January 9 – The Jamaican town of Port Royal, a center of trade in the Western Hemisphere and at this time the largest city in the Caribbean, is destroyed by a fire. British ships in the harbor are able to rescue much of the merchandise that has been unloaded on the docks, but the inventory in market-places in town is destroyed.[1]
January 14 – 1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.7 Norcia earthquake affects Central Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). With a death toll of 6,240–9,761, it is the first in a sequence of three destructive events.
January 16 – 1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.2 Montereale earthquake causes damage at Accumoli, Armatrice, Cittareale and Montereale, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe).
February 2 – 1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.7 L'Aquila earthquake affects Central Italy, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). In the final large event (an example of Coulomb stress transfer), damage occurs as far distant as Rome, with landslides, liquefaction, slope failures and at least 2,500 deaths.
March 1 – The Recruiting Act 1703 goes into effect in England, providing for the forcible enlistment of able-bodied but unemployed men into the English Army and Royal Navy in order to fight in Queen Anne's War in North America. The Act expires at the end of February 1704.
March 20 (February 4 in the Chinese calendar) – 46 of the forty-seven rōnin of Japan carry out an order of seppuku (ritual suicide) for the killing they committed on January 30. The punishment is given by the shogunTokugawa Tsunayoshi. The story continues to be dramatized more than 300 years later in Chūshingura theater, novels and film.
June 19 – Bavarian troops, who during the so-called Bavarian Rummel have invaded Tyrol, besiege Kufstein. Fires break out on the outskirts that engulf the town, destroy it and reach the powder store of the supposedly impregnable fortress. The enormous gunpowder supplies explode and Kufstein has to surrender on June 20. This same day the Tyrolese surrender in Wörgl; two days later Rattenberg is captured and Innsbruck is cleared without a fight on June 25.
June 30 – Battle of Ekeren (War of the Spanish Succession): The French surround a smaller Dutch force, which however breaks out and retires to safety.
July 26 – After their victories at the Pontlatzer Bridge and the Brenner Pass, Tyrolese farmers drive out the Bavarian Elector, Maximilian II Emanuel, from North Tyrol and thus prevent the Bavarian Army, which is allied with France, from marching on Vienna during the War of the Spanish Succession. This success, at low cost, is the signal for the rebellion of the Tyrolese against Bavaria, and Elector Maximilian II Emanuel has to flee from Innsbruck. The Bavarian Army withdraws through Seefeld in Tirol back to Bavaria.
October 11 – Nine Roman Catholic residents of the French village of Sainte-Cécile-d'Andorge are massacred by a mob of more than 800 French Huguenot Protestants, the Camisards. A reprisal against Protestants in the nearby village of Branoux is made less than three weeks later.
October 23 – Hannah Twynnoy, a 24-year-old barmaid in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, becomes the first person to be killed in Great Britain by a tiger. While working at the White Lion Inn, where a group of wild animals is on exhibit, she is mauled after bothering the tiger.
October 30 – More than 47 Huguenots in the village of Branoux-les-Taillades are massacred by Roman Catholic vigilantes in reprisal for the October 11 attack on nearby Sainte-Cécile, slightly more than two miles away.
War of the Spanish Succession: Battle of Speyerbach (in modern-day Germany) – The French defeat a German relief army, allowing the French to take the besieged town of Landau two days later, for which Tallard is made a Marshal of France.
date unknown &ndash Anastasiya Dabizha, princess of Moldavia and Wallachia and Hetmana of Ukraine.
References
^"Fires, Great", in The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance, Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) p47
^Marley, David (1998). "High Tide of Empire (1700-1777)". Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 225.
^"Danneskiold-Samsøe, Frederik" (in Danish). Danish Biographical Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on October 11, 2016. Retrieved September 16, 2016.
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