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

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

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

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

France, joining the American colonies in their fight against Britain, sends a large fleet across the Atlantic

The American naval hero John Paul Jones makes successful raids around the coasts of Britain

Joseph Banks tells a committee of the House of Commons that the east coast of Australia is suitable for the transportation of convicted felons

The world's first iron bridge is assembled in a few months across the Severn at Coalbrookdale

Samuel Crompton perfects the mule, a machine for spinning that combines the merits of Hargreave's jenny and Arkwright's water frame

U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, fights H.M.S. Serapis near England's Flamborough Head

Six days of riot in London are triggered by Lord George Gordon leading a march to oppose any degree of Catholic emancipation

William Herschel discovers Uranus, the first planet to be found by means of a telescope, and names it the Georgian star

In the Treaty of Paris, negotiated by Adams, Franklin and Jay, the British government recognizes US independence