1651. John Owen, an eminent English divine, died. His works amount to 7 vols. folio, 20 quarto, and 30 octavo.
1651. King Charles II, who since his defeat at Worcester had wandered about from one royalist family to another, sleeping in their barns at night and concealing himself in the woods by day, escaped to France. A large oak on which he frequently stood in the woods near White-ladies, obtained the name of the royal oak.
1671. John Amos Comenius, an eminent German protestant divine and grammarian, died.
1711. The Edgar, admiral Hovenburgh's ship, blown up with 400 seamen on board, the officers being on shore.
1728. Bernard de la Monnoye, an elegant French poet, died. He also wrote in Greek, Latin and Italian.
1743. John Ozell, an indefatigable English writer, died; he is immortalized by Pope in the Dunciad.
1760. Battle of Campen; the French defeated the prince of Brunswick, who had a horse killed under him, and lost 1,600 men, chiefly British troops.
1764. Gibbon says that on this day, as he sat musing among the ruins of the Roman capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, he first conceived the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
1778. Pulaski's infantry surprised in the night by the British, and 50 killed, including baron de Bose. The timely arrival of Pulaski with the cavalry alone saved them from utter destruction.
1783. Pilatre de Rozier, the first aerial adventurer, made his first ascension from a garden in Paris. The balloon was of an oval shape.