* 1717 – Spanish troops land on Sardinia.

* 1717 – Louis François, Prince of Conti ( d. 1776 )

* 1797 – Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, English military commander ( b. 1717 )

* 1717 – Blind Jack, English road builder ( d. 1810 )

* 1647 – Maria Sibylla Merian, German botanist ( d. 1717 )

* 1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria ( not actually born until 1717 ).

* John Armstrong ( 1717 – 1795 ), born in Fermanagh, United States Congressman

* 1717 – Elizabeth Carter, English writer ( d. 1806 )

* 1717 – Pope Pius VI ( d. 1799 )

* 1717 – Johann Joachim Winckelmann, German art historian ( d. 1768 )

* 1717 – Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, French statesman and diplomat ( d. 1787 )

* 1783 – Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer ( b. 1717 )

He met the influential early neoclassical painter Raphael Mengs ( 1728 – 1779 ), and through Mengs was introduced to the pathbreaking theories of art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann ( 1717 – 1768 ).

* 1717 – David Garrick, British actor ( d. 1779 )

* 1806 – Elizabeth Carter, English writer ( b. 1717 )

* 1717 – Ernst Gideon Freiherr von Laudon, Austrian field marshal ( d. 1790 )

By the 17th century, Osei Kofi Tutu I ( c. 1695 – 1717 ), with help of Okomfo Anokye, unified what became the Ashante into a confederation with the Golden Stool as a symbol of their unity and spirit.

Henry Middleton ( 1717 – June 13, 1784 ) was a plantation owner and public official from South Carolina.

Henry Middleton was born in 1717 near Charleston, South Carolina to Arthur Middleton ( 1681 – 1737 ) and Susan Amory, on the family plantation, " The Oaks ".

* 1717 – The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world ( now the United Grand Lodge of England ), is founded in London, England.

* 1717 – Peter III of Portugal ( d. 1786 )

* 1717 – John Collins, American politician ( d. 1795 )

* 1768 – Johann Joachim Winckelmann, German scholar and archaeologist ( b. 1717 )

* 1717 – The Netherlands, Great Britain, and France sign the Triple Alliance.

Bishop Hoadly attacked the high-church views of Hickes in his " Preservative Against the Principles of the Nonjurors " and in his famous 1717 sermon " The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ.

Hoadley, by his tract against the Non-jurors and his sermon on the Kingdom of Christ, provoked the Bangorian Controversy and so led to the virtual supersession of Convocation from 1717 to 1852 ; the appointment of Hampden to this see by Lord John Russell in 1847 was bitterly opposed by those who considered him latitudinarian, including the Dean of Hereford, and was appealed against in the Court of Queen's Bench.

In 1717, his sermon on " The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ " provoked the Bangorian controversy.

The controversy itself began very visibly and vocally when Hoadly delivered a sermon on 31 March 1717 to George I of Great Britain on The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ.

In May 1717, the Convocation appointed a committee to study the sermon.

The sloops Robert of Philadelphia and Good Intent of Dublin were stopped on 22 October 1717, and their cargo holds emptied.

Mesnager ( 1717 ), in which he impersonates Nicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht ( 1713 ) and A Continuation of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy ( 1718 ), a satire on European politics and religion, professedly written by a Muslim in Paris.

The influence of the grateful new queen being actively exerted on Alberoni's behalf — the princesse des Ursins having been chased out — within not much more than a year Alberoni was made a duke and grandee of Spain, a member of the king's council, appointed bishop of Málaga, and in 1715 prime minister, and was made cardinal by Pope Clement XI, under pressure from the court of Spain, in July 1717.

* Elizabeth was born about 1624 and died in Little Compton, Rhode Island on May 31, 1717.

Antoine Watteau, Embarkation for Cythera | Pilgrimage on the Isle of Cythera ( 1717, Louvre Museum | Louvre ) captures the frivolity and sensuousness of Rococo painting.

In the year 1717, the master of the Royal Mint Sir Isaac Newton established a new mint ratio between silver and gold that had the effect of driving silver out of circulation and putting Britain on a gold standard.

The Viceroyalty of New Granada () was the name given on 27 May 1717, to a Spanish colonial jurisdiction in northern South America, corresponding mainly to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.

Year 1717 ( MDCCXVII ) was a common year starting on Friday ( link will display the full calendar ) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by

Royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings.

The second but eldest surviving child of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Archduchess Maria Theresa was born early in the morning of 13 May 1717, at the Hofburg Palace, Vienna, shortly after the death of her elder brother, Archduke Leopold, and was baptised on that same evening.

This resulted in Great Britain declaring war on Sweden in 1717.

The Water Music composed by George Frideric Handel premiered on 17 July 1717, when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames.

Sir Christopher Wren has since the eighteenth century been claimed by the Lodge of Antiquity No. 2, one of the four founding Masonic Lodges of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717, to have been its Master at the Goose and Gridiron at St. Paul's churchyard, while he was rebuilding the cathedral: he is said to have been " adopted " on 18 May 1691 ( that is, accepted as a sort of honorary member or patron, rather than an operative ).

Born the son of Jeffrey Amherst ( d. 1750 ), a Kentish lawyer, and Elizabeth Amherst ( née Kerrill ), Jeffery Amherst was born in Sevenoaks, England, on 29 January 1717.

In 1717 he went to Leipzig, where he was befriended by Johann Burkhard Mencke ( 1674 – 1732 ), who recognized his genius ; and there he published a poem on the peace of Passarowitz ( concluded between the German emperor and the Porte in 1718 ) which acquired him reputation.

The town became a popular resort in the 17th century and many grand houses were built there, such as Vanbrugh Castle ( 1717 ) established on Maze Hill, next to the park.

The Anne had originally been captured off the Virginia Capes in April by the pirate Samuel Bellamy in the Whydah, which wrecked in a storm on the night of April 26, 1717, off of Cape Cod.

The pirates soon departed the area on May 9, 1717, on the 25-ton sloop formerly belonging to Colonel Minot, with a pirate crew of 19.