1698

Events 
 January 4 – Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire.
 June 19 – Volcano of Carguarazon erupts in the Andes and causes a rain of fish
 August 25 – Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow – general Patrick Gordon has already crushed the streltsy rebellion – 341 rebels sentenced to be decapitated. Tradition holds that tsar Peter decapitated some of them himself
 September 5 – In an effort to move his people away from Asiatic customs, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards; All men except priests and peasants, are required to pay a tax of one hundred rubles a year and the commoners had to pay one kopek each

 Whigs sponsor Captain Kidd of New York as a privateer against French shipping
 Darien Scheme – First Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama
 Isaac Newton calculates the speed of sound
 Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kochi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid Meteor storm, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".
 Thomas Savery patents an early steam engine.
 A congress begins in Sremski Karlovci to discuss a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League.
 Humphrey Hody is appointed regius professor of Greek at Oxford.
 Bucharest becomes capital of Wallachia (now part of Romania).
 Mombasa and Zanzibar are captured by Oman.
 George Louis (who would in 1714 become King George I of Great Britain) becomes Elector of Hanover.