1706
Benjamin Franklin Born in Boston
The fifteenth child of a soap-maker was born on Milk Street, across from the Old South Meeting House. He would run away to Philadelphia at seventeen, make a fortune printing, harness lightning with a kite, help draft a Declaration, and become the first American recognizable to the world. His face would eventually adorn the hundred-dollar bill of the nation he helped to create.
Battle of Ramillies
In three hours on a Flemish plateau, Marlborough broke a French army and, with it, French control of the Spanish Netherlands. Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent fell in weeks. Louis XIV, reading the dispatches at Versailles, is said to have asked quietly whether God had forgotten everything he had done for Him.
Hyderabad's Nizam Rises
The Mughal governor of the Deccan, Mir Qamar-ud-din, better known by his later title Nizam-ul-Mulk, began consolidating an autonomous regime from Hyderabad. Though still nominally a Mughal servant, he was laying foundations for a post-Mughal princely state that would last, in one form or another, until 1948. His dynasty became the wealthiest in India, ruling a territory the size of France.
Treaty of Altranstädt
Charles XII of Sweden forced Augustus the Strong to renounce the Polish crown and abandon his alliance with Russia, signing the humiliation at a Saxon hunting lodge. Sweden's boy-king stood at the zenith of his power. He chose, fatally, to turn east toward Moscow instead of resting on his triumph.