1694

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Year 1694 (MDCXCIV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar.

Events

January–June

• February 5 – The ship Ridderschap van Holland is lost at sea after it departs the Cape of Good Hope, but does not arrive at Batavia.
• February 6 – The colony of Quilombo dos Palmares, Brazil, is destroyed.
• March 1 – The HMS Sussex treasure fleet of thirteen ships is wrecked in the Mediterranean off Gibraltar with the loss of approximately 1,200 lives.

July–December

• July 27 – The Bank of England is founded through Royal charter by the Whig-dominated Parliament of England following a proposal by the Scottish merchant William Paterson to raise capital by offering safe and steady returns of interest guaranteed by future taxes. A total of £1.2 million is raised for the war effort against Louis XIV by the end of the year to establish the first-ever government debt.
• September 5 – The Great Fire of Warwick in England.
• October 25 – Queen Mary II of England founds the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich.^[1]
• December – Thomas Tenison is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
• December 3 – The Parliament of England passes the Triennial Act requiring general elections every three years.^[2]
• December 28 – Queen Mary II of England dies of smallpox aged 32, leaving her husband King William III to rule alone but without an heir. Since he is also without a royal hostess, Mary's sister Princess Anne is summoned back to court (having been banished after an unseemly row with the queen) as his official heiress.

Date unknown

• The Lao empire of Lan Xang unofficially ends.
• Notorious voyage of the English slave ship Hannibal in the Atlantic slave trade out of Benin, ending with the death of nearly half of the 692 slaves aboard.
• Rascians establish the settlement which will become Novi Sad on the Danube.
• The Académie française publishes the first complete edition of its Dictionnaire in Paris.

Births

• April 25 – Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, English architect (d. 1753)
• June 4 – François Quesnay, French economist (d. 1774)
• June 26 – Georg Brandt, Swedish chemist and mineralogist (d. 1768)
• July 4 – Louis-Claude Daquin, French composer (d. 1772)
• August 5 – Leonardo Leo, Italian composer (d. 1744)
• August 8 – Francis Hutcheson, Irish philosopher (d. 1746)
• August 26 – Elisha Williams, American rector of Yale College (d. 1755)
• September 22 – Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, English statesman and man of letters (d. 1773)
• September 25 – Henry Pelham, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1754)
• October 26 – Johan Helmich Roman, Swedish composer (d. 1758)
• November 21 – Voltaire, French philosopher (d. 1778)
• November 28 – Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen (d. 1728)
• December 22 – Hermann Samuel Reimarus, German philosopher and writer (d. 1768)

Deaths

• January 2 – Henry Booth, 1st Earl of Warrington, English politician (b. 1651)
• January 7 – Charles Gerard, 1st Earl of Macclesfield (b. c.1618)
• February 4 – Natalia Naryshkina, Tsaritsa of Russia (b. 1651)
• April 27 – John George IV, Elector of Saxony (b. 1668)
• June 17 – Philip Howard, English Roman Catholic Cardinal (b. 1629)
• August 8 – Antoine Arnauld, French philosopher and mathematician (b. 1612)
• October 15 – Samuel von Pufendorf, German jurist (b. 1632)
• November 22 – John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1630)
• November 25 – Ismael Bullialdus, French astronomer (b. 1605)
• November 28 – Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet (b. 1644)
• November 29 – Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician (b. 1628)
• December 2 – Pierre Paul Puget, French artist (b. 1622)
• December 28 – Queen Mary II of England, Scotland, and Ireland (b. 1662)
• date unknown – Hafız Post, Turkish musician

References