1681

• German composer Georg Phillip Telemann.
• Danish explorer Vitus Bering.
• German librettist Christian Friedrich Hunold.
• French architect Francois Antoine Vasse.
• Italian composer Francesco Bartolomeo Conti.
• French writer Claudine-Alexandrine Guerin de Tencin.
• English painter Peter Monamy.

• Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca.
• Anglican writer Richard Allestree.
• English organ builder John Loosemore.
• English religious writer William Walwyn, a noted supporter of the Levellers.
• English astronomer William Lilly.
• English actor and dramatist John Lacy.
• Itlaian composer Francesco Corbetta.
• German painter and composer Georg Neumark.
• Dutch painter Franz van Mieris the Elder.
• Dutch painter Gerard Terborch.
• Dutch painter Cornelis Saftleven.
• Dutch poet Andries Pels.
• Dutch or German painter Gerard Soest.
• St. Oliver Plunket, primate of Ireland, drawn and quartered after being implicated in the fraudulent 1678 "Popish Plot".
• Flemish painter Justus Susterman.
• English clergyman John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, and Shakespeare buff.
• 83,000 from the plague in Prague.
• The last dodoes on Mauritius.

• John Dryden's play Absalom and Achitophel premieres.
• Edward Ravenscfort's play The London Cuckolds premieres.
• Thomas Otway's play The Soldier's Fortune premieres.
• Charles's former lover Nell Gwyn writes about being jostled during the "Popish Plot".
• Jonas Moore shows that the Earth's surface is more water than land.
• A student of Matsuo Munefusa plants a banana (or Basho) plant next to his teacher's hut. The Tenwa Era begins in Japan.
• Charles II grants William Penn a tract of land in North America in order to clear a debt incurred with Penn's father.  Pennsylvania, as it is to be called, is the land between the 39th and 42nd parallels from Delaware River to five degrees west of it.   Trouble is, Charles' father had given much of this land to George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, fifty years previously.
• The Scottish Parliament passes a Test Act much like the one in place in England.
• The proprietors of West Jersey issue a "Right of Government" document providing for a legislature and religious toleration.
• Qing Emperor Kangxi defeats three rebellious generals (Geng Jimao, Wu Sangui, and the son of Shang Kexi) who had held control of southern China for the previous nine years.
• Louis XIV
• officially annexes Alsace, which he had occupied since 1679, to France.
• forms a ballet academy allowing women
• Russia
• concludes a peace treaty with the Khanate of the Crimea.
• founds an Academy of Sciences.

1680 - 1681 - 1682

How They Were Made - 17th Century