Events of 1732

January–June

• February 23 – Handel's Orlando is first performed in London.

• June 9 – James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of Georgia.

July–December

• September 16 – The magnitude 5.8 Montreal earthquake occurs in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

• December 7 – The original Covent Garden Theatre Royal (now the Royal Opera House) is opened.

Undated

• Genoa regains Corsica.

• A total of 139 members of the Paris Parliament are exiled by order of the King, but eventually triumph over the Crown, and secure their recall in December.

• Cobalt is discovered and isolated by Georg Brandt.

• The United Secession Church is formed in Scotland.

Births

• January 24 – Pierre de Beaumarchais, French writer (d. 1799)

• February 11/February 22 – George Washington, 1st President of the United States, commander in the Revolutionary War, soldier in the French and Indian War (d. 1799)

• March 31 – Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer (d. 1809)

• April 5 – Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter (d. 1806)

• April 8 – David Rittenhouse, American astronomer, inventor, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman, and public official. (d. 1796)

• April 13 – Frederick North, Lord North, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1792)

• June 21 – Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German composer (d. 1795)

• September 30 – Jacques Necker, French politician (d. 1804)

• October 6 – Nevil Maskelyne, English Astronomer Royal (d. 1811)

• November 13 – John Dickinson, Governor of Delaware and Pennsylvania (d. 1808)

• December 6 – Warren Hastings, British administrator (d. 1818)

• December 23 – Richard Arkwright, English inventor (d. 1792)

• date unknown – Abbas III, Shah of Persia (d. 1740)

Deaths

• January 12 – John Horsley, British archaeologist (b. c.1685)

• February 13 – Charles-René d'Hozier, French historian (b. 1640)

• February 17 – Louis Marchand, French organist and harpsichordist (b. 1669)

• February 22 – Francis Atterbury, English bishop and man of letters (b. 1663)

• March 20 – Johann Ernst Hanxleden, German philologist (b. 1681)

• May 20 – Thomas Boston, Scottish church leader (b. 1676)

• July 15 – Woodes Rogers, English privateer and first Royal Governor of the Bahamas (b. c. 1679)

• September 24 – Emperor Reigen of Japan (b. 1654)

• October 31 – Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia (b. 1666)

• December 4 – John Gay, English poet and dramatist (b. 1685)

• date unknown

• *Jiang Tingxi, Chinese painter, calligrapher, encyclopedist, foreign diplomat to Japan (b. 1669)