James Watt's patent for a separate condenser makes steam engines far more efficient, driving the Industrial Revolution.
Napoleon Bonaparte is born in Ajaccio, Corsica; he will later become Emperor of the French.
British soldiers fire into a crowd in Boston, killing five people and heightening tensions between the colonies and Britain.
On his first voyage, Captain James Cook of HMS Endeavour landed at Botany Bay, then charted Australia's east coast and claimed it for Britain.
Russia, Prussia and Austria carve up the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in three partitions, erasing it from the map of Europe by 1795.
Colonists protesting British taxation dump an entire shipment of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.
The first clashes between colonial militia and British troops in Massachusetts begin the American Revolutionary War.