1707
Aurangzeb Dies, Mughal Empire Unravels
At eighty-eight, after forty-nine years of austere rule and endless war in the Deccan, the last great Mughal emperor died in his tent, asking to be buried without ceremony. His sons fell instantly to fighting. The empire he had stretched to its greatest extent began immediately to come apart. Within a generation, provincial governors in Hyderabad, Bengal, and Awadh would rule as kings in all but name.
Act of Union Creates Great Britain
England and Scotland merged parliaments at Westminster, ending a century of awkward personal union. Scots mobs rioted; Defoe reported from Edinburgh. Yet the bargain held: free trade, common tariffs, and a larger stage for Scottish talent. A new kingdom, awkwardly hyphenated, stepped onto the world map. Scottish merchants, engineers, and soldiers would soon build, govern, and profit from the empire more than anyone expected.
Mount Fuji's Last Eruption
Two weeks after a massive earthquake, Mount Fuji erupted from a new vent on its southeastern flank, raining volcanic ash on Edo a hundred kilometers away. Fields in Suruga province were buried. The eruption, called Hōei, was Fuji's last - the sacred mountain has slept since, its snow-capped silence more unsettling for being temporary.
Linnaeus Born
On a small parsonage in Smaland, Sweden, a boy was born who would one day organize all living things into genera and species. Carl Linnaeus's father called him his little botanist because he could not stop naming flowers. The two-word Latin phrase, Homo sapiens among them, became his lasting gift to science.
Maratha Resurgence Under Shahu
Released by the Mughals after eighteen years of captivity, Shivaji's grandson Shahu returned to the Deccan and, after a brief civil war, took the throne of the Marathas. Under his peshwas the confederacy would become the dominant power in India, stretching one day from Attock to Tanjore. The peshwa at Pune gradually eclipsed the king at Satara, governing the confederacy's vast network of tributary states.
Scilly Naval Disaster
Four English warships, unable to fix their longitude in fog, ran onto the Scilly Isles' rocks. Two thousand sailors, including Admiral Shovell, drowned. Parliament, appalled, would offer a prize for any method that could find longitude at sea. A Yorkshire clockmaker named John Harrison would answer. His marine chronometers, perfected over decades of obsessive craft, eventually solved the problem and saved countless lives.