1676
1671 1672 1673 1674 1675 1676 1677 1678 1679 1680
Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice exploration, colonization science religion literature theater, film music food and drink restaurants |
Russia's czar Aleksis Mikhailovich dies at Moscow February 8 at age 47 after a reign of 31 years and is succeeded by his eldest surviving son, who assumes the throne at age 15 as Fedor III. Disfigured and half paralyzed by disease since birth, Fedor is well educated and will rule effectively until his death in 1682.
A Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter engages French ships off Sicily. De Ruyter is mortally wounded, and he dies at Syracuse April 29 at age 69. French captain Abraham Duquesne, now 65, decisively defeats the combined Dutch and Spanish fleets off Agosta and Palermo in April and June.
Danish naval forces under the command of Niels Juel defeat Swedish forces in the battles of Jamund and Oland in the Scanian War. The Battle of Oland June 1 pits Sweden against a combined force of Danish and Dutch fleets under Juel's command. The 126-gun, 2,140-ton warship Kronan built for the Swedes by English shipwright Francis Sheldon capsizes, explodes, and sinks in a depth of 26 meters with a loss of some 800 men, including the 65-year-old admiral Lorentz Creutz and his son; most of her guns will be recovered by use of a primitive diving bell (see 1677). Swedish admiral Karl Gustav, Greve Wrangel dies at Spieker on Rügen Island June 25 at age 62.
The Treaty of Zuravno (Zórawno) October 16 ends the 4-year war between Poland's Jan III Sobieski and the Ottoman Empire, which acquires most of Podolia and the Polish Ukraine, thus coming into contact with Russia. Poland will not regain her lost territories until 1699. The Ottoman grand vizier Fazl Ahmed Köprülü dies near Corlu in Thrace November 3 at age 41, leaving a fortune of more than 300,000 gold pieces. Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa succeeds him as grand vizier and will serve until his execution in 1683.
The Chinese general Shang Kexi (Shang K'o-hsi) dies as the Revolt of the Three Feudatories continues (see 1673). He has tried suicide but failing health has finally taken his life. Although his elder son has joined the rebel forces, most of his 23 sons have become loyal Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty officials, 11 will be generals, and three state councillors.
Warriors from the Nipmuck, Wampanoag, and Narragansett tribes surround the English settlement of Lancaster in the Massachusetts Bay colony at first light February 20, seeking revenge for the massacre of last November. They break into some houses, set others afire, and by midafternoon have killed at least a dozen settlers and taken 24 captive. Mary White Rowlandson is captured along with her 14-year-old son and her two daughters, Mary, 10, and Sarah, 6 (the latter is wounded and dies a week later). The Native Americans have a reputation for respecting the chastity of their prisoners; Rowlandson is placed in the care of a Narragansett warrior and his wife, who take them along on a journey of nearly 12 weeks through the Connecticut River Valley. She is ransomed May 3 for clothing and food (see 1682). King Philip's War ends in August with the killing in battle of Chief Metacum August 12 in a swamp near what later will Bristol, Rhode Island, by colonial militiamen, who break up Metacum's confederacy and take his head to Plymouth, where it will be exhibited for the next 20 years. Fifty-two of New England's 90 towns have been attacked, 600 men killed, and at least 12 towns completely destroyed.
"King Philip's" widow and children are sold as slaves to the West Indies despite the vote of Boston preacher Increase Mather, 37, that they be executed, and militiamen hunt down other survivors of the war to sell into slavery; 500 are shipped out of Plymouth alone.
Bacon's Rebellion stirs the Virginia colony, but frontiersmen fail in their struggle against the tidewater aristocracy. The colony's slave trade increases.
Dutch traders buy black slaves at 30 florins each in Angola and sell 15,000 per year in the Americas at 300 to 500 florins each.
New Jersey's western part is conveyed to English Quakers, who have entered into an agreement with Philip Carteret (see 1665; politics, 1702).
England's Greenwich Observatory is established to study the position of the moon among the fixed stars and to establish a standard time that will help navigators fix their longitude, but determining accurate position remains a problem (see Bennewitz, 1524; transportation [Frisius], 1530). Britain's first astronomer royal, John Flamsteed, 30, has led the effort to establish the observatory, which will mark the prime meridian (see transportation [Longitude Act], 1714).
Danish astronomer Ole (Christensen) Römer, 32, at the Observatoire Royale in Paris announces that the speed of light is 225,000 kilometers (140,000 miles) per second (later measurements will establish the rate at 299,792 kilometers, or 186,282 miles, per second). The observatory was completed 5 years ago and is headed by astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, now 51, who has changed his first name to Jean-Dominique. Römer has been at Paris since 1672, has noticed that the time elapsed between eclipses of Jupiter's moons by Jupiter have become shorter as Earth and Jupiter moved farther apart, and has deduced that the phenomenon is caused by the time required for light to cross the increased distance between the two planets (see Bradley, 1728).
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," writes Isaac Newton February 18. Robert Hooke has challenged some of his ideas on optics, and Newton replies by pointing out that every contributor to knowledge or learning builds on the contributions of predecessors. Newton has doubtless read Robert Burton's 1621 chrestomathy The Anatomy of Melancholy with its aphorism, "Pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves," an apothegm derived from the writings of the 12th century scholastic Bernard of Chartres, who said, "In comparison with the ancients we stand like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants" (a stained glass window at the Cathedral of Chartres depicts Matthew sitting astride the shoulders of Isaiah), but Newton gives the phrase new meaning, and it will be called Newton's Other Law (see 1666).
Gottfried W. Leibniz substitutes kinetic energy for the conservation of movement and proposes dynamics as a new formulation to replace the Cartesian formulation of the laws of motion, known as mechanics. Following the principle that light follows the path of least resistance, Leibniz believes that he may be able to demonstrate the ordering of nature toward a final goal.
Pope Clement X dies at his native Rome July 22 at age 86 after a 5-year reign in which he has encouraged missionary work. He is succeeded September 21 by the Como-born Benedetto Cardinal Odeschalchi, 65, who will reign until 1689 as Innocent XI.
Christianized Mohawk religious leader Kateri Tekakwitha, 21, takes her first communion. Her conversion 2 years ago has aroused the hostility of her fellow Mohawks, who are suspicious of her piety and refusal to marry, so she has fled to the mission of St. Francis Xavier at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal. After her death in 1680, devotion to the "Lily of the Mohawks" will spread among the French and Indians of the area, and miracles will be credited to her intervention.
Nonfiction: A Philosophical Discourse of Earth . . . by English diarist John Evelyn, 46, is a translation from the French work by J. de la Quintinie.
Diggers founder and author Gerrard Winstanley dies at London September 10 at age 67, having become a Quaker merchant; jurist-scholar Sir Matthew Hale resigns as chief justice of the King's Bench for reasons of health and dies at Alderley December 25 at age 67, having compiled a monumental History of the Pleas of the Crown that will be published in 1736.
Novelist Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen dies at Renchen outside Strasbourg August 17 at age 54.
Theater: The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter by George Etherege 3/11 at London's new Dorset Garden Theatre: "Next to coming to a good understanding with a new mistress, I love a quarrel with an old one" (I, i). Etherege will be knighted in 1680; The Virtuoso by Thomas Shadwell 5/25 at the Dorset Garden Theatre, with the Duke's Company; The Plain Dealer by William Wycherley 12/11 at London's Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.
Operatic composer Francesco Cavalli dies at Venice January 14 at age 73, having written 42 operas.
The Compagnie de Limonadiers established at Paris receives a monopoly for the sale of its lemonade, a honey-sweetened mixture of lemon juice and water dispensed by vendors carrying tanks on their backs.
England's Charles II revokes last year's order with regard to coffeehouses January 8. The establishments have become gathering places for men who may neglect their families to discuss business and politics over coffee but who will also in some cases launch great enterprises over coffee.
1671 1672 1673 1674 1675 1676 1677 1678 1679 1680
