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

Contents

Events of

January - June

July - December

Undated

Births

Deaths

Events of

January - June

★ February 4 - Court Jew Joseph Suss Oppenheimer is executed in Württemberg.

★ April 15 - Premiere in London of ''Serse'', an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel.

★ May 24 - John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.

July - December

★ November 18 - Ratification of the Treaty of Vienna.

Undated

★ Russo–Turkish War (1735–1739): 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.

★ Stanisław Leszczyński 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 (d. 1789)

★ April 12 - Padre Francisco Garcés, 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 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)
: ''See also .''

Deaths

★ February 15 - Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor (born 1684)

★ March 16 - George Bähr, German architect (born 1666)

★ March 25 - Turlough O'Carolan, Irish harper and composer (born 1670)

★ May 1 - Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, English statesman (born c.1669)

★ May 15 - Sir John Chesshyre, English lawyer (born 1662)

★ June 5 - Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant pastor (born 1659)

★ June 21 - Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, English politician (born 1674)

★ September 23 - Herman Boerhaave, Dutch humanist and physician (born 1668)

★ December 22 - Constantia Jones, English prostitute (executed) (born c.1708)
: ''See also .''