1764

• English novelist Ann Radcliffe, the founder of the Gothic horror/romance genre.
• English-born American architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe.
• French composer Helene de Montgeroult.
• Scottish-born Canadian explorer Alexander Mackenzie.
• Jose Gervasio Artigas, learder of Uruguayan independence.

 

• French composer and violinist Jean-Marie Leclair.
• English artist William Hogarth.
• French composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau.
• German mathematician Christian Goldbach (known for his famous conjecture).
• German composer Johann Mattheson.
• Italian composer Pietro Antonio Locatelli.

• The lighthouse in Sandy Hook, NJ lit for the first time.   Still operating today, it is the oldest continously-operating lighthouse in the United States.
• The British Parliament passes the Sugar Act, increasing duties on non-British goods shipped to its American colonies, and the Currency Act, prohibiting the colonies from issung their own currency.
• French fur traders Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau found the settlement of St. Louis near the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
• Mir Kasim enlists the Nawab of Patna in an attempt to take Bengal back from the British. At the Battle of Buxar, British Major Hector Munro defeats the  consolidated army.  The British begin collecting land revenue in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa after this battle.
• François-Marie Arouet; aka Voltaire, publishes his Dictionnaire philosophique ("Philosophical Dictionary").
• Horace Walpole has a nightmare which becomes his novel, The Castle of Otranto.
• Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, purchases the art collection of Johann Ernest Gotzkowski.   This is the nucleus of what would later become the Hermitage Museum.
• James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny.

1763 - 1764 - 1765