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French naval forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch fleet off Cape St. Vincent May 26 to 27. The French commander, Anne Hilarion de Cotentin, 50, comte de Tourville, avenges the defeat he suffered last year in the Battle of La Hogue and gains another victory June 30 at the Battle of Lagos off Portugal, but Royal Navy master of the fleet John Benbow bombards the French port of Saint-Malo in November.
The Battle of Neerwinden (Landen) July 29 gives the duc de Luxembourg another victory over the English in the War of the League of Augsburg. His 80,000-man army overpowers the 50,000-man English force, which loses 18,000 killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, and the French capture 104 guns while losing 9,000 killed and wounded, but the French fail to exploit their victory, and although William III remains in the field the French sack Heidelberg for a second time.
Swiss Protestant cantons agree to supply mercenary troops to the Dutch after Catholic cantons have supplied mercenaries for Louis XIV to throw against the Dutch. The Catholic cantons respond by supplying mercenaries to the Spanish, a move the Protestant cantons will counter by supplying mercenaries to the English as well as to the Dutch.
Former English Leveller agitator Sir John Wildman dies June 4 at age 70 (approximate). He was knighted last year.
Scotland's clan Macgregor mourns the death of its chief Gregor Macgregor and acknowledges his 22-year-old son-in-law Rob Roy (so called because of his red hair) as the new chief (see 1692). Rob Roy obtains control of lands from Loch Lomond to the Braes of Balquihidder (see 1712).
Venice's doge Francesco Morosini, now 75, assumes command once again of the fleet, and an Ottoman fleet cruising in the Venetian archipelago withdraws at the sight of his approach.
New York's Governor Fletcher mounts artillery at the lower tip of Manhattan Island to defend the city by commanding the approach to the Hudson River. The Battery will take its name from the emplacement with its 92 cannon. Colonist Caleb Heathcote, 28, is appointed to the governor's council. Heathcote, whose brother Gilbert is lord mayor of London, arrived at New York last year possessed of a considerable fortune (see 1701).
The Massachusetts Bay colony reduces maximum legal interest rates to 6 percent, down from 8 in 1641.
William III initiates England's national debt by borrowing £1 million on annuities at an interest rate of 10 percent. The crown's antiquated finances have barely been able to achieve solvency even in peacetime. Demands of prosecuting the War of the League of Augsburg have put new pressure on the royal purse, and Northamptonshire-born member of Parliament Charles Montagu, 32, has devised a system of guaranteed government loans. The House of Commons votes December 12 to issue £1 million pounds in annuities; the funded debt will become a powerful tool, enabling England to play banker for the anti-French coalition (see Bank of England, 1694).
The Transactions of the Royal Society publishes a study by astronomer-mathematician Edmund Halley that "shews the odds" that a "Party" of any given age "does not die in a Year." "[I]f it be enquired at what number Years, it is an even Lay that person of any Age shall die, this Table readily performs it . . . [and it would be] an even Wager that a Man of 30 may reasonably expect to live between 27 and 28 years." Halley's tables make it easy to calculate the value of annuities, "it being 100 to 1 that a man of 20 dies not in a year, and but 38 to 1 for a Man of 50 Years of Age," but the English government ignores the tables and sells annuities that pay back their purchase price over a period of 14 years, a policy that will be continued until 1789.
Synopsis of Quadrupeds (Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini Generis) by naturalist John Ray tries to classify different animal species into groups, largely according to their toes and teeth (see Linnaeus, 1737).
The Amish (or Amish Mennonite) sect has its beginnings in a schism from the Mennonite Church in Switzerland led by Swiss Mennonite bishop Jacob Amman, whose followers observe strict discipline marked by opposition to change in dress or way of life (see 1537).
The College of William and Mary is founded by a royal charter granted February 8 for a school in the Virginia colony at Middle Plantation, later to be called Williamsburg (see 1699). Designed to provide education for clergymen and civil servants in the colony, the college was proposed 4 years ago by the Scottish-born clergyman James Blair, now 37, who left for North America in 1685 after being deprived of his Edinburgh parish for refusing to take an oath supporting the Roman Catholic duke of York's claim to the English throne. He has voyaged to England to secure the charter and raise funds (notably from the estate of the late Robert Boyle). He will head the college until his death in April 1743, and it will award its first baccalaureates in 1770 (see Phi Beta Kappa, 1776).
Nonfiction: The Wonders of the Invisible World by Boston Congregationalist minister Cotton Mather analyzes with scientific detachment the work of devils among the Salem "witches" (see 1684; 1692; 1702).
Novelist Marie, comtesse de La Fayette, dies at her native Paris May 25 at age 59; poet-novelist Saikaku Ihara at his native Osaka September 9 at age 51.
Painter Nicolas Maas (Nicolaes Maes) dies at Amsterdam November 24 at age 59.
Theater: The Old Batchelour by English playwright William Congreve, 23, in March at London's Drury Lane Theatre: "Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure,/ Marry'd in haste, we may repent at leisure" (V, iii); The Double Dealer by Congreve in October at the Drury Lane Theatre.
French composer François Couperin, 25, is named organist du roi and begins a notable career of producing clavecin works and chamber music.
White's Club is founded at London, which will grow to have more than 200 gentlemen's clubs. Jonathan Swift will call White's a "common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies," but no London club in centuries to come will be more exclusive or have more royal members.
The Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin is completed in a Russian Baroque style on the estate of Boyarin Naryshkin at Fili, near Moscow.
A November earthquake in the Italian province of Catania kills 60,000.
Scotland reimposes the tax on whisky first enacted in 1644 (see 1713).
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