Muhammad ibn Saud, ruler of the village of ad-Diriyyah, allies himself with Abd-al-Wahhab, a fundamentalist Islamic cleric; the agreement, which will remain in force for centuries, stipulates that the Saudis accept the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and that the Wahhabis allow themselves to be governed
Two Scottish Presbyterian clergymen, Alexander Webster and Robert Wallace, decided to found an insurance company that would provide financial coverage for the widows of deceased clergymen. To calculate insurance premiums, they laid the foundations of modern statistics, leveraging the recent discoveries of Jacob Bernoulli. Today,
Christian Goldbach, in a letter to Leonhard Euler, hypothesized what would become known as Euler’s Conjecture: every number greater than two is the sum of three prime numbers, or every even number greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers.
Quaker Benjamin Robins published the treatise New Principles of Gunnery in England, in which he used his meticulous observations, Boyle’s Law, and the centripetal forces drawn from Newton’s Principia, to calculate the velocity and trajectory of a projectile as it exits the muzzle. He also
Swiss scientist Daniel Bernoulli understood that the Utility function has a logarithmic relationship with the Wealth function. Bernoulli therefore recognized the relative value of utility, which decreases as the wealth at stake increases. He also recognized risk aversion, meaning we are willing to pay more
Nis, between Belgrade and Istanbul, is captured by the Habsburg army. This is the only real success in the war with the Ottomans of 1737–1739. The Ottomans will retake it in October of the same year.
Luigi Galvani uses the nerves of a frog to demonstrate the electrical nature of animal motion
The Board of Longitude meets for the first time (23 years after its creation by the Longitude Act, as no viable proposal had previously been presented) to consider John Harrison’s idea
Harrison’s H-1 clock makes its first sea voyage aboard the Centurion, sailing from England to Lisbon and back. John Harrison’s clock undergoes its first sea trial. This solves the problem of calculating longitude, which plagued navies around the world. Latitude can be measured with the
Euler publishes Mechanics, a treatise that, for the first time, systematically treats the geometric language adopted by Newton in the Principia, translating it into analytical terms (mathematical analysis). Leibniz had already begun the work in 1689, and only Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar completed a modern exposition, in
George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and before becoming a legend of the American nation, he was privately educated by his father, Augustine, and his older half-brother, Lawrence. A stubborn critic of England’s policies, during the Continental Congress he was appointed Commander of
Antonio Vallisneri (Trassilico, May 3, 1661 – Padua, January 18, 1730) died in Padua. He is known for being one of the first medical researchers to propose abandoning Aristotelian theory in favor of an experimental approach based on the scientific principles advocated by Galileo Galilei.
Johann Lambert and the Italian Jesuit and mathematician Giovanni Sacchetti first conceived of non-Euclidean geometry, later developed in detail by Riemann, Gauss, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky in the early 19th century. This would later form the basis of Schwarzschild’s insight, which in 1900 proposed that the
Ibrahim Muteferrika introduces printing to the Ottoman world. Ibrahim Muteferrika is an Ottoman officer born in Transylvania, a Christian. He will present Sultan Mahmud I with his treatise, “Rational Foundations of the Politics of Nations,” in which he analyzes the causes of Ottoman backwardness, pointing
At Isaac Newton’s funeral, the coffin is carried by two dukes, three earls, and the Lord Chancellor himself. Voltaire, a Frenchman, is also present, astonished by the veneration accorded to a man of science of humble birth. He writes: “I have seen a professor of
Isaac Newton is buried in Westminster Abbey, where Charles Darwin, James Clerk Maxwell, and Michael Faraday also rest. Isaac Newton died of gout and lung inflammation. At Isaac Newton’s funeral, Voltaire reported: “I saw a professor of mathematics, simply because he was particularly good at
Isaac Newton, shortly before his death, summed up his life thus: “What the world will think of me I know not. I seem to myself to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, amusing himself with finding, now and then, a pebble a
Johann Heinrich Schulze of Magdeburg created photographic images of words by placing paper masks on the surface of a bottle containing chalk, aqua regia, and silver. However, despite the centuries-long use of the camera obscura among painters for the accurate representation of landscapes, photography would
Immanuel Kant’s hypothesis (in 1755) on the formation of the celestial system as the vortical motion of a primitive nebula seems to have been anticipated by Isaac Newton, who spoke about it to Conduit on 7 March 1725. When the latter asked him why he
Peter the Great dies. Upon the death of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, his wife Catherine ascended the throne. Peter’s reign, having become sole tsar in 1696, was marked by a series of far-reaching military, political, economic, and cultural reforms based on Western models.
Delft, Netherlands. Scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, dies at the age of 90. He will be buried three days later in the local Oude Kerk.
The Ottomans are crossing the Danube toward Karlowitz but are trapped against the anvil of the fortress by the Habsburg army, which destroys them with cavalry charges and artillery fire. Grand Vizier Silahdar Ali is found murdered under a mountain of slain Ottoman bodies. A
Jacob Bernoulli, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, dies of typhoid fever. The publisher of his last, unfinished book asks his brother Johann to continue the work. He responds that he can’t because he’s too busy. Johann Bernoulli might indeed win the gold
France. Lord Middleton visits Maria Beatrice d’Este (of the Duchy of Modena) to ask her son James III to convert to Protestantism, even if only superficially, so as to open the doors to the English throne for him. The regent (declared as such by Louis
By modifying the harpsichord, Bartolomeo Cristofori, in Italy, obtained the Piano-Forte (which, unlike the harpsichord, can produce sounds of different intensities).
The Peace of Rijswijk worsens the position of the Stuarts, who aspire to regain regency in England. The peace is signed by France, the Netherlands, Spain, and England. The divine right monarchy in England ends. William of Orange, by the will not of God but
Reign of Peter I Romanov (Пётр Алексеевич Рома́нов), known as Peter the Great (Пётр Великий). He was born in Moscow on May 30, 1672, and died in St. Petersburg on January 28, 1725. His reign began in 1682, at the age of 10, in co-regency
Buda. A fortunate Bavarian mortar strikes a gunpowder magazine, which explodes, killing a thousand Turks.
Japanese Zen Buddhist master Hakuin spread Rinzai meditation in Japan; he is also a poet, artist, and calligrapher.
Charles of Lorraine, reinforced by two thousand Hungarians, enters Nove Zamky after several weeks of siege. White flags fly almost immediately, but the plea for mercy is momentarily rejected, and hundreds of the besieged lose their lives.
Charles of Lorraine arrives with the allied army at Nove Zamky, where a light siege is already underway. The mighty Habsburg fortress had been conquered by the Ottomans in 1663.
Vienna. 6:00 PM. The three thousand Polish hussars, with their retinue and auxiliaries, and thousands more Polish cavalry behind them, are ready for the final charge. In the open field, the hussars are terrifying. The charge alone is enough to frighten the Turks, who beat
Vienna. 5:00 PM. First Polish attacks in the heart of the Turkish camp. The king orders the first charge of a select company of husaria composed of twenty men. The knights charge on their enormous horses, and just before plunging into the compact mass of
Vienna. 1:00 PM. King John III Sobieski and his Polish army also begin the slow descent down the rugged slope. The king is ready to consolidate his position and take a couple of days. On the left, however, Lorraine has already made up his mind: