Blackbeard blockades Charleston
The fiercest pirate holds a city hostage for a medicine chest
In May 1718 Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, blockaded the port of Charleston for about a week, seizing ships and hostages. For ransom he demanded not gold but a chest of medicines — and got it. Six months later he was killed in a fight off Ocracoke Island.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 18th century
Did you know
Blackbeard held the people of a whole city hostage — and asked for a chest of medicine. Once he got it, he released his captives and lifted the blockade of Charleston in May 1718. Share →
History's most famous pirate was a pirate for only about two years. Blackbeard appears in records in 1716 and died in 1718 — and there is no reliable account of him killing anyone he held captive. Share →
Blackbeard and Isaac Newton were contemporaries. When the pirate was killed off North Carolina in 1718, Newton was running the Royal Mint and the Royal Society — and had more than eight years still to live. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1703 Founding of Saint Petersburg — 15 years earlier
- 1709 Battle of Poltava — 9 years earlier
- 1721 Proclamation of the Russian Empire — 3 years later
Middle East
- 1722 Fall of Isfahan — 4 years later
Alive at the time
- Isaac Newton (aged 75)
- Kangxi Emperor (aged 64)
- Peter the Great (aged 46)
- Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 33)
- Voltaire (aged 24)
- Benjamin Franklin (aged 12)
- Mikhail Lomonosov (aged 7)
- Ahmed III (aged 45)
- Vitus Bering (aged 37)
- Tokugawa Yoshimune (aged 34)