Decades: 1710s 1720s 1730s 1740s 1750s - 1760s - 1770s 1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s

Years: 1764 1765 1766 1767 1768 - 1769 - 1770 1771 1772 1773 1774

Table of contents

1 Events 2 Year in topic 3 Births 4 Deaths 5 Heads of states

Events

• Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen exhibits the "Mechanical Turk", a chess-playing machine
• May 14 - Charles III of Spain sends Spanish missionaries, who found California missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey and begin the settlement of California
• Famine in Bengal kills 10 million people, a third of the population, in the worst natural disaster in human history (in terms of lives lost).
• The Maharajah of Mysore forces the British to agree a treaty of mutual assistance in view of the famine, but the British East India Company increases its demands on the Bengali people to keep profits up
• David Garrick holds the first Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon
• Richard Arkwright invents the spinning frame
• April 13 - James Cook arrives in Tahiti on the ship HM Bark Endeavour, preparing to observe the solar eclipse of the planet Venus, which took place on June 3rd. After the voyage, the data was found to be inaccurate in determining the distance between the Sun and Earth.
• The city of Brescia, Italy was devastated when the Church of San Nazaro, was struck by lightning. The resulting fire ignited the 200,000 pounds of gunpowder that were being stored there at that time, creating a massive explosion. The disaster prompted the Roman Catholic Church to abandon their religious object to lightning rods to protect their property.

• 1769 in literature
• 1769 in science

• January 10 - Michel Ney, a marshal of the French army
• February 9 - Susette Gontard, girl-friend of poet Friedrich Hölderlin (+ 1802)
• March 23 - William Smith, English geologist and cartographer
• May 1 - Arthur Wellesley, later 1st Duke of Wellington and nemesis of Napoleon Bonaparte
• August 15 - Napoleon Bonaparte, future Emperor of France
• September 14 - Karl Salomo Zachariae Von Lingenthal German jurist

• February 2 - Pope Clement XIII
• The Ottawa Chief Pontiac is murdered at Cahokia, Illinois

• China - Qianlong Emperor of China, Qing Dynasty (reigned from October 18, 1735 to February 9, 1796)
• France - Louis XV King of France (1715-1774)
• Holy See
  • Clement XIII pope (1758-1769)
  • Clement XIV pope (1769-1774)
• Prussia - Frederick II King of Prussia (1740-1786)
• Spain - Charles III King of Spain (1759-1788)
• Sweden - Adolf Frederick of Sweden King of Sweden (1751-1771)