1754

• English poet George Crabbe.
• American writer Joel Barlow.
• The future Tsar Paul of Russia to Princess Sophie von Anhalt-Pommern (the future Empress Catherine the Great), and, ostensibly, her husband, the future Tsar Peter III.
• French philosopher Comte Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy.
• British naval Captain William Bligh.
• French Revolutionary figure Madame Jeanne-Marie Roland.
• French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand.
• The future King Louis XVI of France.

• English author Henry Fielding, most famous for The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.
• French architect Germain Boffrand.
• Danish dramatist Ludvig Holberg.
• French mathematician Abraham de Moivre.
• Ottoman Sultan Mahmoud Khan I.

• Anthony Henday becomes the first European to see the Rocky Mountains.
• Colonial representatives meet in Albany, New York to draw up a proposal for a government of all 13 British colonies, to be proposed to Parliament.  In support of this, Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette publishes the famous Join or Die cartoon featuring a cut-up snake whose segments are labeled with the names of individual colonies.
• David Hume publishes his essay Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.
• The British build a fort where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio River. Fort Prince George is attacked and captured by the French before it can be completed.  The French complete the fort, naming it Fort Duquesne.  A Virginia regiment is camped nearby at Fort Necessity.  This regiment, commanded by 22-year-old George Washington, attacks a French patrol. In retaliation, a large French force attacked Fort Necessity and captures the fort, as well as Washington.  Washington and his men are allowed to go back to Virginia. And thus begins the French and Indian War.
• Construction begins on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.
• King's College, later Columbia University, founded in New York City.
• Mughal Emperor Ahmad Shah deposed by one of his ministers.

1753 - 1754 - 1755