1715
Death of Louis XIV
The Sun King died at Versailles after seventy-two years on the throne, the longest reign in European history. Gangrene had blackened his leg; he bore it with awful dignity. His wars had bled France white, his palace had bankrupted the treasury, and his state had become the model every monarch in Europe tried to copy.
Spanish Treasure Fleet Wrecked
A hurricane caught eleven Spanish galleons returning from Havana off the Florida coast, loaded with silver and emeralds. Most sank; a thousand sailors drowned. Pirates and salvors flocked for years. Henry Jennings's raid on the Spanish salvage camp helped launch the Golden Age of Caribbean piracy. Treasure hunters still dive the wrecks off Vero Beach, pulling coins from the sand three centuries later.
The First Jacobite Rising
The Earl of Mar raised the standard of James Stuart, the Old Pretender, at Braemar. Thousands of Highlanders flocked in; Lowland towns rose. But Mar dithered, the Pretender arrived late, and the rising collapsed in snow. James returned to exile; his heir would try again thirty years later, with even worse luck.
Samson the Elephant in Boston
A young Indian elephant, shipped from Bengal to Massachusetts by a sea captain as a curiosity, was exhibited to paying crowds in Boston: the first elephant ever seen in North America. Puritan ministers disapproved; small boys stared. The commerce of the exotic, and the age of the American sideshow, had discreetly begun.