The 1740s (pronounced "seventeen-forties") decade ran from January 1, 1740, to December 31, 1749. Many events during this decade sparked an impetus for the Age of Reason. Military and technological advances brought one of the first instances of a truly global war to take place here, when Maria Theresa of Austria’s struggle to succeed the various crowns of her father King Charles VI led to a war involving nearly all European states in the War of the Austrian Succession, eventually spilling over to North America with the War of Jenkins’ Ear (which went on to involve many of the West’s first ferocious maritime battles). Capitalism grew robust following the fallout of the South Sea bubble two decades prior and the subsequent reign of Sir Robert Walpole, whose rule ended in the earlier half of this decade.
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1740
1741
1742
1743
1744
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1740
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I looked it up later and found out that it's generally conceded that they were all dead by the 1680s. But a story persists that a fellow named MacQueen killed the last wolf in Scotland - and, implicitly, in all Britain - after that, in 1743. (Henry Shoemaker mentions the story in the section of Extinct Pennsylvania Animals that concerns wolves.)
... in 1747 fishwives organized a large political demonstration in Amsterdam, and in 1748 the Amsterdam fish hawker Marretje Arents was one of the principal initiators of a tax riot in the city.
The war of the Austrian Succession for the third time threw the treasury back upon the hated fiscal resource in October of 1741, when the income tax was reintroduced accompanied by a royal promise to the effect that upon the close of the war this means of raising revenue should once for all be done away with.