1724

Events

• January 14 - King Philip V of Spain abdicates the throne
• February 20 - The premiere of Giulio Cesare, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, takes place in London
• June 23 - Treaty of Constantinople signed. Partitioned Persia between the Ottoman Empire and Russia
• November 16 – Jack Sheppard hanged in London
• China expels foreign missionaries
• Blenheim Palace construction is completed. It is presented as a gift to the Duke of Marlborough for his involvement in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704
• Catherine I was named czarina by Peter the Great in Russia
• The Austrian Netherlands agree to the Pragmatic Sanction
• Mahmud of Afghanistan goes insane
• Pierro Orsini become Pope Benedict XIII
• Longman, oldest publishing house in England, is founded

Births

• April 22 - Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (d. 1804)
• June 8 - John Smeaton, civil engineer (d. 1794)
• July 2 - Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, German poet (d. 1803)
• August 25 - George Stubbs, painter (d. 1806)
• December 13 - Franz Aepinus, German natural philosopher (d. 1802)
• John Michell, English natural philosopher and geologist (d. 1793)

Deaths

• March 7 - Pope Innocent XIII (b. 1655)
• May 21 - Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, English statesman (b. 1661)
• June 15 - Henry Sacheverell, English churchman and politician (b. 1674)
• October 29 - William Wollaston, English philosophical writer (b. 1659)
• November 16 - Jack Sheppard (executed)