1764

Events

January–June

January 7 - The Siculicidium is carried out as hundreds of the Székely minority in Transylvania are massacred by the Austrian Army at Madéfalva.
January 19 - John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons of Great Britain, for seditious libel.
February 15 - The settlement of St. Louis is established.
March 15 - The day after his return to Paris from a nine-year mission, French explorer and scholar Anquetil Du Perron presents a complete copy of the Zoroastrian sacred text, the Zend Avesta, to the Bibliothèque Royale in Paris, along with several other traditional texts. In 1771, he publishes the first European translation of the Zend Avesta.
March 17 - Francisco Javier de la Torre arrives in Manila to become the new Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines.
March 20 - After the British victory in the French and Indian War, the first post-war British expedition to explore the newly acquired territories east of the Mississippi River comes under attack by Tunica warriors. The 340 British Army men, under the command of Major Arthur Loftus, were at a spot south of Natchez, Mississippi and were forced to flee in their boats back toward the port of New Orleans while under fire from an unknown number of Tunicas firing from both banks.
March 23 - Following lobbying by George Johnstone, the Governor of British West Florida, Britain's Lords of Trade vote to recommend the northern boundary for the new province to run from the confluence of the Yazoo River and the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee River, and the Privy Council soon approves, bringing about under the West Florida's jurisdiction.
March 27 - The prince-electors, a group of nine German princes who select the next leader of the Holy Roman Empire, vote for the last time as the health of the Emperor Francis I declines. The electors approve Francis's son, Prince Joseph of Austria as King of the Romans. Upon the death of Francis in 1765, Prince Joseph becomes the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II.
March 31 - A mutual defense treaty between the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia is signed in Saint Petersburg between representatives of Russia's Empress Catherine the Great and Prussia's King Frederick the Great. By agreement, each nation agrees to commit 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 horses to the defense of the other in case of an attack, and secretly agree to maintain security within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
April 1 - A solar eclipse occurs. On the same day, the undefeated Thoroughbred racehorse Eclipse, named after the event, is foaled at Keats Gore, near East Ilsley in Berkshire.
April 5 - The Sugar Act is passed in Great Britain.
April 21 - Residents of French Louisiana are informed for the first time that they will come under Spanish rule as the result of a secret agreement of November 13, 1762 whereby France has ceded all of its North American territory west of the Mississippi River. The Spanish, however, do not take possession until August 17, 1769.
April 27 - Eight-year-old child prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart performs a private concert before King George III and Queen Charlotte in Great Britain, and has an encore on May 19.
May 3 - Baden, one of the member states of the Confederation of Switzerland, declares a policy of remaining neutral in future conflicts, a model that is soon followed by other members of the Confederation and which eventually becomes the basis for Swiss neutrality from 1815 onward.
June 21 - The English-language Quebec Gazette is established in Quebec City, Canada.
June 29 - One of the strongest tornadoes ever recorded hits Woldegk, Germany.

July–September

July 6 - The last British troops depart Havana, Cuba, two years after having captured it from Spain during the Seven Years' War. The removal of troops follows the treaty between the two Kingdoms, with Spain ceding West Florida to Great Britain in return for the Havana withdrawal.
July 8 - The Niagara Conference begins at the invitation of Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the northern district, who hosts "one of the largest conventions of red men ever held on the continent" to negotiate the end of the hostilities from the French and Indian War. Reportedly, 2,000 representatives of the North American tribes meet at upstate New York coming from distances ranging "From Dakota to Hudson's Bay, and from Maine to Kentucky."
July 11 - Conditional repatriation of the Acadians in Canada, French colonists who took up arms against the British during the war, is approved by order of King George III on advice of the Privy Council. The Council offers settlement to any Acadians willing to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown and that those living in New Brunswick are to "be allowed to settle in Nova Scotia, but that they should be dispersed in small numbers in various localities."
July 20 - King George, on advice of the Privy Council, issues the Royal Determination of the disputed boundary between the colonial provinces of New York and New Hampshire. The King-in-Council "doth hereby order and declare the western banks of the river Connecticut from where it enters the province of Massachusetts Bay, as far north as the 45th degree of north latitude to be the boundary line between the two provinces of New Hampshire and New York."
July 26 - In what is described 250 years later as "The first documented United States school shooting", a group of four Delaware Indians invade a schoolhouse near what is now Greencastle, Pennsylvania and kill ten schoolchildren and their teacher, Enoch Brown. The massacre happens in the course of Pontiac's War, as retaliation against white settlement of Indian lands in central Pennsylvania. One student, Archie McCullough, manages to escape the carnage; a memorial is erected 120 years later on August 4, 1884.
July 31 - Johnson arrives at the Niagara River site to meet with the representatives of the Indian nations.
August 1 - The Treaty of Fort Niagara is signed between Great Britain and 44 North American Indian nations, bring an end to the ongoing war that had started in 1756 with most of the northern Indian tribes. Sir William Johnson appears on behalf of Britain, and principal chiefs appear for the Iroquois Confederacy, Wabash Confederacy, Illini Confederacy, Haudenosaunee, Seneca, Wyandot, Menominee, Algonquin, Nipissing, Ojibwa, Mississaugas, Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, and Onondaga.
September 7 - Stanisław August Poniatowski is elected as the King of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

October–December

October 15 - English scholar Edward Gibbon conceives the idea of writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "as I sat musing amid the ruins of the Capitol".
October 22 - Battle of Buxar: The British East India Company defeats the combined armies of Mir Qasim, the Nawab of Bengal, the Nawab of Awadh, and Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II.
November 9 - Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet.
December 1 - Siege of Darbar Sahib (1764): 30 Sikhs defend the holy site of Golden Temple against 30,000 Afghans.

Date unknown

The Royal Colony of North Carolina establishes a new county from the eastern portion of Granville County and names it Bute County for John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who had recently resigned his post as Prime Minister of Great Britain. In 1779 the State of North Carolina abolishes the county, when it forms Warren County from the northern portion and Franklin County from the southern portion.
The French government withdraws wartime taxes.
Catherine the Great establishes the first secondary education school for females in Russia - The Smolny Institute, for girls of the nobility in St. Petersburg.
Chief Pontiac, participating in an armed conflict with other native tribes against British military, participates in a dialogue and exchange with the military of Britain, resulting eventually in a negotiated peace treaty.
French Carthusian monks at Grande Chartreuse perfect a commercial recipe for Chartreuse (liqueur).