* 1738 – Premiere in London, England, Great Britain of Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel.

* 1738 – Jacques François Dugommier, French general ( d. 1794 )

* 1683 – Jean-Joseph Mouret, French composer ( d. 1738 )

* 1738 – Leopold Hofmann, Austrian composer ( d. 1793 )

* 1738 – William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, English statesman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ( d. 1809 )

Herman Boerhaave (, 31 December 1668 – 23 September 1738 ) was a Dutch botanist, humanist and physician of European fame.

There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form, after the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720 – 1722, the Great Plague of 1738 ( which hit Eastern Europe ), and the Russian plague of 1770-1772, it seems to have gradually disappeared from Europe.

* 1738 – Richard Montgomery, Irish-born soldier ( d. 1775 )

* 1738 – Jan Antonín Koželuh, Bohemian composer ( d. 1814 )

* 1789 – Nicholas Van Dyke, American lawyer and President of Delaware ( b. 1738 )

* 1684 – Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor ( d. 1738 )

By John Singleton Copley ( 1738 – 1815 )

Karl Friedrich ruled Baden 1738 – 1811 Baden sported perhaps the best government of the smaller states.

Karl Friedrich ruled well for 73 years ( 1738 – 1811 ) and was an enthusiast for The Enlightenment ; he abolished serfdom in 1783.

* 1738 – Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye reaches the western shore of Lake Michigan.

* 1820 – King George III of the United Kingdom ( b. 1738 )

* 1738 – Isaac de Beausobre, French pastor ( b. 1659 )

* 1663 – Franz Xaver Murschhauser, German composer and theorist ( d. 1738 )

* 1738 – John Singleton Copley, American painter ( d. 1815 )

* 1738 – Jacques Delille, French poet and translator ( d. 1813 )

* 1738 – Mary Katharine Goddard, American printer and publisher ( d. 1816 )

* 1738 – Ethan Allen, American military leader ( d. 1789 )

* John Brown ( North Carolina ) ( 1738 – 1812 ), pioneer and statesman

It was continued by various writers and grew to twenty-one volumes ( 1633 – 1738 ), including illustrations by the beautiful copperplate engravings of Matthäus Merian ( 1593 – 1650 ).

Founded in 1842 as the replacement and continuation of the former colonial Royal University of San Felipe ( 1738 ) ( Spanish: Real Universidad de San Felipe ), the university is often called Casa de Bello ( House of Bello ) in honor of its first president, Andrés Bello.

On 28 July 1738, its name changed to Real Universidad de San Felipe, in honor of King Philip V of Spain.

For the next 7 years the Hotakis became the de facto rulers of Persia, but their rule continued in the region of Afghanistan until 1738 when Shah Hussain was defeated.

Voltaire's Eléments de la philosophie de Newton ( Elements of Newton's Philosophy ) was in 1738 the first publication to call Kepler's Laws " laws ".

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye opened the area west of lake Superior and in 1738 reached the Mandan villages on the upper Missouri in North Dakota.

Records of these meetings are given in Charles de Brosses ' Lettres sur l ' Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae, which her father had published in 1738.

* 1659 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant pastor ( d. 1738 )

de: 1738

* March 8 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant pastor ( d. 1738 )

Linnaeus posthumously published Artedi's manuscripts as Ichthyologia, sive Opera Omnia de Piscibus ( 1738 ).

He was not the first to suggest this, Pierre Bouguer and Charles-Marie de la Condamine having attempted the same experiment in 1738.

In 1738, Sebastião de Melo, the talented son of a Lisbon squire, began a diplomatic career as the Portuguese Ambassador in London and later in Vienna.

Daniel Bernoulli was also the author in 1738 of Specimen theoriae novae de mensura sortis ( Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk ), in which the St. Petersburg paradox was the base of the economic theory of risk aversion, risk premium and utility.

The most famous of Louis's mistresses were the sisters of Mailly-Nesle ( four of the five sisters were king's mistresses, notably Louise-Julie, Comtesse de Mailly from 1738 to 1742 and Marie Anne, Duchesse de Châteauroux in 1743-44 ); Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour ( called Madame de Pompadour, the official mistress from 1745 to 1764 ); and Marie Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry ( official mistress from 1768 until the king's death in 1774 ).

In 1738, Sur l ' arbre du quinquina, a paper written by Charles Marie de La Condamine, a member of the expedition that was sent to Peru to determine the length of a degree of the meridian arc in the neighbourhood of the equator, was published by the French Academy of Sciences.

Les Quais de la Fontaine, the embankments of the spring that provided water for the city, the first civic gardens of France, were laid out in 1738 – 55.

Karnak was visited and described in succession by Claude Sicard and his travel companion Pierre Laurent Pincia ( 1718 and 1720 – 21 ), Granger ( 1731 ), Frederick Louis Norden ( 1737 – 38 ), Richard Pococke ( 1738 ), James Bruce ( 1769 ), Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt ( 1777 ), William George Browne ( 1792 – 93 ), and finally by a number of scientists of the Napoleon expedition, including Vivant Denon, during 1798 – 1799.

Published in 1738 by Woodfall and running for 258 pages, the second edition of de Moivre's book introduced the concept of normal distributions as approximations to binomial distributions.