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Willem III of Orange saves Amsterdam and the province of Holland from France's Louis XIV by opening the sluice gates and flooding the country, an operation directed by mathematician and Amsterdam burgomaster Johan van Waveren Hudde, now 45 (see Leyden, 1574). Willem is supported by Friedrich Wilhelm, elector of Brandenburg, who concludes a separate peace with Louis and retains most of his possessions in Clèves.
Polish forces under the command of Jan Sobieski score a stunning victory over an Ottoman army near Chocim (later Hotin) November 10; Poland's incompetent king Mikhail Wishniowiecki dies at his native Lwów that day at age 33 after a 4-year reign (see 1674).
Dutch forces retake New York and Delaware (see 1655; 1664; 1674).
Vietnam's Trinh family sends troops to the south in an effort to regain control of the region and unite it with the north, which they have ruled for a century from Hanoi (see 1558). They have tried for 50 years to conquer the south from the Nguyen family and they fail again. The two sides sign a truce, and for the next century they will rule the two halves of the country separately while the Le dynasty continues puppet suzerainty over a "united" Vietnam (see 1777).
The Chinese warlord Shang Kexi (Shang K'o-hsi) petitions the Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty emperor Kangxi (K'ang-hsi) to retire from his post as governor of Guangdong (Kwangtung) province and return to his native Manchurian birthplace. Now 18, Kangxi quickly agrees; preparations begin to bring the province under direct rule from the capital; and the Revolt of the Three Feudatories begins as Shang's elder son joins with two other southern generals who fear the loss or restriction of their power, which has rivaled that of the government at Beijing. Leading the revolt is General Wu Sangui (Wu San-kuei), now 61, who played a leading role in establishing the Qing dynasty 29 years ago and now proclaims himself emperor of a new Zhou (Chou) dynasty, but Kangxi actually welcomes the opportunity to end what he has considered the inevitable threat posed to his government by having virtually autonomous regimes in the south (see 1674).
Cape Town's founder Jan van Riebeeck dies at Batavia in the Dutch East Indies January 18 at age 57.
Fort Frontenac is founded as a fur-trading post on Lake Ontario by the new governor-general of New France Louis de Buade, comte de Palluau et de Frontenac (see 1672). He has commissioned Jesuit missionary-explorer Jacques Marquette, 36, and trader Louis Joliet, 28, to explore the Mississippi, and they leave May 17 in two birchbark canoes from Michilmackinac, ascend the Fox River to Green Bay, make a short portage to the Wisconsin River, descend the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, which they enter in mid-June. Paddling to the mouth of the Arkansas, they arrive in July at a Quapaw village in what later will be Arkansas but turn back lest they encounter Spanish forces to the south and return to the Illinois, ascend that river, make a portage to the Chicago River, and ascend to Lake Michigan, having paddled 1,500 miles upstream. Joliet has observed buffalo, giant sturgeon, and other wonders en route but has been disappointed to find from his own observations and from what he has learned from the Quapaw that the Mississippi empties not into the Pacific, as he had hoped, but into the Gulf of Mexico. He nevertheless sees the possibility of a lakes-to-gulf waterway for shipping (see real estate [Quebec hotel], 1893).
Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, receives support from New France's governor-general Louis de Buade, comte de Palluau et de Frontenac, to obtain royal permission to continue the explorations of Louis Joliet down the Mississippi River to its mouth. La Salle takes advantage of the royal consent to establish fur-trading posts at the foot of Lake Michigan and on the Illinois River, where his men will illegally gain a large share of the western fur trade with Frontenac's covert support, antagonizing Montreal fur traders while Frontenac feuds with French officials and clergymen (see Iroquois, 1675).
Incidence of the Black Death begins to decline in Europe and England as the brown rat replaces the medieval black rat which is more inclined to carry plague-fleas (but see 1675; 1679; 1680; 1681; 1682; 1720).
The Chelsea Physic Garden opens ("Physic" means pertaining to things natural as opposed to metaphysical; see science [Oxford], 1621). The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London has acquired four acres in the heart of Chelsea, a riverside village on the Thames, to grow plants for the treatment of medical disorders (medicine and botany are closely related, with every disorder thought to have a potential remedy in some plant species) and for scientific research. The garden of officinal plants soon includes "nectarines of all sorts, peaches, apricocks, cherries, and plums." It will be closed to the public until 1983.
The first metal dental fillings are installed by English surgeons.
England's duke of York marries the Catholic Maria d'Este of Modena. Parliament passes the Test Act compelling all English officeholders to take oaths of allegiance and of supremacy, to adjure transubstantiation, and to take the sacraments of the Church of England. The Test Act will remain in force until 1828 but will be nullified after 1689 by bills of indemnity to legalize the acts of magistrates who have not taken communion in the Church of England (see politics [Papists' Disabling Act], 1678).
Nonfiction: History of the Society of Jesus (Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu) by Jesuit Daniello Bartoli; The Ladies Calling by English clergyman Richard Allestree, who writes, "As a Daughter is neither to anticipate, nor to contradict the will of her Parent, so (to hang the balance even) I must say she is not obliged to force her own, by marrying where she cannot love; for a negative voice in the case is sure as much the Child's right, as the Parents'." For a young woman to make a vow of marriage to someone she positively hated would be sacrilege, Allestree says, and his opinions reflect the new view of matrimony that now prevails.
Poetry: "On His Blindness" (Sonnet XIX) by John Milton, who probably wrote the lines in 1655 which begin, "When I consider how my light is spent" and ends, "They also serve who only stand and wait."
Poet Richard Brathwaite dies at Catterick, Yorkshire, May 4 at age 84 (approximate).
Painting: Madonna and Child by Bartolomé Murillo. Salvator Rosa dies at Rome March 15 at age 57.
Theater: Mithridates (Mithridate) by Jean Racine 1/13 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris; The Hypochondriac (Le Malade imaginaire) by Molière 2/10 at the Palais-Royal, Paris. Molière's own illness is not imaginary (he has been chronically ill), and he dies at Paris a week later at age 51; Amboyana, or The Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants by John Dryden in May at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London.
Kabuki actor Sannjuro Ichikawa, 13, at Edo originates the Aragato style featuring the superman war-god. Kabuki actors will follow his acting style for centuries (see 1652; 1678).
Père Marquette writes of the rivers near the Mississippi's headwaters, "The way is so cut up by marshes and little lakes that it is easy to go astray, especially as the river is so covered with wild oats that one can hardly discover the channel." Père Marquette calls the grain a fausse avoine, or "false oat." French fur trader and explorer Pierre Esprit Radisson wrote in his journal of the "wild oats" about 15 years ago, saying, "We had there a kinde of rice, much like oats . . . and that is their food for the moft part of the winter" (see 1750).
Parliament introduces export subsidies to help English landlords, who have suffered from falling grain prices (see 1689).
A French patent is granted for making porcelain at Rouen. A factory will begin production at St. Cloud in 1677, but the "porcelain" is soft paste (pâte tendre), which can be made into decorative objects but lacks the strength to resist wear (see 1712).
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