1774

• English poet Robert Southey.
• English anatomist Charles Bell.
• German Mathematician Karl Brandan Mollweide.
• German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich.
• French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Biot.
• English astronomer Francis Baily.
• English painter George Chinnery.
• Elizabeth Bayley Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity, first American-born saint.  Canonized in 1975.
• John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed.

• King Louis XV of France.  Loius XVI assumes the throne.
• Deborah Read Rogers Franklin, wife of Benjamin Franklin.
• Italian composer Niccolò Jommelli.
• Pope Clement XIV.

• In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passes several acts, dubbed the Intolerable Acts:
• The Boston Port Act, closing the port of Boston until the damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid back.
• The Administration of Justice Act, preventing British soldiers from being tried in the colonies.  A similar act exepmts British soldiers from all Massachusetts law.
• The Quebec Act, dividing Canada into French-speaking Lower Canada and English-speaking Upper Canada,  but also taking territory away from Massachusetts (in Maine), New York, and Pennsylvania  and gaving it to Canada.  The southern border of Quebec is set at the Ohio River.
• The Quartering Act of 1765, expanded to require British troops to be quartered in private homes.
• The Intolerable Acts have an effect opposite to the one intended: The colonies unite against Great Britain.
• The first Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia.
• "The Association", a universal boycott of trade with Great Britain, is established.
• Paul Revere carries news to  Portsmouth that troops are being sent to reinforce Fort William and Mary in that city. That next day the fort is raided; all of its gunpowder is taken.  The day after that, all of the light cannon and small arms are taken.
• (October) Residents of Annapolis, Maryland discover that the ship Peggy Stewart is carrying a cargo of tea. The owner is forced to run the ship aground and burn it.
• Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, leads an army into Kentucky. He defeats the Shawnee chief Cornstalk at the Battle of Point Pleasant.  This removed the last obstacle to colonization west of the Appalachians.
• John Wesley, founder of Methodism, calls for the abolition of slavery.
• Captain James Cook visits the islands of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Espiritu Santo).
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe publishes the archetypal Sturm und Drang novel, The Sufferings of Young Werther.
• Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen.
• The Treaty of Kucuk Kainarji ends the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.  Russia gains Bessarabia (Moldova), and access to the Black Sea.

1773 - 1774 - 1775