1740 : definition of 1740 and synonyms of 1740 (English)

This article is about the year 1740.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	17th century – 18th century – 19th century
Decades:	1710s 1720s 1730s – 1740s – 1750s 1760s 1770s
Years:	1737 1738 1739 – 1740 – 1741 1742 1743

1740 by topic:
Arts and Sciences
Archaeology – Architecture – Art – Literature (Poetry) – Music – Science
Countries
Canada – Great Britain –
Lists of leaders
Colonial governors – State leaders
Birth and death categories
Births – Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments – Disestablishments
Works category
Works

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1740

Year 1740 (MDCCXL) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Events

August 1 – The song Rule, Britannia! is first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales.^[1]
August 17 – Pope Benedict XIV succeeds Pope Clement XII as the 247th pope.
October 9 – The Dutch East India Company massacres 5,000–10,000 Chinese inhabitants of Batavia.^[2]
October 20 – Maria Theresia of Austria inherits the Habsburg hereditary dominions (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and present-day Belgium). However, her succession to the Holy Roman Empire is contested widely because she is a woman.
November – Hertford College, Oxford, is founded for the first time.^[3]
December 16 – Frederick II of Prussia invades the Habsburg possession of Silesia, starting the War of the Austrian Succession.

By an act of the Parliament of Great Britain, alien immigrants (including Huguenots and Jews) in the colonies receive British nationality.
Enfield, North Carolina, is founded.
Adam Smith enters Balliol College, Oxford.
George Whitefield founds the Bethesda Orphanage.
University of Pennsylvania is founded.
Spain begins construction on Fort Matanzas in the Matanzas Inlet, approximately 15 miles (24 km) south of St. Augustine, Florida.
Annual British iron production reaches 17,000 tons.

February 4 – Carl Michael Bellman, Swedish poet and composer (d. 1795)
February 16 – Giambattista Bodoni, Italian publisher and engraver (d. 1813)
March – Johann van Beethoven, German musician and father of Ludwig van Beethoven (d. 1792)
May 7 – Nikolai Arkharov, Russian police chief (d. 1814)
June 2 – Marquis de Sade, French author (d. 1814)
June 6 – Victor Maitre, French aristocrat (d. 1796)
August 14 – Pope Pius VII (d. 1823)
August 23 – Emperor Ivan VI of Russia (d. 1764)
September 23 – Empress Go-Sakuramachi of Japan (d. 1813)
October 29 – James Boswell, Scottish author (d. 1795)
date unknown
- Juan Andrés, Spanish Jesuit (d. 1817)
- Johann Jacob Schweppe, inventor and founder of the Schweppes Company (d. 1821)

^ Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 308. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
^ image: Bird's eye view of Batavia showing the massacre of the Chinese
^ Hibbert, Christopher, ed. (1988). The Encyclopædia of Oxford. London: Macmillan. p. 182. ISBN 0-333-39917-X.