1684

Years: 1681 1682 1683 - 1684 - 1685 1686 1687
Decades: 1650s 1660s 1670s - 1680s - 1690s 1700s 1710s
Centuries: 16th century - 17th century - 18th century 1684 in literature 1684 in science 1684 state leaders

Table of contents

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths

Events

Pope Innocent XI forms a Saint League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland to liberate Europe from the Ottoman Turkish rule.
Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shogun Sunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people
The Japanese poet Saikaku composes 23,500 verses in 24 hours at the Sumiyoshi Shrine at Osaka; the scribes cannot keep pace with his dictation and just count the verses
The British East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton. Tea sells in Europe for less than a shilling a pound, but the import duty of 5 shillings makes it too expensive for most English people to afford
Smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea
England has its coldest winter in living memory; the River Thames and the sea as far as 2 miles out from land freezes over
John Bunyan writes The Pilgrim's Progress Part 2

March 19 - Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar
April 15 - Martha Skavronskaya, a Lithuanian peasant who later became Empress Catherine I of Russia
October 10 - Antoine Watteau, French painter
December 3 - Ludvig Holberg, historian and writer (d. 1754)