istoryworld
All Events
Government soldiers, mainly Campbells, massacre their MacDonald hosts in Glencoe
The Massachusetts town of Salem is gripped by witch-hunting hysteria
Twenty people convicted of witchcraft are hanged in Salem, and one is pressed to death
Gold is found in Brazil, launching the first great American gold rush
The Bank of England is founded and soon becomes the central banker for England's many private banks
Mary II dies of smallpox and building work at Hampton Court is suspended for 3 years due to William's grief and also for financial reasons due to the enormous expenditure
The joint monarch of England, Mary II, dies - leaving her husband, William III, to reign alone
Barn Elms is demolished by Thomas Cartwright, who replaces it with a country house in a contemporary style.
The new Privy Garden at Hampton Court is built (the Mount had previously been levelled) including a new elm bower and a new Great Parterre of complex design and an Orangery
Domenico Scarlatti gets his first teacher
Peter the Great makes an unexpected raid down the river Don and captures Azov from the Crimean Tatars
Fort St William is built by the East India Company in the Ganges delta, and subsequently develops into Calcutta
The Russian tsar, Peter I, studies western European technology, working as a ship's carpenter in Dutch and English shipyards
In his opera La Caduta de' Decemviri, Alessandro Scarlatti introduces a new form of prelude, later known as the Italian overture, which is an important stage in the development of the symphony
In the Treaty of Rijswijk, Spain cedes the western half of Hispaniola to France, which names its new colony Saint-Domingue
On the death of Elizabeth, Duchess of Lauderdale, Ham House is inherited by her Tollemache descendants who manage the estate for the next 250 years
A fleet from Oman evicts the Portuguese from Mombasa and Zanzibar
Thomas Savery creates the first practical steam engine, designed to pump water out of mines
A maker of harpsichords in Florence, Bartolomeo Cristofori, develops the piano ('soft') and forte ('loud') feature which leads to the piano
Scotland makes a disastrous attempt to establish a colony in Darien, on the isthmus of Panama
Peter the Great makes a symbolic gesture of reform in trimming his boyars' beards
Grinling Gibbons begins work on carving decorative features and architectural mouldings in the King's Appartments at Hampton Court
The tenth Sikh guru, Gobind Rai, commits his people to the five Ks, which become the outward signs of their group identity
The Chestnut Avenue through Bushy Park is laid out for William III to a design by Sir Christopher Wren
In the years after the battle of the Boyne, Catholic ownership of land in Ireland is reduced to just 14% of the total
