1696

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Events

January–March

January 21 – The Recoinage Act, passed by the Parliament of England to pull counterfeit silver coins out of circulation, becomes law.<ref name=JetRogers>James E. Thorold Rogers, The First Nine Years of the Bank of England (Clarendon Press, 1887 p. 41</ref>
January 27 – In England, the ship Template:HMS (formerly Sovereign of the Seas) catches fire and burns at Chatham, after 57 years of service.
January 31 – In the Netherlands, undertakers revolt after funeral reforms in Amsterdam.
January – Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed in London.<ref>"The Sentimental Movement", by Dudley Miles, The Mid-West Quarterly (July 1917) p. 355</ref>
February 8 (January 29 old style) – Peter the Great, who had jointly reigned since 1682 with his mentally ill older half-brother Tsar Ivan V, becomes the sole Tsar of Russia when Ivan dies at the age of 29.
February 15 – A plot to ambush and assassinate King William III of England in order to restore King James and the House of Stuart to the throne is foiled when the king cancels his usual plan to return from a hunting trip by way of the road between Turnham Green and Brentford. The king's guard is alerted by the Earl of Portland, William Bentinck, who had been approached on February 13 by Sir Thomas Prendergast.<ref name=Moody>Template:Cite book</ref>
February 23 – A royal proclamation is issued to arrest suspected Jacobite conspirators who had plotted the assassination of King William III, including gunman Robert Charnock and organizers George Barclay, and Sir John Fenwick. Barclay eludes capture, but Charnock and Fenwick are executed.<ref name=Moody/>
March 7 – King William III of England departs from the Netherlands.
March 9 – Spanish missionaries in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in North America first learn of plans for a revolt among the Pueblo Indians and send warnings to the governor, asking for Spanish troops. The uprising begins on June 4.<ref name=Espinosa>Template:Cite book p. 163</ref>
March 16 – The Dutch bombard Givet during the Nine Years' War.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
March 18 – Robert Charnock, who had been arrested for the Jacobite plot to kill King William is hanged at the Tower of London.

April–June

April 23 – Russo-Turkish War (1686–1700): Russia begins the second of the Azov campaigns (1695–96).
April – A fire destroys the Gra Bet (Left Quarter) of Gondar, the capital of Ethiopia. The fire starts "in the house of a prostitute" and destroys many buildings, including the churches of St. George, Takla Haymanot and Iyasu.<ref>E. A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia: Volume II, Nubia and Abyssinia (Methuen, 1928, reprinted by Routledge, 2014) p. 416</ref>
May 1 – A partial solar eclipse is visible in western Canada and Greenland.<ref name="ref1923598177">Template:Cite web</ref>
May 16 – A total lunar eclipse is visible in western Europe and Africa.<ref name="ukho">Template:Cite web</ref>
May 31 – John Salomonsz is elected chief of Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean Netherlands.
June 4 – A second Pueblo Revolt occurs in Santa Fe de Nuevo México. The Tiwas of Taos and Picuris, the Tewas of San Ildefonso and Nambe, the Tanos of Jemez and San Cristobal, and the Keres of Santo Domingo and Cochiti attack during the full moon and kill 21 Spanish civilians and five priests.<ref>Nicholas A. Robins, Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas (Indiana University Press, 2005) p. 35</ref>
June 12 – China's Kangxi Emperor leads troops in the Battle of Jao Modo, about Template:Convert from the modern Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, and defeats 5,000 Mongolian troops of the Dzungar Khanate under the command of Galdan Boshugtu Khan.
June 17
- The throne of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth becomes vacant with the death of Jan Sobieski, prompting a competition between Friedrich Augustus, Elector of Saxony and Prince François Louis of France to compete under the commonwealth's "Golden Liberty" system for an elective monarchy of the new king by the nobility. Jerzy Albrecht Denhoff, the Grand Chancellor, remains the head of the Polish-Lithuanian government during the vacancy of the ceremonial throne.
- Seven French ships attack five Dutch ships escorting a convoy of 112 merchant ships in the Battle of Dogger Bank.

July–September

July 18 – Azov campaign: The Russian fleet occupies Azov at the mouth of the river Don.
August 13 – The Dutch state of Drenthe makes William III of Orange its Stadtholder.
August 22 – Forces of the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire clash near Andros.
August 29 – King Louis XIV of France and Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, sign the Treaty of Turin, ending Savoy's involvement in the Nine Years' War.
September 8 – The Parliament of Scotland passes the Education Act 1696, providing for locally funded, Church-supervised schools to be established in every parish in Scotland.
September 11 – England's Royal Navy scuttles and deliberately sinks its 32-gun battleship HMS Sapphire in Bay Bulls Harbour in Newfoundland, rather than let it be captured by the French Navy following a disastrous battle.
September 17 – On Canada's Hudson Bay, the English Navy recaptures the York Factory from France, three years after the French had captured it, and renamed the site "Fort Bourbon".<ref>Georges Dugas, The Canadian West: Its Discovery by the Sieur de La Vérendrye (. Its Development by the Fur-trading Companies, Down to the Year 1822" (Librairie Beauchemin Ltd., 1905) p. 30</ref>

October–December

October 7 – The Convention of Vigevano is signed, bringing a general ceasefire in Italy and an end to the Nine Years' War between France and the remaining members of the Grand Alliance.
October 20 – The Imperial Russian Navy is founded on the recommendation of Tsar Peter the Great and approval by the Russian Duma.
November 9 – A total lunar eclipse is visible in North and South America.<ref name="ukho2">Template:Cite web</ref>
November 12 – Hand in Hand Fire & Life Insurance Society, as predecessor to Aviva, is founded in England.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="aviva">Template:Cite web</ref>
November 21 – John Vanbrugh's play The Relapse is first performed in London.
November 25 – In England, the House of Commons approves the bill of attainder to convict Sir John Fenwick of high treason for plotting to lead the assassination of and coup d'état against King William III, on its third and final reading, voting 187 to 161 in favor of conviction. The measure then moves to the House of Lords.<ref name=Horwitz>"House of Commons Votes, 1689–1702", in Parliament, policy, and politics in the reign of William III, by Henry Horwitz (Manchester University Press, 1977) p. 338</ref>
November 30 – Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville captures and destroys St. John's, Newfoundland after a three-day siege.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
December 7 – Connecticut Route 108, one of Connecticut's oldest highways is laid-out to Trumbull.
December 19 – Jean-François Regnard's verse comedy Le Joueur ("The Gamester") premieres in Paris.
December 23 – By a vote of 66 to 60, the English House of Lords approves the bill of attainder for the conviction of Sir John Fenwick for high treason.<ref>"Bills of Attainder", in Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons: Relating to conference and impeachment, by John Hatsell (L. Hansard and Sons) 1818 p. 324</ref> Fenwick is beheaded on January 28, 1697.
December 24 – The Inquisition in Portugal carries out the sentence of burning at the stake against several Marrano Jews in Évora.

Date unknown

The Great Famine of 1695–1697 wipes out almost a third of the population of Finland, while the Great Famine of Estonia (1695–97) takes out a fifth of the population of Estonia; and the "seven ill years" of famine in Scotland are ongoing.
Polish replaces Ruthenian as an official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Abington, Pennsylvania, is settled.
William Penn offers an elaborate plan for intercolonial cooperation largely in trade, defense, and criminal matters.
Edward Lloyd probably begins publication of Lloyd's News, a predecessor of Lloyd's List, in London.
Window tax was introduced in England and Wales and remained in force until 1851.
A New Theory of the Earth, a book by William Whiston, is published and is well received by intellectuals of the day.
The Bank of Scotland becomes the first bank in Europe to successfully issue paper currency.<ref name="bankofscotland">Template:Cite web</ref>