Year 1738 (MDCCXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Events

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January–June

• February 4 – Court Jew Joseph Suss Oppenheimer is executed in W rttemberg.
• April 15 – Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, premieres in London.
• May 24 – John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.

July–December

• Sept 18 – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer. Published 1785.
• November 18 – The Treaty of Vienna is ratified.

Date unknown

• Russo Turkish War (1735 1739): The Russian army fails to cross the Dniester. They are decimated by plague.
• China's Qing government announces that all western businessmen have to use the Cohong in Guangzhou to trade.
• The excavation of Herculaneum, a Roman city buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, begins.
• Stanis aw Leszczy ski 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.

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Births

• January 21 – Ethan Allen, American patriot (d. 1789)
• April 12 – Padre Francisco Garc s, Spanish missionary (d. 1781)
• April 14 – William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1809)
• April 16 – Henry Clinton, British officer (d. 1795)
• May 1 – King Kamehameha I of Hawaii (d. 1819)
• May 27 – Nathaniel Gorham, American politician (d. 1796)
• June 4 – King George III of the United Kingdom (d. 1820)
• July 3 – John Singleton Copley, American painter (d. 1815)
• September 25 – Nicholas Van Dyke, American lawyer and President of Delaware (d. 1789)
• October 11 – Arthur Phillip, British admiral and Governor of New South Wales (d. 1814)
• October 18 – Andrei Bolotov, Russian agriculturalist and memoirist (d. 1833)
• November 15 – William Herschel, German-born astronomer (d. 1822)
• December 31 – Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, British general (d. 1805)

Deaths

• February 15 – Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor (b. 1684)
• March 16 – George B hr, German architect (b. 1666)
• March 25 – Turlough O'Carolan, Irish harper and composer (b. 1670)
• May 1 – Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, English statesman (b. c. 1669)
• May 15 – Sir John Chesshyre, English lawyer (b. 1662)
• June 5 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant pastor (b. 1659)
• June 21 – Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, English politician (b. 1674)
• September 23 – Herman Boerhaave, Dutch humanist and physician (b. 1668)
• December 22 – Constantia Jones, English prostitute (executed) (b. c. 1708)

References

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