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London theaters reopen; actresses appear onstage for the first time
The new King enjoyed theatre and he issued a licence re-opening the theatres the moment he was back in England. One such licence went to William Davenport, who opened a theatre at Covent Garden, and another went to Thomas Killigrew, who opened a theatre not far away in Drury Lane. -
Charles II is proclamed king of england (crowned in1661)
Charles II was the monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland during much of the latter half of the 17th century, marking the Restoration era. -
Great fire of london
In the early morning hours, the Great Fire of London breaks out in the house of King Charles II’s baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. It soon spread to Thames Street, where warehouses filled with combustibles and a strong easterly wind transformed the blaze into an inferno. When the Great Fire finally was extinguished on September 6, more than four-fifths of London was destroyed. Miraculously, only 16 people were known to have died. -
Bloodless Revolution
The Glorious Revolution,[b] also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland) by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange). William's successful invasion of England with a Dutch fleet and army led to his ascending of the English throne as William III of England jointly with his wife Mary II of England, in conjunction with the documentation of the B -
Alexander Pope publishes part of The Rape of the Lock.
The Rape of the Lock opens with a brief letter from Pope to the poem's real-life subject, Arabella ("Belle") Fermor. In the letter, he explains why he wrote the poem in the first place, the circumstances that led him to publish it, and why he dedicates it to Arabella. -
Swift Publishes A Modest Propsal, protesting English treatment of the Irish poor
A Modest Proposal was written by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), who is well-known as the author of the satirical political fantasy, Gulliver's Travels. Swift published the Modest Proposal in 1729 as a pamphlet (a kind of essay in an unbound booklet). -
Voltaire publishes Candide
Candide begins in the German town of Westphalia, where Candide, a young man, lives in the castle of Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh. A noted philosopher, Doctor Pangloss, tutors the baron on philosophical optimism, the idea that "all is for the best . . . in this best of all worlds." Candide, a simple man, first accepts this philosophy, but as he experiences the horrors of war, poverty, the maliciousness of man, and the hypocrisy of the church, he begins to doubt the voracity of Pangloss's theory. -
George III is crowned king of england
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 Parliment passes Stamp Act for taxing American Colonies
an act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the British Crown. -
Boston Tea Party occurs
The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston") was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. -
African American poet Phillis Wheatly's Poems on Varoius Subject, Religious and Moral is published in London
Phillis Wheatley broke barriers as the first American black woman poet to be published, opening the door for future black authors. James Weldon Johnson, author, politician, diplomat and one of the first African-American professors at New York University, wrote of Wheatley that "she is not a great American poet—and in her day there were no great American poets—but she is an important American poet. Her importance, if for no other reason, rests on the fact that, save one, she is the first in order -
Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was the first great feminist treatise. Wollstonecraft preached that intellect will always govern and sought “to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonimous [sic] with epithets of weakness.” -
Napoleon heads revolutionary government in France
After a series of whirlwind victories, General Bonaparte led his victorious army into Milan on May 5, 1796. The Milanese greeted him as a heroic liberator, the general who freed them from the rule of the Austrian emperor Francis I. -
Plague claims more than 68,000 people in London
The Black Death: Bubonic Plague. In the early 1330s an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague occurred in China. The bubonic plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people. Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly.
