On the death of her brother-in-law, William III, Anne becomes queen of England and Scotland

German chemist Georg Stahl coins the name phlogiston for the substance believed to be released in the process of burning

Peter the Great falls for a Lithuanian serf, Catherine, who becomes his life-long companion

Peter the Great founds the port and city of St Petersburg, giving Russia access to the Baltic

The duke of Marlborough wins a major victory over the French at Blenheim, capturing twenty-four battalions and four regiments

The Act of Union merges England and Scotland as 'one kingdom by the name of Great Britain', a century after the union of the crowns

The secret of true porcelain is at last discovered in the west, at Dresden, by Johann Friedrich Böttger

The Swedish king Charles XII suffers his first major defeat in a brilliant career, when he faces the Russians at Poltava

The Tatler launches a new style of journalism in Britain's coffee houses, followed two years later by the Spectator

Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale discovers the use of coke in the smelting of pig iron

Thomas Newcomen creates a piston steam engine, with the steam condensed in the cylinder by a jet of cold water

Christopher Wren's new domed St Paul's cathedral is completed in London

Machines are thrown out of the window of a Spitalfields factory, in an early protest against industrialization

The Byerley Turk, Darley Arabian and Godolphin Arabian, ancestors of all thoroughbred racehorses, are imported into England

25-year-old George Berkeley attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

Handel's success in London with his opera Rinaldo prompts him to settle in Britain

Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry

The tsar formally marries Catherine, his mistress for nearly ten years (though they may have married secretly five years earlier)

The treaties signed in Utrecht bring to an end the War of the Spanish Succession

In the aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish Netherlands are transferred to Austria

Strasbourg and Alsace are ceded to Louis XIV and become part of France

Fahrenheit perfects the mercury thermometer and decides on a 180-degree interval between the freezing and boiling points of water

On the death of Queen Anne, the Act of Settlement delivers the British crown to the elector of Hanover, as George I

The British government offers a massive £20,000 prize for a chronometer capable of keeping accurate time at sea

In his Monadology Leibniz describes a universe consisting of forceful interactive parts that he calls 'monads'