1731 The University of Bologna appoints Laura Bassi, 21, as professor of anatomy, Europe's first professorship for a woman. She is from a wealthy family, and while a teen her brilliance was recognized by Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, who encouraged her scientific work.
1732 Benjamin Franklin's agricultural handbook, Poor Richard's Almanac, is published.
1733 Georgia, the last of the Britain's thirteen colonies, is founded as a debtors' asylum.
1733 Empire continues to create instability among the European powers. The war of Polish Succession begins. Poles are not to have a king of their own choosing. Austria and Russia team up against France. Sardinia and Spain side with France, Spain's monarchy hoping to recover Naples and Sicily.
1734 In Montreal (New France), a black slave known as Marie-Joseph Angélique is accused on setting a fire that destroyed part of the city. He is tortured and hanged.
1734 Daniel Boone is born into a Quaker family living in Pennsylvania. He will become a frontiersman and a legend.
1735 George Hadley publishes the first explanation of trade winds.
1735 Austria makes peace with France and Spain, agreeing to France's Louis XV acquiring Lorraine and the Spain's monarchy acquiring Naples and Sicily.
1735 Calcutta has become an active commercial port. Its population has risen to 100,000.
1735 Frederick William has been King of Prussia since 1713. He has reclaimed marshes, stored grain in good times, encouraged frugality and work, given military commissions according to merit rather than to the highest bidder and has invented marching in step and formation in military training. He has left in place various traditional punishments such as branding, pinching with hot tongs, beheading, drawing and quartering, breaking on the whee, and hanging. Infanticide is punished by sewing the offending woman into a leather bag and throwing her into a river to drown. But he removes from public squares all stakes upon which accused witches have been burned.
1735 Mohammed Nader defeats the Ottoman Turks in south-central Iran.
1735 In New York a landmark legal case known as the Zenger Trial is decided on August 14 in favor of a pubisher, John Peter Zenger. It determines that truth is a defense against charges of libel and lays the foundation for freedom of the press.
1736 Nader is crowned Shah (king) of Iran.
1737 A science academy is created at Stockholm, Sweden.
1738 Nader Shah and his army move through Kabul, conquer Kandahar and cross the Indus River.
1739 At the Battle of Karnal, Nader defeats the Mughal army of Mohammad Shah. He sacks and plunders Delhi, massacring 30,000. The Mughal empire is at an end. The Hindu Marathas will begin expanding into northern India.
1739 In South Carolina, 75 slaves with liberated weapons flee toward Florida (then under Spanish rule). The revolt is crushed by the South Carolina militia.
1740 Following the failure of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph I, and his successor Emperor Charles VI (who reigned from 1711) to produce a son and heir, the throne was given to the latter's yet unborn daughter, Maria Theresa. In 1736, when Maria Theresa was twenty, Emperor Charles arranged her marriage to Francis of Lorraine, who agreed to exchange his hereditary lands for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (as well as Duchy of Teschen from the Emperor). With Maria Theresa, whose reign began in 1740 (to be the mother of Marie-Antoinette), the House of Habsburg became the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.
1740 The King of Prussia, Frederick II, to be known as Frederick the Great, believes Austria is weak and sends troops to take possession of Silesia. Austria goes to war against Prussia. The War of Austrian Succession has begun.
1740 From Batavia, in the Spice Islands, the Dutch East India Company is preparing to deport "superfluous" Chinese. Rumors spread among the Chinese that they will be killed at sea. Some begin arming themselves. Anti-Chinese riots erupt. The Chinese district is burned to the ground and perhaps as many as 10,000 Chinese are killed. munities
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