The British Museum, although today principally a…

Species Plantarum (Latin: "The Species of Plants"), a book by Carl Linnaeus, initially published in 1753, lists every species of plant known at this time, classified into genera.

Species Plantarum is the first botanical work to consistently apply the binomial nomenclature system of naming to any large group of organisms (Linnaeus' tenth edition of Systema Naturae will apply the same technique to animals for the first time in 1758).

Prior to this work, a plant species would be known by a long polynomial, such as Plantago foliis ovato-lanceolatis pubescentibus, spica cylindrica, scapo tereti (meaning "plantain with pubescent ovate-lanceolate leaves, a cylindrical spike and a terete scape") or Nepeta floribus interrupte spicatis pedunculatis (meaning "Nepeta with flowers in a stalked, interrupted spike").

These cumbersome names are replaced in Species Plantarum with two-part names, consisting of a single-word genus name, and a single-word specific epithet or "trivial name"; the two examples above become Plantago media and Nepeta cataria, respectively.

The use of binomial names had originally been developed as a kind of shorthand in a student project about the plants eaten by cattle.

After the specific epithet, Linnaeus gives a short description of each species, and a synonymy.

The descriptions are careful and terse, consisting of few words in small genera.

Becauseit is the first work to consistently apply binomial names it is considered the starting point for the naming of plants. (The nomenclature of some non-vascular plants and all fungi uses later starting points).

The electrical nature of lightning had been the subject of public discussion in France in 1750, with a dissertation of Denis Barbaret receiving a prize in Bordeaux; Barbaret had proposed a cause in line with the triboelectric effect.

The physicist Jacques de Romas also wrote a memoir that year with similar ideas.

Benjamin Franklin had listed a dozen analogies between lightning and electricity in his notebooks at the end of 1749.

Speculations of Jean-Antoine Nollet had led the issue being posed as a prize question at Bordeaux in 1749.

De Romas later defended his own electrical kite proposal as independent of Franklin's.

In 1752, Franklin had proposed an experiment with conductive rods to attract lightning to a Leyden jar, an early form of capacitor.

Such an experiment was carried out in May 1752 at Marly-la-Ville in northern France by Thomas-François Dalibard.

An attempt to replicate the experiment killed Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Saint Petersburg in August 1753; he is thought to be the victim of ball lightning.

Franklin himself is said to have conducted the experiment in June 1752, supposedly on the top of the spire on Christ Church in Philadelphia; however, doubts have been expressed about whether the experiment was actually performed.

Works on the chemistry of bismuth, recognized as a specific metal by the middle of the eighteenth century, had been published in 1739 by German chemist Johann Heinrich Pott and by French chemist Claude François Geoffroy the Younger, who demonstrates in 1753 that this metal is distinct from lead and tin.

Elizabeth Canning is an English maidservant who claimed to have been kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft for almost a month.

She ultimately becomes central to one of the most famous English criminal mysteries of the eighteenth century.

She disappears on January 1, 1753, before returning almost a month later to her mother's home in Aldermanbury in the City of London, emaciated and in a "deplorable condition".

After being questioned by concerned friends and neighbors she is interviewed by the local alderman, who then issues an arrest warrant for Susannah Wells, the woman who occupies the house in which Canning is supposed to have been held.

At Wells' house in Enfield Wash, Canning identifies Mary Squires as another of her captors, prompting the arrest and detention of both Wells and Squires.

London magistrate Henry Fielding becomes involved in the case, taking Canning's side.

Further arrests are made and several witness statements were taken, and Wells and Squires are ultimately tried and found guilty—Squires of the more serious and potentially capital charge of theft.

However, Crisp Gascoyne, trial judge and Lord Mayor of London, is unhappy with the verdict and begins his own investigation.

He speaks with witnesses whose testimony implies that Squires and her family could not have abducted Canning, and he interviews several of the prosecution's witnesses, some of whom recant their earlier testimony.

He orders Canning's arrest, following which she is tried and found guilty of perjury.

Squires is pardoned, and Canning sentenced to one month's imprisonment and seven years of transportation.

Canning's case pits two groups of believers against one another: the pro-Canning "Canningites", and the pro-Squires "Egyptians".

Gascoyne is openly abused and attacked in the street, while interested authors wage a fierce war of words over the fate of the young, often implacable maid.

She will die in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1773, but the mystery surrounding her disappearance will remain unsolved.

Cornwallis, dissatisfied with the English colonists sent to Halifax in 1749, had appealed to the Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations (Board of Trade) in London to recruit more Germans and Swiss.

Over twenty-seven hundred "Foreign Protestants" had signed up for the passage and emigrated to Nova Scotia.

Most come from the Upper Rhine area of present-day Germany, from the French and German-speaking Swiss cantons and from the French-speaking principality of Montbéliard.

They have stayed in Halifax under British protection while working on the fortifications to pay off the cost of their passage.

In 1753, three years into Father Le Loutre's War, John Creighton leads the group of Foreign Protestants stationed in Halifax to resettle Mirliguèche, naming the new British colony Lunenburg.

The town is named in honor of the King of Great Britain and Ireland, George August of Hanover, who is also the duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg.

Like Halifax, the British have established Lunenburg unilaterally, that is, without negotiating with the Mi'kmaq whose sovereign territory it has always been.

In the spring, Governor Hopson receives warnings from Fort Edward that as many as three hundred natives nearby are prepared to oppose the settlement of Lunenburg and intend to attack upon the arrival of settlers.

On June 7, 1753, supervised by Lawrence, escorted by several ships of the British Navy and accompanied by one hundred and sixty Regular soldiers, fourteen hundred and fifty-three Foreign Protestants from Halifax land at Rous' Brook.

British and Canadian traders throughout the 1740s and early 1750s had increasingly come into contact in the Ohio Country, including the upper watershed of the Ohio River in what is now western Pennsylvania.

Authorities in New France have became more aggressive in their efforts to expel British traders and colonists from this area, and in 1753 begin construction of a series of fortifications in the area.

Paul Marin de la Malgue, commander of the French and Canadien construction force, has constructed two forts, the main one being Fort Le Boeuf.

The French action has drawn the attention of not just the British, but also the native tribes of the area.

Despite good Franco-native relations, British traders have become highly successful in persuading the natives to trade with them in preference to the Canadiens, and the planned large-scale advance is not well received by all.

In particular, Tanacharison, a Mingo chief also known as the "Half King", has become decidedly anti-French as a consequence.

In a meeting with Paul Marin de la Malgue, the latter reportedly loses his temper, throwing down some wampum that Tanacharison had offered as a good will gesture.

Marin's military successes had earned him the cross of Saint Louis, but he had died in late October before learning of this honor, and and command of the operations had been turned over to Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who, returning from the western forts in 1753, has been assigned to the Ohio Country.

Robert Dinwiddie, born at Glasgow before October 2, 1692, the son of Robert Dinwiddie of Germiston and Elizabeth Cumming, had matriculated at the University in 1707 before starting work as a merchant.

Joining the British colonial service in 1727, Dinwiddie had been appointed collector of the customs for Bermuda.

Following an appointment as surveyor general of customs in southern American ports, Dinwiddie  became Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, and will be featured as such in William Makepeace Thackeray’s nineteenth-century historical novel The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century.

Dinwiddie, as deputy for absentee governor John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun, is the de facto head of the colony wants to limit French expansion in Ohio Country, an area claimed by the Virginia Colony and in which the Ohio Company, of which he is a stockholder, has made preliminary surveys and some small settlements.

Dinwiddie learns in 1753 that the French have built Fort Presque Isle near Lake Erie and Fort Le Boeuf, which he sees as threatening Virginia's interests in the Ohio Valley.

In fact, he considers Winchester, Virginia, to be "exposed to the enemy"; Cumberland, Maryland, is only to be fortified the next year.

Dinwiddie sends an eight-man expedition under twenty-one-year-old George Washington, a major in the state militia, with a written demand that the French leave the disputed territory.

Washington makes the journey in midwinter of 1753–54.

Washington has taken Christopher Gist along as his guide; during the trip, Gist will earn his place in history by saving the young major's life on two separate occasions.

Washington arrives at Fort Le Boeuf on December 11, 1753.

Saint-Pierre receives Washington politely, but rejects his ultimatum, informing him that he is  here pursuant to orders, that Washington's letter should have been addressed to his commanding officer in Canada, and that he has no intention of leaving.

He gives Washington three days hospitality at the fort, then gives him a letter to deliver to Dinwiddie.

The letter conveys to Dinwiddie that he will send Dinwiddie's request on to Marquis de Duquesne in Quebec and will meantime maintain his post while he awaits the latter's orders.

Washington notes during his stay that the fort has one hundred men, a large number of officers, fifty birch canoes and seventy pine canoes, many unfinished.

He described the fort as on a south or west fork of French creek, near the water, and almost surrounded by it.

Four houses compose  the sides.

The bastions are made of piles driven into the ground, standing more than twelve feet (three point seven meters) high, and sharpened at the top.

Port holes for cannon and loop-holes for small-arms are cut into the bastions.

Each bastion mounts eight six-pound cannon and one four-pound cannon guards the gate.

Inside the bastions stand a guard-house, chapel, doctor's lodging and the commander's private stores.

Outside the fort are several log barracks, some covered with bark, others with boards.

In addition, there are stables, a smithy and other buildings.

The new settlers rebel against their living conditions in mid December 1753, within six months of their arrival at Lunenburg.

The rebellion becomes known as "The Hoffman Insurrection", as it is led by John Hoffman, one of the Captains who had established the settlers in the town.

Hoffman leads a mob that eventually locks up in one of the blockhouses a number of Commander Patrick Sutherland’s troops and the Justice of the Peace.

Sutherland asks for reinforcements from Halifax and Colonel Robert Monckton is sent with troops.

Monckton arrests Hoffman and brings him to Halifax, where he will be fined and imprisoned on Georges Island (Nova Scotia) for two years.

Because of the living conditions and encouragement from Le Loutre, a number of the French and German-speaking Foreign Protestants leave the village to join the Acadian communities.

Ivan Shuvalov and Mikhail Lomonosov have promoted the idea of a university in Moscow, and Russian Empress Elizabeth decrees its establishment on January 25 [O.S. January 12], 1755.

The first lectures are given on April 26th.

Russians still celebrate January 25th as Students' Day.