Voltaire got rich by beating the state lottery.

1729

In 1729 he and the mathematician La Condamine spotted a flaw in its rules and bought up tickets until they had made a fortune.

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The event

• Diderot's Encyclopédie1751–1772 · Paris. Edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert, the multi-volume Encyclopédie of sciences, arts and trades began to appear. Despite censorship and bans, it became the great monument of the Enlightenment, spreading ideas of reason and tolerance.

18th century

More amazing facts

• 1726 In 1726 a surgeon to the royal household believed an Englishwoman was giving birth to rabbits.
• 1729 · 1762 Catherine the Great was born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst in the Prussian port of Stettin, now Szczecin in Poland.
• 1730 · 1755 The founder of Moscow University walked to Moscow.
• 1731 · 1739 Britain and Spain fought for nine years over a severed ear. Spaniards cut off Captain Jenkins's ear in 1731; after he told Parliament about it, war broke out in 1739.
• 1734 In 1734 a man from Ghana earned a doctorate in Germany.
• 1734 Bach wrote a musical comedy about a coffee addict.

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