Born in 1743:

• Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of rebellion which gained independence for Haiti.
• Thomas Jefferson, Third president of the United States.
• Austrian princess Marie Antoinette, later Queen of France.
• Italian composer Luigi Boccherini.
• Chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.
• Jean-Paul Marat, a figure in the French Revolution.
• Irish Architect James Gandon.
• Theologian William Paley.
• Naturalist Sir Joseph Banks.
• Composer Ekaterina Romanova Dashkova.
• Romantic Era Author Anna Letitia Barbauld.
• Banker Meyer Amschel Rothschild.

Died in 1743:

• Virginia planter Augustine Washington, father of George Washington.
• English Astronomer Edmund Halley¹.
• Cardinal Fleury, chief minister of France.  Louis XV rules France by himself.

Events of 1743:

• The War of Jenkins' Ear in North America merges into the larger War of the Austrian Succession in Europe.
• The instigator, Frederick II of Prussia, is temporarily out of the war.
• (March) James Oglethorpe of Georgia tries but fails to capture St. Augustine from the Spanish.
• Austria, without Frederick to worry about, re-takes Bohemia from the French.
• (May) Austrian Empress Maria Theresa crowned Queen of Bohemia.
• (June 27) The French and Bavarians Led by the Duc De Noaille) are defeated by the British, Hanoverians, and Hessians (led by George II himself) at the Battle of Dettingen in Bavaria.
• (September) Sardinia (that is, Savoy) enters the war on the side of the Austrians.
• (October 25) Bourbon Louis XV of France signs the Second Family Compact with Bourbon Philip V of Spain supporting Spain in its war with Great Britain. It's all one big bloody conflagration by now.
• Saxony switches sides over to the Austrians.
• French troops retreat into France, and Austrian troops overrun  Bavaria.
• James Oglethorpe leaves Georgia, never to return.
• Frederick and Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna arrange the marriage of Elizaveta's heir Peter to 14-year-old Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst.
• Robert Clive arrives in India as an employee of the British East India Company.
• The Treaty of Abo allows Russia to put its candidate on the throne of Sweden.
• Georg Freideric Handel's oratorio Messiah is performed in London for the first time.
• The first Elevator is installed for Louis XV in the Versailles Palace.
• Frederick Augustus II, elector of Saxony and King of Poland, removes all Protestants from public office.
• Leopold Mozart appointed violinist for the orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg.
• The Canadian Rocky Mountains are sighted by Europeans for the first time.
• Jean Christin revises the temperature scale of Anders Celsius, resulting in the Celsius Scale of today.
• John Locke publishes his History of the Devil.
• Jean D'Alembert reveals that problems in Dynamics can be reduced to problems in Statics.
• Benjamin Franklin invents a heat-efficient Stove which will bear his name.

1742 - 1743 - 1744

How They Were Made - 18th Century

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¹Because people in Great Britain and its North American colonies had not yet adopted the Gregorian Calendar, and used March 21 as New Years' Day instead of January 1, this event will often be reported as having happened in 1742.