* EVENTS
1700 England and France dominate African slave trade to America
1738 Wesley founds Methodism
1748 Utilitarian philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham born
1752 American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin develops lightning rod (right)
1756 Major powers conflict as worldwide Seven Years War begins
1771 Captain Cook sails to the Pacific on the Endeavour (right)
1773 American revolutionaries resist British taxation at Boston Tea Party
1776 Declaration of Independence adopted by 13 American states on July 4
1783 Treaty of Paris. Britain accepts American independence
1789 Parisian mob storms the Bastille as French revolution begins (above)
1792 Thomas Paine publishes The Rights of Man
1793 Execution of French king, Louis XVI (right)
1796 Physician Edward Jenner develops smallpox vaccine
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte assumes power as First Consul of France
* IDEAS
1714 Polish physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit develops mercury thermometer
1755 Samuel Johnson publishes the first English dictionary
1776 Adam Smith examines laissez-faire economics in Wealth of Nations
1778 Deaths of Enlightenment thinkers Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire
1781 German philosopher Immanuel Kant publishes Critique of Pure Reason
1786 Mozart's La Nozze di Figaro opens to lukewarm reviews
1788 Edward Gibbon completes Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
1789 Antoine Lavoisie publishes Elementary Treatise on Chemistry
1792 Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Women