1708

Born in 1708:

• English politician William Pitt the Elder, first Earl of Chatham and prime minister, 1766-1768.
• Swiss anatomist Albrecht von Haller.
• Massachussetts painter Joseph Badger.
• English illustrator Francis Hayman.
• Italian painter Pompeo Girolamo Battoni.
• English architect, playwright, and pamphleteer Richard Bentley.
• English writer Hannah Glasse.
• English politician Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of The Hell-Fire Club.
• Italian composer Egidio Romualdo Duni.
• Deborah Read, future wife of Benjamin Franklin.
• Future Russian empress Anna Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great.

• Gobind Singh, the tenth and last Sikh Guru. Mortally wounded while preparing for prayer, he passes authority in the Sikh religion to the Sikh Holy Book, the Guru Granth Sahib.
• English composer John Blow.
• Italian composer Giovanni Battista Draghi.
• Dutch painter Ludolf Bakhuyzen.
• French clergyman François Xavier de Montmorency Laval, first bishop of Quebec.
• Prince George of Denmark, husband of English Queen Anne.
• Dutch painter Adriaen Coorte.
• French architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart.
• English poet William Walsh.
• German mathematician Ehrenfried Tschirnhausen.
• Scottish mathematician David Gregory.
• Japanese mathematician Seki Takakazu, who independently invented much of modern calculus.

• Johann Sebastian Bach is re-hired as court organist for the Duke of Saxony (at Weimar).
• The British East India Company absorbs the New East India Company.
• Ebenezer Cook publishes his satirical poem The Sot-Weed Factor.
• Peter the Great updates the Cyrillic alphabet.
• The Duchess of Marlborough convinces Queen Anne to dismiss Robert Harley, Secretary of State for the North.
• There are more slaves in the Carolina colony than there are whites.
• Thomas Nairne meets the Chickasaw Indians during his expedition to Alabama and Mississippi; he laments that the Chickasaw have to raid all the way down into the Florida Keys for Indians to enslave.
• The War of the Spanish Succession/Queen Anne's War:
• (July 4-5) The French army captures Ghent and Bruges in the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium).
• (July 11) Allied armies scatter the French at the Batle of Oudenarde. The Duke of Marlborough wants to march on Paris, but Prince Eugene of Savoy wants to reduce the fortress at Lille first.
• (August 29) French troops and allied Indians destroy HAverhill, Massachussetts.
• (December 11) Lille finally falls.
• (December 21) French troops and allied Indians operating out of Placentia on the island of St. Pierre capture St. John's, Newfoundland.
• Allies of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, the rulers of Bohemia and Hanover are made Electors for the Holy Roman Emperor.
• Sardinia surrenders to the Allies after the British Navy blockades Cagliari harbor; Britain hands the island over to the Austrians.
• The Great Northern War finds Swedish king Charles XII rampaging through Russia.
• Charles has early successes at (July 4) Holowczin, (August 30) Malatitze, and (September 10) Rajowka, but Peter begins to use the scorched-earth tactics so many invaders of Russia will experience.
• (September) Charles captures Smolensk, but winter is coming.
• (September 29) Peter's army soundly defeats the Swedes at Lesnaya; killing half of General Lewenhaupt's army, and all of the supplies that Charles will need for the winter.
• (November) The Russians attack the Swedish army at Kolkanpää, which is waiting to be transpported across the Gulf of Finland.  The army (barely) escapes but loses most if its supplies.
At the end of the year, Charles makes an alliance with one faction of Cossacks, under hetman Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa. But his army is in for a hard winter.

1707 - 1708 - 1709

How they Were Made - 18th Century