In the year 1698, the first Scottish settlers leave for an ill-fated colony in Panama (Jul 14), English engineer Thomas Savery obtains a patent for a steam pump (Jul 25), Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards so as to move his people away from Asiatic customs (Sep 5), Christiaan Huygens argues in his posthumously published book Kosmotheoros that other planets in the solar system could contain extraterrestrial life, starting a debate that goes on - and all these fine people were born:
1698-xxxx Baal Shem Tov* (b Israel ben Eliezer) mystic/ healer/ regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism - Okopy, Kingdom of Poland (1760/c.62)
1698-0101 Archibald Spencer* physician/ scientist/businessman - Edinburgh, Scotland (1760/62)
1698-0103 Pietro Metastasio* poet/librettist - Rome, Papal States (1782/84)
1698-0107 Thomas Southwell* Irish nobleman/freemason/politician (1766/68)
1698-01
1698-0205 Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix* writer/ playwright - Rennes, Kingdom of France (1776/78)
1698-0207 Nicolas Sarrabat* mathematician/ scientist - Lyon, Kingdom of France (1739/41)
1698-0216 Pierre Bouguer* mathematician/ geophysicist/astronomer - Croisic, Kingdom of France (1758/60)
1698-0326 Prokop Diviš* (b Václav Divíšek) theologian/natural scientist/ inadvertently constructed one of the first grounded lightning rods - Helvíkovice, Kingdom of Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire (1765/67)
1698-0508 Henry Baker* naturalist/therapist/author - London, England (1774/76)
1698-0517 Gio Nicola Buhagiar* painter - Żebbuġ, Hospitalier Malta (1752/53)
1698-0619 Aoki Konyō* 青木昆陽 Confucian scholar/credited with introducing the cultivation of sweet potato in Japan - Nihonbashi, Edo (1769/80)
1698-0622 Charles-Hugues Le Febvre de Saint-Marc* playwright/homme de lettres - Paris, Kingdom of France (1769/71)
1698-0623 Lord Nassau Powlett* army officer/politician - England (1741/43)
1698-0717 Pierre Louis Maupertuis* mathematician/ philosopher/man of letter - Saint-Malo, Kingdom of France (1759/60)
1698-0719 Johann Jakob Bodmer* author/ poet/critic - Zürich, Switzerland (1783/84)
1698-0908 François Francœur* violinist/ composer - Paris, KIngdom of France (1787/88)
1698-0914 Charles François de Cisternay du Fay* chemist/discovered the existence of the two types of electricity - Paris, Kingdom of France (1739/40)
1698-0915 Pier Francesco Guala* Italian painter - Casale Monferrato, Alessandria (1757/58)
1698-1006 François-Bernard Lépicié* engraver/ historiographer/biographer - Paris, KIngdom of France (1755/56)
1698-1007 Henry Madin* composer/ music theorist /of Irish descent- Verdun, KIngdom of France (1748/49)
1698-1030 Peter Thompson* merchant/ antiquarian/MP - Poole, Dorset, England (1770/72)
1698-1108 Alberico Archinto* Italian cardinal/papal diplomat - Milan, Papal States (1758/59)
1698-1122 Pierre de Rigaud* colonial governor of New France - Quebec, New France (1778/79)
1698-1128 Charlotta Frölich* writer/historian/agronomist - Sweden (1770/71)
1698-1202 Oliver Legipont* German Benedictine bibliographer - Soiron, Limburg, Holy Roman Empire (1758/59)
1698-1225 Jacobus Houbraken* Dutch engraver - Dordrecht (1780/81)
1698-1227 Vlaho Kabužić* nobleman/ diplomat - Dubrovnik, Republic of Ragusa (1750/51)
Updated 27.3.2023-2
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