S

The Natural History Museum of Modena is founded

George Washington assumes command of American forces before Boston

Paris. The Comte de Vergennes, at the court of Louis XVI, writes, “…the recovery of America by the English is impossible. All their efforts to multiply their forces overseas will be in vain.”

Battle of Bunker Hill: First Assault: General Stark’s New Hampshire troops opened fire with muskets on the Redcoats: entire ranks fell, but British discipline prevailed, and the gaps were filled by the shouts of officers who had to use the precious seconds the rebels needed

Battle of Bunker Hill, near Boston: New Hampshire sharpshooters litter the beach with British dead.

Boston. American General Artemas Ward of Massachusetts orders the occupation of the Bunker Hill peninsula, opposite Boston.

Jubilee celebrated by Pius VI

The Continental Congress is established in the United States of America, it will be dissolved in 1788

Peace of Kucuk Kaynarca between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the Russians gain access to the Black Sea.

America, representatives of 13 American colonies decide to boycott English products (First Congress of Philadelphia)

Englishman Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen

The Swede Carl Scheele first isolated chlorine and immediately noted its caustic nature: it was green, suffocated, and bleached plants and litmus paper. Chlorine was discovered during one of the great scientific challenges of the time: proving whether all acids contained oxygen. Hydrochloric acid (or

Paris. Lavoisier demonstrates for the first time that the transformation of copper and iron into green copper and rust, respectively, is accompanied by a gain in weight, hypothesizing that these substances absorb something from the air. He will later demonstrate that this “something” is oxygen.

Boston Tea Party, a protest by merchants against the English tea monopoly, the English government closes the port and declares a state of siege.

Second Voyage of Captain James Cook; he carries with him the K-1 watch prepared by Larcum Kendall, a copy of John Harrison’s H-4; Cook writes “Mr Kendall’s Watch (which costs 450 punds) exceeded the expectations of his most zealous advocate and by being now and

The Modena Botanical Garden is founded

Lagrange found exact solutions to some special cases of the Three-Body Problem. A famous example is the one found in Jupiter’s Trojan satellites, discovered in 1906 (the asteroid Achilles in this case), precisely at the points where Lagrange had indicated, which are now called Lagrangian

An English mission funded by the Royal Society and led by James Cook observed the transit of Venus across the Sun from Tahiti. The mission was very expensive. The primary scientific goal was to determine the distance of the Earth from the Sun, but the

London. Henry Cavendish, an extraordinarily wealthy and eccentric man, discovers hydrogen, or “inflammable air.” He later enjoys creating explosions, and in doing so, he discovers that water is produced from the explosions, thus confirming that water is not an element but a compound.

John Harrison receives another £10,000 from the Longitude Board who now demand he prove the duplicability of H-4

Spallanzani demolishes the theory of spontaneous generation

After Vienna, Ottoman diplomat Ahmed Resmi Efendi headed to Berlin. He was accompanied by hundreds of philosophers and technicians to unlock the secrets of the West. All previous attempts to do so had been met with derision and contempt. This time, things were different, and

The colonial capital of Brazil is moved from Salvador de Bahia to Rio de Janeiro

The Harrisons receive £1500 for the test taken by H-3 and H-4 and ask for a second trip by H-4

Tobias Mayer’s widow was awarded 3,000 pounds and Euler 300 pounds for their contribution to the solution of the longitude problem.

The French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille catalogued nearly 2000 stars in the southern sky from the Cape of Good Hope, inventing the constellations of Telescopium, Microscopium, Sextant, Horologium

John Harrison completes the H-1 (sea-clock): it is about one cubic meter and has four dials: month, hour, minute and second; it still works today at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

The Swede Carl Linne’ (Carolus Linnaeus) published the first edition (of only 14 pages) of his Systema Naturae; the twelfth edition, the last published by Linne’, was 2300 pages long and in three volumes, cataloguing 13,000 species of plants and animals.

Osaka, Japan. At the rice market (Dojima kome ichiba), derivative products developed. The market was founded in 1697, and over the years, the value of rice, the payment of the samurai, became so important that it replaced currency. In 1730, the price of rice collapsed.

North America. The Cherokee were originally divided into 30 or 40 independent chiefdoms (groups of villages) that were fiercely antagonistic to one another. With the rise of competition with the white man, it became increasingly common for individual Cherokee to rob or attack the camps

The University of Pennsylvania is founded in Pricenton, New Jersey.

The French political philosopher Charles-Louis de Secondat, aka Baron Montesquieu, was in Paris. In 1748, he published “The Spirit of the Laws,” which inspired the Founding Fathers of the United States to draft the American Constitution, which protected the spirit of individual liberty. Individual liberty

London. Very close to Lloyd’s Café, another bar opens: Jonathan’s, the hub of stockbrokers and speculators. It is the first to publish a bulletin listing the prices of various securities. A century later, it will directly transform into the London Stock Exchange.

Padua. Bartolomeo Cristofori builds the first known piano. It is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

French academic Henrion publishes an article concluding that average human height has steadily decreased over the centuries. Adam, for example, must have been 37.72 m tall, according to Henrion, while Eve was “only” 36.2 m. Noah stood at only 8.2 m, Abraham 6 m, Moses

Battle of Cape Matapan, off the southern tip of Greece. The Venetians suffer heavy losses. The Venetian fleet is enormous: 26 ships with 1,800 guns. They lose 1,824 men. Turkish losses, however, are also very heavy, because they avoid engaging in battle. (By comparison, Nelson

Blackbeard the Pirate dies in a battle off the coast of North Carolina.

France. April 26 OS in the Old Style calendar (not Gregorian but Julian). Maria Beatrice d’Este (of the Duchy of Modena and former Queen of England), dressed in the simple habit of the Visitation, the one she dreamed of wearing as a child, is transported

Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, purchased Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Hammer or Leicester Codex; he retained possession of it until 1980.

Death of Leibniz, now almost alone and abandoned at the court of Hanover

Isaac Newton, in a new edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, also publishes his new lunar theory

Flamsteed, during a heated argument with Newton, was forced to publish a first version of “Historia Coelestis”, which Newton would use to validate his lunar theory; Flamsteed later disavowed that version and bought back almost all the available copies; a revised version of the work

St. Petersburg becomes the capital of Russia

Vienna is defended by mighty six-meter-high walls, the Linienwall, designed by the court mathematician Johann Jakob Marinoni.

Leonhard Euler, son of a Calvinist pastor, was born in Basel; he would become one of the greatest mathematicians of the 18th century.

Due to an incorrect longitude estimate, the Scilly Isles, off the coast of England, became the grave of 2,000 of Sir Clowdisley’s sailors. On their return from a victorious battle with the French at Gibraltar, on a foggy day, the Association, the Eagle, and the

The Austrian-Habsburg eagle began to fly over the Duchy of Milan. Austrian rule became definitive in 1748.

The English ship Kent transports 62,700 pounds of tea from Canton, China, to London. In Canton, the merchandise costs 4,700 pounds and is resold in London for a whopping 50,100 pounds. A 1,000% profit! Thus, the English, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish ships are emptied of

Northern War, alliance of Russia, Saxony-Poland, and Denmark against the Swedish king Charles XII. Russia defeats the Swedes and takes their place as the dominant power in northeastern Europe.

London. There are more than two thousand registered cafés. They serve a social function, a pillar of the nascent bourgeois society. Coffee brings greater sobriety to the European population. To a certain extent, and for certain customers, it partially replaces wine and beer in bars

Spain. The Bourbon dynasty reigns with eight sovereigns: Philip V, Louis I, Philip V (again), Ferdinand VI, Charles III, Charles IV, Ferdinand VII, and Charles IV.

Jubilee celebrated by Innocent XII

Pierre Gassendi, a Catholic priest, revives the work of Democritus, proposing an atomic theory in which matter is composed of tiny invisible particles.

About 300 ships a year sail between the British Isles and the West Indies for the Jamaica Trade

Treaty of Nerchinsk: Russia recognizes the territories north of the Ussuri and Amur rivers as Chinese.

War between the League of Augsburg (alliance between Holland and England) and France

Buda. Allied batteries open fire on the walls of the lower city.

200,000 French Huguenots expelled from France spread French clothing manufacturing techniques and glass manufacturing technologies throughout Europe.

Istanbul. The Grand Vizier suffers the defeat of Vienna and the fall of several Ottoman strongholds, including Buda. The sultan demands that he return the Seal, the Sacred Standard of the Prophet, and the Key to the Kaaba in Mecca. He also tells him he

Vienna. In the euphoria of their overwhelming victory, the generals push to pursue the enemy into their territory. Little does anyone know that this will unleash a 16-year war of conquest and a series of wars lasting over a century. The Poles, angered by the

The Age of Heroes, or Age of Heroes, in Austrian history. It was a period of conquests and reconquests by the Habsburgs at the expense of the Ottomans. Among the heroes were Charles of Lorraine, Turkelouis-Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden, Guy von Starhenberg, Florimund of Mercy,

Second Long War between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs of the Holy Roman Empire. Following the failed siege of Vienna, it brought unparalleled triumphs for the Christians, including the reconquest of Hungary. All the territories conquered by the Ottomans since 1521 were redeemed. Only Belgrade

Vienna. Three mines explode beneath the Lobl Bastion, opposite the Burg. A gaping hole opens up about ten meters.

Vienna. A cannonball enters through one of the large lancet windows of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It crashes into a column, raining shrapnel down on the faithful gathered for Mass. Only one person is seriously injured, with his legs shattered.

Rome. A hen is famous for never having laid an egg. Then suddenly she lays one, but not just any egg: one with a comet on it. The comet does indeed arrive, and the story spreads throughout Europe via broadsheets (a type of large sheet

Enlightenment: scientific and philosophical progress in Europe, associated with reason, freedom, and progress. But it was also a period of European imperial expansion throughout the world.

Maria Beatrice d’Este and James Stuart, Duke of York, leave Brussels for Edinburgh. The couple hope to return to London, but the council unanimously votes to exile the duke, and James and Maria Beatrice must return to Scotland.

Giovanni Cassini, at the court of the Sun King, created a beautiful and detailed lunar map, where he also hid the portrait of a half-length woman.

England. The short life of Charles, Duke of Cambridge. On November 7, Mary Beatrice gives birth to her third child, finally a boy, after Catherine Laura (January 21 – October 13, 1675); Isabella (1676-81); the third child is Charles, Duke of Cambridge (November 7, 1677).

Edmond Halley publishes a catalog called “Catalogus Stellarum Australium” which, in addition to a map of the known sky, also contains a map of the southern sky, with 341 new stars.

Isaac Newton, in a letter to Hooke about a long and protracted dispute, wrote a phrase that would become famous: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Here Newton is perhaps mocking Hooke, who is small in stature,

Modena. Duchess Laura Martinozzi returns to the Ducal Palace after accompanying her daughter Maria Beatrice d’Este to England for her wedding to James Stuart, Duke of York.

Paris. On her way to London, Marie Beatrice d’Este is a guest of Louis XIV (the Sun King) at Versailles. The famous palace had just been built at the time, as Louis XIV only began planning it in 1661, immediately after the death of his

Giovanni Domenico Cassini was invited to Paris by the Sun King to inaugurate the observatory; he remained in France until his death in 1720.

Barrow, in his Optical and Geometric Lectures, published an early version of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, revised and commented on by Isaac Newton, who then expanded on the topic and proved it geometrically, in Newton’s own manner, very simply. Newton himself later fully understood

Fundamental Theorem of Calculus published by Barrow in Optical and Geometrical Lectures, with revision and comments by Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton builds the first reflecting telescope (devised by James Gregory in 1663)

Dom Pérignon moved to Hautvillers Abbey near Épernay. The Benedictine monk made a fundamental contribution to the development of the méthode champenoise. Champagne, however, did not become popular until the 19th century.

Sabbatai Levi converts from Judaism to Islam. Sabbatai Levi had initially been recognized by some as a mystical messiah, then, in 1666, denounced by the Jewish community of Constantinople as a seditious rabble-rouser, he was forced by Sultan Mehmed IV to choose between death and

Robert Hooke first spotted Jupiter’s Red Spot. The discovery, however, was disputed by Cassini, at the same time as Hooke, and also by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, in 1831.