Peter I the Great becomes Tsar of Russia, his reign lasts until 1725

James II, King of England, after being exiled in France, landed in Catholic Ireland, from where he hoped to reach London leading his supporters, who took the name Jacobites. Despite having gathered around him a large army, largely financed by his French cousin Louis XIV, James II was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne near Dublin and forced to return to France. In his later years, James II lived with his wife Maria Beatrice d’Este thanks to an allowance granted by the King of France and established his court in Saint-Germain-en-Laye until his death in 1701.

North America (the future United States). The Kunders family (later Cunreds, then Cunards, and finally Conrads) has German ancestry. They founded Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1689. They received 500 acres of virgin land from William Penn himself. Pete Conrad, the third man on the moon, with Apollo 12, is descended from this family.

England. King James I is deposed thanks to a Dutch coup d’état, carried out at the invitation of the British Parliament itself.

William of Orange landed at Tobay, Devonshire, England, at the head of a fleet of 600 ships. King James confronted him with an army of 25,000 soldiers, and his wife Mary Beatrice remained in London and temporarily assumed the regency.

England. Maria Beatrice d’Este gives birth to a son: Giacomo Francesco Edoardo, Prince of Wales. After having previously lost several children, the doctors consulted at length and decided to feed the baby only a porridge made from boiled milk. The poor child, who was strong and robust at birth, wasted away and lost weight every day. Then one day, his father, Giacomo, stubbornly insisted on finding a wet nurse immediately. Immediately. A beautiful and buxom commoner was found. The bumblebee latched onto her ample breast and began to suck greedily. Giacomo and Beatrice embraced, crying, and the boiled milk porridge was thrown away.

The Dutch began to bring opium from India to Southeast Asia, mainly for military purposes, namely to keep soldiers’ morale high.

London. Edward Lloyd opens Lloyd’s Café. He is the owner of the Lloyd’s insurance group: his activities of distributing news and gathering information are intertwined with his bar.

Cambridge: Isaac Newton: “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica”: proof of Kepler’s three laws and Newton’s three laws. The first edition of the Principia was printed in only 500 copies. It is a 550-page treatise in three volumes, written in just 18 months, but the result of a lifetime’s work.

Battle of Nagyharsany or Second Mohacs. The Allies retake Mohacs and the Ottomans flee.

The Venetian Francesco Morosini, having reconquered everything Venice had lost in the Cretan War in the Ionian Sea and Morea, and more, is attacking Athens. One of his gunners lodges a shell in the roof of the Parthenon, detonating the enormous ammunition stockpiles the Turks had stockpiled in the Greek temple.

Paris. Procope, one of the city’s first cafés, opens in Saint-Germain. It was opened by Sicilian Francesco Procopio Cutò.

Buda. The Allied army breaks through the Ottoman defenses and enters the city. Governor Pasha dies bravely in the breach where he valiantly defends himself, scimitar in hand. The imperials carry out the most terrible massacre, despite the explicit orders of Lorraine and the Elector of Bavaria.

Three thousand Turks, who were supposed to be providing relief to the besieged in Buda, were massacred in the surrounding countryside by Lorraine’s soldiers. They were janissaries and elite men.

Thursday, April 23, English (not Gregorian) calendar. Westminster Abbey. James II, Duke of York, and Maria Beatrice d’Este are crowned. Maria Beatrice, originally from the Duchy of Modena, wears a sumptuous purple and gold velvet cloak trimmed with ermine, lined with white satin, with a long train held at the shoulders by pearl cords, a diamond circlet around her head, and a gown studded with precious gems. Also present are the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain, Godolphin, and the Deputy Chamberlain, Strikland. Both will stand by the Queen throughout the long years of misfortune, even in exile, until her death. Modena’s minister in London, Rizzini, is also present, noting with satisfaction the popular enthusiasm: the hatred toward the Catholic heirs seems (temporarily) assuaged. After the crown, the new king receives the ring, the scepter, the staff of equality and mercy, and the royal ornaments. She is given a scepter of gold and gems, and on her finger a ring with a large ruby and 16 smaller rubies. Her crown, inscribed “Queen of Modena,” is still kept in the Tower of London today. At the banquet, featuring 175 different dishes, among others, are served: venison tongues, lamb kidneys, cockscombs, Bologna sausages, Portuguese eggs, Dutch beef, and pistachio cream.

Charles II, King of England, while having his wig trimmed by his barber, rolls his eyes, flails his arms, and leans back in his chair. He suffers a stroke. He is blood-stained (which, as a layman, I’d say doesn’t help), and dies on February 16, 1685. England lives in terror that his brother, the unpopular and overbearing James II, is attempting to make the country a Catholic nation. James II Stuart then becomes king, and his wife, Maria Beatrice d’Este, from the Duchy of Modena, becomes queen. At first, the accession of James II to the throne was well received, even in Anglican circles, especially because of the freedom of conscience professed by the new regency, which did not oblige the country to become Catholic, while in neighboring France, on the contrary, the Edict of Fontainebleau, issued by Louis XIV of France on 18 October 1685, revoked Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes, and made France a Catholic nation by law.

Newton decides to check the validity of Kepler’s third law using his mathematical methods: the mathematics matched perfectly

At a discussion at the Royal Society, Robert Hooke claims to have found proof that gravity is a force emanating from the Sun, but refuses to reveal it to Edmond Halley. Halley, furious, rushes to Isaac Newton and poses the problem: “What would be the trajectory of a planet if the Sun emanated a force that attracted it with the inverse square of the distance?” Newton promptly replies, “An ellipse,” and says he had already performed the necessary calculations four years earlier: this is the birth certificate of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

The siege of Ottoman Buda is lifted.

Buda. The Christian siege of the Ottoman city has been going on for several weeks without success. Elector Maximilian Emanuel, having just dismounted from his horse, moves to greet some commanders. His groom is holding onto the horse’s reins when a cannon shot hits the horse’s hindquarters, spraying blood, bones, and intestines onto the nearby tent of Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden and the Duke of Salms.

Central Europe. Siege of Visegrad: Lorraine warns the besieged Ottomans. Those who surrender will be spared. The rest will all be impaled. They surrender. And the road to Buda is clear.

Central Europe. Lorena positions her guns in front of Visegrad and begins the bombardment.

The King of Poland, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold, and the Doge of Venice sign an agreement to wage war on the Ottomans. Pope Innocent XI is behind it.

Legend, probably half true, holds that part of the Allies’ enormous loot after the Ottomans hastily abandoned their positions during the siege of Vienna included sacks full of small, dark beans: coffee beans. Unknown to the West, they gave rise to the first coffeehouses in Vienna. Another story credits the introduction of coffee to the West to the Armenian Giovanni Diodato.

Vienna. The Ottoman siege exasperates the citizens: in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, even today, a graffiti in German can be read: “Muhammad, you bastard, go home!”; the Turkish cannons will be melted down to make the cathedral’s new bell, decorated with the skulls of six Turkish soldiers.

Vienna. 10:00 PM. Several Allied contingents have already entered the city, greeted by cheering crowds. But the Saxons, Poles, and other knights spend the night outside in case the enemy returns to attack. But by 10:00 PM, the camp is completely in Allied hands. Victory is complete. Vienna and Christendom are safe.

Vienna. 10:00 a.m. The Allied advance is halted by insistent Ottoman artillery fire. From the diary of the Ottoman Master of Ceremonies: “A huge army of Giour [Christians] is advancing towards our camp. It looks like a flood of black pitch pouring down the slope, burning everything.”

Vienna. The Ottoman war council in the Grand Vizier’s tent decides that the cavalry and the troops lounging in the heat will face the Allied contingents, while the siege continues as before.

Vienna. The Habsburg forces are now complete and begin to move towards the Ottoman besiegers.

Vienna. In the plain north of Vienna, the Polish contingent finally appears on the horizon. Charles of Lorraine rides at the head of 3,000 light cavalry, followed by 2,000 hussars (hussars), the legendary noble winged knights, followed by 10,000 other cavalry and all the infantry. The hussars are a unique elite strike force. They wear heavy plate armor and chain mail, and are resplendent in leopard skins and plumed helmets. They ride with a 5-meter lance, two swords, and one or more pistol holsters. They typically attack en masse at full gallop with lances at rest. They are the quintessential heavy cavalry of the 17th century.

Vienna. The Ottoman lines reach the palisade. Turkish engineers begin slow but steady excavation work to place mines beneath them. They then change tactics and build small earthen hills that rise 5 meters above the palisade.

Vienna. Word spreads that a sixteen-year-old boy dressed in women’s clothing attempted to set fire to the arsenal, overloaded with ammunition and gunpowder. The boy suffers a terrible death. He is lynched by an enraged mob, leaving only his dismembered torso, as if mauled by wild beasts. The city is plunged into rage and panic.

Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa crosses the Darda River on a pontoon bridge and proceeds with his immense army, reinforced by countless contingents from every corner of the Ottoman Empire, towards Vienna.

Dutch linen trader Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria through direct observation through his microscope (x275)

After René La Salle’s voyage from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Delta and the annexation of the entire area, naming it Louisiana in honor of the King of France, an ungrateful Louis XIV wrote, “I am convinced that Sieur de La Salle’s discovery is entirely useless, and that such enterprises should be avoided in the future.” Louisiana would later be sold by France to the United States of America, in what would prove to be one of the best deals ever… for the United States.

Inauguration of the Studio San Carlo, which three years later would become the University of Modena.

Istanbul. The sultan’s gardeners dig a trench next to the Imperial Gate of Topkapi Palace. At regular intervals, they plant seven long crimson poles, each as thick as a man’s arm, topped with a richly carved and gilded piece with black horsetails. These are the tugs, the ancient insignia of the steppe warriors, from whom the Ottomans descend. They signal the preparations for war.

The Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini publishes his observations of Halley’s Comet, putting forward the revolutionary hypothesis that the comet is the same one observed by Tycho Brahe in 1577.

Jacob Bernoulli, observing a comet, decided to dedicate his life to mathematics rather than the Church. It was the beginning of a dynasty of mathematicians that would last 150 years and produce eight renowned mathematicians, three of whom are among the most famous of all time (Jacob, his brother Johann, and his son Daniel).