1681
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Hungarian noblemen regain their constitution under terms of the Treaty of Sopron with the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold.
France's Louis XIV annexes Strasbourg and lays claim to 10 Alsatian cities, posing a threat to the Holy Roman Empire and to the peace of Europe (see League of The Hague, 1683).
Russia confiscates Tatar territories on the Volga, forcing the people to convert to Christianity.
China's Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty emperor Kangxi (K'ang-hsi) ends the 8-year-old Revolt of the Three Feudatories in the south and establishes Qing rule over all of mainland China (see Taiwan, 1683).
Pennsylvania has its beginnings in a land grant of 48,000 square miles in the New World given by Charles II to religious nonconformist William Penn, 37, whose late father has bequeathed him an immense claim of £15,000 against the king (see 1643; Jamaica, 1655). Penn has been the first person of means to join the Society of Friends founded by George Fox in 1647. He has served time in prison for writing and distributing pamphlets espousing the Quaker cause, and the king's generosity is motivated in part by a desire to rid England of nonconformists, but Charles honors the late admiral by prefixing "Penn" to the name "Sylvania" that William Penn gives to the new territory (see 1682).
England begins a period of prosperity that will be shared by the New England Confederation formed in 1643. Merchants become rich as the demand for ships and shipping increases.
The first bank checks are issued in England (see Bank of England, 1694; London Stock Exchange, 1698).
France's 150-mile (240-kilometer)-long Canal du Midi (Canal du Languedoc) opens in April to link the Giron River at Toulouse and the Mediterranean port of Cette (later Sète) with the Aude River that flows into the Atlantic Ocean's Bay of Biscayne (see 1680). The late Pierre-Paul, Baron Riquet de Bonrepos, planned the canal. It climbs to a height of more than 600 feet, and it employs swinging miter lock gates invented by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century. Baron Riquet spent most of his own personal fortune to pursue the project, which has 26 locks and includes a 515-foot (157-meter) tunnel through a rocky rise near Béziers. The canal will be completed in 1692, providing a waterway for barges of up to 98 feet in length.
The March 10 issue of the Journal des Scavans published at Paris contains an essay by Brittany-born Jesuit scholar Jean Hardouin, 34, who discusses in his first scientific paper the meaning of a passage in Pliny's Natural History.
The Black Death takes 83,000 lives at Prague.
Poetry: Absolom and Achitophel by John Dryden, who satirizes George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, characterizing him as a "chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon." Buckingham, represented as "Absolom," was dismissed from his offices in 1674 for personal immorality and for promoting popery and arbitrary government. Dryden also satirizes the devious (but basically liberal) Anthony Ashley Cooper, 60, 1st earl of Shaftesbury ("Achitophel"), the former chancellor of the exchequer and (later) lord chancellor who fled to Holland after the fictitious "Popish Plot" of 1678.
Painter Geraert Terborch dies at Deventer December 8 at age 64.
Theater: The History of King Lear by Dublin-born poet-playwright Nahum Tate, 29, pleases London audiences with a happy ending as Edgar and Cordelia marry in a resolution that outrages purists, who condemn the "Tatification" that will keep the Shakespearean tragedy from being performed in its original version for 150 years.
Playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca dies at Madrid May 25 at age 81, ending the Century of Gold (Siglo de Oro) that has marked the apogee of Spanish civilization.
Composer Arcangelo Corelli at Rome publishes his 12 Trio Sonatas for Two Violins and Cello, with Organ Basso, Opus 1, which he dedicates to the former Swedish queen Kristina. Corelli will be promoted next year to first violinist in the orchestra at Rome's chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi and will retain the position until 1685.
Venice's Church of the Salute is completed after 50 years of interrupted activity. Ordered by a decree of the Senate in 1630 as a thanksgiving for delivering the city from the plague, the baroque church has been designed by Baldassare Longhena, now 83, who will die within a year.
Christopher Wren designs Tom's Tower for Oxford's Christ Church.
The dodo becomes extinct as the last of the species dies on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales) established a port after being driven out of Madagascar in 1674. A flightless bird related to the pigeon but as large as a turkey, the dodo has been killed off by Europeans for food.
France's Louis XIV restricts fishing for mussels but places no restraint on dragging for oysters, whose natural banks are called "inexhaustible" (see 1786).
The pressure cooker invented by French physicist Denis Papin employs a safety valve. Papin has taken refuge in England to escape religious persecution; he issues a small pamphlet, "The New Digester, or Engine for Softening Bones" in which he describes various experiments, including one in which he took an "old male and tame rabbet, which is ordinarily but a pitiful sort of meat," and cooking it in his machine so that it became as soft and savory as a young rabbit and turned its juice and bones into a good jelly. But Papin's cumbersome "digester" must be placed in a specially-built furnace and is somewhat dangerous to use (see 1939).
French chefs prepare foods en gelée, using tasteless gelatin derived from animal bones by Denis Papin (see 1816; Peter Cooper, 1845).
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