1751

Born in 1751:

• James Madison, fourth President of the United States.
• Irish poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan. in Dublin.
• American writer Judith Sargent Murray.
• Swiss physicist Pierre Prévost, who showed that cold was the absence of heat.
• English politician and philosopher Henry St. John Bolingbroke.
• English poet and essayist Capel Lofft.
• American Revolutionary war heroine Margaret Corbin.
• English furniture designer Thomas Sheraton.
• Russian composer Dmitri Bortnyansky.
• Spanish] composer Blas de Laserna.
• British biologist George Montagu.
• Austrian painter Friedrich Heinrich Füger.
• British naturalist George Shaw.
• Swedish painter Adolph Ulric Wertmüller.
• New Hampshire general Henry Dearborn.

Died in 1751:

• Italian composer Tomasso Albinoni.
• English landscape architect Batty Langly.
• Scottish poet William Hamilton.
• Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales.  His 11-year-old younger brother George is now next in line to the British Throne.
• Tokugawa Yoshimune, Shogun of Japan, force behind the development of the Kansei Code.

Events of 1751:

• The British Parliament passes:
• The Calendar Act which matches Great Britain's calendar to most of the rest of Europe's by:
• Adopting the Gregorian Calendar, to become effective in September, 1752, and
• Moving New Year's Day from March 25 to January 1.
• The Currency Act prohibiting New England colonies from issuing paper money, and voiding all such currency in circulation.
• The Gin Act regulating the production of Gin, thus increasing its expanse and vastly increasing the popularity of beer.
• Robert Clive, working for the British East India Company, captures Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic region in south-eastern India (controlled by the French).
• Georgetown founded in the area of Maryland that will eventually become the District of Columbia.
• The Pima and Papago Indians rebel against Spanish intrusion in southern Arizona.  The Spanish build a presidio (fort) at Tubac the following year.
• The first steam-powered oceangoing ship, Gran Louis, sails from Le Havre to Port-Au-Prince.
• Alex Frederick Cronstedt isolates a new metal from a type of copper ore called Kupfernickel ("Old Nick's Copper"). He later names the metal Nickel.

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