1680

1689 Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas

December 30, 1689: English Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s beloved opera ‘Dido and Aeneas’ was first said to have premiered at Josias Priest’s girls’ school in London. Remembered as one of Purcell’s foremost theatrical works, it was also Purcell’s only true opera as well as his only all-sung dramatic work.   English Baroque composer Henry Purcell wrote his first opera based on the story of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the Prince of Troy, Aeneas, based on a libretto by Nahum Tate. It was first performed in 1689. Based on book IV of Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid, Henry Purcell may […]

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Events 1680s – The Glorious Revolution of 1688

1688 The Glorious Revolution  Events 1680: The Pueblo Revolt drives the Spanish out of New Mexico until 1692. The Great Comet of 1680 is first sighted by Gottfried Kirch, the first comet discovered by telescope Dodo becomes extinct. Wild boars are hunted to extinction in Britain A comet that will later become known as Comet Halley, is observed from several locations on Earth after reaching magnitude 2 and becoming visible to the naked eye. Arthur Storer sees it from the North American colony of Maryland, while German astronomer Johannes Hevelius measures it from Danzig (now Gdansk in Poland).  Edmond Halley successfully predicts that it will return in 1758. The first organised street lighting is introduced by the city of London in England, as Edward Hemming […]

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1688 William of Orange lands at Brixham, Devon

The customarily sober and understated William entered Exeter in triumphal procession: ‘Armed cap a pee. A plume of white feathers on his head. All in bright armour, and forty two footmen running by him.’ Fifty gentlemen and as many pages attended him and supported his banner, which bore the inscription ‘God and the Protestant religion’. William rode on a ‘milk white palfrey’ and was preceded by two hundred gentlemen in armour, English and Scottish for the most part, mounted on heavy Flemish horses. For further dramatic effect, these knights were accompanied by ‘two hundred blacks brought from the [sugar] plantations […]

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