istoryworld
Events relating to england
A comet returns exactly at the time predicted by English astronomer Edmond Halley, and is subsequently known by his name
James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life
Liverpool-born artist George Stubbs sets up in London as a painter, above all, of people and horses
Portrait-painter Thomas Gainsborough moves from Suffolk to set up a studio in fashionable Bath
Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood sets up a factory of his own in his home town of Burslem
Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception
A British defeat of the French in Quiberon Bay prompts David Garrick to write Heart of Oak
A succession of victories cause 1759 to be known in Britain as annus mirabilis, the wonderful year
German painter Johann Zoffany moves to England to find work as a painter of conversation pieces and portraits
On the death of his grandfather, George II, George III becomes king of Great Britain
John Harrison's fourth chronometer is only five seconds out at the end of a test journey from England to Jamaica
Johann Sebastian Bach's youngest son, Johann Christian, moves to London and becomes known as the English Bach
Fingal, supposedly by the medieval Celtic poet Ossian, has a huge and fashionable success but is revealed to be a forgery by James Macpherson
A treaty signed in Paris ends the Seven Years' War between Britain, France and Spain
English journalist John Wilkes is arrested for publishing seditious libel in issue no 45 of his weekly magazine The North Briton
James Boswell meets Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Davies
American artist Benjamin West settles in London, where he becomes famous for his large-scale history scenes
Britain passes the Sugar Act, levying duty on sugar, wine and textiles imported into America
Lancashire spinner James Hargreaves conceives the idea of the spinning jenny, with multiple spindles worked from a single wheel
English historian Edward Gibbon, sitting among ruins in Rome, conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
English author Horace Walpole provides an early taste of Gothic thrills in his novel Castle of Otranto
Britain passes the Stamp Act, taxing legal documents and newspapers in the American colonies
Britain repeals the Stamp Act, in a major reversal of policy achieved by resistance in the American colonies
English chemist Henry Cavendish isolates hydrogen but believes that it is phlogiston
The British Chancellor, Charles Townshend, passes a series of acts taxing all glass, lead, paint, paper and tea imported into the American colonies
