1740

October 9: The Batavia Massacre by the Dutch East India Company of at least 5,000 Chinese Indonesians begins in what is now Jakarta.

Events

January 8 – All 237 crewmen on the Dutch East India Company ship Rooswijk are drowned when the vessel strikes the shoals of Goodwin Sands, off of the coast of England, as it is beginning its second voyage to the Indies. The wreckage is discovered more than 250 years later, in 2004.<ref>Wendy van Duivenvoorde, Dutch East India Company Shipbuilding: The Archaeological Study of Batavia and Other Seventeenth-Century VOC Ships (Texas A&M University Press, 2015) p145</ref>
February 20 – The North Carolina General Assembly incorporates the town of Newton as Wilmington, North Carolina, named for Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington and patron of Royal Governor Gabriel Johnston.
March 16 – King Edward of the Miskito Indians signs a treaty making his kingdom, located on the coast of modern-day Nicaragua, a protectorate of Great Britain.<ref>"Mosquito Coast", in Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, ed. by Kenneth J. Panton (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) p384</ref>
March 25 – Construction begins on Bethesda Orphanage for boys near Savannah, Georgia, founded by George Whitefield.

April 8 – War of the Austrian Succession: The Royal Navy captures the Spanish ship of the line Princesa off Cape Finisterre and takes her into British service.
May 31 – Frederick II becomes King in Prussia upon the death of his father, Frederick William I.
June 1 – Plantation Act 1740 or Naturalization Act 1740 of the Parliament of Great Britain comes into effect providing for Protestant alien immigrants (including Huguenots, and also Jews) residing in the American colonies for 7 years to receive British nationality.
June 16 – Pour le Mérite first awarded in Prussia as a military honour.
June 26 – War of Jenkins' Ear: Siege of Fort Mose – A Spanish column of 300 regular troops, free Black militia and Indian auxiliaries storms Britain's strategically crucial position of Fort Mose, Florida.

July 7 – Adam Smith sets out from Scotland to take up a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
July 11 – Pogrom: Jews are expelled from Little Russia.
August 1 – The song Rule, Britannia! is first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in England.<ref name="Cassell's Chronology308">Template:Cite book</ref>
August 17 – Pope Benedict XIV succeeds Pope Clement XII, as the 247th pope.
September 8 – Hertford College, Oxford, England, is founded for the first time.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

October 9–22 – Batavia Massacre: Troops of the Dutch East India Company massacre 5,000–10,000 Chinese Indonesians in Batavia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
October 20 – Maria Theresa inherits the hereditary dominions of the Habsburg monarchy (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and modern-day Belgium) under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 on the death of her father, Charles VI. Her succession to the Holy Roman Empire is contested widely because she is a woman, but she will reign for 40 years.
November 6 – Samuel Richardson's popular and influential epistolary novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, is published anonymously in London.
November 14 – The University of Pennsylvania is officially established.
December 16 – Frederick II of Prussia invades the Habsburg possession of Silesia, starting the War of the Austrian Succession.

February 4 – Carl Michael Bellman, Swedish poet, composer (d. 1795)
February 15 – Juan Andrés, Spanish Jesuit (d. 1817)
February 16 – Giambattista Bodoni, Italian publisher and engraver (d. 1813)
February 17 – John Sullivan, American General in the American Revolutionary War, delegate in the Continental Congress (d. 1795)
March – Johann van Beethoven, German musician, father of Ludwig van Beethoven (d. 1792)
March 16 – Johann Jacob Schweppe, German-born inventor, founder of the Schweppes Company (d. 1821)
April 7 – Haym Salomon, Polish-Jewish American financier of the American Revolution (d. 1785)
April 14 – Anna Strong, Patriot spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1812)
May 7 – Nikolai Arkharov, Russian police chief (d. 1814)

June 2 – Marquis de Sade, French author, for whom sadism is named (d. 1814)
June 24 – Juan Ignacio Molina, Spanish-Chilean Jesuit priest, naturalist, historian, translator, geographer, botanist, ornithologist and linguist (d. 1829)
June 27 – James Woodforde, English clergyman and diarist (d. 1803)
July 27 – Jeanne Baré, French explorer (d. 1803)
August 23 – Emperor Ivan VI of Russia (d. 1764)
August 26 – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, French inventor (d. 1810)
September 12 – Johann Heinrich Jung, German writer (d. 1817)
September 23 – Empress Go-Sakuramachi of Japan (d. 1813)
September 25 – Hercules Mulligan, tailor and spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1825)
October 29 – James Boswell, Scottish author (d. 1795)
October 31 – Philip James de Loutherbourg, English artist (d. 1812)
December – Elisabeth Olin, Swedish opera singer (d. 1828)

Ali Pasha of Ioannina, Albanian ruler (d. 1822)
Margaret Bingham, Countess of Lucan, born Margaret Smith, English portrait miniature painter and writer (d. 1814)<ref name="Radford">Template:DNB</ref>
John Milton, American politician and officer of the Continental Army (d. 1817) (earliest estimated date of birth)
Septimanie d'Egmont, French salonist (d. 1773)