"Bajazet"
Jan 1 Jean Racine's five-act tragedy play "Bajazet" premieres in Paris, France
Newton's 1st Optics Paper
Feb 8 Isaac Newton reads first optics paper before the Royal Society in London
- Feb 23 Joan Blaeus publishers destroyed by fire in Amsterdam
Declaration of Indulgence
Mar 15 King Charles II of England enacts the Declaration of Indulgence in an unsuccessful attempt to extend religious liberty to Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics in his realms
- Apr 6 France declares war on Netherlands
- May 2 John Maitland, administrator of Scotland for Charles II, made the Duke of Lauderdale and Earl of March
- May 6 Brandenburg monarch Frederik Willem signs treaty with Netherlands
- May 15 1st copyright law enacted by Massachusetts
- May 17 Frontenac becomes Governor of New France (Canada)
- Jun 7 Battle by Solebay: Dutch admiral Michael de Ruyter beats a French-English fleet
- Jun 12 French army under General Turenne crosses the Rhine at Lobith during the Dutch War
- Jun 21 French troops under King Louis XIV occupy Utrecht
Johan de Witt Wounded
Jun 21 Grand Pensionary of Holland Johan de Witt is seriously wounded by a knife-wielding assassin
- Jun 25 1st recorded monthly Quaker meeting in US held at Sandwich, Massachusetts
Frontenac Sets Sail for New France
Jun 28 French aristocrat and new Governor of New France Louis de Buade de Frontenac sets sail from La Rochelle for Quebec [1]
- Jul 4 States of Holland declares "Eternal Edict" void
William III Appointed Stadholder
Jul 8 William III is appointed stadholder by the States General in the Netherlands
- Jul 9 William III inaugurated as viceroy of Holland and Zealand
- Aug 20 Former Grand Pensionary of Holland Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered and their livers supposedly cooked and eaten by an angry mob in The Hague
- Sep 6 William of Orange 's troops reconquer Naarden from France
- Oct 18 Treaty of Buchach ends the first phase of the Polish–Ottoman War between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire
- Dec 10 New York Governor Lovelace announces monthly mail service between New York & Boston
- Dec 23 Giovanni Cassini discovers Rhea, a satellite of Saturn
- Dec 30 Baron Karl Rabenhaupt occupies Coevorden, Netherlands
Admirals
Aviators
Gangsters
Generals
Industrialists
Suffragists