919: England and Wales lose 150,000 (15,000 in London alone)
  • 1918: UK - Final casualties for World War I - almost 1 million British Empire men killed, about 3 million maimed (744,000 killed are from UK)
  • 1918: UK - Women over 30 given the vote (complete voting equality with men comes in 1928), all men over 21 (except peers, lunatics and felons) given vote
  • 1918: UK - Consumer purchasing power now about 1/3 of what it was in 1914
  • 1918: USA - Charles Jung invented fortune cookies.
  • 1918: UK - Police strikes this year and the next
  • 9 Nov 1918: Europe - Kaiser abdicates, peace signed two days later at Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I
177 1919 
178 1920 
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180 1922 
181 1923 
182 1924 
183 1925 
184 1926 
185 1927 
186 1928 
187 1929 
188 1930 
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190 1932 
191 1933 
192 1934 
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194 1936 
195 1937 
196 1938 
197 1939 
198 1940 
199 1941 
200 1942 
201 1943 
202 1944 
  • 1944: France - D-Day landings
  • 1944: France - First German V1 and V2 Rockets Fired
  • 1944: Berlin, Germany - Hitler Escapes Assassination Attempt
  • 1944: USA - The kidney dialysis machine invented by Willem Kolff.
  • 1944: USA - Synthetic cortisone invented by Percy Lavon Julian.
203 1945 
204 1946 
205 1947 
206 1948 
  • 1948: USA - Life magazine makes painter Jackson Pollock an overnight celebrity by devoting a three-page spread with color photographs to him and his paintings under the headline, Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?; Abstract Expressionism becomes a subject of widespread popular ridicule.
  • 1948: Berlin, Germany - Berlin Airlift
  • 1948: UK - Big Bang Theory Formulated
  • 1948: India - Gandhi Assassinated
  • 1948: South Africa - Policy of Apartheid Begun
  • 1948: Israel - State of Israel Founded
  • 1948: USA - The Frisbee® invented by Walter Frederick Morrison and Warren Franscioni.
  • 1948: USA - Velcro® invented by George de Mestral.
  • 1948: USA - Robert Hope-Jones invented the Wurlitzer jukebox
207 1949 
208 1950 
209 1951 
210 1952 
211 1953