What Happened in 1764

Major Events

  • Jan 24 Governor Winthrop's Telescope is destroyed in a Harvard fire
  • Feb 15 St. Louis, Missouri founded as a French trading post by Pierre Laclède
  • Feb 21 English House of Commons tries John Wilkes in absentia and finds him guilty of publishing a seditious libel for his "Essay on Women," an obscene parody of Alexander Pope’s "Essay on Man"
  • Apr 3 Austrian Archduke Jozef crowned himself Holy Roman Emperor Josef II
  • Apr 5 British Parliament passes the Sugar Tax on the American colonies, introduced by Prime Minister George Grenville
  • May 5 Smolny Institute forms in St Petersburg for noble girls
  • Jul 23 James Otis publishes views on taxation without representation
  • Oct 15 Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  • Nov 9 Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet.
  • Nov 16 Native Americans surrender to British in Indian War of Chief Pontiac
  • More 1764 Events

More People Born in 1764

Who Died in 1764

  • Mar 6 Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor of England, dies at 73
  • Mar 17 George Parker, English astronomer, dies
  • Mar 30 Pietro Locatelli, Italian violinist and composer, dies at 68
  • Apr 15 Madame de Pompadour, French mistress of King Louis XV of France, dies of tuberculosis at 42
  • Apr 15 Peder Horrebow, Danish astronomer who invented the Horrebow-Talcott Method, a method to determine a location's latitude from the stars, dies at 84

More 1764 Deaths

Famous Weddings in 1764

  • Aug 5 Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II (17) weds queen Maria Luisa of Spain (18) in Innsbruck, Austria
  • Oct 25 Future 2nd American President John Adams (28) weds Abigail Smith (19) in Weymouth, Massachusetts (marriage lasts 54 years)



World Leaders in 1764