1684

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	16th century – 17th century – 18th century
Decades:	1650s  1660s  1670s  – 1680s –  1690s  1700s  1710s
Years:	1681 1682 1683 – 1684 – 1685 1686 1687

Year 1684 was a leap year that started on Saturday when using the Gregorian calendar.

Events

• July 24 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails from France, again, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
• October 7 – Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shogun Tsunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people.
• December 10 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.

Undated

• France under Louis XIV makes Truce of Ratisbon separately with the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg) and Spain.
• Pope Innocent XI forms a Holy League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland to liberate Europe from the Ottoman Turkish rule.
• 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.
• The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the River Thames frost fairs on the Thames in London.

Births

• January 1 – Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (died 1748)
• January 14 – Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (died 1745)
• February 24 – Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor (died 1738)
• March 15 – Francesco Durante, Italian composer (died 1755)
• March 19 – Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar (died 1766)
• April 15 – Catherine I of Russia (died 1727)
• June 22 – Francesco Manfredini, Italian composer (died 1762)
• September 18 – Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist, and composer (died 1748)
• October 10 – Antoine Watteau, French painter (died 1721)
• October 26 – Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, Prussian field marshal (died 1757)
• December 3 – Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian historian and writer (died 1754)

See also: :Category:1684 births

Deaths

• April 1 – Roger Williams, English theologian and colonist (born 1603)
• April 5 – Lord William Brouncker, English mathematician (born 1602)
• May 4 – John Nevison, English highwayman (born 1639)
• May 12 – Edme Mariotte, French physicist and priest (born c.1620)
• July 2 – John Rogers, American President of Harvard University (born 1630)
• July 6 – Peter Gunning, English royalist churchman (born 1614)
• August 8 – George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer (born 1622)
• October 1 – Pierre Corneille, French playwright (born 1606)
• October 11 – James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven (born 1617)

See also: :Category:1684 deaths