1696

Centuries:	16th century · 17th century · 18th century
Decades:	1660s 1670s 1680s 1690s 1700s 1710s 1720s
Years:	1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699

1696 by topic:
Arts and Science
Architecture - Art - Literature - Music - Science
Lists of leaders
Colonial governors - State leaders
Birth and death categories
Births - Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments - Disestablishments
Works category
Works

1696 (MDCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Wednesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). The year 1696 had the earliest equinoxes and solstices for 400 years in the Gregorian calendar, because this year is a leap year and the Gregorian calendar would have behaved like the Julian calendar since March 1500 had it have been in use that long. See 1903.

Events

April - Fire destroys the Gra Bet (or Left Quarter) of Gondar, the capital of Ethiopia.
August 22 - Forces of Venice and Turkish troops clash near Molino
October 29 - Fuller Baptist Church founded in Kettering, England.
December 24 - Inquisition burns number of Marrano Jews in Evora, Portugal
Peter the Great becomes sole tsar of Russia.
Polish replaces Ruthenian as an official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
A famine wipes out almost a third of the population of Finland.
Abington, Pennsylvania, is settled.
William Penn offers an elaborate plan for intercolonial cooperation largely in trade, defense, and criminal matters.
The Second Pueblo Revolt took place
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville captured and destroyed St. John's, Newfoundland.

January 5 - Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena, Italian architect/painter (died 1757)
March 27 - Antoine Court, French Huguenot minister (died 1760)
March 5 - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Italian painter (died 1770)
June 11 - Francis Edward James Keith, Scottish soldier and Prussian field marshal (died 1758)
June 27 - William Pepperrell, English colonial soldier (died 1759)
July 14 - William Oldys, English antiquarian and bibliographer (died 1761)
August 2 - Mahmud I, Ottoman Sultan (died 1754)
August 12 - Maurice Greene, English composer (died 1755)
September 27 - Alphonsus Liguori, Italian founder of the Redemptionist order (died 1787)
October 13 - John Hervey, Lord Hervey, English statesman and writer (died 1743)
December 22 - James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia (died 1785)
Benning Wentworth, colonial governor of New Hampshire (died 1770)