1684

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1684 (MDCLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (dominical letter BA) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Tuesday (dominical letter FE) of the Julian calendar, the 1684th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 684th year of the 2nd millennium, the 84th year of the 17th century, and the 5th year of the 1680s decade. Note that the Julian day for 1684 is 10 calendar days difference, which continued to be used from 1582 until the complete conversion of the Gregorian calendar was entirely done in 1929.

Events

January–June

• January – Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion.
• January 5 – King Charles II of England gives the title Duke of St Albans to Charles Beauclerk, his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn.
• January 26 – Marcantonio Giustinian is elected Doge of Venice.
• March – End of the severe frost in Britain, starting the previous December, during which the River Thames was frozen in London, and the sea as far as 2 miles (3.2 km) out from land freezes over. There was great loss of beast and of wildlife, especially birds. Similar reports from across Northern Europe.^[1]
• April 5 - Karl Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein dies.

July–December

• July 24 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails from France, again, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
• August 15
  • France under Louis XIV makes the Truce of Ratisbon separately with the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg) and Spain.
  • Louis XIV decrees the foundation of the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a boarding school for girls at Saint-Cyr, at the urging of Madame de Maintenon.
• October 7 – Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shogun Tsunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people.
• December 10 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.
• December 20 – Miles Holmwood, known as Norway's Undead Soldier was born. Disappeared in 1721 after the victory of the Great Northern War
• December – End of the Tibet–Ladakh–Mughal war of 1679–84.

Date unknown

• Pope Innocent XI forms a Holy League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland to end the Ottoman Turkish rule in Europe.
• Japanese poet Saikaku composes 23,500 verses in 24 hours at the Sumiyoshi Shrine at Osaka; the scribes cannot keep pace with his dictation and just count the verses.
• Tokyo University, formally registered as a university in 1877, had its predecessor established.
• The British East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton. Tea sells in Europe for less than a shilling a pound, but the import duty of 5 shillings makes it too expensive for most English people to afford; hence smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea.
• John Bunyan writes The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2, in England.
• The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the River Thames frost fairs in London.

Births

• January 1 – Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (d. 1748)
• January 14 – Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (d. 1745)
• February 24 – Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor (d. 1738)
• March 15 – Francesco Durante, Italian composer (d. 1755)
• March 19 – Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar (d. 1766)
• April 15 – Catherine I of Russia (d. 1727)
• May 5 – Françoise Charlotte d'Aubigné, niece of Madame de Maintenon and ancestress of the Heir to the Belgian throne (d. 1739)
• June 22 – Francesco Manfredini, Italian composer (d. 1762)
• September 18 – Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist, and composer (d. 1748)
• October 10 – Jean-Antoine Watteau, French painter (d. 1721)
• October 26 – Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, Prussian field marshal (d. 1757)
• December 3 – Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian historian and writer (d. 1754)
• December 20 – Miles Holmwood, Norwegian soldier (d. unknown)
• date unknown – James Figg, first English bare-knuckle boxing champion (d. 1734)

Deaths

• April 1 – Roger Williams, English theologian and colonist (b. 1603)
• April 5 – Lord William Brouncker, English mathematician (b. 1602)
• May 4 – John Nevison, English highwayman (b. 1639)
• May 12 – Edme Mariotte, French physicist and priest (b. c. 1620)
• July 2 – John Rogers, American President of Harvard University (b. 1630)
• July 6 – Peter Gunning, English royalist churchman (b. 1614)
• August 8 – George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer (b. 1622)
• October 1 – Pierre Corneille, French playwright (b. 1606)
• October 11 – James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven (b. 1617)
• October – Dud Dudley, English ironmaster (b. 1600?)

References