Year 1684 (MDCLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1684

January - June

• (unknown)

July - December

• July 24 - René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails from France, again, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
• October 7 - Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shogun Tsunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people.
• December 10 - Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.

Undated

• France under Louis XIV makes the Truce of Ratisbon separately with the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg) and Spain.
• Pope Innocent XI forms a Holy League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland to liberate Europe from the Ottoman Turkish rule.
• Japanese poet Saikaku composes 23,500 verses in 24 hours at the Sumiyoshi Shrine at Osaka; the scribes cannot keep pace with his dictation and just count the verses.
• The British East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton. Tea sells in Europe for less than a shilling a pound, but the import duty of 5 shillings makes it too expensive for most English people to afford.
• Smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea.
• England has its coldest winter in living memory; the River Thames and the sea as far as 2 miles out from land freezes over.
• John Bunyan writes The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2.
• The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the River Thames frost fairs on the Thames in London.

Births

• January 1 - Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (d. 1748)
• January 14 - Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (d. 1745)
• February 24 - Matthias Braun, Czech sculptor (d. 1738)
• March 15 - Francesco Durante, Italian composer (d. 1755)
• March 19 - Jean Astruc, French physician and scholar (d. 1766)
• April 15 - Catherine I of Russia (d. 1727)
• June 22 - Francesco Manfredini, Italian composer (d. 1762)
• September 18 - Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist, and composer (d. 1748)
• October 10 - Antoine Watteau, French painter (d. 1721)
• October 26 - Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, Prussian field marshal (d. 1757)
• December 3 - Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian historian and writer (d. 1754)

See also Category: 1684 births.

Deaths

• April 1 - Roger Williams, English theologian and colonist (b. 1603)
• April 5 - Lord William Brouncker, English mathematician (b. 1602)
• May 4 - John Nevison, English highwayman (b. 1639)
• May 12 - Edme Mariotte, French physicist and priest (b. c. 1620)
• July 2 - John Rogers, American President of Harvard University (b. 1630)
• July 6 - Peter Gunning, English royalist churchman (b. 1614)
• August 8 - George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer (b. 1622)
• October 1 - Pierre Corneille, French playwright (b. 1606)
• October 11 - James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven (b. 1617)

See also Category: 1684 deaths.