Born in 1680:

• English mathematician John Machin.
• Italian painter Sebastiano Conca.
• English composer Michael Christian Festing.
• English composer Robert Valentine.
• Italian composer Giacomo Rampini.
• Flemish composer Jean Baptiste Loeillet.
• German poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes.
• Italian-born French composer Jean-Baptiste Stuck.
• Irish economist Richard Cantillon.
• (approx). French composer Louis-Antoine Dornel.
• Japanese confucian philosopher Dazai Shundai.

Died in 1680:

• Italian sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
• English poet Samuel Butler.
• English admiral Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory.
• English admiral and founder of Carolina and  New Jersey Sir George Carteret.
• English poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
• English painter Robert Streeter.
• English folklorist Nathaniel Wanley.
• English philosopher Joseph Glanvill.
• English Civil War figure Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles.
• English Platonist philosopher Ralph Cudworth.
• English Puritan theologian Stephen Charnock.
• German painter Ludwig von Siegen.
• Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, granddaughter of James I, abbess of Herford in Wesphalia and corespondent wit Rene Descartes.
• French composer François Roberday.
• French epigrammist Duc François de la Rochefoucauld.
• Flemish religious reformer Antoinette Bourignon.
• Austrian composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer.
• Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi.
• Italian composer Lelio Colista.
• Italian composer Marco Uccellini.
• Italian composer Antonio Sartorio.
• Italian composer Pietro Simone Agostini.
• German Jesuit priest and mathematician, geographer, astronomer, ethnographer, and physicist Athanasius Kircher.
• Danish anatomist and mathematician Thomas Bartholin.
• Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam.
• Dutch painter Ferdinand Bol.
• Dutch painter Frans Post.
• Dutch painter Dircksz Santvoort.
• Dutch painter Sir Peter Lely, in London.
• (approx). Dutch painter Hendrik Dankers.
• Irish adventurer Thomas Blood, who had attempted to steal the English crown jewels in 1671, but charmed Charles II out of executing him.
• Former French Minister of Finance Nicolas Fouquet.
• Former Japanese emperor Go-Mi-no-o.
• Tokugawa Ietsuna, shogun of Japan. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi succeeds him.
• Johann Friedrich, Duke of Hannover. Ernst August succeeds him.
• Johann Georg II, Elector of Saxony.
• Maratha maharaja Shivaji Bhosle. His son Rajaram succeeds him.

Events of 1680:

• The Duke of York grants the western half of his personal domain in the New World, West New Jersey, to a coalition of people including William Penn.
• Swedish King Karl XI marries Princess Ulrika of Denmark, founds a naval base, and sets up a council that will give him absolute power two years later.
• The third part of Samuel Buter's satirical poem Hudibras is published.
• Colonists in Maryland run out of food, and learn to dig up oysters from the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay. Rough life.
• Virginia's House of Burgesses passes an ordinance limiting the allowable types of fishing.
• John Bunyan publishes his moral allegory The Life and Death of Mr Badman.
• Matsuo Munefusa moves out of Edo, building a hut in the Fukagawa district. A collection of poems by his students, Tosei Montei Dokugin Nijikkasen, appears.
• Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz develops a form of calculus but does not publish it.
• Giovanni Borelli proves that flapping wings is an impossible mode of human-powered flight.
• Stjepan Gradic publishes De loco Galilaei about Galileo's paradox of the bowl.
• Nathaniel Lee's tragedy Lucius Junius Brutus premeires.
• Sir Christopher Wren is made president of the Royal Society.
• Magdeburg is transferred from Saxony to Brandenburg-Prussia.
• Pueblo Indians centered around Red Willow Pueblo rise up and drive the Spanish out of New Mexico.
• Revolts against Emperor Leopold I break out all over Bohemia and Slovakia in response to the Emperor's repression of Calvinism.
• An earthquake shakes the Leeward Islands; Jamestown, Nevis is destroyed.
• In Scotland, the Campbell and Sinclair clans fight over the Girnigoe region.  At the Battle of Altimarlach, the Campbells defeat the Sinclairs (Uilt na Muirleach or "The Burn of the Thieves")
• John Flamsteed produces a star catalogue. Among its curiousities is a sixth-magnitude star near 3 Cassiopeiae that is later classified as erroneous.  That is, until 20th Century radio astronomers discover Cassiopeia A (3C 461), the strongest radio source in the sky ouside the solar system.  This is the remnant of a supernova that exploded in 1667 but which no-one noticed at the time.

1679 - 1680 - 1681

How They Were Made - 17th Century