1698

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[edit] Events

  • January 4 - Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire.
  • June 19 - Volcano of Carguarazon erupts in the Andes and causes a rain of fish
  • August 25Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow - general Patrick Gordon has already crushed the streltsy rebellion - 341 rebels sentenced to be decapitated. Tradition holds that tsar Peter decapitated some of them himself
  • September 5 - In an effort to move his people away from Asiatic customs, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards; All men except priests and peasants, are required to pay a tax of one hundred rubles a year and the commoners had to pay one kopek each
  • Whigs sponsor Captain Kidd of New York as a privateer against French shipping
  • Darien Scheme - First Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama
  • Isaac Newton calculates the speed of sound
  • Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kochi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid Meteor storm, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".
  • Thomas Savery patents an early steam engine.
  • A congress begins in Sremski Karlovci to discuss a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League.
  • Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.
  • Bucharest becomes capital of Wallachia (now part of Romania).
  • Mombasa and Zanzibar are captured by Oman.
  • George Louis (who would in 1714 become King George I of Great Britain) becomes Elector of Hanover.

[edit] Births

[edit] Deaths