Born in 1758:

• English writer Mary Darby Robinson.
• French politician Maximillien Robespierre, force behind the French Revolution's Reign of Terror as leader of the Committee of Public Safety.
• British naval hero Horatio Nelson.
• American lexicographer Noah Webster.
• German physician Franz Joseph Gall.
• German physician and astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers.
• Henry Harford, last Lord Proprietor of Maryland, the illegitimate son of Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore.
• James Monroe, fifth President of the United States.

Died in 1758:

• Johnathan Edwards, leader of the Great Awakening.
• Scottish poet Allan Ramsay.
• German composer Johann Friederich Fasch.
• Sophie Wilhelmine, composer and sister of King Frederick the Great of Prussia.
• Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman.
• Pope Benedict XIV. Carlo Rezzonico is elected to succeed him; taking the name Clement XIII.
• Italian painter Rosalba Giovanna Carriera.

• French and Indian War/Seven Years' War:
• The British capture Fort Duquesne and rename it Fort Pitt, later Pittsburgh.
• Colonel William Rogers loses a large part of his company of Rangers in The Battle on Snowshoes near Lake George in upstate New York.
• the British capture Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
• Prussia and Russia beat each other to a bloody pulp at the battle of Zorndorf
• Benjamin Franklin publishes The Way to Wealth, a summary of his advice from Poor Richard's Almanack.
• Carolus Linnaeus publishes the founding work of biological taxonomy, Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cim characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis.
• Astronomers sight the comet which Edmund Halley had predicted in 1704 would return this year. This is a triumph for Newtonian mechanics, and the comet is named in Halley's honor. (The comet reached perhelion the following March).

1757 - 1758 - 1759