1666
Newton Describes Gravity at Woolsthorpe
According to Newton's own later account, he sat in his mother's garden at Woolsthorpe that summer, watched an apple fall, and wondered whether the same force that pulled the apple to the ground might extend to the moon. The story is probably true in outline, if not in apples, and the insight it represents would eventually unify terrestrial and celestial mechanics.
Sabbatai Zevi Converts to Islam
The Ottoman court, impatient with the Smyrna mystic whose claims to be the Jewish messiah had roused Europe, gave Sabbatai Zevi a choice between Islam and execution. He chose Islam and kept his head. Jewish messianic expectation, which had swept from Amsterdam to Yemen, collapsed in bitter disillusionment, leaving communities that had sold their possessions in anticipation of redemption stricken and ashamed.
Great Fire of London
A fire that started in a bakery on Pudding Lane, fanned by an east wind and dry summer, burned for four days and destroyed thirteen thousand houses, eighty-seven churches, and old Saint Paul's Cathedral. Only a handful of people died; the Plague was cauterized with the rubble. Christopher Wren would rebuild the City.
Academy of Sciences Founded in Paris
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's controller-general, founded the Academie des Sciences as a state-funded research institution modeled loosely on the Royal Society but more tightly controlled by government. French science had gained institutional patronage and a commitment to utility that would distinguish it from its English counterpart, producing generations of mathematicians, astronomers, and naturalists who served both truth and the crown.