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The 14-year-old Russian czar Peter II dies of smallpox at St. Petersburg January 30, the very day on which he was to have married Catherine, second daughter of Aleksis Dolgoruki. The Supreme Privy Council elects Peter's cousin Anna Ivanovna of Courland, 36, to the throne. Council member Dmitri Mikailovich Golitsyn, 64, persuades the Privy Council to make her sign conditions at Mitau (Jelgava) placing strict limits on her power. She enters Moscow February 26, her personal friends overthrow the Privy Council in a coup d'état March 8, and she summons her former lover Ernst Johann Biren, 39. Grandson of a groom to a former duke of Courland, Biren gained favor with Anna when she was duchess of Courland (her husband died in 1711, a year after she married him). She names Biren duke of Courland, grand-chamberlain, and a count of the empire, and he adopts the arms of the French ducal house of Biron. The new czarina gives Biron an estate at Wenden with 50,000 crowns a year, and he will dominate her 10-year reign, antagonizing most Russians with his rapacity and treachery as together the czarina and Biron exile thousands to Siberia.
Charles Townshend, Viscount Townshend of Raynham, resigns May 15 at age 56 to devote his energies to agriculture, leaving Sir Robert Walpole as sole minister in the British cabinet.
Denmark's Frederik IV dies at Odense October 12 at age 59 after a 31-year reign in which he has been forced to give up some German territories. He is succeeded by his narrow-minded 31-year-old son, who will reign until 1746 as Kristian VI, following the whims of his wife, Sophie Magdalene of Brandenburg-Kulmbach.
A Constanople mob rebels under the leadership of a bath waiter, one Patrona Halil (or Khalil). A Turkish defeat by Persia has riled the city, the Ottoman grand vizier is strangled September 17 in a revolt of the Janissaries, Halil is assassinated, and Ahmed III is obliged to abdicate at age 57 after a 27-year reign that will be remembered as the Tulip Time because of the popularity of that flower. The sultan's 35-year-old nephew ascends the throne October 18, restores order after the Patrona Halil uprising, imprisons his uncle (Ahmed will die in captivity in 1736), and will reign until 1754 as Mahmud I.
The Persian shah Ashraf is defeated with his Afghans near Shiraz after a 5-year reign (see 1727); some of his followers murder him en route to Kandahar, and he is succeeded by Tahmasp II, a figurehead for the Afshar chief Nadir Kuli (see 1731).
Pioneer abolitonist Samuel Sewall dies at Boston January 1 at age 77.
French chemist Charles François de Cisternay du Fay, 32, discovers that electrical action is not always attraction (see Gray, 1729).
Analytical Miscellany (Miscellanea Analytica) by mathematician Abraham de Moivre, now 63, is another work on probability theory (see 1718). He is the first to use the probability integral in which the integrand is the exponential of a negative quadratic. One of the first people to use complex numbers in trigonometry, Moivre gives a formula (it will bear his name) that will help bring trigonometry out of geometry and into the realm of analysis.
Pope Benedict XIII dies at Rome February 21 at age 81 after a 6-year reign in which unscrupulous grafters have taken advantage of his unworldliness as he occupied himself with liturgical concerns. He is succeeded July 15 by Florentine-born prelate Lorenzo Cardinal Corsini, 78, who will reign until 1740 as Clement XII.
Actor-playwright Colley Cibber, now 58, uses political intrigue to have himself named poet laureate of Britain.
Painting: The Symbolic Marriage of Venice to the Adriatic by Venetian painter Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), 33; The Dancer (La Camargo) by French painter Nicolas Lancret, 40; A Mallard Drake Hanging on a Wall and a Seville Orange by Jean-Siméon Chardin; The Wedding of Stephen Beckingham and Mary Cox, The Fountaine Family, and A Fishing Party by William Hogarth.
Theater: The Game of Love and Chance (Le jeu de l'amour et du hasard) by Pierre de Marivaux 1/23 at the Théâtre Italien, Paris; The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great by Henry Fielding, in April at London's Drury Lane Theatre (see 1731); Brutus by Voltaire 12/11 at Paris.
Actress Adrienne Lecouvreur dies at Paris March 20 at 37, and there are rumors that she has been poisoned by a rival, the duchesse de Bouillon. Passionately adored by many men, including Voltaire and the comte de Saxe, she is refused a Christian burial by the Church because she has been an actress, so she is buried secretly, at night, by Voltaire and some friends in the rue de Boulogne.
"Gaudeamus Igitur" is published for the first time. The German drinking song may date to the 13th century.
Pirates and privateers continue to take a heavy toll on shipping in the Caribbean and elsewhere (see 1722). English, French, and Spanish pirates in the West Indies have generally abandoned flags displaying bleeding hearts, cutlasses, hourglasses, skeletons, spears, and other symbols in favor of a white skull and crossbones on a black cloth, widely known as the "Jolly Roger."
The Serpentine in London's Hyde Park is created from the River Westbourne.
Scientific farming is introduced into England by Lord Townshend, who has resigned from public life. Taking a cue from the Dutch, "Turnip Townshend" will find that he can keep livestock through the winter on his estates by feeding them turnips, thus eliminating the need to slaughter most of them each fall, making fresh meat available in all seasons, reducing the need for costly spices used to disguise the taste of spoiled meat, and permitting the development of larger cattle (see 1732; Bakewell, 1755; 1760; Coke, 1772).
The Spanish wine-exporting firm Pedro Domecq has its beginnings in a company founded at Jerez de Frontera. The Domecq family will acquire it in 1816, and it will grow to have more than 70 bodegas in the sherry-producing area, establishing a worldwide reputation for its very pale dry fino, fino amontillado, dry amontillado, medium amontillado, oloroso, palo cortado, and sweet sherries, sold under the brand name La Ina (and brandies sold under such names as Don Pedro, Fundador, and Presidente). Spanish wine merchants have fortified their wines in order to make them relatively stable (too many bottles and decanters of unfortified wine gather dust and go flat, whereas the fortified sherries retain their life).
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