The State of Virginia forbids blacks and slaves from bearing arms, prohibits blacks from congregating in large numbers, and mandates harsh punishment for slaves who assault Christians or attempt escape.

The Pueblo Revolt drives the Spanish out of New Mexico until 1692.

The first museum of natural history is established in London.

Painting by Claude Lorraine: Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia was painted in Rome for Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna (1637 1689), Claude's most important patron in his last years, and is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It is signed, dated with the year, and inscribed with the subject (at centre bottom), as Claude sometimes did with his less common subjects. It was Claude's last painting, and is perhaps not quite finished; it therefore does not appear in the Liber Veritatis, where he made drawings to record his finished works. His date of birth is uncertain, but he was at least in his late seventies when he painted it, perhaps as old as 82.

What will become Pennsylvania is colonized by William Penn. Penn founds Philadelphia. Also, with other Friends, Penn purchases East Jersey.

New York makes it illegal for slaves to sell goods.

Virginia declares that all imported black servants are slaves for life.

La Salle (Ren -Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle) explores the length of the Mississippi River and claims Louisiana for France.

Peter the Great becomes joint ruler of Russia (sole tsar in 1696).

The Ottoman Empire suffered a significant defeat at the Siege of Vienna, a failed attempt to capture the city of Vienna, Austria. This marked the beginning of the empire's decline, as it was forced to cede territory and lost its status as a major European power.

The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the second Siege of Vienna.

Oxford opens the Ashmolean Museum, the world's first public museum. The museum's practice of allowing entry to anyone who pays the admission fee horrifies scholars from continental Europe.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz publishes a description of his invention of the differential calculus.

Edict of Fontainebleau outlaws Protestantism in France. King Charles II dies.

Robert Boyle composes Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature criticizing the notion that nature is capable of autonomy from God.

Sir Isaac Newton publishes his Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica (or just Principia), which describes an infinite, steady state, static, universe, in which matter on the large scale is uniformly distributed. In the work, he establishes the three Laws of Motion ( a body persists its state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force ; force equals mass times acceleration ; and to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction ) and the Law of Universal Gravitation (that every particle in the universe attracts every other particle according to an inverse-square formula) that were not to be improved upon for more than two hundred years. He is credited with introducing the idea that the motion of objects in the heavens (such as planets, the Sun and the Moon) can be described by the same set of physical laws as the motion of objects on the ground (like cannon balls and falling apples).

The Pennsylvania Quakers pass the first formal antislavery resolution.

John Locke publishes his first Letter Concerning Toleration. Its initial publication was in Latin, though it was immediately translated into other languages. Locke's work appeared amidst a fear that Catholicism might be taking over England, and responds to the problem of religion and government by proposing religious toleration as the answer. This "letter" is addressed to an anonymous "Honored Sir": this was actually Locke's close friend Philipp van Limborch, who published it without Locke's knowledge.

William III ascends to the throne over England, Scotland, and Ireland.