The British first reach the Pacific Northwest by sea in 1778, during James Cook's third voyage.

His exploration of the Pacific coast, Vancouver Island in particular, results in the beginnings of British participation in the Maritime Fur Trade.

While sailing north to search for the fabled Northwest Passage, Cook had discovered the Hawaiian Islands.

On the Northwest Coast, he spends a month in Nootka Sound, during which he and his crew trade with the Nuu-chah-nulth from the village of Yuquot.

They end up with over three hundred furs, mostly sea otter, but think them of no great value.

James Cook enters Prince William Sound in 1778 and names it Sandwich Sound, after his patron the Earl of Sandwich.

The editors of Cook's maps will later change the name to Prince William Sound, in honor of Prince William, who will later become King William IV.

The element molybdenum is not formally discovered and identified until 1778, when Scheele attacks pulverized molybdaina (now molybdenite, MoS₂), long thought to be a lead ore or graphite, with concentrated nitric acid; he then evaporates the residue to dryness.

Scheele proves that the ore certainly contains sulfur and an oxide of, possibly, a previously unknown metal.

Danish physicians, on the king’s orders, move to open two major vaccination houses in Denmark in 1778.

Neapolitan nurses inoculate infants in Italy in 1778 without the knowledge of their parents.

A Masonic Convention in Wilhelmsbad, a spa near Hanau, in 1782 (or Lyon in 1778?) organizes the Knights Beneficent of the Holy City, more commonly referred to as Chevaliers Bienfaisant de la Cité Sainte (CBCS).

The oldest order connected with freemasonry which has had a continuous existence, it is derived from the Rite of Strict Observance erected in 1754, the foundation of which was attributed to the late Baron von Hund; it propounds a theory that freemasonry was developed directly from the Crusading Templars, embodying a belief that the Order is ruled by ‘unknown superiors’.

Percivall Pott becomes the first scientist to demonstrate that a cancer may be caused by an environmental carcinogen when, in 1775, the English surgeon finds an association between exposure to soot and a high incidence of scrotal cancer (later found to be squamous cell carcinoma) in chimney sweeps.

This is the first occupational link to cancer, and the early investigations cry post, one of the founders of orthopedy, contribute to the science of epidemiology and lead to the Chimney Sweeper's Act of 1788.