13 March – The Royal Navy brings 180 warships, frigates and transport vessels, led by Admiral Edward Vernon, to threaten Cartagena, Colombia, with more than 27,000 crew against the 3,600 defenders.[7]
4/5 August–9 December – Vernon captures Guantánamo Bay and renames it Cumberland Bay. His troops hold it but are resisted by local guerrilla forces and withdraw.[citation needed]
22 August–14 September – George Frideric Handel composes the oratorio Messiah in London to a libretto compiled by Charles Jennens,[13] completing the "Hallelujah Chorus" on 6 September.[14] It receives a private rehearsal in Chester in November while Handel is en route to Dublin.
12 October – George II, as Elector of Hanover, signs the Neustadt Protocol with France, but fails to inform his British government until after his return from Germany.[15]
19 October – Actor David Garrick makes his London stage debut, in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III,[13] having made his professional debut at Ipswich in Oroonoko earlier in the year.
11 December – At 11 a.m. a "fire-ball" and explosion, perhaps resulting from a meteor, is heard over southern England.[16]
^Drake, James D. (2008). "Cartagena, Expedition against". In Tucker, Spencer (ed.). The Encyclopedia of North American Colonial Conflicts to 1775. Harper Collins.
^Bown, Stephen R. (2005). Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail. Macmillan.
^Simms, Brendan; Riotte, Torsten (2007). The Hanoverian Dimension in British History, 1714–1837. Cambridge University Press. p. 1041.
^"Sir Robert Walpole". Prime Ministers in history. Prime Minister's Office. Archived from the original on 21 August 2008. Retrieved 27 February 2011.
^Thompson, Andrew C. (2011). George II: King and Elector. Yale University Press. p. 140.
^Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. "a countryman ... saw a flash of Lightning Before he heard the Noise ... The sound was double ... a Ball of Fire ... took its Course to the East ... over Westminster ... it divided into Two Heads [and] left a Train of Smoke ... which continued ascending for 20 minutes".
.svg){kind=small}