1766

Events

January–March

* January 1 – Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") becomes the new Stuart claimant to the throne of Great Britain, as King Charles III, and figurehead for Jacobitism.
* January 14 – Christian VII becomes King of Denmark.
* January 20 – Outside of the walls of the Thailand capital of Ayutthaya, tens of thousands of invaders from Burma (under the command of General Ne Myo Thihapate and General Maha Nawatra) are confronted by Thai defenders led by General Phya Taksin. The defenders are overwhelmed and the survivors take refuge inside Ayutthaya. The siege continues for 15 months before the Burmese attackers collapse the walls by digging tunnels and setting fire to debris. The city falls on April 9, 1767, and King Ekkathat is killed.
* February 5 – An observer in Wilmington, North Carolina reports to the Edinburgh newspaper ''Caledonian Mercury'' that three ships have been seized by British men-of-war, on the charge of carrying official documents without stamps. The strict enforcement causes seven other ships to leave Wilmington for other ports.
* February 13 – John Mills is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, with Benjamin Franklin as one of his sponsors.
* February 15 – Protesting against the Stamp Act 1765, members of the New York City Sons of Liberty travel to Pennsylvania and set fire to a British supply of tax stamps before the stamps can be taken to distributors in the province of Maryland.
* February 18 – ''Meermin'' Slave Mutiny: Captive Malagasy people seize a Dutch East India Company slave ship in the Indian Ocean.
* February 20 – The ''Pennsylvania Gazette'' reports that a British sloop off Wilmington, North Carolina, has seized a sloop sailing from Philadelphia, and another sailing from Saint Christopher, on the charge of carrying official documents without stamps. In response, local residents threaten to burn a Royal Man-of-War attempting to deliver stamps to Wilmington, forcing the ship to return to the mouth of the Cape Fear River.
* February 23 – Lorraine becomes French again, on the death of Stanisław Leszczyński, King of Poland and last Duke of Lorraine.
* February – Ferocious wolf attacks occur in France, such as the Beast of Gévaudan or Wolves of Périgord.
* March 5 – Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans.
* March 18 – American Revolution: The British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act, which has been very unpopular in the British colonies; the persuasion of Benjamin Franklin is considered partly responsible. The Declaratory Act asserts the right of Britain to bind the colonies in all other respects.

April–June

* April 3 – Seventeen days after the Stamp Act's repeal in London, news reaches America of the decision.
* April 9
** African slaves are imported directly into the American colony of Georgia for the first time, as the sloop ''Mary Brow'' arrives in Savannah with 78 captives imported from Saint-Louis, Senegal.
** American botanist John Bartram completes his first exploration and cataloging of North American plants after more than nine months.
* April 17 – King Carlos III of Spain issues a royal cédula from Aranjuez to round up all ethnic Chinese in the Philippines and to move them to ghettoes in various provinces.
* May 29 – In a paper read to the Royal Society, British theoretical chemist Henry Cavendish first describes his process of producing what he refers to as "inflammable air" by dissolving base metals such as iron, zinc and tin in a flask of sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid, drawing the conclusion that the vapor that was released is different from air. Seven years later, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier

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