Events

• May 11 - War of Austrian Succession: Battle of Fontenoy - At Fontenoy, French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army including the Black Watch
• June 4 – Frederick the Great destroys Austrian army at Hohenfriedberg
• August 19 - Beginning of the '45 Jacobite Rising at Glenfinnan
• September 12 - Francis I is elected Holy Roman Emperor with the support of his wife, Maria Theresia of Austria. He is the successor of Charles VII Albert of Bavaria, an enemy of Habsburg, who died on January 20 of this year.
• September 14 - Madame de Pompadour is officially presented in the court of Louis XV of France
• December 25 – Treaty of Dresden gives Prussia full possession of Silesia

• Last execution for witchcraft in France

Ongoing events

• War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748)

Births

• February 18 - Alessandro Volta, physicist, eponym for the unit of electric potential (d. 1827)
• February 20 - Henry James Pye, English poet (d. 1813)
• March 18 - Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of Great Britain
• September 16 - Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, Russian field marshal, (d. 1813)
• December 15 - Johann Gottfried Koehler, German astronomer

Deaths

• January 20 - Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor
• March 18 - Robert Walpole, first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• October 19 - Jonathan Swift, Irish writer