1692
year

1692 (MDCXCII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1692nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 692nd year of the 2nd millennium, the 92nd year of the 17th century, and the 3rd year of the 1690s decade. As of the start of 1692, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Events
January–March
January 24 –King William's War – Candlemas Massacre: At least 75 residents of what is now York, Maine are killed by French soldiers, led by missionary Louis-Pierre Thury, along with a larger force of Abenaki and Penobscot Indians, under the command of Penobscot Chief Madockawando.
January 30 – English Army General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, a close adviser to King William III of England, is fired from all of his jobs by the English Secretary of State, the Earl of Nottingham, on orders of Queen Mary II.
February 13 – Massacre of Glencoe: The forces of Robert Campbell slaughter around 30 members of the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe in Scotland (from whom they have previously accepted hospitality), for delaying to sign an oath of allegiance to King William III of England.
February 17 – An annular solar eclipse is visible across Russia, western Mongolia, Xinjiang, Iran, Afghanistan and Iran.
March 1 – The Salem witch trials begin in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony, with the charging of 3 women with witchcraft. Tituba, a slave owned by Samuel Parris, is the first to be arrested, and she implicates Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, who are arrested later in the day.
March 22 – The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty issues the Edict of Toleration, recognizing all the members of the Roman Catholic Church, not just the Jesuits, and legalizing missions and their conversion of Chinese people to the Christian Faith.
April–June
April 18 – Giles Corey, Mary Warren, Abigail Hobbs and Bridget Bishop, all residents of Salem, Massachusetts, are arrested and charged with the practice of witchcraft.
May 2 – The first performance of the semi-opera The Fairy-Queen by Henry Purcell, based on William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, takes place at the Queen's Theatre, Dorset Garden in London.
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This entry incorporates text from “1692” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.