The triangular trade, controlled from Liverpool, ships millions of Africans across the Atlantic as slaves

Walpole adds the Great North Bedchamber to Strawberry Hill.

17-year-old Thomas Chatterton, later hailed as a significant poet, commits suicide in a London garret

In response to American protests, the British government removes the Townshend duties on all commodities with the exception of tea

King George III pays for the church on Kew Green to be greatly enlarged. It is expanded again in 1810 and further additions are made in later years.

English entrepreneur Richard Arkwright adds water power to spinning by means of the water frame

Richard Arkwright pioneers the factory environment with his cotton mill at Cromford in Derbyshire

Captain Cook sets off, in HMS Resolution, on his second voyage to the southern hemisphere

The London brokers who meet to do business in Jonathan's coffee house decide to call themselves the Stock Exchange

Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre

Samuel Johnson and James Boswell undertake a journey together to the western islands of Scotland

A tontine is launched in Richmond to raise money for the construction of a bridge across the Thames

Britain's new Coercive (or Intolerable) Acts include the requirement that Massachusetts citizens give board and lodging to British troops

Encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine emigrates to America and settles in Philadelphia

Illiterate visionary Ann Lee, leader of an English sect, the 'Shaking Quakers', crosses the Atlantic to spread the word

English chemist Joseph Priestley isolates oxygen, but he believes it to be 'dephlogisticated air'

Thomas Gainsborough moves from Bath to set up a studio in London

John Singleton Copley, already established as America's greatest portrait painter, moves to London

Captain Cook publishes his discovery of a preventive cure against scurvy, in the form of a regular ration of lemon juice

Walpole adds the Beauclerk Tower and hexagonal closet to Strawberry Hill.

Two Boulton and Watt engines are installed, the first of many in the mines and mills of England's developing industrial revolution

English historian Edward Gibbon publishes the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Scottish economist Adam Smith analyzes the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations

Richmond Bridge, designed by James Paine and Kenton Couse, opens to traffic (and is now the oldest bridge in London)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre