1698

Year 1698 (MDCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1698

January - June

* January 1 - The Abenaki tribe and the Massachusetts colonists sign a treaty ending the conflict in New England.
* January 4 - The Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire.
* January 23 - George Louis (who will in 1714 become King George I of Great Britain) becomes Elector of Hanover.
* June 19 - The Carguarazon volcano erupts in the Andes and causes a rain of fish.

July - December

* July 2 - Thomas Savery patents an early steam engine.
* July 14 - Darien scheme: The first Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama.
* August 25 - Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow: General Patrick Gordon has already crushed the streltsy rebellion, with 341 rebels sentenced to be decapitated (tradition holds that tsar Peter decapitated some of them himself).
* September 5 - In an effort to move his people away from Asiatic customs, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards: all men except priests and peasants are required to pay a tax of 100 rubles a year; commoners are required to pay one kopeck each.
* November - Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kochi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid meteor shower, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".
* November 16 - A congress begins in Sremski Karlovci to discuss a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League.

Undated

* The Whigs sponsor Captain Kidd of New York as a privateer against French shipping.
* Isaac Newton calculates the speed of sound.
* Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.
* Bucharest becomes the capital of Wallachia (now part of Romania).
* In Africa, Mombasa and Zanzibar are captured by Oman.

Births

* January 13 - Metastasio, Italian poet (d. 1782)
* February - Colin Maclaurin, Scottish mathematician (d. 1746)
* March 26 - Václav Prokop Diviš, Czech theologian (d. 1765)
* May 8 - Henry Baker, English naturalist (d. 1774)
* July 17 - Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, French mathematician (d. 1759)
* July 19 - Johann Jakob Bodmer, Swiss author (d. 1783)
* September 26 - William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire (d. 1755)
* December 24 - William Warburton, English critic and Bishop of Gloucester (d. 1779)
*"date unknown" - Bernard Forest de Bélidor, French engineer (d. 1761)

: "See also ."

Deaths

* January 10 - Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, French historian (b. 1637)
* March 14 - Claes Rålamb, Swedish statesman (b. 1622)
* April 29 - Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, First Lord of the British Admiralty (b. 1655)
* May 15 - Marie Champmeslé, French actress (b. 1642)
* July 18 - Johann Heinrich Heidegger, Swiss theologian (b. 1633)
* November 4 - Rasmus Bartholin, Danish physician and scientist (b. 1625)
* November 28 - Louis de Buade de Frontenac, Governor of New France (b. 1622)
*"date unknown" - Nicholas Barbon, English economist (b. c. 1640)

: "See also ."