May 3 – The coronation of KingFrederick I of Sweden takes place in Stockholm, six weeks after his rule began.
May –Great Plague of Marseille begins. The last major outbreak ofbubonic plague in western Europe, the disease kill over 100,000 people in the city and surrounding area of France.[2]
May 20 – TheTreaty of The Hague, signed between Spain and the Quadruple Alliance (Britain, France, the Netherlands and Austria) on February 17, goes into effect. Spain renounces its claims to the Italian possessions of the French throne, and Austria and the Duchy of Savoy tradeSicily forSardinia.
May 25 – The British privateerSpeedwell, captained byGeorge Shelvocke, is wrecked on the uninhabited island ofMás a Tierra, the same island where Alexander Selkirk was marooned for five years; the island off of the coast ofChile is later calledRobinson Crusoe Island. The crew is marooned for five months but is able to build a boat from timbers salvaged from the wreck, and is able to escape the island on October 6.
June 1 – British silversmiths are once again allowed to usesterling silver after 24 years of being limited to a higher quality (but softer)Britannia silver.
June 11 – The British Parliament approves theBubble Act (officially the Royal Exchange and London Assurance Corporation Act 1719), prohibiting the formation of joint-stock companies without prior approval by royal charter.
June 19 – AtBurhanpur (in the modern-day Indian state ofMadhya Pradesh), the Nizam-ul-Mulk of Hyderabad survives an attempted ambush byMughal Empire forces dispatched by the Sayyid brothers (Syed Abdullah Khan and Syed Husain Ali Khan Barha) and goes on to establish a rival state in southern India.
June 25 – The "South Sea Bubble", the phenomenal growth of theSouth Sea Company, reaches its peak as South Sea stock is priced at £1,060 a share. By the end of September, as panic sales are made, the price falls to £150.
July 12 – Under the authority of theBubble Act, the Lords Justices in Great Britain attempt to curb some of the excesses of the stock markets during the "South Sea Bubble". They dissolve a number of petitions for patents and charters, and abolish more than 80 joint-stock companies of dubious merit, but this has little effect on the creation of "Bubbles", ephemeral joint-stock companies created during the hysteria of the times.[3]
July 27 – TheBattle of Grengam takes place in the Ledsund strait between the island communities of Föglö and Lemland. It is the last major naval battle in the Great Northern War taking place in the Åland Islands, marking the end of Russian and Swedish offensive naval operations in Baltic waters.
October 8 –Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan Barha, one of the powerfulSayyid brothers of the Mughal Empire in India, is stabbed to death by Turkish nobleman Haider Beg Dughlat after Dughlat distracts him by giving him a petition to read. The assassination is ordered by Nizam ul-Mulk in retaliation for Sayyid Hussain's attempted ambush on June 19.
October 15 –Muhammad Ibrahim, a grandson of the late EmperorBahadur Shah I, is freed from prison by conspirators and declared the Mughal Emperor as a rival of his brotherMuhammad Shah, beginning a 32-day reign that is described as being "like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass".
Parallel to the English South Sea Bubble France experiences the Mississippi Bubble. Market shares of theMississippi Company had reached a peak price of over 10,000 livres in spring just to plummet to 1,000 by the end of the year. Monthly inflation in France reaches 23 percent and a bank rush ensues when investors try in vain to convert paper notes issued by the Banque Royale into gold and silver.John Law, the Scottish architect of the Bubble, is forced to flee the country.
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