Bering's two Pacific expeditions (1725-29 and 1733-42),…

Christian Goldbach, born in the Duchy of Prussia's capital Königsberg, part of Brandenburg-Prussia, was the son of a pastor.

He had studied at the Royal Albertus University.

After finishing his studies he had undertaken long educational voyages from 1710 to 1724 through Europe, visiting other German states, England, Holland, Italy, and France, meeting with many famous mathematicians, such as Gottfried Leibniz, Leonhard Euler, and Nicholas I Bernoulli.

Back in Königsberg, he became acquainted with Georg Bernhard Bilfinger and Jakob Herman.

He had gone on to work at the newly opened St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1725.

Later on, he was a tutor to the later Tsar Peter II in 1728.

He enters the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1742.

[Goldbach is most noted for his correspondence with Leibniz, Euler, and Bernoulli, especially in his 1742 letter to Euler stating his Goldbach's conjecture, one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in number theory and in all of mathematics.

It states: Every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.

The conjecture has been shown to be correct up through 4 × 1018 and is generally assumed to be true, but no mathematical proof exists despite considerable effort.

George Brandt finally determines in 1742 that the presence of cobalt is responsible for the blue color of some promising copper-bearing ores of Germany’s Harz Mountains.

The Al Sa'id, an Ibadi family from one of the coastal cities, in 1742 persuades the local population to help it expel the Iranians; this puts the leader, Ahmad ibn Sa'id Al Sa'id, in control of the Omani coast.

William Champion had obtained a patent for a process to reduce zinc oxide to zinc in 1738, but the process is energy inefficient.

The difficulty is that a temperature of 1000°C is needed to reduce the oxide to the metal, but zinc vaporizes at 907°C.

It is thus necessary for the furnace to provide a means of condensing the vapor.

The distillation process produces around four hundred kilograms of zinc per charge from six crucibles located in the furnace.

The zinc is collected by iron tubes into water.

His initial works are on Old Market in Bristol and he makes two hundred tons of spelter (as zinc is at this time called) by 1742, when he is required to move because his premises are a 'common nuisance'.

Champion comes from a family who are already concerned in the metal trade at Bristol, his father being a leading partner in the Bristol Brass Company.

As a young man, he had toured Europe, returning in 1730.

He then experimented with smelting calamine, developing a method very similar to those long in use at the Zawar mines in India (except in scale), but no mechanism for technology transfer has yet been established.

The Powhatan tribe had lived before 1607 in the region of present Richmond, Virginia, with one of their capitals there, known as Powhatan, Shocquohocan, or Shockoe.

James I had granted a royal charter to the Virginia Company of London in 1606 to settle colonists in North America.

After the first permanent English-speaking settlement was established in April 1607, at Jamestown, Captain Christopher Newport had led explorers northwest up the James River, and on May 24, 1607, erected a cross on one of the small islands in the middle of the part of the river that runs through today's downtown area.

Two attempts at English settlement were subsequently made (in 1609 and 1610), but each was abandoned, as the native inhabitants were not willing to give up their capital without a fight.

Colonist John Rolfe began in the 1610s to grow a sweeter variety of tobacco at Henricus, and it became a lucrative commodity in the tidewater region, driving further expansion.

Fort Charles was erected in 1645, at the falls of the James—the highest navigable point of the James River—as a frontier defense.

New settlers had moved in, and the community has grown into a bustling trading post for furs, hides, and tobacco.

Planter William Byrd II in 1737 had commissioned Major William Mayo to lay out the original town grid.

Byrd named the city "Richmond" after the English town of Richmond near (and now part of) London, because the view of the James River was strikingly similar to the view of the River Thames from Richmond Hill in England, where he had spent time during his youth.

The settlement was laid out in April 1737, and is incorporated as a town in 1742.

Early trade grows rapidly, primarily in the agriculture sector, but also in the slave trade.

Enslaved Africans are imported to Richmond's Manchester docks, and are bought and sold at the same market.

The first edition of The Pennsylvania Journal, an American weekly newspaper published by William Bradford, appears in December 1742.

Although the Mallet’s first expedition had been a commercial failure, the French send out a second, and larger, trade expedition to New Mexico.

Andre Fabry de la Bruyere, a government official in New Orleans, had been appointed to lead the expedition, which left New Orleans in September 1741.

The Mallet brothers and several other voyageurs and one Negro slave accompanied him.

Fabry had proceeded by boat up the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers to the Canadian and then with agonizing slowness up the Canadian to the junction of the Little River near present-day Holdenville, Oklahoma.

There he met a war party of thirty-five Osage who were in search of their Mento (Wichita) enemies.

The river being unnavigable, Fabry had attempted unsuccessfully to buy horses from the Osage and other tribes to continue the journey.

In September 1742 he abandons the expedition.

The Mallets meanwhile, apparently disgusted with Fabry’s leadership, had departed on foot for Santa Fe.

They were also unsuccessful and turns back to Arkansas Post, where they live during the 1740s.

Pierre will continue to trade and explore along the Canadian River.

The French have successfully reignited the conflict between Chickasaw and Choctaw.

The Choctaw have pursued their familiar hit-and-run tactics: ambushing hunting parties, killing traders’ horses, devastating croplands after using superior numbers to drive the Chickasaw into their forts, and killing peace emissaries.

Illiniwek and Iroquois occasionally have pitched in from the north as well.

This war of attrition has effectively worn the Chickasaw down, reaching a crisis level in the late 1730s and especially the early 1740s.

Fort Matanzas is constructed of coquina, a common shellstone building material in the area.

It is fifty feet (fifteen meters) long on each side with a thirty-foot (nine point one meter) tower.

The marshy terrain is stabilized by a foundation of pine pilings.

The standard staff for the Fort is one officer in charge, four infantrymen, and two gunners, though more troops can be stationed if necessary.

All soldiers at Fort Matanzas serve on rotation from their regular duty in St. Augustine.

Five cannons are placed at the Fort—four six pounders and one eighteen pounder.

All guns can reach the inlet, which at this time is less than a half mile away.

As the Fort is nearing completion in 1742,  the British under Oglethorpe approach the inlet with twelve ships.

Cannon fire drives off the scouting boats and the warships leave without engaging the Fort.

This brief encounter is the only time Fort Matanzas will fire on an enemy.

Austrian troops under Ludwig Andreas von Khevenhüller capture Munich, Charles Albert's capital, on January 24, 1742. the dame day that Charles Albert of Bavaria is unanimously elected Holy Roman Emperor at Frankfurt.

The Archduchess, who regards the election as a catastrophe, has caught her enemies unprepared by insisting on a winter campaign.