The year 1696 had the earliest equinoxes and solstices for 400 years in the Gregorian calendar, because this year is a leap year and the Gregorian calendar would have behaved like the Julian calendar since March 1500 had it have been in use that long. See 1903.

Events

• Peter the Great becomes sole tsar of Russia.
• Polish replaces Ruthenian as an official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
• A famine wipes out almost a third of the population of Finland.
• Abington, Pennsylvania, is settled.

Births

• March 5 - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, painter (+ 1770)
• Henry Pelham, English Whig politician, prime minister 1743-54 (died 1754)

Deaths

• June 17 - John III of Poland
• December 4 - Empress Meisho of Japan