1738

Events

• April 15 - - Premiere in London of Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel.
• November 13 - Ratification of the Treaty of Vienna

• The excavation of Herculaneum, a Roman city buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, begins.
• John and Charles Wesley form the Methodist Society, on their return to England.
• Stanislas receives Lorraine in exchange for renouncing the Polish throne.
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis publishes Sur la figure de la terre, which 'confirms Newton's view that the earth is a spheroid slightly flattened at the poles'.
• Franz Ketterer invents the cuckoo clock.
• Jacques de Vaucanson presents the world's first automaton, The Flute Player, to the French Academy of Sciences

Births

• January 21 - Ethan Allen, American patriot leader
• April 12 - Padre Francisco Garcés, Spanish missionary
• May 27 - Nathaniel Gorham, American politician (d. 1796)
• June 4 - King George III of the United Kingdom
• October 11 - Arthur Phillip, British admiral, Governor of New South Wales (d. 1814)
• November 15 - William Herschel, astronomer (d. 1822)

Deaths

• December 22 - Constantia Jones, British prostitute (executed)