Era · c. 1500 – 1800
Voyages of exploration, the Reformation and the age of revolutions that reshaped Europe and the wider world.
Fahrenheit's accurate mercury thermometers and scale became a standard in Britain and its colonies, while the centigrade scale of Celsius later became the international norm.
A Fulani-led Islamic state, the imamate of Futa Jallon, was founded with its capital at Timbo and lasted until French conquest in the 1890s.
The first Ottoman press run by Muslims printed 17 titles in Turkish, Arabic and Persian between 1729 and the 1740s, mainly dictionaries, histories and geographies.
Dahomey annexed the kingdom of Hueda and took control of Ouidah, one of the busiest slave-trading ports in West Africa.
The Agojie became a core part of Dahomey's army for over 150 years until the kingdom's defeat by France in 1892–1894.
Grand Vizier İbrahim Pasha was executed, Ahmed III abdicated in favour of Mahmud I, and Patrona Halil was himself killed in November 1730.
The expedition mapped most of Russia's Arctic coast and reached north-western America in 1741, but Bering died on Bering Island after his ship was wrecked.
The flying shuttle roughly doubled a weaver's output and helped create the yarn shortage that drove the mechanisation of spinning.
The Trustees' colony of Georgia was established at Savannah, the last of Britain's thirteen mainland colonies, with a planned town and an early ban on slavery that was lifted in 1751.
The revivals divided established churches, boosted evangelical denominations, founded new colleges and encouraged a more personal, voluntary style of religion in colonial America.
The Qing Empire reached its greatest territorial extent and cultural splendour, but ended the reign burdened by corruption, rebellion and a strained treasury.
Linnaeus's ranked classification and consistent two-part species names became the foundation of modern biological nomenclature.
