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Year '1698' ('MDCXCVIII') was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Contents

Events of 1698

January - June

July - December

Undated

Births

Deaths

Events of 1698

January - June

★ January 1 - The Abenaki people and the Massachusetts colonists signed a treaty ending the conflict in New England.

★ January 4 - Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire.

★ January 23 - George Louis (who would in 1714 become King George I of Great Britain) becomes Elector of Hanover.

★ June 19 - The volcano of Carguarazon erupts in the Andes and causes a rain of fish.

July - December

★ July 14 - Darien scheme: First Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama.

★ 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 one hundred rubles a year; commoners are required to pay one kopeck each.

★ 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 16 - A congress begins in Sremski Karlovci to discuss a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League.

Undated

★ Whigs sponsor Captain Kidd of New York as a privateer against French shipping.

★ Isaac Newton calculates the speed of sound.

★ Thomas Savery patents an early steam engine.

★ Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.

★ Bucharest becomes capital of Wallachia (now part of Romania).

★ In Africa, Mombasa and Zanzibar are captured by Oman.

Births

★ January 13 - Metastasio, Italian poet (died 1782)

★ February - Colin Maclaurin, Scottish mathematician (died 1746)

★ March 26 - Václav Prokop Diviš, Czech theologian (died 1765)

★ May 8 - Henry Baker, English naturalist (died 1774)

★ July 17 - Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, French mathematician (died 1759)

★ July 19 - Johann Jakob Bodmer, Swiss author (died 1783)

★ September 26 - William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire (died 1755)

★ December 24 - William Warburton, English critic and Bishop of Gloucester (died 1779)

★ ''date unknown'' - Bernard Forest de Bélidor, French engineer (died 1761)
: ''See also .''

Deaths

★ January 10 - Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, French historian (born 1637)

★ March 14 - Claes Rålamb, Swedish statesman (born 1622)

★ April 29 - Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, First Lord of the British Admiralty (born 1655)

★ May 15 - Marie Champmeslé, French actress (born 1642)

★ July 18 - Johann Heinrich Heidegger, Swiss theologian (born 1633)

★ November 4 - Rasmus Bartholin, Danish physician and scientist (born 1625)

★ November 28 - Louis de Buade de Frontenac, Governor of New France (born 1622)

★ ''date unknown'' - Nicholas Barbon, English economist (born c.1640)
: ''See also .''