January 2– King Amangkurat II of Mataram (located on the island of Java, part of modern-day Indonesia), invites Trunajaya, who had led a failed rebellion against him until his surrender on December 26, for a ceremonial visit to the royal palace. After Trunajaya arrives, King Amangkurat stabs his guest to death.
January 24–William Harris, one of the four English Puritans who established the Plymouth Colony and then the Providence Plantations at Rhode Island in 1636, is captured by Algerian pirates, when his ship is boarded while he is making a voyage back to England. After being sold into slavery on February 23, he remains a slave until ransom is paid. He dies in 1681, three days after his return to England.
February 12– The Marquis de Croissy, Charles Colbert, becomes France's Minister of Foreign Affairs and serves for 16 years until his death, when he is succeeded as Foreign Minister by his son Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
February 22–Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin, a fortune teller in France who organized a ring of killers in what became known as the "Affair of the Poisons" that killed at least 1,000 people, is burned at the stake after being convicted of witchcraft. In all, 36 people are executed for their role in the poisoning.
March 25– Troops sent by the Sultan of Morocco, Ismail Ibn Sharif, begin a blockade of the port of Tangier, occupied by the English and located on the North African coast. Palmes Fairborne is dispatched to defend Tangier as the colonial governor and commander-in-chief of English forces.
April 21– Prince Rajaram Bhosle, the 10-year-old son of the Shivaji, the Chhatrapati (Emperor) of the Maratha Empire in India, is installed on the throne as the new Emperor, less than three weeks after the death of his father. Sambhaji Bhosle, the eldest son of Shivaji, learns the news while imprisoned at Panhala and makes plans to escape prison and take over the throne.
April 27– Prince Sambhaji and fellow prisoners kill the commander of the Panhala prison and take control of the fort, as he makes plans to become ruler of the Maratha Empire.
April 30– The first FrenchHuguenots in the New World arrive at Charleston, South Carolina, as 45 of the religious exiles arrive at Oyster Point on the ship Richmond, after being sent there by King Charles II of England.
June 10– England and Spain sign a mutual defense treaty.
June 11–Elizabeth Cellier, an English Catholic midwife, is tried and acquitted of treason for pamphleting against the government.
June 16–Sambhaji Bhosle and his troops capture Raigad, the capital of the Maratha Empire and Sambhaji becomes the new Chhatrapati or Emperor. Sambhaji deposes his younger brother Rajaram I and places Rajaram and Rajaram's mother under house arrest.
August 10– A Pueblo medicine man named Popé begins an attack by the Puebloans and their Apache allies on Spanish outposts throughout what is the modern-day U.S. state of New Mexico, choosing the campaign to begin before a supply caravan can reach the Spaniards.
September 11–Emperor Go-Mizunoo spent his later years in relative seclusion as a retired emperor, continuing to participate in courtly and cultural activities until his passing away.
A four month truce between England and Morocco expires and the Alcaid Omar, Viceroy of Morocco, begins a bombardment of the English fort at Tangier.
A treaty is concluded between the Dutch Republic and the Ottoman Empire for Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV and his subjects to apply Dutch law to Dutch visitors to Ottoman territory.
September 21– Spanish troops make a counterattack on Santa Fe in the modern-day U.S. state of New Mexico, allowing the remaining Spanish troops in the besieged city to flee to El Paso (now in Texas).
December 17 (December 7 O.S.) – The trial for treason of William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford before his fellow members of the House of Lords having concluded after seven days, the Lords vote on whether to convict him of the articles of impeachment. The Lords vote, 55 to 31 to convict him and to impose the death sentence and Lord Stafford is beheaded on 29 December (8 January 1681 N.S.)
Date unknown
Chambers of Reunion (French courts under Louis XIV) decide on the complete annexation of Alsace.
January 1– Prince Muhammad Akbar, son of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, initiates a civil war in India. With the support of troops from the Rajput states, Akbar declares himself the new Mughal Emperor and prepares to fight his father, but is ultimately defeated.
January 18– The "Exclusion Bill Parliament", summoned by King Charles II of England in October, is dissolved after three months, with directions that new elections be held, and that a new parliament be convened in March in Oxford.
March 21– The "Oxford Parliament" is summoned in England by King Charles II and meets in Oxford rather than in Westminster, but is dissolved seven days later. No further sessions of parliament are held until after the death of Charles in 1685.
May 15– The Canal du Midi in France is opened officially, as the Canal Royal de Languedoc.
June 23– The Church of the East, an Eastern Orthodox rite in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), already split between two patriarchs in the Eliya line and the Shimun line, is split along a third line by the Roman Catholic Church when Mar Yousip of the Archdiocese of Amid (now Diyarbakır in Turkey) is proclaimed by Pope Innocent XI as Joseph I, "Patriarch of the Chaldean nation deprived of its patriarch", creating the "Josephite line" of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
October 27–Sir John Child of England becomes the new Governor of Bombay province and, unofficially, Governor-General of all of the settlements of the East India Company in India. With the exception of a rebellion by Captain Richard Keigwin during the year 1684, Child expands British control until involving the British in a war with the Mughal Empire.
November 29– A storm strikes the Isthmus of Panama and overwhelms the Spanish Navy's Flota de Tierra Firma, sinking the ship Nuestra Señora de Encarnación in the Chagres River. The Encarnación wreckage is not found until almost 340 years later, in 2011, mostly intact and still loaded with most of its cargo.
December 3– Another ship in the Flota de Terra Firma, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, sinks in the Chagres River with the loss of its 280 crew.
January 7– The Republic of Genoa forbids the unauthorized printing of newspapers and all handwritten newssheets; the ban is lifted after three months.
January 12– Scottish minister James Renwick, one of the Covenanters resisting the Scottish government's suppression of alternate religious views, publishes the Declaration of Lanark.
January 21– The Ottoman Empire army is mobilized in preparation for a war against Austria that culminates with the 1683 Battle of Vienna.
May 7 (April 27 O.S.) – Upon the death of the Tsar Feodor III of Russia, Feodor's younger brother, 15-year-old Ivan is passed over in favor of a half-brother, 10-year-old Peter.
May 11– The Moscow uprising of 1682 occurs when a mob, outraged by the rejection of Prince Ivan and upset over rumors that Ivan has been strangled, invades the Kremlin and lynches the leading boyars and military commanders. Ivan V and Peter I are named co-rulers of Russia as a result of a compromise between Peter's mother Natalya Naryshkina and Ivan's mother Maria Miloslavskaya and both are crowned a month later.
June 8– The English trading freighter Johanna is wrecked off of the coast of South Africa with the loss of 10 of her 114 crew, becoming the first of Britain's East India Company fleet to be lost.
June 25 (June 15 O.S.) – Ivan V and Peter I are crowned as joint Tsars of Russia at the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow, with actual power exercised by their older sister, Sophia Alekseyevna for the next seven years.
August 6– The Ottoman Empire declares war on the Holy Roman Empire and makes plans to attack Vienna.
August 12–Vesuvius begins a period of volcanic activity lasting for 10 days.
August 23– A comet that will later become known as Comet Halley, is observed from several locations on Earth after reaching magnitude 2 and becoming visible to the naked eye. Arthur Storer sees it from the North American colony of Maryland, while German astronomer Johannes Hevelius measures it from Danzig (now Gdansk in Poland). Edmond Halley successfully predicts that it will return in 1758.
August 25– Following the Bideford witch trial, three women (probably) become the penultimate known to be hanged for witchcraft in England, at Exeter.
November 22– Nearly 1,000 houses in Wapping, London are destroyed in a fire.
December 11–William Penn meets with Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore for the first discussion of the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, fixed at 40 degrees north. Recognizing that 40° north would remove Pennsylvania's access to the sea, Penn proposes a purchase of some of Maryland's territory.
December 27– Colonists from the German electorate of Brandenburg arrive at Akwidaa on the Brandenburger Gold Coast at what is now Ghana and, five days later, begin building a fort at what is now Princes Town.
Date unknown
Celia Fiennes, noblewoman and traveller, begins her journeys across Britain, in a venture that will prove to be her life's work. Her aim is to chronicle the towns, cities and great houses of the country. Her travels continue until at least 1712, and will take her to every county in England, though the main body of her journal is not written until the year 1702.
The Richard Wall House, believed to be the longest continuously inhabited residence in the US, is built in Pennsylvania.
January 27–Gove's Rebellion breaks out in the Province of New Hampshire in North America as a revolt against the Royal Governor, Edward Cranfield. Most of the participants, and their leader Edward Gove, are arrested. Gove is convicted of treason but pardoned three years later.
March 17– In a battle at Kalyan (near Bombay) between the Maratha Empire and the Mughal Empire in India, Maratha General Hambirrao Mohite defeats the local Mughal official, Ranamast Khan.
July 21– The gruesome execution of Lord Russell, for his role in the 1683 Rye House Plot to assassinate King Charles II of England, is carried out by the royal executioner Jack Ketch, who wields his axe in a manner requiring multiple blows to make Russell suffer as much as possible during the beheading.
August 4–Turhan, in the powerful role of the Valide sultan of the Ottoman Empire since 1648 as the mother of Sultan Mehmed IV, dies at the age of 56, bringing an end to the era in Ottoman history known as the "Sultanate of Women". Upon the overthrow of Mehmed IV four years later, the role of the mother of the Ottoman Sultan is less powerful.
August 25– The Earl of Limerick, Irishman Thomas Dongan, takes office as the new British Colonial Governor of the Province of New York and makes major reforms to restore public order and rescue the province from bankruptcy.
Battle of Vienna: The Ottoman siege of the city is broken with the arrival of a force of 70,000 Poles, Austrians and Germans under Polish–Lithuanian king Jan III Sobieski, whose cavalry turns their flank. The victory marks a turning point in the Ottoman Empire's fortunes and the end of the Turkish attempt to expand its control into Western Europe.
October 6–Germantown, Philadelphia is founded as the first permanent German settlement in North America (in 1983 U.S. President Ronald Reagan declares a 300th Year Celebration, and in 1987, it becomes an annual holiday, German-American Day).
George Ducas, the Prince of Moldavia installed by the Ottomans in 1678, is arrested by Polish authorities while on his way back to Bucharest from the defeat by Poland in the Battle of Vienna. Ducas is replaced by Ștefan Petriceicu.
December 27–Richard Keigwin leads a rebellion against the East India Company to take over as Governor of Bombay and most of the British territory in India, driving out Governor Sir John Child and arresting the Deputy Governor, Charles Ward. Keigwin surrenders the office less than a year later.
January 15 (January 5 O.S.) – To demonstrate that the River Thames, frozen solid during the Great Frost that started in December, is safe to walk upon, "a Coach and six horses drove over the Thames for a wager" and within three days "whole streets of Booths are built on the Thames and thousands of people are continually walking thereon." Sir Richard Newdigate, 2nd Baronet, records the events in his diary.
January – Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. Hooke's claim is that in a letter to Newton on 6 January 1680, he first stated the inverse-square law.
February 7 – Morocco retakes control of the city of Tangier from England, which had controlled the North African port since 1661. During the five months prior to evacuation of the English from the city, the Governor, Lord Dartmouth had ordered the destruction of the wall around the city, its fortifications and port facilities that had been built by the English during the occupation.
February 8 – Prince Dumitrașcu Cantacuzino returns to the throne of the principality of Moldavia for a third reign but is overthrown 14 months later on June 25. In 1859, Moldavia will unite with neighboring Wallachia to form the Kingdom of Romania.
February 15 (February 5 O.S.) – The Great Frost in Britain, during which the River Thames was frozen in London and the sea as far as 2 miles (3.2km) out from land and which started the previous December, ends as the Thames begins to thaw. William Maitland later writes that the Frost, which started in December 1683, "congealed the river Thames to that degree that another city, as it were, was erected thereon; where by the great number of streets and shops, with their rich furniture, it represented a great fair, with a variety of carriages, and diversions of all sorts." During the freeze, there had been great loss of beast and of wildlife, especially birds, and similar reports from across Northern Europe. The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty began during the freeze, with James Chipperfield introducing performing animals to the country at the Frost Fair on the Thames in London.
March 19 – In Japan, the Tenna era ends on the 21st day of the 2nd month of the Chinese calendar of the 4th year of the Tenna era and the Jōkyō era begins as Japan's royal astronomer, Shibukawa Shunkai institutes the Jōkyō calendar to replace Chinese calendar which had been used in Japan since 859 AD, after calculating that the length of the solar year is 365.2417 days.
May 18 – The French Navy begins a 10-day bombardment of the Italian city of Genoa in the course of the War of the Reunions between France and the Republic of Genoa. During the fight, the French fleet, commanded by Abraham Duquesne, fires almost 13,000 cannonballs, pausing only during a cease-fire on May 21 and May 22, and uses the new technology of explosive bombs. When the bombardment ends on May 28, two-thirds of the city has been destroyed or damaged.
October 7 – Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people.
November 8 – James Renwick, a Scottish minister and one of the "Covenanters" challenging the attempt by Kings James VI and Charles I to take over churches in Scotland, posts his "Apologetical Declaration" on church doors and market crosses in and around Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire.
Japanese poet Ihara Saikaku composes 23,500 verses in 24 hours at the Sumiyoshi-taisha (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; hence smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea.
January 8– Almost 200 people are arrested in Coventry by English authorities for gathering to hear readings of the sermons of the non-conformist Protestant minister Obadiah Grew .
February 4– A treaty is signed between Brandenburg-Prussia and the indigenous chiefs at Takoradi in what is now Ghana to permit the German colonists to build a third fort on the Brandenburger Gold Coast.
February 6– Catholic James Stuart, Duke of York, becomes King James II of England and Ireland, and King James VII of Scotland, in succession to his brother Charles II (1660–1685), King of England, Scotland, and Ireland since 1660. James II and VII reigns until deposed, in 1688.
March 28– An attack on a Mughal Empire envoy, Khwajah Abdur Rahim, outside of the Maratha fortress at the Bijapur Fort in India leads to a siege of the city by the forces of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. The siege lasts for 15 months before Bijapur surrenders.
March–Louis XIV passes the Code Noir, allowing the full use of slaves in the French colonies.
June 16– A lunar eclipse is observed in the evening by François-Timoléon de Choisy, amongst others, onboard his ship in the vicinity of Madagascar. The ship was at a latitude of 37 degrees 40 minutes, and the eclipse was not visible from Europe.
September 29– The first organised street lighting is introduced by the city of London in England, as Edward Hemming begins carrying out his contract to be paid for lighting an oil lamp "at every tenth house on main streets between 6 PM and midnight between September 29 and March 25" on nights in the autumn and winter without adequate moonlight.
December 3– King Charles XI of Sweden issues an order banning Jews from settling in Sweden, particularly in the capital at Stockholm "on account of the danger of the eventual influence of the Jewish religion on the pure evangelical faith."
December 10– In what is now Thailand, King Narai of Ayutthaya signs a treaty with representatives of France at Lopburi, allowing Roman Catholic missionaries to preach the Gospel and exempting Thai Catholics from work on Sunday, as well as appointing a special court to settle disputes between Thai Christians and non-Christians.
January 3– In Madras (now Chennai) in India, local residents employed by the East India Company threaten to boycott their jobs after corporate administrator William Gyfford imposes a house tax on residences within the city walls. Gyfford places security forces at all entrances to the city and threatens to banish anyone who fails to pay their taxes, as well as to confiscate the goods of merchants who refuse to make sales. A compromise is reached the next day on the amount of the taxes.
January 17– King Louis XIV of France reports the success of the Edict of Fontainebleau, issued on October 22 against the Protestant Huguenots, and reports that after less than three months, the vast majority of the Huguenot population had left the country.
January 31– In the wake of the success of France's campaign against Protestantism, Victor Amadeus II, the Duke of Savoy, issues an edict against the Valdesi, the Duchy's Protestant minority, setting a 15-day deadline for members of the Valdesi to publicly renounce their beliefs as erroneous, or face banishment or death. The February 15 deadline is ignored.
February 15– After the Valdesi in the Duchy of Savoy decline to obey the edict to convert to Catholicism, Duke Victor Amadeus dispatches a force of 9,000 French and Piedmontese soldiers to enforce the edict.
February 22– Sweden's Council of State endorses the reforms proposed by King Charles XI for the Swedish Church Law 1686, after having debated it in three sessions on February 18, 19 and 20. The law confirms and describes the rights of the Lutheran Church and confirms Sweden as a Lutheran state; all non-Lutherans are banned from immigration unless they convert to Lutheranism; the Romani people are to be incorporated to the Lutheran Church; the poor care law is regulated; and all parishes are forced by law to teach the children within them to read and write, in order to learn the scripture, which closely eradicates illiteracy in Sweden.
February 27–Gabriel Milan, the controversial Governor of the Danish West Indies since 1684, is removed from office by order of King Frederick III and placed under arrest for treason. Three years later, after being found guilty in a trial after being brought back to Copenhagen, Milan is beheaded on March 26, 1689.
March 3– A group of 107 French Canadian soldiers, under the command of Pierre de Troyes, begins the Hudson Bay expedition, departing from Montreal on an 800-mile (1,300km) journey to take control of the properties of British North American settlers of the Hudson's Bay Company. The group marches for 82 days and arrives at the first Hudson's Bay fort, at Moose Factory on June 19.
April–June
April 9– As the Valdesi rebellion continues, the Duke of Savoy issues a second edict, giving the Protestant Valdesi eight days to lay down their arms and allows safe passage into exile for those who agree.
April 22– In the wake of Savoy's newest repression of the Protestant Valdesi, a third war breaks out and Protestant pastor Henri Arnaud leads the resistance with 3,000 rebel soldiers against 8,500 Savoyard soldiers and mercenaries. The Valdesi are overwhelmed within one month.
May 25– The third war against the Protestant Valdesi ends. Soon afterward, 2,000 of the Valdesi are massacred, 8,500 taken prisoner and about 3,000 surviving civilians forcibly resettled and converted to Catholicism.
July 18–An army of 3,000 Chinese troops demand Russian surrender of a Russian Empire fortress at Albazino on the Amur River. The fortress is manned by only 736 Russian soldiers and militia but is armed with cannons. Over the next several weeks, the Chinese troops are joined by another 3,000 men in supply boats, but the Russians hold off the attacks for the next five months. By December, only 24 Russians remain, and Albazino is ceded to China in 1689.
August 4– Portuguese soldiers hired by the East India Company mutiny rather than follow orders to join the war in Bengal. The ringleaders are quickly arrested and executed, and the mutiny ends.
August 15–Christina, who had ruled as the monarch of Sweden until her abdication in 1654 in favor of her cousin Charles, responds to the revocation in France of the Edict of Nantz and declares that Jews within Sweden will be under her protection.
August 16–King James VII of Scotland dismisses the Parliament of Scotland after the members refuse to remove restrictions on Roman Catholics and on Protestants outside of the Church of Scotland and the Church of England. The Parliament does not meet again for more than two and a half years.
August 17– Spanish troops attack and plunder the Scottish colony of Stuarts Town in the Province of Carolina (now Port Royal, South Carolina) and plunder the city. After three days, the Spaniards begin a march of over 75 miles (121km) toward the larger port city of Charles Town.
September 30– The Ottoman fortress of Sinj in Dalmatia falls to the army of the Republic of Venice.
October–December
October 17– As the Savoyard–Waldensian wars, draw to a close, the Duke of Savoy announces that the Protestant Valdisi defenders will be granted safe passage to Switzerland, and that children taken during the war will be allowed to return to their families. By January, a little more than 2,500 Valdisi take the offer.
October 22– In the Great Turkish War, the Siege of Pécs ends when the Ottoman-held city, located across the Danube River from the recent liberated Buda, surrenders to Austrian troops of the Holy League, continuing the Austrian assumption of control of Hungary. Buda and Pest are later combined to form the Hungarian city (and now capital) of Budapest.
October 23–Szeged, now the second largest city in Hungary, is liberated from Turkish Ottoman rule.
October 31–Anglurah Agung, the virtual leader of the island of Bali as king of the paramount state of Gelgel, is killed in battle fighting Batu Lepang (who also dies in the fighting), ending the unification of the island (now part of Indonesia) and causing Bali to split into several principalities.
November 26– The Treaty of Whitehall, more formerly the Treaty of Neutrality for America, is signed at the Palace of Whitehall in Westminster between representatives of King Louis XIV of France and King James II of England, with both sides pledging that "though the two Countries might be at war in Europe their Colonies in America should continue in peace and Neutrality". The treaty is broken less than two years later when King William's War breaks out in what is now the U.S. state of Maine.
December 20–Edmund Andros arrives in Boston to become the British Governor of the newly created Dominion of New England, which includes most of the what are now the U.S. states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and much of the eastern portion of New York. The unpopular Andros, who reigns as a dictator after being appointed by King James II, is driven out of office in 1689 after the overthrow of James, and the Dominion of New England is broken up into its constituent colonies.
English historian and naturalist Robert Plot publishes The Natural History of Staffordshire, a collection of illustrations and texts detailing the history of the county. It is the first document known to mention crop circles and a double sunset.
January 3– With the end of latest of the Savoyard–Waldensian wars in the Duchy of Savoy between the Savoyard government and Protestant Italians known as the Waldensians, Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, carries out the release of 3,847 surviving prisoners and their families, who had forcibly been converted to Catholicism, and permits the group to emigrate to Switzerland.
January 8–Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, is appointed as the last Lord Deputy of Ireland by the English crown, and begins efforts to include more Roman Catholic Irishmen in the administration. Upon the removal of King James II in England and Scotland, the Earl of Tyrconnell loses his job and is replaced by James, who reigns briefly as King of Ireland until William III establishes his rule over the isle.
January 27– In one of the most sensational cases in England in the 17th century, midwife Mary Hobry murders her abusive husband, Denis Hobry, after he beats her up for the last time. Mary then dismembers his body and scatters the remains in a dunghill and in several outhouses (or privies) in the area. Despite a defense of justifiable homicide, Mary is convicted of murder and burned at the stake.
February 12– The Declaration of Indulgence is issued in Scotland by King James VII as one of the first steps in establishing freedom of religion in the British Isles, eliminating enforcement of criminal penalties against persons who failed to conform with Anglicanism. As King James II of England, he issues a similar declaration on April 4.
April 26– The Spanish city of Guayaquil (now part of Ecuador) is attacked and looted by English and French pirates under the command of George Hout (English), Pierre Le Picard and Francois Groniet (French). Of more than 260 pirates, 35 are killed and 46 were wounded; 75 defenders of the city died and more than 100 are wounded.
June 14– In one of the few actions on land in the Anglo-Siamese War, English sailors on the coast of Mergui in Burma (now Myeik, Myanmar) are massacred by Siamese troops.
October 20– An estimated 8.7 magnitude earthquake strikes 50 kilometres (31mi) off of the coast of Peru and kills at least 5,000 people, primarily from a tsunami that washes away the city of Pisco and causes severe damage to the Spanish colonial cities of Lima, Callao and Ica.
October 31– The legend of the Charter Oak begins as a successful attempt to hide the 1662 Royal Charter of the British colony (and now a U.S. state) of Connecticut after Edmund Andros, the Governor of the Dominion of New England, makes a mission of attempting to confiscate the founding documents for the seven colonies that make up the new administrative area. After Governor Andros arrives in Hartford and comes to the tavern of Zachariah Sanford to demand the Connecticut Colony charter, Captain Joseph Wadsworth spirits the parchment away from the and hides the Charter in a hollowed out portion of a white oak tree on Wyllys Hyll until Andros is recalled to London.
November 5– An annular solar eclipse is visible from Arabia across the Indian Ocean and across the south of Australia
December 31– In response to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a group of Huguenots set sail from France, and settle in the recently established Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope, where, using their native skills, they establish the first South African vineyards.
January 2 – Fleeing from the Spanish Navy, French pirate Raveneau de Lussan and his 70 men arrive on the west coast of Nicaragua, sink their boats, and make a difficult 10 day march to the city of Ocotal.
March – William Dampier makes the first recorded visit to Christmas Island, now a territory of Australia, located south of the island of Java (now part of Indonesia).
June 10 – The birth of James Francis Edward Stuart (later known as the Old Pretender), son and heir to James II of England and his Catholic wife Mary of Modena, at St James's Palace in London, increases public disquiet about a Catholic dynasty, particularly when the baby is baptised into the Catholic faith. Rumours about his true maternity swiftly begin to circulate.
June 24 – French forces under Chevalier de Beauregard abandon their garrison at Mergui, following repeated Siamese attacks; this ultimately leads to their withdrawal from the country.
September 24 – Louis XIV publishes his manifesto Memoire de raisons, which lists his grievances and demands. He cites three major things as grievances: Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, who had been earlier elected to be the coadjutor-archbishop of Cologne with support of Louis being vetoed by the pope, the continued aggressions and forming of alliances against France and providing an alternative to Fürstenberg in the Cologne election by the Holy Roman Empire, and Philip William becoming Elector Palatine and seizing the territory, which he believed belonged to Elizabeth Charlotte.
November 15 (November 5 OS) – The Glorious Revolution begins: William of Orange lands at Torbay, England with a multinational force of 20,000 soldiers. He makes no claim to the British Crown, saying only that he has come to save Protestantism and to maintain English liberty, and begins a march on London.
November 19 (November 9 OS) – William of Orange captures Exeter, after the magistrates flee the city.
November 20 (November 10 OS) – The Wincanton Skirmish between forces loyal to James II led by Patrick Sarsfield and a party of Dutch troops is one of the few armed clashes in England during the Glorious Revolution.
December 9– The Battle of Reading takes place in Reading, Berkshire. It is the only substantial military action in England during the Glorious Revolution and ends in a decisive victory for forces loyal to William of Orange.
March 22 (March 12 O.S.) – Start of the Williamite War in Ireland: The deposed James II of England lands with 6,000 French soldiers in Ireland, where there is a Catholic majority, hoping to use it as the base for a counter-coup. However, many Irish Catholics see him as an agent of Louis XIV, and refuse to support him.
March 27– Japanese haiku master Bashō sets out on his last great voyage, which will result in the prose and verse classic Oku no Hosomichi ("Narrow Road to the Interior").
The Siege of Derry begins in Ireland as former King James II arrives at the gates of Derry and asks for its surrender during the Williamite War in Ireland. The Protestant defenders refuse and the siege lasts until August 1 when it is abandoned. .
William and Mary accept the Scottish throne a month after the Scottish Parliament votes to depose King James VII
May 12–Nine Years' War: With England and the Netherlands now both ruled by William III, they join the Grand Alliance (League of Augsburg), thus escalating the conflict, which continues until 1697. This is also the effective beginning of King William's War, the first of four North American Wars (until 1763) between English and French colonists, both sides allied to Native American tribes. The nature of the fighting is a series of raids on each other's settlements, across the Canadian and New England borders.
August 12–Pope Innocent XI (Benedetto Odescalchi, b. 1611), Pope since 1676, dies. He played a major part in founding both the League of Augsburg, against Louis XIV, and the Holy League, against the Ottoman Empire.
Roman Catholic cardinals convene in Rome for a papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope Innocent XI. The conclave lasts until October 6.
Gravely ill, the Empress Xiaoyiren is proclaimed empress by her husband, China's Kangxi Emperor, after having been Imperial Noble Consort since 1682. She dies the next day.
September 8– The Siege of Mainz (in the modern-day Rheinland-Pfalz state of Germany), which had started on June 1, ends after almost three months, as French General Nicolas Chalon du Blé surrenders the walled city to the armies of Austria and the Dutch Republic.
September 9– King William brings England into a military alliance with the Holy Roman Empire in a fight against France in the Nine Years War.
October 6– The papal conclave in Rome unanimously elects Pietro Vito Ottoboni as the new Pope. Ottoboni takes the name Alexander VIII and succeeds Pope Innocent XI, to become the 241st pope, the first Venetian to hold the office in over 200 years.
December 10– A great comet is visible from Pekin and sightings continue until December 24th, including many from Dutch ships near the equator.
December 16– The Bill of Rights (An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown), drawn up by the Convention Parliament of England to establish constitutional monarchy in England, but with Roman Catholics barred from the throne, receives royal assent; it will remain substantially in force into the 21st century.