1698
Savery Patents Steam Pump
The English military engineer Thomas Savery patented a device for raising water by fire: a crude steam engine without a piston, intended to pump water out of Cornish tin mines. It worked poorly but worked. The age of steam had its first ungainly mechanical ancestor, and the principle of converting heat into motion would eventually power the Industrial Revolution.
Darien Scheme Launched by Scotland
Scotland invested a quarter of its national wealth into an ill-conceived colony on the fever-ridden Isthmus of Darien in Panama. Mosquitoes, Spanish hostility, and English indifference killed most of the settlers within two years. The catastrophic financial loss bankrupted Scotland and drove it, desperate and humiliated, toward the 1707 Act of Union with England.
Oman Expels the Portuguese from East Africa
After a prolonged siege, Omani forces captured Fort Jesus at Mombasa, the last major Portuguese stronghold on the East African coast. The garrison, reduced to a handful of skeletal defenders, surrendered after thirty-three months. Three centuries of Portuguese dominion over the Swahili coast ended, and Oman became the Indian Ocean's newest maritime power.
Streltsy Revolt
The traditional Russian musketeer regiments, unhappy with Peter I's western reforms and long absences, rose in revolt and marched on Moscow. Peter hurried home from his Grand Embassy, crushed the rebellion, and personally participated in the torture and execution of hundreds of streltsy. The old Russia was being hunted down.
Paris Academy of Sciences Reformed
Louis XIV's minister Pontchartrain reorganized the Paris Academy of Sciences as a body of salaried royal officials charged with advancing useful knowledge. The Academy became a model for state-supported science that would outlast its founders. Enlightenment science had its first fully bureaucratic European institution, and the French tradition of government-funded research that continues today was firmly established.