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The British land at Charleston, South Carolina.

American Revolution. The Battle of Saratoga is the sign France has been waiting for: the Americans can win. France will be followed by Spain and the Netherlands. The Great Powers enter the scene, and the war spreads to the entire world theater.

Upstate New York. Battle of Saratoga: General John Burgoyne’s British army surrenders to the American rebels led by General Horatio Gates. Ninety Americans and 440 British soldiers are killed. 6,222 British soldiers are captured.

United States. Ninety percent of the gunpowder used by the Americans came from overseas. The British failure to stop this supply was one of the causes of their defeat.

Paris. Lavoisier gave the name Oxygen (literally “Acid Generator”) to the comburent absorbed from the air during multiple combustions. In fact, he had demonstrated years earlier that the transformation of copper and iron into green copper and rust, respectively, is accompanied by a gain in

Isaac Newton’s private papers, inherited by his niece Catherine Barton and later passed to the Earl of Portsmouth, who married his daughter, were examined by Bishop Samuel Horsley, who “viewed the contents with horror and slammed the lid.” Newton, in fact, devoted a good part

American War of Independence

John Harrison, who solved the problem of longitude, dies

Battle of Quebec City, Canada. 9:00 a.m. American Colonel Greene offers surrender to the British, who accept it. Morgan, however, refuses to hand over his weapons to the British, handing them over instead to a priest he sees in the crowd.

Battle of Quebec City, Canada. Very early morning. Montgomery forces his way through a palisade and runs with several men into the city perimeter. A cannonade instantly kills him and a dozen other soldiers. The first of the two American attacking wings on the city

Following a second (more easterly) route toward Canada than Arnold and Allen, General Richard Montgomery and his rebels reach Lake Champlain. He has 1,700 militiamen from Connecticut and New York at his disposal. They are undisciplined and untrained.

Battle of Bunker Hill: 4:00 PM, Third Assault: This time, after several volleys, the British opened fire on the American lines with their cannons. The men were literally torn to pieces. The American lines also ran out of ammunition. A retreat was ordered. Congressman General

Battle of Bunker Hill: Second Assault: The British advance toward Breeds Hill, opposite Bunker Hill. Then they halt and open fire. For an incredible quarter of an hour, they exchange volleys with the Americans, who, however, are under cover. Only eight or nine Redcoats remain.

Samuel Adams and John Hancock were among the first to be alerted by the Minuteman to the arrival of the British Redcoats in Boston. The two escaped just in time.

Antoine Lavoiser accurately describes the process of combustion

Italy. The reform movement in Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Kingdom of Naples is winding down. The reforms have made society more modern but have also accentuated internal tensions.

Captain Cook returned from his second voyage around the world without losing a single man to scurvy. The solution was simply to always have fresh fruit for the crew, especially lemons. However, this lesson would take decades to become the norm, and thousands of sailors

Russia. Between the Urals and the lower Volga, the Cossack and peasant revolt led by Yemelyan Pugachev spreads. It will be crushed only after several months by regular troops. It will leave hundreds of nobles dead and an indelible mark on the ruling class.

The future Louis XVI, at the age of 15, married Marie Antoinette, who was one year younger. The couple remained childless for seven years, apparently because they were unaware of the necessary procedures for procreation. Until Marie Antoinette’s brother, Emperor Joseph II, visited Paris in

Hungary. The “Mechanical Turk” is conceived and manufactured. The Mechanical Turk, also known as the Automatic Chess Turk (German: Schachtürke, “Chess Turk”; Hungarian: A Török), is a fake gaming machine that, until its destruction by fire in 1854, was exhibited by various owners as an

Corsica. Napoleon Bonaparte is born, his native languages being Italian and Corsican, but he never learned to write French properly. Corsica had been ceded to France by Genoa only the year before his birth.

Jose’ Ortega discovers San Francisco Bay

Russian Mikhail Lomonosov realizes that Venus has an atmosphere.

Thomas Wright, a clockmaker from Durham, in the north of England, publishes the book “An Original Theory of the Universe,” in which he hypothesizes that stars are uniformly distributed in a disk-shaped volume we call the Milky Way, and that there are an uncountable number

At the Battle of Culloden, the English had in their ranks the Scots of Clan Munro, the Highland militia of Clan Campbell, and the Clans McKay, Ross, Gunn, and Grant. The Jacobites were three-quarters Highlanders, the remainder Lowland Scots, and a small contingent of French

Duchy of Modena and Reggio. Duke Francesco III had Engineer Vandelli build the main road to the Tyrrhenian Sea (he noted “La Vandelli”), and then Engineer Giardini (also with a dedicated road) made the slopes gentler. Francesco II also built the Sant’Agostino Hospital, with the

Nis, between Belgrade and Istanbul, is recaptured by the Ottoman army. The Habsburg general who governs it, Doxat, surrenders in exchange for safe conduct for himself and his men. Upon returning to Vienna, he is beheaded for cowardice. He had designed, among other things, the

James Bradley discovered the Earth’s 18-year nutation motion. It would be necessary to wait longer to have the physical explanation demonstrated and precisely calculated. Jean-Baptiste d’Alambert and Leonhard Euler would precisely calculate the motion of the ellipsoidal Earth, deriving the precession of the equinoxes as

England. The South Sea Company goes bankrupt. Severe financial turmoil ensues throughout the world.

The Mississippi Bubble. The Mississippi Company is a French company, listed in Paris, which aims to colonize the lower Mississippi Valley, with its headquarters in New Orleans. Its shares are initially priced at 500 livres, then on August 1, 1719, they rise to 2,750 livres,

James III Stuart, son of Maria Beatrice d’Este (of the Duchy of Modena) and James II Stuart (former King of England) arrives at the court of Modena, due to forced exile from France, where he had by now become an uncomfortable guest.

The death of the German Leibniz, another fearsome rival of Newton, was not enough to appease the Englishman, who continued to drag out the dispute with the German for years, until the Third Edition of the Principia, in 1725, in which he also removed the

James III lands in Scotland. He is the son of Maria Beatrice d’Este and James II Stuart. He quickly conquers several cities and is acclaimed by the population (who, like him, were Catholic). The King of Spain sends him a ship full of gold bars

Ditton and Whiston devised a method for estimating longitude: time bombs that exploded at regular intervals at 6,440 feet altitude, launched from equally spaced ships moored offshore. They also convinced the British Parliament to pass the Longitude Act.

St. Petersburg is founded as an important seaport for Tsarist Russia (the Black Sea was controlled by the Ottomans and routes from Archangel were often blocked by ice)

Battle of Zenta. Prince Eugene of Savoy humiliates Sultan Mustafa, who flees the battlefield in panic, leaving the Tisza River littered with Ottoman casualties. An estimated 20,000 Turks were massacred on the riverbank and 10,000 drowned in the river. Eugene lost 300 men. He also

James II, King of England, increasingly distressed, must return to France to the court of Louis XIV. After being exiled to France, he had attempted, for the third time in a few years, to return to England with the support of the French fleet, but

By 600 BC, the Assyrians were already aware of ergotism (ergot), a harmful growth on the ear of wheat. In damp winters and unsuitable storage conditions, mold and fungus thrive. However, the first documented outbreak in Europe occurred in 857 AD, on the German side

The chief of the McDonald clan takes five days to register the oath to King William III, King of England; the Campbell clan, guests at the McDonald castle in Glencoe late at night, carries out a treacherous ambush and kills 38 of them and many

The French visit the Mississippi plain. They are the first since the Spaniard Hernando de Soto more than a century earlier. They are no longer able to see any visible remains of the large villages (aside from earthen mounds) of the rich agricultural kingdoms that

Venetian military campaign that manages to re-establish its dominion over the Peloponnese: the Venetians advance as far as Athens

The Ottoman Sultan Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa besieged Vienna with an army of 500,000 soldiers, 1,000 cannons, 40,000 horses, 20,000 camels, 20,000 elephants, 20,000 buffalo, 20,000 mules, 20,000 cows and bulls, 10,000 sheep and goats, 100,000 sacks of corn, 50,000 sacks of coffee, 100 wives

Vienna. Captain Heisterman retreats and burns the remaining defenses. The Ottomans seize the ravelin between the Burg and Lobl bastions.

Vienna. In the plain north of Vienna, the army is gathering to relieve Vienna. More than 20,000 infantrymen are bivouacking, consisting of the troops of Maximilian Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, Leopold’s future son-in-law; contingents from Franconia and Swabia; and Saxon troops led by the Elector

Vienna. 300 musketeers of the Dupigny regiment and 30 cavalrymen storm the ditch, killing the Ottoman diggers. After an hour of furious fighting, the Turks prevail, and the Viennese retreat with the body of Commander Dupigny. The mines and subsequent Turkish attacks occur practically every

Frenchman Denis Papin builds the first steam engine

First Industrial Revolution. Steam engines.

Bubonic plague devastates Paris: 81,000 dead.

John Flamsteed, Astronomer Royal appointed by Charles II, is the first European astronomer to realize that the two comet sightings of November and December 1680 are in fact the same comet (Halley’s Comet).

England. Maria Beatrice d’Este, wife of James Stuart, Duke of York, gives birth to a baby girl: Caterina Laura. Unfortunately, she will die on October 13th of the same year. For Maria Beatrice, that day will mark the end of her joy and the beginning

Isaac Newton, in a letter to John Collins, announces the birth, the existence, of the tool of mathematical analysis. With his treatise “On the Methods of Series and Fluxions,” he developed, for example, the notion of convergence of series, which he would later use fruitfully

Gottfried Liebniz improved the Pascaline by adding multiplication, division and square root.

London Great Fire: London is almost completely destroyed by a horrific fire; years of intense reconstruction follow; the fire extinguishes the Black Death, destroying 13,000 homes and 87 churches, including the magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Reconstruction Act, enacted the following year by Charles II,

Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley: the gravitational force F is proportional to 1/r^2

Annus Mirabilis by Isaac Newton

France, Louis XIV, the Sun King, ascends to the throne, reducing the influence of the court

In 1633, in South America, Jesuit Father Antonio de Calaucha noted the surprising properties of the “fever tree” in preventing malaria. These trees belong to the Chinchona genus, which produce quinine, an antimalarial. In the following years, the use of quinine spread among the Jesuits

Christian Huygens discovers Titan

Cretan War. Venetian victory in the central Aegean.

Harvard University in Boston is founded

Japan. The new Togugawa kingdom forbade Japanese people from traveling abroad. Then, in 1637, it severely limited the rights of Christianity in Japan. A Jesuit was tortured and beheaded. In 1640, a Portuguese ship returned, hoping to reopen trade, but the crew was executed and

The eclectic Father Marin Mersenne, who gives his name to numbers in the form (2^n)-1, writes in his work Questioni Armoniche: “As they say, it is very easy and even necessary to see further than our predecessors, once we have stood on their shoulders, but

Japan expels Europeans; a period of near-total isolation begins that will last nearly three centuries.

French troops battle the Spanish west of Milan, and the Venetian army attempts to relieve Mantua, besieged by the Germans. But after a single defeat, the Venetian army disintegrates, and Mantua is sacked with all the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War. Only Swedish intervention

Swedish and Finnish settlements in Delaware brought the log cabin to North America—a quick-to-build, durable, sturdy, and warm home. It was known in Scandinavia probably as early as 2000 BC.

Beijing. The emperor issues an urgent edict to have foreign gunsmiths from Macau at court as soon as possible to counter the Manchu advance on the capital. They consist of four Portuguese experts, led by Gocalo Teizeira Correa, a Chinese interpreter, a Portuguese interpreter (the

Cardinal Richelieu is appointed French Prime Minister in an age of plots and intrigues

Kepler, forced to leave Linz because of the Thirty Years’ War raging in Germany and Austria, worked with Sagan on a science fiction novel about a “demon” who tells how the protagonist can travel to the Moon: “Moon Dreams” (Somnium seu astronomia lunari). This novel

The Dutch, led by Peter Minuit, arrive in Manhattan and buy it in exchange for fishhooks and glass beads (worth 60 guilders); Manhattan covers 60 sq km and will be worth at least US$ 150 billion in 2000.

The Dutch colonize Connecticut as part of New Netherland. The “Nutmeg State” will prosper to become the richest in America, while Yale University in New Haven will rise to become one of the world’s elite centers of education.

Indonesia. The Dutch arrive in the small English colony of Ambon, capture and behead the 14 inhabitants after a confession extracted under torture. For decades, the episode will poison relations between the two countries, with constant demands for compensation from the English.

Ottoman armies enter Poland for the first time

Present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. A community of 52 English colonists, including women and children, attend a feast with 90 warriors from the Wampanoag tribe. The English are the survivors of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Mayflower, having survived a terrible winter and disappointing harvests. The Wampanoag

A hundred English Puritans on the Mayflower land in the land they will call New England

Johannes Kepler publishes the five books that make up “Harmonices Mundi”: Kepler’s Third Law

Francis Bacon notes that the continents appear to fit together on either side of the Atlantic; it will take nearly 300 years for an explanation.

The Aztec population of Mexico collapsed from 20 million in 1520 to just 1.6 million a century later, due to epidemics brought by the Spanish to which the indigenous population never developed immunity. In Eurasia, however, such diseases had been present for millennia. Smallpox in

First English-speaking whites in Virginia: John Smith explores Jamestown, Virginia, and New England

Manila. The Chinese ghetto for Chinese sailors and traders commuting to and from China, which had grown to over 20,000 inhabitants, with wooden shacks (building in stone was forbidden), revolted, and Spanish intervention bloodily quelled it. The following season, trade returned to boom.

Strait of Malacca, Indian Ocean. The Portuguese ship Santa Catarina, carrying over 50 tons of porcelain, is captured by the Dutch. It is the second mega-shipload of porcelain the Dutch have secured in just two years.