Born in 1717:

• French mathematician Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, who also dabbled in physics.
• Swedish statistician and astronomer Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin.
• English French and Indian War general Jeffrey Amherst.
• German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
• English nobleman and art collector Horace Walpole.
• English playwright David Garrick.
• English landscape artist Alexander Cozens.
• Maria Theresa, future archduchess of Austria.
• English poet scholar and wit Elizabeth Carter.
• French courtier Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, a figure in the American Revolution.

• French mystic Madame Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon.
• Carmelite nun and poet, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, in Guadalajara.
• French painter Jean Jouvenet.
• French painter Jean-Baptiste Santerre.
• English composer Daniel Purcell (has a more famous brother).
• British industrialist Abraham Darby, the first large-scale iron and steel manufacturer.
• German music theorist Wolfgang Caspar Printz.

• Johann Sebastian Bach is arrested by his employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst in Weimar, for visiting relatives in a city controlled by Wilhelm's rival.
• Parliament passes the Act of Grace pardoning the participants of the 1715 Jacobite uprising, except for the MacGregor clan.
• Governor Antoine Cadillac returns home to France after hearing of his recall by King Louis XV (rather, his regent, the dic d'Orleans).
• When he arrives in France, he is thrown in the Bastille.
• (March), interim governor L'Epinay arrives in Mobile.  Cadillac has messed thingsup so badly that no-one will obey him, only former governor Jean Baptiste Bienville.
• (August) Antoine Crozat relinquishes his charter for Louisiana.  As Scottish banker John Law has control of most of France's finances, his Compagnie des Indies is granted exclusive rights.
• (August) Meanwhile, L'Epinay gives up and returns home.
• Law and Orleans reinstate Bienville, who decides to have a new capital built in honor of his benefactor.
• George I acts to rid the seas of piracy:
• He offers an amnesty and pardon to all pirates who surrender.
• He appoints former privateer captain Woodes Rogers (who had rescued Alexander Selkirk)  the first royal governor of the Bahamas, a notorious hideout for pirates.
• Pirate captain Benjamin Hornigold and his lieutenant, Edward Teach, aka "Blackbeard" capture a slave trading ship, named Concorde, off Cape St. Vincent.  He gives it to Teach to command it. Teach renames the ship Queen Anne's Revenge. Hornigold accepts King George I's amnesty and retires (or is deposed by Teach), leaving his protegé in command.
• Austria continues its war against The Ottoman Empire.
• (August 16) Austrian general Prince Eugene of Savoy captures Belgrade from the Turks.  He also controls western Wallachia and northern Bosnia.
• The Spanish establish a mission in Natchitoches.
• The Southern Tuscarora Indians sign a treaty with Virginia defining their lands.
• Swedish king Charles XII, having lost all of the Sweden's overseas possessions, begins peace negotiations with Russia to end the Geat Northern War.
• Polish king Augustus II's disagreements with the Sejm nearly start a civil war. Augustus, who is also Elector of Saxony, calls in his ally, Russia.  18,000 Russian troops surround the Sejm and dictate a Russian protectorate over Poland.
• Afghan noble Mahmud Shah murders his uncle and becomes governor of Kandahar.
• Georg Friederic Handel composes some Water Music for George I's barge trip on the Thames.
• A Dzungar Mongol army occupies Lhasa.
• Mughal Emperor Farukh Siyar grants the British East India Company a Firman for unrestricted trade at Bombay.

1716 - 1717 - 1718

How they Were Made - 18th Century