| 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. |
| 1759 | England [literature and language] | The English writer and critic Samuel Johnson publishes his philosophical romance The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. |
| 1759 | France [literature and language] | The French writer Voltaire publishes his novel Candide, ou L'Optimisme/Candide, or Optimism, a satire on the thinkers and institutions he considers a hindrance to human progress. It becomes his most widely read work and is soon translated. |
| 1759 | UK [ceramics] | English pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood leases the Ivy House works in Burslem, Staffordshire, where he will perfect and pioneer many new pottery techniques. |
| 1759 | Ireland [food and drink] | The Irish brewer Arthur Guinness opens a brewery in Dublin, Ireland. It will grow to become the world's largest brewery. |
| 1759 | UK [architecture] | The redesigning of the interiors of Kedleston Hall, England, to schemes by the Scottish architects John and Robert Adams, is completed. |
| 1759 | England [art] | English artist Joshua Reynolds paints Portrait of James, 7th Earl of Lauderdale. |
| 15 January 1759 | UK [thought and scholarship] | The British Museum opens, on the site of Montagu House, in Bloomsbury, London, England, partly funded by a government-sponsored lottery. |
| 25 January 1759 | Scotland [births and deaths] | Robert Burns, national poet of Scotland, born in Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland (–1796). |
| 8 April 1759 | UK, India, France, Mogul Empire [Seven Years War (1754–62)] | An expedition dispatched by Robert Clive, governor of the British East India Company's Bengal possessions, and led by Colonel Francis Forde, second in command to Clive in Bengal, seizes Masulipatam, southeast India, with a small force and drives the French from the Deccan, South India. |
| 14 April 1759 | Germany, England [births and deaths] | George Frideric Handel, German-born English baroque composer, whose best-known works include the oratorio Messiah (1741), dies in London, England (74). |
| 28 May 1759 | England [births and deaths] | William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of Britain 1783–1801 and 1804–06, a Tory, born in Hayes, Kent, England (–1806). |
| 1 August 1759 | France, Prussia, UK [Seven Years War (1754–62)] | French forces are decisively defeated by a Prussian army under Ferdinand, Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, King Frederick II the Great of Prussia's most experienced general, and Lord George Sackville, commander of the British contingent, at Minden, Germany. |
| 10 August 1759 | Spain, Naples, Italy [political events] | King Ferdinand VI of Spain dies and is succeeded by Charles III (formerly Charles IV of the Italian kingdom of Naples, which passes to his nine-year-old son Ferdinand). |
| 13 September 1759 | France, England, North America [Seven Years War (1754–62)] | British forces under the English major-general James Wolfe bypass the French defences of the city of Quebec by scaling the Heights of Abraham from the St Lawrence River and defeating the French on the plains above the city. Both Wolfe and the French commander, Louis-Joseph, marquis de Montcalm, are killed, but French Canada falls into British hands with the capture of the city. |
| 26 October 1759 | France [births and deaths] | Georges-Jacques Danton, leader in the French Revolution instrumental in overthrowing the monarchy and establishing France's First Republic, born in Arcis-sur-Aube, France (–1794). |
| 10 November 1759 | Württemberg [births and deaths] | Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, German dramatist and poet, born in Marbach, Württemberg (now Germany) (–1805). |
