Roggeveen reaches Easter Island
Europeans first see the moai, on Easter Sunday
On 5 April 1722, Easter Sunday, Jacob Roggeveen's Dutch expedition came upon a remote island in the eastern Pacific and named it Easter Island. The sailors described huge stone statues still standing on their platforms and, by their reckoning, several thousand inhabitants; during the landing the Dutch shot about a dozen islanders. The next Europeans did not arrive until 1770.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 18th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1703 Founding of Saint Petersburg — 19 years earlier
- 1709 Battle of Poltava — 13 years earlier
- 1721 Proclamation of the Russian Empire — 1 year earlier
Middle East
- 1722 Fall of Isfahan — same year
- 1747 Ahmad Shah Durrani founds the Afghan state — 25 years later
Alive at the time
- Isaac Newton (aged 79)
- Kangxi Emperor (aged 68)
- Peter the Great (aged 50)
- Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 37)
- Voltaire (aged 28)
- Benjamin Franklin (aged 16)
- Mikhail Lomonosov (aged 11)
- Ahmed III (aged 49)
- Vitus Bering (aged 41)
- Tokugawa Yoshimune (aged 38)