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The night of 6–7 January 1598

Feodor I died in Moscow during the night of 6–7 January 1598 in the Julian calendar, corresponding to 16–17 January Gregorian. The Great Russian Encyclopedia dates the acute crisis to the evening of 6 January Old Style and his death roughly two hours later.

He left no surviving child and was the last member of the Moscow branch of the Rurikids to occupy the Russian throne.

An interim nobody could define

The succession was not transferred immediately and cleanly to Boris Godunov. A near-contemporary official narrative depicts the widowed Irina exercising authority, consulting Patriarch Job and ordering commanders to reinforce frontier cities.

Her constitutional status is disputed. Contemporary government records show her issuing commands and receiving allegiance, but she had not been crowned as a ruling tsaritsa.

Nine days, counted generously

On 15 January Old Style, Irina withdrew to Moscow's Novodevichy Convent and took vows under the monastic name Alexandra, leaving the throne unresolved until Boris's later election.

The conventional claim that she ruled for nine days uses inclusive counting and simplifies a legally confused transition.

The polity was the Tsardom, not the "Russian Empire" — that title was adopted under Peter I in 1721.

Sunset, 9 October 1604, Verona

At sunset on 9 October 1604, the astronomer Ilario Altobelli saw an unfamiliar stationary light in Verona, near the conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in Ophiuchus. A modern historical study identifies him as the first known observer to report it.

He insisted in later letters that the object had not been present through 8 October; he had been watching the same part of the sky night after night to follow the conjunction.

As bright as Jupiter, and an odd colour

On that first evening Altobelli judged the new object comparable to Jupiter and described an unusual mixed yellow-green or orange colour.

What observers called a stella nova was the light from a supernova in the Milky Way, now catalogued as SN 1604. NASA gives its peak apparent magnitude as approximately −2.5 and its daylight visibility as about three weeks.

Kepler was clouded out

Additional observers reported the object in Italy on 10 October. Clouds kept Kepler from seeing it in Prague until 17 October, after which he monitored it for more than a year; his 1606 book gave the event its enduring name.

Modern secondary sources contest who saw it first: NASA names Lodovico delle Colombe, whereas the 2021 historical study identifies Altobelli and documents his repeated insistence on the date.

Historical naked-eye brightness estimates carry substantial uncertainty — a modern review assigns typical errors of roughly 0.25 to 0.5 magnitude.

1614, Edinburgh: the tables go to print

John Napier published Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio at Edinburgh in 1614, printed by Andrew Hart. It was the first publication of a complete logarithm table.

The title page and surviving copies fix the year. The consulted catalogues and scholarship do not establish a particular day or month.

What was actually in the book

The text explained how Napier's new artificial numbers could replace difficult multiplications, divisions and root extractions with simpler operations. Fifty-seven pages of explanation were followed by ninety pages of tables.

Those tables paired trigonometric sines with Napier's logarithms at one-minute angular intervals through a whole quadrant, computed on a whole-sine scale of 10,000,000 units. The Descriptio gave worked examples but withheld the construction method, which appeared posthumously as Constructio in 1619.

Translation, lectures and collaboration

Napier's stated aim was to cut the delay, labour and risk of error in lengthy calculation, especially trigonometric calculation. Astronomers, navigators and anyone working in spherical trigonometry could now consult printed logarithms instead of grinding through the arithmetic.

Edward Wright set about an English translation for practitioners. Henry Briggs was lecturing on the method and travelled to meet Napier in 1615, and the two went on to develop the more convenient common-logarithm system.

4 June 1615: the summer campaign ends

On 4 June 1615 — Keichō 20, fifth month, eighth day — the Osaka Summer Campaign closed in Tokugawa victory. Osaka Castle fell, Toyotomi Hideyori died, and Hideyoshi's political inheritance ended with him.

The decisive fighting was at Tennōji and Okayamaguchi. Toyotomi troops were driven back into a castle whose defences had been dismantled or filled in under the previous winter's armistice; it was overrun and burned.

Who died inside

Hideyori and his mother, Yodo-dono, died as the stronghold was destroyed. Sanada Nobushige, who commanded in the final battle near Tennōji, was killed there.

Accounts differ in reconstructing their last hours. The fall and the deaths are secure, but dramatic dialogue and exact suicide scenes often come from later narratives.

Crosses on the losing banners

Kirishitan converts and rōnin fought for the Toyotomi. One scholarly study records crosses and Christian insignia on their banners and counts three Franciscans, two Jesuits and two Japanese clergy with the Osaka force.

Command on the winning side was split between father and son: Tokugawa Ieyasu remained the dominant strategist but had relinquished the shogunal title in 1605, and Hidetada was the reigning shogun. The castle tourists see at Osaka today stands above the buried, fire-damaged walls of the Toyotomi fortress destroyed in 1615.

14 May 1643: the crown passes at Saint-Germain

Louis XIII died at the Château-Neuf of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 14 May 1643, and his son succeeded him immediately as Louis XIV.

The new king was four years old in completed years: born on 5 September 1638, he had not reached his fifth birthday. Some French sources say he became king "at five", meaning that he was in his fifth year.

A letter to the Parlement

A letter issued in Louis XIV's name from Saint-Germain-en-Laye that day notified the Parlement of his father's death, invoked his hereditary right, and instructed officials to continue administering justice.

The succession followed from the death itself and waited on nothing else. Louis was not crowned at Reims until 1654.

Four days to a regency

On 18 May, at a lit de justice the child king attended, the Parlement granted Anne of Austria full regency authority and confirmed Cardinal Mazarin as minister of state.

Mazarin was being confirmed rather than appointed; he had entered the royal council in December 1642. At that first lit de justice Louis appeared in a violet robe and was carried into the assembly.

8 November 1644: an auspicious day chosen in Beijing

A formal imperial enthronement for the young Shunzhi Emperor was held in Beijing on 8 November 1644, an auspicious jiazi day beginning a new sexagenary cycle.

It was his second enthronement rather than his accession. He had already been enthroned at Mukden on 8 October 1643, and the Shunzhi era had begun with the lunar new year in February 1644.

The proclamation on yellow paper

The emperor issued an ascension proclamation asserting Qing sovereignty and naming Beijing as the dynasty's capital.

The surviving document is black ink on yellow paper and written only in Chinese, not in the Qing court's usual multilingual format. Feng Quan, a ritual expert and former Ming official, helped orchestrate the ascension using established Chinese court ritual.

The regent in the room

The emperor was six years old by Western reckoning. During the ceremony Dorgon's achievements were likened to those of the ancient regent the Duke of Zhou, and his status was elevated to Uncle Prince-Regent.

Dorgon had moved court and child emperor from Mukden after occupying Beijing. What the day asserted was rule from the former Ming capital; it did not found the Qing dynasty, which had borne that name since 1636.

14 July 1683: the army appears before the walls

On 14 July 1683 the main Ottoman army, commanded by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha, appeared before Vienna's walls and began investing the Habsburg imperial residence.

Emperor Leopold I had already left the city, and the Habsburg field army had withdrawn ahead of the Ottoman advance.

The demand, and the refusal

Kara Mustafa issued the customary demand for surrender to Vienna's commander, Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg. His letter offered alternatives: conversion and Ottoman protection, or surrender while remaining Christian under Ottoman protection.

The city did not capitulate. Starhemberg held it with roughly 11,000 soldiers and about 5,000 armed citizens.

How big the army really was

The 173,000 figure that circulates in anniversary lists is not scholarly consensus. Modern estimates of the force at Vienna run to roughly 90,000 or 120,000, and larger totals may fold in auxiliaries, camp followers, or the campaign's whole mobilization.

What the day produced was an encircled, defended city and a siege that ran about two months. The relief battle of 12 September is a separate event; a print made in 1683 puts both dates in its title.

22 January 1689: a Convention no monarch had summoned

Lords and newly elected Commons assembled at Westminster on 22 January 1689 in response to letters issued by William of Orange. James II's flight had left no reigning monarch able to summon a regular Parliament.

That made the gathering a Convention rather than, initially, a Parliament — called by William, not summoned by a king. A printed letter from William to the Lords assembled in the Convention carries the contemporary date, 22 January 1688/9.

The double year is the English legal year, which began on 25 March. The parenthetical "12 January 1688 O.S." reverses the conversion: the meeting was 22 January Old Style, which is 1 February 1689 in the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

One word to settle

The Convention began deliberating whether James II's flight amounted to abdication and whether the throne was vacant. It settled neither question on its opening day.

"Abdicated" was the battleground. The Commons accepted the word; many Lords initially resisted it as unfamiliar to common law.

Weeks, not an afternoon

The Commons adopted an abdication-and-vacancy resolution on 28 January. Agreement between the Houses followed in early February, the Declaration of Rights was approved on 12 February, and the crown was offered and accepted on 13 February.

The settlement was English. Scotland held a separate Convention and adopted its own Claim of Right in 1689.

27 July 1694: a charter for a private company

On 27 July 1694, William III and Mary II granted the charter incorporating the subscribers as the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.

It was a private joint-stock corporation, created principally to finance the government's war against France. Sir John Houblon was appointed its first governor, with Michael Godfrey as deputy governor.

£1.2 million, lent straight back out

The incorporated subscribers' capital of £1,200,000 went to the government as a loan carrying 8 percent interest. The Bank's museum history says the target was raised in 11 days; many secondary accounts say 12.

The subscribers were not only City men. William and Mary themselves held £10,000 of Bank stock, alongside merchants, doctors, grocers and carpenters.

What the charter was not

The April 1694 Tonnage Act had already authorized the subscription scheme. The charter was the incorporation — not the opening of the subscription drive, and not the Bank's first day of business.

Trading began on 1 August at Mercers' Hall in Cheapside, with a staff of 17 clerks and two gatekeepers. The Bank remained owned by its stockholders until it was nationalized in 1946.

19 March 1707: paperwork arrives from Westminster

On 19 March 1707 the Scottish Parliament received and read the authenticated exemplification of the English act ratifying the Union, and ordered the act and its Union provisions entered in its own record.

The document recorded that Queen Anne had already given royal assent to the English bill at Westminster on 6 March. Matthew Johnson, Clerk of the English Parliament, had certified the attached copy on 7 March.

Why this is not the ratification date

English ratification became law by royal assent on 6 March. What happened in Edinburgh on the 19th was the reading and recording of authenticated English paperwork.

Nor is 19 March a calendar conversion of 6 March. Both are Julian dates under the calendar Britain then used, and 6 March Julian corresponded to 17 March Gregorian.

Six days from the end

The Scottish parliamentary record now held authenticated evidence of England's matching ratification. The settlement it confirmed gave Scotland 16 representative peers and 45 members of the Commons.

The Scottish Parliament held its final sitting on 25 March. The Union itself remained scheduled to take effect on 1 May.

Brought into blast

The traditional account places the bringing-into-blast of Abraham Darby's refurbished Coalbrookdale furnace on 10 January 1709, fuelled by coke — contemporary accounts call it charked coal.

Darby had leased the damaged Shropshire furnace in 1708, repaired it and prepared coke from local coal. His surviving accounts document coal being charcked in early January and contain no purchases of wood or charcoal for the campaign, which is strong evidence that coke was used.

Blast is not the same as cast

A furnace must be heated and operated before its first cast, so brought into blast and successfully produced cast iron are not interchangeable events. The evidence does not securely establish that finished cast iron was produced on 10 January itself.

One reconstruction identifies an item entered about four weeks after furnace warming as the probable first cast. Contemporary English dating also used the Julian calendar; 10 January Julian corresponds to 21 January Gregorian.

What Darby was actually first at

He was not the first person to try coke or coal in iron smelting. What is well supported is commercially sustained production of coke-smelted iron at Coalbrookdale beginning in 1709.

The commercial target was cookware: grey cast iron suitable for thin pots made efficiently in green-sand moulds, a system he developed with the moulder John Thomas. Darby sold 81 tons of iron goods during 1709, and the oldest identified surviving Darby coke-iron pot is dated 1714.

11 April 1713: five treaties, not one

At Utrecht on 11 April 1713, French plenipotentiaries concluded separate peace treaties with Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal, Prussia and Savoy. These were bilateral instruments; no single document was signed by every belligerent.

The year is 1713, not 1714. For the Anglo-French instrument, 11 April is the New Style date — British records give the same signing as 31 March 1713, Old Style.

What the British treaty carried

The France–Britain instrument declared reciprocal peace and incorporated the renunciations intended to prevent the French and Spanish crowns from being united. France recognized the Protestant succession and withdrew support from James Francis Edward Stuart.

It also ceded or recognized British possession of Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, Acadia/Nova Scotia and St Kitts, and accepted the dismantling of Dunkirk's fortifications.

Who was still at war

The other four instruments addressed Dutch barrier and commercial interests, the Prussian title and territories, Savoy and Nice, and the France–Portugal boundary in northern South America.

Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor were not parties to any of the five. Spain's treaties with Britain and Savoy followed on 13 July 1713, and Emperor Charles VI rejected the Utrecht terms and remained at war with France.