1666

1666 was a year. The year after the Great Plague hit London. The year of the great fire of London. Samuel Pepys recorded the year 1666 in loving detail. Many saw apocalyptic elements in the fire and plague, especially based on the relationship of the year-number to 666, and its pan-digital nature in Roman Numerals.

In sixteen hundred and sixty-six
Old London burned like rotten sticks.

  - Nursery Rhyme

It may not be a well known fact that while London was burning, Sir Isaac Newton was playing around with his prisms. While officially he was breaking white light into its component colors, several historians now suspect that his motives were not so innocent. Although he claimed to have been visiting his mother in Leeds, evidence has reached the sensei909 detective squad that suggests that his mother had refused to talk to him for several years at that point, on account of being dead. It is therefore likely that just one year after laying the basis for apple warfare, Sir Isaac had moved to the hardball league, just as France was declaring war on England.

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See, History can be fun!

"Thus ends this year of public wonder and mischief to this nation - and therefore generally wished by all people to have an end."

-Samuel Pepys, December 31

Born in 1666:

• English diarist Mary Astell.
• Italian composer Francesco Scarlatti
• Italian composer Attilio Ariosti.
• Italian composer Antonio Lotti.
• French composer Jean-Féry Rebel.
• English anatomist William Cowper.
• French harpsichord composer Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre.
• Princess Sophie Dorothea of Brunswick - Lüneburg and future wife of Elector Georg Ludwig, divorced in 1694 after an adulterous affair.
• Japanese confucian scholar Ogyu Sorai.
• The future Tsar Ivan V of Russia.
• Gobind Rai, who would become the last living Sikh Guru.

Died in 1666:

• German physicist and mathematician Gaspar Schott.
• Dutch painter Frans Hals.
• Dutch painter Johannes de Haes.
• Dutch painter Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten.
• Italian physicist Giovanni Battista Baliani.
• Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Il Gurercino.
• Italian painter Pier Francesco Mola.
• Italian composer Massimiliano Neri.
• English composer Nicholas Lanier.
• English poet Alexander Broome.
• English alchemist and magician Thomas Vaughan.
• English privateer captain Christopher Myngs, killed during the August 4 battle.
• Anne of Austria, consort of Louis XIII, the last person exerting any control over Louis XIV.
• English poet, playwright, and composer Mildmay Fane, second Earl of Westmoreland.
• English playwright James Shirley, from exposure after the Great Fire.
• Former Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, imprisoned since 1658 by his son Aurangzeb.  He is buried beside his wife at the Taj Mahal.
• Abbas II, Shahanshah of Persia.  He is succeeded by his son Suleiman I.
• Tens of thousands from the plague in England (see below).
• 100 Covenanters, executed after Rullion Green.

Events of 1666:

• Three plays by Molière appear: Le Misanthrope, Le Médecin malgré lui, and Mélicerte.
• Louis XIV, at the impetus of his minister Colbert, charters the Academie des Sciences in PAris. One early member is Christiaan Huygens who plans to solve the problem of longitude using a pendulum clock.
• Tekisai Nakamura's encyclopedia Kinmô Zui appears.
• Isaac Newton misses the fire, having fled home to Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire to escape the plague, but he makes good use of his time: He lays the foundations of calculus as well as his theories of gravitation and optics.
• Antonio Stradivari opens his violin-making shop in Cremona.
• John Eliot publishes The Indian Grammar, a codification of the Wampanoag language.
• A census finds 3215 people living in New France.  This is the first known modern census, counting everyone and  collecting demographic data for administrative purposes.
• (September 2-6) As legend has it, a baker in Pudding Lane in London forgets to turn off his oven. Soon the bakery goes up in flames. The fire spreads throughout the city. The Great Fire burns for four days and destroys 1 1/2 square miles of London, most of the city at the time.  The official death toll is 16, and 80,000 people are made homeless, but as most of the rats in the city were also killed, the Black Death, which had been ravaging London since the previous year, is checked.
• Charles II has been replacing Scottish Presbyterian ministers loyal to the 1638 National Covenant, who are unhappy with Charles's attempt to make the Church of Scotland like the Church of England.  Skirmishes between locals in Galloway turn into a march on Edinburgh.  The revolt is crushed by Sir Thomas Dalyell at the (November 13) Battle of Rullion Green in the Pentland Hills.
• Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, annexes Magdeburg.
• England has been at war with the Netherlands since 1664.
  • Louis declares war against England.  Although this is the limit of France's involvement, rumors of French fleets sailing here and there make the strategic situation difficult for the English.
  • In June, Michiel de Ruyter defeats Admiral George Monck (now Duke of Albemarle) and Prince Rupert in a four-day naval battle off North Foreland.
  • A month later in the North Sea, Monck beats de Ruyter after Admiral Tromp fails to meet up with him.
  • Sir Robert Holmes destroys the Dutch merchant fleet in the Vlie off of Texel.  However, the fire draws all attention away from the campaign, and Monck anchors the entire fleet in the Medway estuary.
• In Poland, Lubomirski rebels surprise and destroy the army of King Jan II Kazimierz (led by Field Hetman Jan Sobieski) at the Batle of Matwy.
• Newark founded in East Jersey.

1665 - 1666 - 1667

How They Were Made - 17th Century