| 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. |
| 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. |
| 1760–1770 | North America [statistics and demography] | The estimated population of the North American colonies is 1,593,625 including 325,806 black slaves. |
| 1766–1777 | UK [canals] | English engineer James Brindley begins work on the Grand Trunk Canal linking the Trent and Mersey rivers. It crosses the Pennines by the Harecastle tunnel and will establish a water route between the North Sea and the Irish Sea. |
| 1769–1770 | India [famines] | Famine kills 10 million in Bengal, India; it is the worst famine to date. |
| c. 1770 | UK [food and drink] | Britain imports around 3 million kg/6.6 million lb of tea leaves a year. |
| 1770 | America [painting] | The American artist Benjamin West paints The Death of General Wolfe, which is an important break with tradition. Instead of representing an important recent event through an event in Greek or Roman mythology or history, he depicts the death of the British conqueror of Quebec in contemporary terms. |
| 1770 | France [philosophy] | The French philosopher Baron d'Holbach (Paul Heinrich Dietrich) publishes Système de la nature/System of Nature under the name J B Mirabaud. Its outspoken attack on Christianity provokes critical responses from Voltaire and Frederick the Great. |
| 1770 | Ireland, UK [political theory] | The Irish-born Britsh writer and statesman Edmund Burke publishes Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, a pamphlet on the role of the monarch and of political parties in Britain's constitution. |
| 1770 | America [religion] | The American preacher John Woolman publishes Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind. |
| 1770–1780 | America [statistics and demography] | The estimated population of the American colonies is 2,780,369 including 575,420 black slaves. |
| 1770 | America [statistics and demography] | The population of Britain's 13 American colonies has risen from 1.6 million to an estimated 2.2 million in a decade. |
| 1770 | England [tools] | English designer Jesse Ramsden invents a screw-cutting lathe. |
| c. 1770 | UK [manufacturing] | English inventor Richard Arkwright tries his cotton spinning machinery at a mill in Nottingham. The following year he goes into full-scale production in a new water-powered mill at Cromford, Derbyshire, and builds houses for the workers, creating the first factory town. |
| 7 April 1770 | England [births and deaths] | William Wordsworth, English Romantic poet, and poet laureate 1843–50, born in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England (–1850). |
| 27 August 1770 | Germany [births and deaths] | Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher of the idealist school, born in Stuttgart, Germany (–1831). |
| 17 December 1770 | Germany [births and deaths] | Ludwig van Beethoven, German classical Romantic composer, born in Bonn, Germany (–1827). |
