1698
Events January 4 - Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire. June 19 - Volcano of Carguarazon erupts in the Andes and causes a rain of fish August 25 – Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow - general Gordon has already crushed the streltsy rebellion - 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 one hundred rubles a year and the commoners had to pay one kopek each - Whigs sponsor Captain Kidd of New York as a privateer against French shipping
- Darien Scheme - First Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama
- Isaac Newton calculates the speed of sound
- Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kochi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid Meteor storm, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".
- Thomas Savery patents an early steam engine.
- A congress begins in Sremski Karlovci to discuss a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League.
- Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.
- Bucharest becomes capital of Wallachia (now part of Romania).
- Mombasa and Zanzibar are captured by Oman.
- George Louis (who would in 1714 become King George I of Great Britain) becomes Elector of Hanover.
Births - February - Colin Maclaurin, Scottish mathematician
- May 8 - Henry Baker, English naturalist
- July 17 - Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, French mathematician (d. 1759)
- December 24 - William Warburton, English critic, Bishop of Gloucester (d. 1779)
- William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire
- Johann Jakob Bodmer, Swiss author
- Metastasio, Italian poet
- Vaclav Prokop Divis, Czech theologian
Deaths - 23 January - Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick, in Lüneburg
- Nicholas Barbon, English economist
- Louis de Buade de Frontenac, Governor of New France
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