| 1730–1807 | UK [newspapers] | The Daily Advertiser is launched in London, England. With its dependence on advertisements, this may be regarded as the first modern newspaper. |
| 1743–1760 | North America [town planning] | Paving city streets in the North American colonies becomes common, making the colonial streets drier and smoother than those in Britain. |
| 1750–1777 | Portugal [law and government] | Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, the Marquis of Pombal, virtual ruler of Portugal during the reign of José I, carries out a series of extensive reforms aimed at breaking the power of the nobility and revitalizing Portugal's finances, industry, agriculture, and education system. |
| 1755 | England [literature and language] | English writer and critic Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language. A revised edition appears in 1773. |
| 1755 | America [thought and scholarship] | North American writer and statesman Benjamin Franklin publishes Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. |
| 1755 | Germany [astronomy] | In his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels/Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposes a theory for the formation of the Solar System from a primordial nebula, predicts the existence of Uranus, and proposes that our Galaxy is just one of many in the universe. |
| 1755 | Scotland [chemistry] | Scottish chemist Joseph Black identifies carbon dioxide, which he calls ‘fixed air’. |
| 1755 | Ottoman Empire [climate and weather] | The Golden Horn around Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire freezes over in one of the coldest winters on record – the beginning of a ‘mini Ice Age’ that will last several decades. |
| 5 July 1755 | England [births and deaths] | Sarah Siddons, English tragic actor, born in Brecon, Brecknockshire, Wales (–1831). |
| 1 November 1755 | Portugal [natural disasters] | A massive earthquake, the largest ever known in Europe, destroys Lisbon, Portugal, and over 30,000 people are killed in the quake itself, and the tidal wave and fire which follow it. |
| 2 November 1755 | France, Holy Roman Empire, Austria [births and deaths] | Marie-Antoinette (Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna von Österreich-Lothringen), Queen Consort of King Louis XVI of France, 11th daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa, born in Vienna (now in Austria) (–1793). |
