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1721
Events January–March * January 6 – The Committee of Inquiry on the collapse of the South Sea Company in Great Britain publishes its findings. * February 5 – James Stanhope, chief minister of Great Britain, dies a day after collapsing while vigorously defending his government's conduct over the "South Sea Bubble" in Parliament. * March 24 – Johann Sebastian Bach's ''Brandenburg concertos'' are completed, and dedicated to Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt. April–June * April 4 – Robert Walpole becomes the first Prime Minister of Great Britain (although this is more a term of disparagement at this time). * April 21 – The deadliest outbreak of smallpox in the history of Boston begins when the British ship HMS ''Sea Horse'' arrives in Boston Harbor with a crew of sailors who had survived a smallpox epidemic. One of the ''Seahorse'' crew who had cleared quarantine develops symptoms the next day and infects other people in a lodging ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (; 26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whigs (British political party), Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the ''de facto'' first Prime Minister of Great Britain, serving from 1721 to 1742. His formal titles included First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons. Although the exact dates of Walpole's dominance, dubbed the "Robinocracy", are a matter of scholarly debate, the period 1721–1742 is often used. He dominated the Walpole–Townshend ministry, as well as the subsequent Walpole ministry, and holds the record as the List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure, longest-serving British prime minister. W. A. Speck, W. A. Speck wrote that Walpole's uninterrupted run of 20 years as prime minister "is rightly regarded as one of the major feats of British political history. Explanations a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
1721 Boston Smallpox Outbreak
In 1721, Boston experienced its worst outbreak of smallpox (also known as variola). 5,759 people out of around 10,600 in Boston were infected and 844 were recorded to have died between April 1721 and February 1722. The outbreak motivated Puritan minister Cotton Mather and physician Zabdiel Boylston to variolate hundreds of Bostonians as part of the Thirteen Colonies' earliest experiment with public inoculation. Their efforts would inspire further research for immunizing people from smallpox, placing the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the epicenter of the Colonies' first inoculation debate and changing Western society's medical treatment of the disease. The outbreak also altered social and religious public discourse about disease, as Boston's newspapers published various pamphlets opposing and supporting the inoculation efforts. Smallpox in Boston On 22 April 1721 the British passenger ship arrived at Boston from Barbados, after one stop at Tortuga, with a crew of sailors who had j ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope
James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope (1673 – 5 February 1721) was a British army officer and Whig politician who effectively served as Chief Minister between 1717 and 1721. He was also the last Chancellor of the Exchequer to sit in the House of Lords. Born in Paris as the son of a prominent diplomat, Stanhope pursued a military career. Although he also served in Flanders and Italy, he is best remembered for his service in Portugal and Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession. He was the first British Governor of Minorca, which he captured from the Spanish in 1708. In 1710 he commanded the British contingent of the Allied Army which occupied Madrid, having won a decisive victory at the Battle of Zaragoza. Having then evacuated the Spanish capital, Stanhope's rearguard on the retreat to Barcelona were overwhelmed and forced to surrender at Brihuega. Paroled, he returned to Britain and pursued a political career as a Whig. A supporter of the Hanoverian Succession he w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Pope Innocent XIII
Pope Innocent XIII (; ; 13 May 1655 – 7 March 1724), born as Michelangelo dei Conti, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 May 1721 to his death in March 1724. He remains the most recent pope to take the pontifical name "Innocent". Pope Innocent XIII was reform-oriented, and imposed new standards of frugality, abolishing excessive spending. He took steps to end the practice of nepotism by issuing a decree which forbade his successors from granting land, offices or income to any relatives – something opposed by many cardinals who hoped they might become pope and benefit their families. Biography Early life Michelangelo dei Conti was born on 13 May 1655 in Poli, near Rome as the son of Carlo II, Duke of Poli, and Isabella d'Monti. Like Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), Pope Gregory IX (1227–1241) and Pope Alexander IV (1254–1261), he was a member of the aristocratic landowning family of the Conti, who held the titles of counts and d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Pope Clement XI
Pope Clement XI (; ; ; 23 July 1649 – 19 March 1721), born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 23 November 1700 to his death in March 1721. Clement XI was a patron of the arts and of science. He was also a great benefactor of the Vatican Library; his interest in archaeology is credited with saving much of Rome's antiquity. He authorized expeditions which succeeded in rediscovering various ancient Christian writings and authorized excavations of the Roman catacombs. Biography Early life Giovanni Francesco Albani was born in 1649 in Urbino to the Albani family, a distinguished family of Albanian origin in central Italy. His mother Elena Mosca (1630–1698) was a high-standing Italian of bergamasque origin, descended from the noble Mosca family of Pesaro. His father Carlo Albani (1623–1684) was a patrician. His mother descended in part from the Staccoli family, who were patricians of Urbino, in part from the Gior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
South Sea Company
The South Sea Company (officially: The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America and for the encouragement of the Fishery) was a British joint-stock company founded in January 1711, created as a public-private partnership to Debt consolidation, consolidate and reduce the cost of the national debt. To generate income, in 1713 the company was granted a monopoly (the ''Asiento de Negros'') to supply African slaves to the islands in the "South Seas" and South America. When the company was created, Britain was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain and Portugal controlled most of South America. There was thus no realistic prospect that trade would take place, and as it turned out, the Company never realised any significant profit from its monopoly. However, Company stock rose greatly in value as it expanded its operations dealing in government debt, and peaked in 1720 before suddenly collapsing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Prime Minister Of Great Britain
The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet, and selects its ministers. Modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, so they are invariably members of Parliament. The office of prime minister is not established by any statute or constitutional document, but exists only by long-established convention, whereby the monarch appoints as prime minister the person most likely to command the confidence of the House of Commons. In practice, this is the leader of the political party that holds the largest number of seats in the Commons. The prime minister is ''ex officio'' also First Lord of the Treasury (prior to 1905 also the official title of the position), Minister for the Civil Service, the minister responsible for national security, and Minister for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
May 8
Events Pre-1600 * 453 BC – Spring and Autumn period: The house of Zhao defeats the house of Zhi, ending the Battle of Jinyang, a military conflict between the elite families of the State of Jin. * 413 – Emperor Honorius signs an edict providing tax relief for the Italian provinces Tuscia, Campania, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Lucania and Calabria, which were plundered by the Visigoths. * 589 – Reccared I opens the Third Council of Toledo, marking the entry of Visigothic Spain into the Catholic Church. * 1360 – Treaty of Brétigny drafted between King Edward III of England and King John II of France (the Good).p118 Hersch Lauterpacht, "Volume 20 of International Law Reports, Cambridge University Press, 1957, *1373 – Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic and anchoress, experiences the deathbed visions described in her '' Revelations of Divine Love''. * 1429 – Joan of Arc lifts the Siege of Orléans, turning the tide of the Hundred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Brandenburg Concertos
The ''Brandenburg Concertos'' ( BWV 1046–1051) by Johann Sebastian Bach are a collection of six instrumental works presented by Bach to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, in 1721 (though probably composed earlier). The original French title is ''Six Concerts Avec plusieurs instruments'', meaning "Six Concertos for several instruments". Some of the pieces feature several solo instruments in combination. They are widely regarded as some of the greatest orchestral compositions of the Baroque era. History It is uncertain when most of the material for the Brandenburg Concertos was written. It is clear that the first movement of Concerto No. 1 (BWV 1046) was based on an introduction to Bach's 1713 cantata '' Was mir behagt'', and the second and last may have been as well. It also seems likely that Concerto No. 5 was the last to be written; it features a prominent harpsichord part, which is presumed to be for a new instrument ordered for Prince Leopold from th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Kingdom Of Great Britain
Great Britain, also known as the Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in Western Europe from 1707 to the end of 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the Kingdom of England (including Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland to form a single kingdom encompassing the whole island of Great Britain and its outlying islands, with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The unitary state was governed by a single Parliament of Great Britain, parliament at the Palace of Westminster, but distinct legal systems—English law and Scots law—remained in use, as did distinct educational systems and religious institutions, namely the Church of England and the Church of Scotland remaining as the national churches of England and Scotland respectively. The formerly separate kingdoms had been in personal union since the Union of the Crowns in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became King of England an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
April 26
Events Pre-1600 * 1336 – Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux. * 1478 – The Pazzi family attack on Lorenzo de' Medici in order to displace the ruling Medici family kills his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral. * 1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of birth is unknown). 1601–1900 * 1607 – The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry. * 1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz. *1777 – Sybil Ludington, aged 16, allegedly rode to alert American colonial forces to the approach of British regular forces *1794 – Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. * 1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France. *1803 – Thousands of m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Pirate
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples of such areas include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term ''piracy'' generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
