1727
Death of Isaac Newton
Eighty-four, unmarried, Master of the Mint, and universally revered, Newton died in Kensington. He was buried in Westminster Abbey like a king. Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night, wrote Pope. God said, Let Newton be, and all was light. The Enlightenment had its saint. His unpublished manuscripts, discovered later, revealed a man equally consumed by alchemy, biblical chronology, and the secret architecture of creation.
Treaty of Kyakhta
Russia and Qing China fixed their long Siberian border and opened trade at a remote Mongolian crossroads. Russian furs flowed south; Chinese tea and silk flowed north. For more than a century, nearly all Russian tea arrived by caravan through Kyakhta. Two empires had politely agreed to ignore each other for a while.
Bach's St. Matthew Passion Premieres
On Good Friday at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Bach's setting of the Gospel of Matthew received its first performance before a bored congregation. Double choirs, double orchestras, and arias of almost unbearable tenderness. Forgotten within a generation, it would be revived by Mendelssohn a century later and recognized for what it was.
George II Ascends the British Throne
George I died in Germany en route to Hanover, vomiting in his carriage. His son, the equally unloved George II, succeeded him. He would keep Walpole in power against his own inclinations, be the last British king to lead troops in battle, and listen to Handel's coronation anthems in Westminster Abbey.