1698

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Year 1698 (MDCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar. The first year of the ascending Dwapara Yuga.

Events

January–June

• January 1 – The Abenaki tribe and the Massachusetts colonists sign a treaty ending the conflict in New England.
• January 4 – The Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire.
• January 23 – George Louis (who in 1714 will become King George I of Great Britain) becomes Elector of Hanover.

July–December

• July 14 – Darien scheme: The first Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama.
• July 25 – English engineer Thomas Savery obtains a patent for a steam pump.^[1]
• August 25 – Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow: General Patrick Gordon has already crushed the streltsy rebellion, with 341 rebels sentenced to be decapitated (tradition holds that tsar Peter decapitated some of them himself).
• September 5 – In an effort to move his people away from Asiatic customs, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards: all men except priests and peasants are required to pay a tax of 100 rubles a year; commoners are required to pay one kopeck each.
• October 24 – Iberville and Bienville sail from Brest to the Gulf of Mexico to defend the southern borders of New France; they will eventually found three capitals of Louisiana (New France), as the future American cities: Mobile, Biloxi & New Orleans.^[2]
• November – Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kochi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid meteor shower, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".
• November 14 – First Eddystone Lighthouse off Plymouth, England, illuminated.^[3]
• November 16 – A congress begins in Sremski Karlovci to discuss a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League.

Date unknown

• The Whigs sponsor Captain Kidd of New York as a privateer against French shipping.
• Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.
• John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough is reinstated in the English army after a period in disgrace.
• Bucharest becomes the capital of Wallachia (now part of Romania).
• In Africa, Mombasa and Zanzibar are captured by Oman.
• Since the establishment of its presidencies in 1689, the British East India Company has been under constant pressure from traders who are not members of the company and are not licensed by the Crown to trade. Under a parliamentary ruling in favour of free trade, these private newcomers are able to set up a new company, called the New Company or English Company.

Births

• January 13 – Metastasio, Italian poet (d. 1782)
• February – Colin Maclaurin, Scottish mathematician (d. 1746)
• March 26 – Václav Prokop Diviš, Czech theologian (d. 1765)
• May 8 – Henry Baker, English naturalist (d. 1774)
• July 17 – Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, French mathematician (d. 1759)
• July 19 – Johann Jakob Bodmer, Swiss author (d. 1783)
• September 26 – William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire (d. 1755)
• November 4 – Caleb Fleming, English dissenting minister and Polemicist (d. 1779)
• December 24 – William Warburton, English critic and Bishop of Gloucester (d. 1779)
• date unknown – Bernard Forest de Bélidor, French engineer (d. 1761)

Deaths

• January 10 – Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, French historian (b. 1637)
• March 14 – Claes Rålamb, Swedish statesman (b. 1622)
• April 29 – Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, First Lord of the British Admiralty (b. 1655)
• May 15 – Marie Champmeslé, French actress (b. 1642)
• July 18 – Johann Heinrich Heidegger, Swiss theologian (b. 1633)
• November 4 – Rasmus Bartholin, Danish physician and scientist (b. 1625)
• November 28 – Louis de Buade de Frontenac, Governor of New France (b. 1622)
• Decebmber – Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, Flemish alchemist (b. 1614)
• date unknown – Nicholas Barbon, English economist (b. c. 1640)

References