1731

• American inventor, engineer, architect, and publisher Benjamin Banneker.
• Martha Dandridge, future wife of George Washington.
• English naturalist Erasmus Darwin, who had a more famous grandson.
• English poet and critic William Cowper.
• English chemist Henry Cavendish.
• English composer, Soprano and conductor Elisabetta de Gambarini.
• English poet Charles Churchill.
• Bohemian composer Frantisek Dusek.
• German composer Johann Christian Cannabich.

• Scottish author Daniel Defoe.
• English writer Mary Astell.
• English mathematician Brook Taylor.
• Italian harpsichord maker Bartolommeo Cristofori, inventor of the piano.
• English tavernkeeper and writer Edward Ward.
• An Earthquake kills 100,000 people in Peking.

• 15-year-old Spanish Infante Don Carlos (later King Carlos III) inherits the duchy of Parma and a claim to Tuscany from his mother. Later in the year, he contracts smallpox but survives.
• Former King Victor Amadeus II of (Piedmont-)Sardinia tries to reassume the throne he abdicated the previous year. His son, King Charles Emmanuel III has him arrested and put in prison.
• The first settlement near the Mission San Antonio is established.
• The Spanish coast guard catches the English brig Rebecca while smuggling.  They board the ship and seize its cargo.  During the struggle, the captain of the Rebecca, one Robert Jenkins, has part of his ear cut off. Several years later he would produce the preserved ear before Parliament, and a war would result.

1730 - 1731 - 1732

How They Were Made - 18th Century