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France's Louis XV turns 13 February 15 and officially comes of age; his regent Philippe II, duc d'Orléans has ruled the country for the sickly young king since 1715 along with Guillaume, Cardinal Dubois, who dies at Versailles August 10 at age 66. Orléans loses his position, becomes first minister in August, but dies at Versailles December 2 at age 59; he is succeeded by the 31-year-old Louis-Henri, 7th prince de Condé, whose mistress, the marquise de Prie, influences his every decision. Through her influence he will impose repressive police measures and appoint a financial adviser whose efforts to increase taxes will arouse widespread discontent.
Britain banishes the English bishop Francis Atterbury, 61, for complicity in a Jacobite conspiracy.
The Treaty of Charlottenburg October 10 between Britain and Prussia provides that the grandson of George I shall marry a Prussian princess and that Prussia's Prince Friedrich shall marry the daughter of the Prince of Wales.
Tuscany's sixth grand duke Cosimo III de' Medici dies October 31 at age 81 after a 53-year reign in which the grand duchy has declined in power. His son Gian Gastone inherits the title, but Gian is childless, and the Quadruple Alliance has arranged through treaties in 1718 and 1720 for Tuscany's future (see 1737).
Baku capitulates to Russia's Peter the Great (see 1722), and Persia cedes the southern and western shores of the Caspian Sea to Russia in return for military assistance.
Ottoman forces take Tiflis and invest Hamadan, which falls after a short siege (see 1722). Another Ottoman force advances on Erivan, whose garrison surrenders after a 3-month siege in which four assaults plus disease have cost the Turks 20,000 men.
Kazbin throws out its Afghan invaders; whereupon Shah Mahmoud arrives, invites the city's noblemen to dinner, has them massacred and their corpses thrown into the great square. The shah massacres 3,000 Persian guards whom he has engaged, and then gives orders to shoot every Persian who has served Shah Hussein (see 1722). The slaughter goes on for 15 days (see 1724).
Revillon Frères is founded at Paris by furriers Jacques and Philippe Revillon, whose agents will set up trading posts in North America to compete with those of the Hudson's Bay Company (which will acquire Revillon Frères in 1936).
British industrial expansion proceeds at a growth rate of 1 percent per year (but see Kay, 1733).
Colonists near what later will be Fredericksburg in the Virginia colony employ an air furnace to smelt iron, using the bituminous coal abundant in the region. Alexander Spotswood has resigned as lieutenant governor to establish the furnace (see 1714; coal, 1742).
The maharajah Sawai Jai Singh II publishes astronomical tables under the title "Movements of Heavenly Bodies" ("Zeech Mohammed shahi"). Now 35, he has worked with other Arab scientists in his observations of the night skies.
Microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek dies at his native Delft August 26 at age 90, having been the first to observe bacteria and protozoa.
Yellow fever appears for the first time in Europe (see New York, 1702; Cádiz, 1741).
Britain permits Jews to take oaths without using the words, "On the true faith of a Christian" (see Jewish Naturalization Bill, 1753).
New-England Courant publisher Benjamin Franklin quarrels with his half brother James and quits the paper (see 1722). Unable to find other work at Boston or at New York, Franklin proceeds to Philadelphia, where he gets a job with printer Samuel Keimer. Franklin will obtain backing next year from a Philadelphia merchant and voyage to London with the intent of buying equipment for a shop of his own; not finding letters of credit promised by Governor William Keith of Pennsylvania, Franklin will work for a London printshop until 1726, when he will return to Philadelphia and work briefly as a store clerk (see 1729).
Painter Sir Godfrey Kneller dies at London November 7 at an age somewhere between 74 and 77.
Opera: Ottone 1/12 at the King's Theatre, London, with Francesca Cuzzoni singing the role of Teofane in her London debut and Italian soprano Margherita Durastanti, now 37, music by George Frideric Handel. Half-guinea tickets for the second night fetch 2 and even 3 guineas as word spreads of Cuzzoni's prowess; she will sing at the King's Theatre at £2,000 per season until the Royal Academy closes in June 1728.
First performances: The St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach, who is appointed cantor at Leipzig's St. Thomas Church after composer Georg Philipp Telemann, 42, has refused the post. Bach has served Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen since 1717, but the prince has married a woman with no interest in music, and the organist-composer will remain cantor at St. Thomas's until his death in 1750.
Architect Sir Christopher Wren dies at London February 25 at age 90 and is buried in his St. Paul's Cathedral while work proceeds on his Greenwich Hospital. The Latin inscription on his tomb translates as, "Reader, if you seek his memorial, look about you"; J. B. Fischer von Erlach dies at Vienna April 5 at age 66, leaving his half brother Joseph Emanuel, 30, to complete the city's Kariskirche (Church of San Carlo Borromeo), Hofburg, and Imperial Library.
Boston's Christ Church is completed 300 yards from the Old North Church completed in 1676.
An American coffee industry that will eventually produce 90 percent of the world's coffee has its beginnings in a seedling planted on the Caribbean island of Martinique by French naval officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, who has been helped by confederates to break into the French Jardin Royale at night and make off with the Arabica seedling (see 1713; Brazil, 1727).
Sir Robert Walpole reduces duties on tea, which is less popular in Britain than coffee and cocoa.
London brewer Ralph Harwood of the Bell Brewhouse at Shoreditch brews his first batch of porter, naming the top-fermenting beer for the market porters and other manual workers who enjoy its body and low price. Also called "intire" or "entire butt" beer because it matures best in large containers where the fermentation utilizes the raw materials in their entirety, porter is a strong black beer whose cloudiness reflects its impurities (it is made from relatively cheap, coarse barley and from robust, less refined hops well-suited to London's soft water). It will be brewed all over the British Isles by the middle of the century (see Whitbread, 1742).
The condom can emancipate young English wives from fear of "big belly, and the squalling brat," writes White Kennett, son of the bishop of Peterborough, in his satirical poem "Armour" (see 1655; 1671; Julius Schmid, 1883).
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