1761

• Marie Grosholtz, aka Madame Tussaud, creator of the famous wax museum.
• Francesco Xaverio Castiglione, later Pope Pius VIII.

• English Mathematician Thomas Simpson.
• English mathematician Thomas Bayes.
• English naturalist, Rev. Steven Hales.
• English spiritualist William Law.
• French sculptor François Gaspard Adam.

• Seven Years' War:
• King George III forces William Pitt to resign as Prime Minister.    Britain cuts off all money to Frederick the Great's war effort, and Frederick is on the point of capitulation.
• Spain enters the war on the side of the French. The British capture Belle Isle near Minorca.
• The British capture Pondicherry in India from the French.
• The British defeat their last opponent in North America, the Cherokee Indians.
• James Otis resigns his post as Advocate-General of Massachusetts in protest against the Writs of Assistance, which allowed Colonial officials to search for smuggled goods anywhere they wished.  In the subsequent trial, Otis delivers a stirring speech condemning the acts.  A 25-year-old John Adams witnessed the speech, and later wrote that 'Then and there the child independence was born'.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes his novel La nouvelle Heloise.
• Composer Franz Josef Haydn becomes second conductor for Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy of Hungary.
• Slave traders are banned from the Society of Friends (even though many Quakers owned slaves).
• at the 3rd battle of Panipat, the Indian Maratha army is crushed by Ahmad Shah Durrani of Afganisthan, ending the Marathas' dominance of most of India, and creating a power vacuum that smoothed the way for British conquest.
• The first known composition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (five years old), his "Andante in C for Keyboard" (Kochel 1a), is published.

1760 - 1761 - 1762