1671 1672 1673 1674 1675 1676 1677 1678 1679 1680
Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice exploration, colonization commerce science medicine religion theater, film music architecture, real estate environment |
Ferdinand Maria, elector of Brandenburg, dies at Schleissheim, Bavaria, May 26 at age 42 after a 28-year reign in which he has worked to repair the damage left by the Thirty Years' War, encouraging industry, building or restoring churches and monasteries, bringing fields back into cultivation, and the like.
The Peace of St. Germain-en-Laye signed June 29 obliges the elector of Brandenburg to surrender to Sweden practically all of his conquests in Pomerania. France's Louis XIV gives the elector almost nothing in return.
Four new treaties signed at Nijmegen, Fontainebleau, and Lund settle disputes among France, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Holy Roman Empire (see 1678). The Scanian War that began in 1676 is ended.
The tract "Narrative" by English informer Thomas Dangerfield, 29, makes charges against James, duke of York, and other high-ranking Roman Catholics. Having robbed his own father, an Essex farmer, and served time in prison for counterfeiting and other crimes, Dangerfield accepted a job defaming those who made accusations against Catholics, but he soon betrayed his Catholic employer, Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, and claimed publicly that some Catholic noblemen had paid him, through Mrs. Cellier, to assassinate Charles II and Whig leader Anthony A. Cooper, 1st earl of Shaftesbury. Authorities found incriminating papers planted by Dangerfield in a meal tub at Mrs. Cellier's house, but Dangerfield's testimony at her trial was so patently false that she was acquitted of treason (see 1685).
The French princess Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, duchesse de Longueville, dies at Paris April 15 at age 59, having spent her final years in the convent of the Carmelites where she received her education.
Spanish chief minister Juan José de Austria dies at his native Madrid September 17 at age 50, having arranged the marriage of Carlos II to Marie-Louise d'Orléans, a niece of Louis XIV.
The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb invades northwestern India, plunders Marwar, and orders the conversion of all its inhabitants to Islam. But the princely states of Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur form an alliance to resist Muslim control. The Jaipur and Jodhpur princes forfeited the right to marry women of Udaipur's ruling family when they allied themselves with the Mughals, but they will now regain that privilege on condition that children of Udaipur princesses have first rights to succession, an arrangement that will lead to quarrels that eventually lead to the supremacy of the Maratha Hindu warrior class.
The Habeas Corpus Act passed by Parliament in May obliges English judges to issue upon request a writ of habeas corpus directing a jailer to produce the body of any prisoner and to show cause for his imprisonment. A prisoner shall be indicted in the first term of his commitment, says Parliament, he shall be tried no later than the second term, and once set free by order of the court he shall not be imprisoned again for the same offense.
French explorer Daniel Greysolon, 40, sieur Duluth (or Du Lhut), reaches the great inland sea that will be called Lake Superior and claims the region for Louis XIV (see Radisson, Groseilliers, 1658). Jesuit missionary Claude-Jean Allouez circumnavigated the huge body of water and charted it 12 years ago; Duluth opens it to active trading in furs (see La Salle, 1682).
Charleston (Charlestown) in the Carolina colony receives a group of French Huguenots who have received permission from the English to start a silk-manufacturing industry. The industry will be suppressed, but families that include the Hugers, Legares, Legendres, Manigaults, Mazycks, and Mottes will become Charleston's leading moneylenders, planters' agents, and shippers.
Scots-born colonist Robert Livingston, 25, marries Alida Schuyler Van Rensselaer, widow of the late Nicholas Van Rensselaer, and extends his landholdings in the Albany, New York, area where he has made his home for the past 5 years (see 1630; 1686).
Mathematician Gottfried W. Leibniz perfects the binary system of numeration (using 2 as a base) in March, and at year's end proposes the basis for what later will be called general topology, a branch of mathematics dealing with selected properties of collections of related physical or abstract elements. Leibniz has been working since last year as councillor to Johann Friedrich, duke of Hanover.
French physicist Edmé Mariotte, 59, announces the constant relation between the pressure and volume of an enclosed quantity of air. He has made his discovery independently of work by Robert Boyle (see 1662).
French Huguenot physicist Denis Papin, 32, shows that the boiling point of water depends on atmospheric pressure. He has worked since 1675 with Robert Boyle at London after having worked with Christiaan Huygens at Paris.
Chemist-physiologist John Mayow dies at his native London in October at age 39, having identified oxygen (spiritus nitroaereus) as a distinct atmospheric entity. A physician by profession, he has recognized the role of oxygen in the combustion of metals (see Lavoisier, 1784; Stahl's "phlogiston," 1700).
The Black Death takes at least 76,000 lives at Vienna.
Sectarian preacher Praise-God Barebone (or Barbon) dies at London at age 83 (approximate), having exhibited a remarkable toleration in his writings despite being labeled an Anabaptist and Brownist by his opponents.
Philosopher Thomas Hobbes dies at Hardwick, Derbyshire, December 4 at age 91, having written in 1651 that "the life of man [is] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."
Theater: Troilus and Croilus, or Truth Found Too Late by John Dryden, in April at London's Dorset Garden Theatre.
Opera: Gli Quivoco nell'amore in February at Rome's Teatro Capranica, with music by Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, 20, who gains the protection of Sweden's former Queen Kristina and begins a career that will produce important musical works for 44 years. Scarlatti's operas, church music, and chamber music will virtually create the language of classical music.
Sweden's Skokloster Castle is completed south of Uppsala.
Tuscany's Arno River is brought under control by Italian engineer Vincenzo Viviani, who uses a modification of a plan devised by Leonardo da Vinci in 1495. The Arno will nevertheless continue to flood periodically, inundating Florence (see 1966).
Father Hennepin finds peach trees growing along the riverbank as he accompanies the sieur de La Salle across the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River.
1671 1672 1673 1674 1675 1676 1677 1678 1679 1680
