I started my homeschooling back up last Monday, and have been thoroughly enjoying my history course. Here are 16 dates in history that may surprise you:
_________________________________________________________________________________
1592 - Galileo invents the first thermometer. More precise ones were developed around 1660.
1618-1648 - The Thirty Years' War is fought in Europe. Germany is fragmented while France and Sweden make major territorial gains.
1633 - The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the church of England, begins persecuting dissenters, including Puritans.
1636 - The Massachusetts village of New Towne renames itself Cambridge after the university city of England. It votes $400.00 to begin a college. Puritan minister John Harvard leaves money to the college in his will in 1639, and it is renamed for him.
1637 - Descartes publishes a work which introduces modern analytical geometry.
1642 - Pascal invents the first adding machine.
1656 - Christiaan Huygens invents a clock that uses a pendulum to turn the gears. Its accuracy is a breakthrough in timekeeping. In 1675 he adds a spring to the balance wheel of an existing portable clock and invents the first modern pocket watch.1657 - Chocolate is introduced in London. The Spanish had found it being used in the court of Montezuma and had kept the recipe a secret for almost a century before the French began importing cocoa in the early 1600s.
1665 - John Milton publishes Paradise Lost.
1666 - A great fire destroys eighty percent of London, but the rebuilding process makes London the world's most modern city.
1678 - John Bunyan publishes The Pilgrim's Progress
1682 - Edmund Halley notices a comet, compares it to sightings in previous years, and predicts that it will return in 1758.
1690 - A Protestant army led by King William of England defeats an Irish Catholic force sympathetic to James II in the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. (The Catholics are called Jacobites because James is the English translation of the Hebrew name Jacob.) Protestant gloating over this battle has continued to be the source of much friction between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland today.
1690-1700 - Johann Denner perfects the clarinet.
1700 - The piano is developed in Italy. It is an improvement over the harpsichord.
1700 - The population of the world is estimated to be 600 million people.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I hope these dates were intriguing to hear. Please leave any requests for topics or songs in the comments. I love comments! <3
No comments:
Post a Comment