In the year St Petersburg was founded (1703), Newton became President of the Royal Society.
He outlived Peter the Great by two years.
The events
- Newton's Principia1687 · London. Isaac Newton published the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, setting out his three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. One mechanics for heaven and Earth became the foundation of classical physics.
- Founding of Saint Petersburg1703 · Saint Petersburg. During the Great Northern War, Peter I laid a fortress at the mouth of the Neva on land taken from Sweden. The new city became Russia's capital and its 'window on Europe', the emblem of Peter's reforms.
More amazing facts
- 1661 · 1662 The last confirmed sighting of a dodo was in 1662 — just as Louis XIV was beginning to rebuild Versailles.
- 1682 · 1683 Peter I became tsar in 1682; a year later the Ottomans were stopped at the gates of Vienna.
- 1689 The authoritative text of the first Russia–China treaty, Nerchinsk (1689), was in Latin: Jesuit interpreters handled the talks.
- 1709 The brutal winter of 1709, the 'Great Frost', struck all of Europe and wore down Charles XII's Swedish army before Poltava.
- 1741 · 1768 Steller's sea cow was discovered in 1741 and wiped out in just 27 years: the last was apparently killed in 1768, the year Cook set off on his first voyage.
- 1751 · 1762 Catherine II corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot and offered to publish the Encyclopédie, banned in France, in Riga.