Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

- Thomas Gray, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"¹

Born in 1742:

• American Revolutionary War general Nathaniel Greene.
• Pennsylvania lawyer and politician James Wilson.
• Swedish chemist Karl Scheele.
• German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.
• French educator Abbé Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard, pioneer of deaf education.
• Mohawk chief Thayendanegea, aka Joseph Brant.
• American frontierswoman Anne Bailey.

Died in 1742:

• French architect Armand Claude Mollet.
• Spanish composer José António Carlos de Seixas.
• French biologist Louis Bourguet.
• Dutch physicist Jakob 's Gravesande.
• Italian composer Evaristo Dell'Abaco.

Events of 1742:

• The War of Jenkins' Ear and the War of the Austrian Succession continue on.
• British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole is pressured into declaring war on France. Walpole is eventually forced to resign.
• (May 17) Frederick II of Prussia manages to not run away this time, defeating the Austrians at the Battle of Chotusitz and cements his hold on Silesia.
• (June-July) Spanish colonial troops under Don Manuel de Montiano invade St. Simons Island in Georgia.  Georgia troops and British regulars under James Oglethorpe hold the Spanish off at the Battle of Bloody Marsh.  Montiano withdraws to St. Augustine.
• (July) Maria Theresa of Austria signs the Peace of Berlin ceding Silesia to Frederick.
• Austrian troops, freed of the threat of Prussian intervention, begin to drive the French out of Bohemia. The French are forced into a terrible winter retreat.
• The Elector of Bavaria is elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII.
• Elizaveta Petrovna overthrows Tsar Ivan VI of Russia. She abolishes capital punishment but (December 1) expels all Jews from Russia.
• The Marathas invade Bengal.
• Georg Freideric Handel's oratorio Messiah premieres in Dublin.
• Johann Sebastian Bach publishes Die Kunst der Fugue.
• Christian Goldbach conjectures that every even number can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers.
• Edmond Hoyle publishes A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist.
• In Cambridge, the brick facades of Trinity College are ashlared, that is, refaced with stone.

1741 - 1742 - 1743

How They Were Made - 18th Century

¹Thanks to mauler for supplying the quotation.