(place) by Gorgonzola Tue Oct 09 2001 at 2:21:46
Born in 1675: Died in 1675: Events of 1675:
  • Charles II orders the construction of a naval observatory at Greenwich, with John Flamsteed the first Astronomer Royal.
  • William Wycherley's play The Country Wife appears.
  • Thomas Otway's play Alcibiades appears.
  • John Dryden's play Aureng-Zebe (ref. Aurangzeb) appears.
  • Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers a Cassini Gap 'gap' in the rings of Saturn.
  • Antonie van Leeuwenhoek peers at a drop of water through his 'microscope' and sees small 'animalcules' (protozoa); he looks at a drop of blood and sees red blood cells forthe first time..
  • Olaus Romer measures the speed of light.
  • Construction begins on a Christopher Wren-designed replacement for St. Paul's Catherdral which had burned down in the 1666 Great Fire of London.
  • Japanese whalers develop a technique of driving whales into large nets in the oen sea, then harpooning them while entangled.
  • Japanese mariners land on the Bonin Islands for the first time.
  • Takeda Katsuyori tries for the last time to capture Kyoto and unseat the Tokugawa shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, but a cavalry charge at the Battle of Nagashino is pointless against muskets, and the Takeda are no more.
  • New York governor Sir Edmund Andros declares that all land west of the Connecticut River really belongs to New York's proprietor (James, Duke of York).
  • Wampanoag  Indians rise up against encroachment on their lands from Massachusetts settlers.  Led by Wampanoag chief Metacomet, known to the settlers as 'King Philip', Bands of indians raid towns all over Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies, and into New Hampshire and Maine.  Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut muster their militias. Mahican, Abenaki and other tribes join in, but instead, the colonists attack the neutral Narraganset in Rhode Island.  The war is a stalemate until the colonists begin using native soldiers to teach them guerilla tactics.
  • Farther south in Virginia, a cycle of violence between colonists and local indians begins, and Governor William Berkeley fails to keep matters from spirallnig out of control When Berkeley refuses his nephew Nathaniel Bacon a commisison in hte militia, Bacon begins taking matters into his own hands. In one unbelievable act of treachery, he bullies the Occaneechee to raid other Indian villages, and then kills captors and captives alike when they return.
  • Still farther south in Carolina, Chawahoc Indiands begin attacking settlements.  In neaby Albemarle, plolicical facitons are building aroung  Thomas Eastchurch and Thomas Miller, who want to be rid of Governor John Jenkins.
  • Father Marquette founds a mission at a Kaskaskia Indian settlement near Utica, Illinois, but dies during his return to Michilimackinac.
  • Twenty-year-old Swedish King Karl XI has inherited an alliance with Louis XIV that drags him into war.  On Louis' insistence, he sends an army of 10,000 across the Baltic into Swedish Pomerania and attacks Brandenburg, but Brandenburgian forces defeat the army at Fehrbellin.  While Karl is tied down trying to hold onto Pomerania,  Danish (and Norwegian) King Christian V sees an opportunity to recapture Scania (Skåne, Skaane), taken from the Danes by Sweden only twenty years previously. While Christian prepares to invade, Scanians treat the Danes as liberators and rise up against the Swedes.
  • Louis himself is faring much better in his "Dutch War" (against The Netherlands, The Holy Roman Empire, and Spain), occupying most of the Hapsburg lands to his north and east of France. In January, Marshal Turenne defeats a German army at Türkheim in Alsace so badly they flee back across the Rhine.  The French go on the offensive, invading Baden.  However, Turenne is killed in July 27 by artillery at the battle of Sasbach, causing enough confusion to force a retreat back across the Rhine.   A different French army is defeated at Konzer Brücke outside Trier, where the French commander is captured.
  • Trier residents accuse the city's Jews of helping the occupying French troops, and go on a rampage looting Jewish stores and homes.
  • Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's fanatical repression of other Indian religions in the name of Islam causes many people to plead with Tegh Bahadur for help. A now legendary exchange between Bahadur and his son convinces him to journey to Delhi to challenge the Emperor to persuade him to convert to Islam. (Bahadur knows what will happen and leaves instructions that his son succeed him). Aurangzeb has Bahadur arrested and brought before him in chains.  Aurangzeb challenges Bahadur to produce miracles to prove his authority; Bahadur refuses.   The Emperor tries to convert Bahadur through torture, and eventually has him beheaded.  Gobind Rai takes the surname Singh (lion) and begins a campaign against the Mughals.
  • Osei Tutu becomes ruler of the Asante in Ghana.

1674 - 1675 - 1676

How They Were Made - 17th Century

I like it!