January 1 - Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) publishes in Stockholm the first volume (Animalia) of the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, the starting point of modern zoological nomenclature, introducing binomial nomenclature for animals to his established system of Linnaean taxonomy.[1] Among the first examples of his system of identifying an organism by genus and then species, Linnaeus identifies the lamprey with the name Petromyzon marinus.[2] He introduces the term Homo sapiens. (Date of January 1 assigned retrospectively.)[3]
January 22 - Russian troops under the command of William Fermor invade East Prussia and capture Königsberg with 34,000 soldiers; although the city is later abandoned by Russia after the Seven Years' War ends, the city again comes under Russian control in 1945 during World War II and is now named Kaliningrad.[5]
February 22 - A fleet of 158 British Royal Navy warships, under the command of Admiral Edward Boscawen, departs from Plymouth toward North America in an effort to conquer the French Canadian territories of New France. Many of the sailors die of nutritional deficiencies along the way, including the scurvy that kills 26 of the crew of HMS Pembroke, captained by future world explorer James Cook on his first long voyage.[6]
February 23 - Jonathan Edwards, the famed English theologian who had assumed the presidency of what is now Princeton University only a week earlier, sets an example for students and faculty by publicly receiving an inoculation against smallpox.[7] Unfortunately, the vaccine contains live smallpox; Edwards develops the disease and dies on March 22 at the age of 54.
March 16 - Members of the Comanche Nation loot and destroy the Spanish Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá (near modern-day Menard, Texas) and kill eight of the people there, including the mission leader, Father Alonso Giraldo de Terreros.[8]
June 9 - 10 - Spanish-Barbary Wars - Battle of Cape Palos: a Spanish squadron of three ships of the line defeats a Barbary squadron made up of a ship of the line and a frigate.
Marquis Gabriel de Lernay, a French officer captured during the Seven Years' War, establishes a military lodge in Berlin, with the help of Baron de Printzen, master of The Three Globes Lodge at Berlin, and Philipp Samuel Rosa, a disgraced former pastor.
Book: Eldredge, Niles. Niles Eldredge. Life on Earth: A-G. ABC-CLIO. 2002. 477–478.
The Use of Numerals for Specific Names in Systematic Zoology. David Starr. Jordan. Science. 1911-03-10. 33. 845. 372. 10.1126/science.33.845.370-a. 17799876.
Book: International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Article 3. International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 4th. 0-85301-006-4. 1999. International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature, c/o Natural History Museum .
Shelby T. McCloy, The Negro in the French West Indies (University Press of Kentucky, 2015) p40
Herbert J. Redman, Frederick the Great and the Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763 (McFarland, 2015) p191
Stephen Feinstein, Captain Cook: Great Explorer of the Pacific (Enslow Publishers, 2010) p28
"Edwards, Jonathan", by Douglas A. Sweeney, in Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) p770
Donald E. Chipman and Harriet Denise Joseph, Explorers and Settlers of Spanish Texas (University of Texas Press, 2010)
Gordon Carruth, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates 3rd Edition (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1962) p72
Web site: Messier's "Notes on my comets". It was discovered, [...] at Aprohlis, near Dresden, by a farmer named Palitzsch, on the 25th of December 1758[...].
Web site: J R Geigy SA . Science Museum Group . March 6, 2025.
