| 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. |
| 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. |
| 1770–1780 | America [statistics and demography] | The estimated population of the American colonies is 2,780,369 including 575,420 black slaves. |
| 1776–1779 | Pacific [exploration] | English explorer James Cook explores the Pacific Ocean. In 1778, he discovers Hawaii, where the indigenous population treat him as a god. Later that year, he passes through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, searching for the northwest passage to the Atlantic. |
| 1777 | AMERICA [suffrage] | New York adopts a constitution denying women, even those with property, the right to vote. |
| 1777 | Spain, Portugal, Brazil [treaties] | Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of San Ildefonso, confirming Portugal's colonial claims to large areas in the Amazon and Paraná plains in South America. |
| 1777 | France [chemistry] | French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier presents his ‘Memoir’ paper to the French Academy of Sciences in which he refutes the phlogiston theory of combustion and forwards the idea oxygen-based combustion. |
| 1777 | Sweden [chemistry] | Swedish chemist Karl Scheele discovers that silver nitrate, when exposed to light, results in a blackening effect. This is an important discovery for the development of photography. |
| 1777 | France [dictionaries and encyclopedias] | The bulk of the text of the first edition of the French Encyclopédie/Encyclopedia, largely the creation of the French philosopher Denis Diderot, is completed. Publication began in 1751. The entire work (with illustrations and index) is completed in 1780. |
| 1777 | France [physics] | French scientist Charles Coulomb invents the torsion balance, in which weights are measured by the amount of twist induced in a metal wire. |
| 24 February 1777 | Portugal [political events] | Maria I becomes queen regnant of Portugal on the death of her husband, José I. She frees the Marquis of Pombal's political prisoners and banishes him. |
| 14 June 1777 | AMERICA [legislation] | The Continental Congress votes to adopt a flag (designed, according to legend, by the seamstress Betsy Ross at the request of George Washington) as the national emblem of the new United States of America. |
