"Ay, now the plot thickens very much upon us."

- George Villiers, The Rehearsal

Born in 1672:

• English poet Joseph Addison.
• English painter Isaac Fuller.
• English essayist Richard Steele.
• English mathematician John Wilkins.
• French organ composer Nicolas de Grigny.
• English card game authority Edmond Hoyle.
• Charles Lennox, illegitimate son of Charles II, later 1st duke of Richmond.
• Future Tsar Peter the Great of Russia.

• Peter Stuyvesant, former ruler of Nieuw Nederland.
• Japanese mathematician Yoshida Mitsuyoshi.
• Japanese calligrapher and painter Obaku Dokuryu.
• German composer Heinrich Schütz.
• English miniature painter Samuel Cooper.
• French missionary and historian of French Canada, Marie Guyard.
• New England poet Anne Bradstreet.
• Flemish painter Lucas Uden.
• Dutch painter Abraham van den Tempel.
• Chinese bureaucrat Zhou Lianggong, patron of many important Chinese painters.
• Ranadhira Kanteerava Narasaraja, Wodeyar of Mysore, succeeded by Chikkadevaraja.
• English Admiral Edward Montagu, first Earl of Sandwich, killed in the Battle of Sole Bay.
• Dutch mathematician and statesman Johan de Witt, chief minister of the Netherlands, and his brother Cornelius De Witt, killed during a riot, see below.
• Jan II Casimir, former king of Poland.
• hundreds of thousands from plague in Italy and France.

• Moliere's play Les Femmes savantes appears.
• William Wycherley's plays The Gentleman Dancing Master and Love in a Wood appear.
• George Villers' play The Rehearsal appears.
• John Dryden's play Marriage a la Mode appears.
• Hannah Wolley's compendium of all things domestic, The Ladies Delight, is published.
• A fire destroys Drury Lane Theatre.
• Isaac Newton publishes several articles on light and colour.  In one of them, he suggests that light is composed of "corpuscles".
• Jean Richer discovers that a pendulum's period varies with latitude; from this, Newton deduces that the Earth has an equatorial bulge.
• Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers a new satellite of Saturn, Rhea.
• In Japan, the very first Shirone Kite Festival is held.
• The Scottish Court of Justiciary is established.
• Charles II issues an Act of Indulgence suspending the Penal Laws, angering Parliament, which will retaliate the following year.
• Parliament grants the Royal Africa Company a monopoly on the African slave trade.
• French merchants establish a base at Pondicherry in India.
• (Third Dutch War) Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England gang up on The Netherlands.
• Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz suggests a campaign in Egypt but Louis is not diverted.
• Louis personally commands the army of invasion, The Duke of York's fleet harasses Dutch shipping.
• Chief minister Johan de Witt's entreaties for peace are spurned.  Dutch citizens blame De Witt for their military weakness. De Witt's brother Cornelius is arrested and put to torture in The Hague. De Witt resigns and William of Orange becomes stadtholder of The United Netherlands; thus ends the Era of Liberty.
• When Johan visits his brother in prison, a mob breaks into the prision and tears them to pieces; their limbs are hung from lampposts.
• In December, the Dutch open dikes and flood the countryside.  Unfortunately a frost gives firm-enough footing for the French to threaten Amsterdam. A thaw nearly traps the French army, however.
• Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter engages the combined Anglo-French fleet at their anchorage at Sole Bay.  the Duke of York is forced to transfer his flag twice.  A tactical draw, it breaks the English stranglehold on the seas, preventing Dutch ports from being attacked.
• Polish general Jan Sobieski defeats a Cossack-Tatar army in the Ukraine.  Ottoman sultan Mehmet IV responds by sending and army of 300,000 into the Ukraine, capturing Kamenets-Podolsky and the rest of Podolia from the Poles.
• In Narnaul, a fight between a Mughal foot soldier and a farmer belonging to the Satnami sect turns into a full-blown revolt. Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb sends an army of 10,000 into Narnaul, which annihilates the Satnami.
• A Spanish missionary and his assistant on Guam are killed by Chief Mata'pang, triggering retaliation by the Spanish, and Guam is rocked by war until there are too few Chamoru left to continue fighting.
• King Phra Narai of Siam expels French missionaries and solders from his country.

1671 - 1672 - 1673

How They Were Made - 17th Century