• Welsh poet Henry Vaughn.
• Dutch painter Jacob de Wit.
• Italian composer Guise Sammartini.
• Flemish=born French architect François Cuvilliés.
• Swiss mathematician and physicist Nicolaus Bernoulli II.
• Future British general Edward Braddock, author of the 1755 fiasco that began the Seven Years' War.

• pioneering Dutch astronomer and physicist Christian Huygens.
• English composer Henry Purcell.
• German organist Johann Ambrosius Bach, see below.
• French poet Jean de le Fontaine.
• Mexican Carmelite nun and hymn writer Juana Ines de la Cruz.
• Italian painter Giuseppe Recco.
• English sculptor Edward Pierce.
• German composer Pohle, David.
• Swiss composer Johann Caspar Bachofen.
• French art historian André Félibien des Avaux.
• Massachusetts military leader Sir William Phips.
• Duc François-Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville de Luxembourg, principal commander of French forces.
• Ottoman sultan Ahmed II. His nephew Mustafâ II succeeds him.

 

• Both of nine-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach's parents are dead, and he and a brother go to live with their older brother Johann Christoph Bach, also an organist, in Ohrdruf.
• William Congreve's play Love for Love premeires.
• John Locke publishes The Reasonableness of Christianity, stressing reason over faith, which of course lands him in trouble.
• Maryland lays out a new town, Annapolis, and moves its capital there from St. Mary's City.
• King William's War/Nine Years' War/War of the League of Augsburg:
• The Duc de Luxembourg's successor, Villeroi, burns down Brussels but achieves little else.
• after a three-day July siege, Anglo-Dutch forces capture Namur in the Spanish Netherlands.
• Louis XIV sends out feelers for peace negotiations.
• Very little else happens in Europe, but fighting continues in North America and on the high seas.
• Russia tries to take Azov from the Ottoman Empire, but fails because it has no navy. Tsar Peter decides it would be a good idea to build one.
• The English Parliament passes a tax on windows to pay for a new mint, and a tax on bachelors to encourage young men to marry.
• There are extremely few sunspots this year; this "Maunder Minimum" coincides with extremely cold weather.
• The Hall of Supreme Harmony is built inside The Forbidden City in Beijing for Qing emperor Kang Xi.
• A magnitude 7.75 earthquake in China's Shensi Province kills 52,600, half of them in Linfen.
• the Scottish Parliament charters the Bank of Scotland (William had chartered a Bank of England the year before).

1694 - 1695 - 1696

How They Were Made - 17th Century