1759

• German poet Friederich Schiller.
• Scottish poet Robert Burns.
• English author Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley).
• English botanist James Edward Smith, founder of the Linnean Society.
• Hungarian composer Franz Krommer.
• William Pitt the Younger, Earl of Chatham and future Prime Minister.
• Mathematician and Physicist Jacob Bernoulli II.

Died in 1759:
 

• German/English composer George Frideric Handel.
• Carl Heinrich Graun, Kapellmeister of Frederick the Great.
• French scientist Pierre de Maupertuis.
• Korean Artist Chong Son.
• British general James Wolfe, killed  on the Plains of Abraham during the Battle of Quebec. (see below).
• French General Montcalm, killed on the during the battle of Quebec.
• British painter Charles Brooking.
• English poet William Collins.

Events of 1759:

• The first volume of Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman appears.
• French and Indian War/Seven Years' War:
• One fourth of the British navy crosses the Atlantic Ocean to America.  Commanded by General James Wolfe (and navigated by James Cook).
• General Wolfe's troops capture Quebec.
• While Wolfe was attacking Quebec, General Amherst attacks Fort Carillon near Lake George in upstate New York.  The French abandon it and nearby Fort St. Frederic after booby-trapping them.  Both forts are destroyed.  Amherst later builds  Fort Ticonderoga on the site of Fort Carillon, and Fort Crown Point on the site of Fort St Frederic.
• The British, aided by several thousand Iroqouois, capture Fort Niagara from the French.
• The French (under de Broglie) occupy Minden in central Germany.  Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, aided by British and Hanoverian troops, destroy a large part of the French army; the French are pushed back to the Rhine.
• The French launch a harebrained scheme to invade Great Britain; the French fleet is destroyed at Quiberon Bay before it can pick up the invasion force.
• Frederick the Great is routed by Austrian and Russian forces at Kunnersdorf.
• Francois Arouet, aka Voltaire, publishes his novel Candide.
• Adam Smith publishes his Theory of Moral Sentiments.
• Charles III ascends the throne of Spain.
• In a triumph for mathematical physics, a comet that Edmund Halley had predicted would return this year actually does return; it is renamed in his honor.

1758 - 1759 - 1760