1684

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Year '1684' ('MDCLXXXIV') was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Contents

Events of 1684

January - June

July - December

Undated

Births

Deaths

Events of 1684

January - June

★ (unknown)

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.

★ 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 Edmund Halley.

Undated

★ France under Louis XIV makes Truce of Ratisbon separately with the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg) and Spain.

★ Pope Innocent XI forms a Holy League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland to liberate Europe from the Ottoman Turkish rule.

★ The 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.

★ 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.

★ Smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea.

★ England has its coldest winter in living memory; the River Thames and the sea as far as 2 miles out from land freezes over.

★ John Bunyan writes The Pilgrim's Progress Part 2.

★ The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the Frost Fair on the Thames.

Births

★ January 1 - Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (died 1748)

★ January 14 - Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (died 1745)

★ February 24 - Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor (died 1738)

★ March 15 - Francesco Durante, Italian composer (died 1755)

★ March 19 - Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar (died 1766)

★ April 15 - Catherine I of Russia (died 1727)

★ June 22 - Francesco Manfredini, Italian composer (died 1762)

★ September 18 - Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist, and composer (died 1748)

★ October 10 - Antoine Watteau, French painter (died 1721)

★ October 26 - Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, Prussian field marshal (died 1757)

★ December 3 - Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian historian and writer (died 1754)
: ''See also .''

Deaths

★ April 1 - Roger Williams, English theologian and colonist (born 1603)

★ April 5 - Lord William Brouncker, English mathematician (born 1602)

★ May 4 - John Nevison, English highwayman (born 1639)

★ May 12 - Edme Mariotte, French physicist and priest (born c.1620)

★ July 2 - John Rogers, American President of Harvard University (born 1630)

★ July 6 - Peter Gunning, English royalist churchman (born 1614)

★ August 8 - George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer (born 1622)

★ October 1 - Pierre Corneille, French playwright (born 1606)

★ October 11 - James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven (born 1617)
: ''See also .''