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London theaters reopen; actresses appear onstage for the first time
With the reopening of the theatres after the Restoration, women were for the first time allowed to act on the stage. Previously, female roles had been performed by young boys. The advent of women actors opened up a world of titillation and scandal, appreciated by audiences from all levels of society; from merchants to nobles and even King Charles II himself. It also brought about a variety of changes to the theatre. -
Charles II is proclaimed king of England (crowned in 1661)
Charles was born on 29 May 1630, the eldest surviving son of Charles I. He was 12 when the Civil War began and two years later was appointed nominal commander-in-chief in western England. With the parliamentary victory he was forced into exile on the continent. He was in the Netherlands when, in 1649, he learnt of his father's execution. -
Plague claims more than 68,000 people in London
The Great Plague of 1665 was the last major plague in England. The outbreak began in London in February. Within seven months 100,000 Londoners (20% or one-fifth of the population) were dead. Many fled the capital to escape the disease. Victims were shut in their homes and a red cross was painted on the door with the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’. The theatres and other public entertainments such as football were banned to stop the disease spreading. -
Great Fire destroys much of London
The Great Fire of London began on the night of September 2, 1666, as a small fire on Pudding Lane, in the bakeshop of Thomas Farynor, baker to King Charles II. At one o'clock in the morning, a servant woke to find the house aflame, and the baker and his family escaped, but a fear-struck maid perished in the blaze. -
Glorious (Bloodless) Revolution: James II is succeeded by Protestant rulers of William and Mary
Glorious Revolution, also called Revolution of 1688, or Bloodless Revolution, in English history, the events of 1688–89 that resulted in the deposition of James II and the accession of his daughter Mary II and her husband, William III, prince of Orange and stadholder of the Netherlands. -
Alexander Pope publishes part of The Rape of the Lock
Mock epic is a narrative poem which aims at mockery and laughter by using almost all the characteristic features of an epic but for a trivial subject. Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” is a famous mock-epic. In it, there is invocation to Muses, proposition of subject, battles, supernatural machinery, journey on water, underworld journey, long speeches, feasts (coffee house), Homeric similes and grand style but all for a simple family dispute instead of a national struggle. -
Swift publishes A Modest Proposal, protesting English treatment of the Ieish poor.
The tract is an ironically conceived attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth." Across the country poor children, predominantly Catholics, are living in squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed. -
Voltaire publishers Candide
Candide is the illegitimate nephew of a German baron. He grows up in the baron’s castle under the tutelage of the scholar Pangloss, who teaches him that this world is “the best of all possible worlds.” Candide falls in love with the baron’s young daughter, Cunégonde. The baron catches the two kissing and expels Candide from his home. On his own for the first time, Candide is soon conscripted into the army of the Bulgars. He wanders away from camp for a brief walk, and is brutally flogged as a de -
George III is crowned king of England; becomes known as the king who lost the American Colonies
England’s longest-ruling monarch before Queen Victoria, King George III (1738-1820) ascended the British throne in 1760. During his 59-year reign, he pushed through a British victory in the Seven Years’ War, led England’s successful resistance to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and presided over the loss of the American Revolution. After suffering intermittent bouts of acute mental illness, he spent his last decade in a fog of insanity and blindness. -
British Paraliament passes Stamp Act for taxing American Colonies
The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source. Arguing that only their own representative assemblies could tax them, the colonists insisted that the act was unconstitutional, and they resorted to mob violence -
African American poet Philis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subject, Religious and Moral is published in London
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral includes, besides the letter from John Wheatley, an attestation from eighteen prominent Boston citizens, including Governor Thomas Hutchinson and John Hancock, asserting their belief in Wheatley’s true authorship of the poems. Despite these endorsements, Wheatley was still forced to look beyond America’s borders for a publisher. However, the book was received well in both America and England, collecting praise from many notable figures of the time, -
Boston Tea Party occurs
This famed act of American colonial defiance served as a protest against taxation. Seeking to boost the troubled East India Company, British Parliament adjusted import duties with the passage of the Tea Act in 1773. While consignees in Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia rejected tea shipments, merchants in Boston refused to concede to Patriot pressure. On the night of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea -
Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Wollstonecraft doesn't waste a whole lot of time in getting to the point in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman . She says from the get-go that humanity's greatest gift is its ability to reason. And since men and women are born with the same ability to reason, women should enjoy just as much education, power, and influence in society as men do. The only reason women don't seem as smart as men, she says, is because they aren't given the same education. The one thing she's willing to admit is tha -
Napoleon heads revolutionary government in France
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), also known as Napoleon I, was a French military leader and emperor who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. Born on the island of Corsica, Napoleon rapidly rose through the ranks of the military during the French Revolution (1789-1799). After seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d’état, he crowned himself emperor in 1804. Shrewd, ambitious and a skilled military strategist, Napoleon successfully waged war against various coalitions of Eu
