Editing 1744 (section)

=== October&ndash;December ===
* [[October 4]] &ndash; In one of the greatest disasters for the [[Royal Navy]], [[HMS Victory (1737)|HMS ''Victory'']] sinks in a storm in the English Channel, killing 1,100 sailors and officers it had been bringing back from Gibraltar to England, including Admiral [[John Balchen]].<ref>Stewart Gordon, A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks (ForeEdge, University Press of New England, 2015) p.140</ref> The wreck will be located 264 years later, in January, 2009.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7863840.stm "Legendary British warship 'found'", BBC News, February 1, 2009]</ref> 
* [[October 12]] &ndash; The creator of [[binomial nomenclature]] for the identification of plant and animal species, [[Carl Linnaeus]], is selected as president of the [[Royal Swedish Academy of Science]], succeeding the late [[Anders Celsius]], who had devised the centigrade measurement of temperature.<ref>Florence Caddy, ''Through the Fields with Linnaeus: A Chapter in Swedish History'' (Little, Brown, and Company, 1886) p159</ref>
* [[October 19]] &ndash; [[William Shirley]], the British colonial Governor of the [[Province of Massachusetts Bay]], announces the declaration of war against the [[Miꞌkmaq]] and [[Maliseet]] Indian tribes.<ref>Frederic J. Baumgartner, ''Declaring War in Early Modern Europe'' (Springer, 2011) p149</ref> 
* [[October 25]]
** The [[Massachusetts General Court]], colonial legislature for the Massachusetts Bay Province, approves an incentive for the killing of enemy Indians, authorizing the payment of 100 [[Massachusetts pound]]s for the [[scalping]] of a Mi'kmaq or Maliseet Indian, and 50 for the scalps of women or children.<ref>Geoffrey Plank, An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign Against the Peoples of Acadia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) p110</ref>
** Spanish explorers [[Antonio de Ulloa]] and [[Jorge Juan y Santacilla]] complete their mission of exploration and depart from the [[Peru]]vian seaport of [[Callao]] for a return to Spain.<ref>Robert Whitaker, The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale Of Love, Murder, And Survival In The Amazon (Basic Books, 2004) p197</ref>
* [[November 1]] &ndash; [[Second Silesian War]]: The Prussian Army, under the command of Field Marshal [[Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin]], begins the bombardment of  [[Prague]]. The Bohemian capital surrenders after two weeks.<ref>Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (Macmillan, 1998) p243</ref>
* [[December 18]] &ndash; Queen [[Maria Theresa]] of [[Habsburg monarchy|Austria]] issues a proclamation to rid [[Bohemia]] of its Jewish residents, with the [[History of the Jews in Prague|Jews]] to leave Prague over the next two weeks, and then to depart from Bohemia entirely in 1745.<ref>Selma Stern, ''The Court Jew - A Contribution to the History of the Period of Absolutism in Central Europe'' (Read Books, 2011)</ref>