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French forces under the duc de Villars defeat British and Dutch forces commanded by Arnold Joost van Keppel, 41, earl of Albemarle, at Denain July 24. The French recapture Douai, Le Quesnoy, and Bouchain; they sack the Caribbean island of Montserrat; and the Congress of Utrecht opens to resolve the War of the Spanish Succession (see 1713).
Former British statesman Thomas Osborne, 1st duke of Leeds, dies at Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, July 26 at age 80, having long since lost any political influence.
Bernese forces triumph July 25 at Villmergen in a second Swiss war between Catholics and Protestants. The victory establishes the dominance of the Protestant cantons.
The Russian czarevich Alexius Petrovich infuriates his father Peter the Great by disabling his own right hand with a pistol shot. Peter has taken him on a tour of inspection in Finland, sent him to see to the building of new ships at Staraya Rusya, and ordered him to draw something of a technical nature to show his progress in mechanics and mathematics (see 1716).
The Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah I dies at Lahore February 27 at age 68 after a 4½-year reign in which he has driven the Sikhs into the Punjabi hills and subdued their leader Banda Singh Bahadur.
The Japanese Tokugawa shōgun Ienobu dies at age 50 after a 3-year reign. He is succeeded by his 3-year-old son, who will reign until 1716 as Ietsugu.
The Ashanti king Osei Tutu in West Africa is killed in an ambush after a reign in which he has used war and diplomacy to create a formidable power (see 1800).
American colonists attack Tuscarora tribespeople January 28 in what will be remembered as the Tuscarora War.
Pennsylvania forbids further importation of slaves.
North Carolina and South Carolina are created by a division of the Carolina colony founded in 1663.
New York's royal governor Robert Hunter tells the Palatine refugees that the ministry at London has lost interest in their welfare, that his own funds have become exhausted, and that they must hereafter fend for themselves (see 1711). The Germans will settle in central New York and Pennsylvania.
Colonist William Penn, now 67, suffers a massive stroke and is rendered virtually helpless. His second wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn, 41, bribes officials to look the other way while she guides Penn's hand in signing colonial documents; she was 4 months pregnant with their second child (they have had eight) when she left England with him for a 3-month voyage to the New World in 1699 (see 1718).
Voyage Round the World by Woodes Rogers is an account of the navigator-privateers adventures (see 1711). Rogers will serve as governor of the Bahamas from 1718 to 1729 and again from 1729 to 1732, suppressing piracy, resisting Spanish attacks, and establishing a house of assembly.
French naturalist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, 29, describes the ability of a crayfish to grow new claws (see steel, 1722; digestion, 1752).
Botanist-physician-microscopist Nehemiah Grew dies at London March 25 at age 70; astronomer Giovanni Domenico (Jean-Dominique) Cassini at Paris September 14 at age 87. His son Jacques, 35, succeeds him as head of the Paris Observatoire and by 1718 will have completed the measurement of the arc of the meridian (longitude line) between Dunkerque and Perpignan (see 1720).
Fiction: The first of five pamphlets by Scottish-born London mathematician-physician John Arbuthnot, 45, satirizes the duke of Marlborough and introduces the name "John Bull" as a symbol of England. The pamphlets will be published collectively in 1727 under the title, Law is a Bottom-less Pit; or, The History of John Bull.
Poetry: The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope is a mock-heroic poem describing a day at Hampton Court, where Queen Anne does "sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea."
Lady Mary Pierrepont resists her father's pressures to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, a rich but dull Irish nobleman 8 years her senior, and elopes in late August with the more learned (but insensitive) Edward Wortley Montagu (see 1710). Her father has spent £400 on her wedding outfit and gives her no dowry.
Scotland's clan Macgregor chief Rob Roy fails to repay money that he has borrowed from James Graham, 1st duke of Montrose, to carry on his business as cattle dealer (see 1693). Now 41, Rob Roy has taken the name Campbell and played the Argylls off against the Montroses, but the duke evicts him from his lands and declares him an outlaw; Rob Roy supports himself by depredations on the duke and his tenants, and he foils all efforts to capture him (see Sheriffmuir, 1715).
Vienna's Trautson Palace is completed by J. B. Fischer von Erlach after 3 years of construction.
Nantucket whaling captain Christopher Hussey harpoons a sperm whale from an open boat, probably the first such whale to be killed by man since Phoenician times. Physeter catodon has an oil content averaging 65 to 80 barrels—far more than other whales—and Hussey's kill initiates a new era in whaling (see 1690). Spermaceti from the sperm whale will be used to make millions of wax candles, its teeth are fine-grained ivory, its skin is high in glycerin, and it is the only whale that produces ambergris, valuable as a perfume fixative.
French missionary Père d'Entrecolles sends home the first accurate description of how the Chinese make porcelain using the white clay called kaolin, which has been found on a ridge near Beijing (Peking) called kao-ling (the word means "high ridge") (see technology, 621; 1709; 1754).
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