Some of the finest of Jan van…

Yongzheng is a hardworking administrator who rules with an iron hand.

His first big step towards a stronger regime had come when he returned the State Examination System back to its original standards.

He cracks down in 1724 on illegal exchange rates of coins, which are being manipulated by officials to fit their financial needs.

Those who are found in violation of new laws on finances are removed from office, or in extreme cases, executed.

When Nian makes a visit to Beijing in late 1724, and pays his respects to the Emperor, he is given additional honors and privileges normally granted to a Prince of the Blood.

His attitude, however, arouses hatred and jealousy, and many officials submit reports hostile to Nian.

Peter decrees the establishment of the Saint Petersburg State University on January 28, 1724.

He also establishes in this year the St. Petersburg Mint, which will centralize coinage in Russia and begin to produce different kinds of badges and medals used for decorating.

The campaign along the parched shores of the Caspian had obviously put a great strain on Peter's health, already undermined by enormous exertions and also by the excesses in which he occasionally indulged himself.

Peter, whose overall health has never been never robust, had earlier this winter begun having problems with his urinary tract and bladder.

A team of doctors in the summer of 1724 performs the necessary surgery releasing upwards of four pounds of blocked urine.

Peter remains bedridden until late autumn.

Restless and certain he is cured in the first week of October, he begins a lengthy inspection tour of various projects.

Peter has his second wife, Catherine, crowned as Empress, although he remains Russia's actual ruler.

All of Peter's male children have died—the eldest son, Alexei, had been tortured and killed on Peter's orders in 1718 because he had disobeyed his father and opposed official policies.

Alexei's mother Eudoxia had also been punished; she had been dragged from her home and tried on false charges of adultery.

A similar fate had befallen Peter's beautiful Dutch mistress, Anna Mons, in 1704.

Peter and Catherine have an estrangement over her support of William Mons (the handsome brother of Peter's former mistress and secretary to Catherine) and his sister Matryona Balk, one of Catherine's ladies in waiting.

Peter has fought his entire life a somewhat hopeless battle to clear up corruption in Russia.

Catherine has a great deal of influence on who can gain access to her husband.

Mons is promoted to the rank of imperial chamberlain on Catherine’s crowning, and he and his sister have begun selling their influence to those who want access to Catherine and through her Peter.

Apparently this is overlooked by Catherine, who is fond of them both.

Peter finds out, has Mons apprehended on charges of peculation (embezzlement) and betrayal of trust and, after a brief and brutal inquest by Pyotr Tolstoy, the head of the Secret Chancellery, has him publicly drawn and quartered on November 16.

His sister, who had been publicly flogged during her brother's trial, is exiled.

Peter and Catherine will not speak for several months.

Rumors fly that she and Mons had had an affair, but there is no evidence to support this.

Daniel Bernoulli was born in Groningen, in the Netherlands, into a family of distinguished mathematicians.

The son of Johann Bernoulli (one of the "early developers" of calculus), nephew of Jakob Bernoulli (who was the first to discover the theory of probability), and older brother of Johann II, Daniel Bernoulli is said to have had a bad relationship with his father, Johann.

Upon both of them entering and tying for first place in a scientific contest at the University of Paris, Johann, unable to bear the "shame" of being compared as Daniel's equal, had banned Daniel from his house.

Johann Bernoulli also plagiarized some key ideas from Daniel's book Hydrodynamica in his own book Hydraulica that he backdated to before Hydrodynamica.

Despite Daniel's attempts at reconciliation, his father carries the grudge until his death.

When Daniel was seven, his younger brother Johann II Bernoulli was born.

Around schooling age, his father, Johann Bernoulli, had encouraged him to study business, there being poor rewards awaiting a mathematician.

However, Daniel had refused, because he wanted to study mathematics.

He later gave in to his father's wish and studied business.

His father had then asked him to study in medicine, and Daniel agreed under the condition that his father would teach him mathematics privately, which they continued for some time.

He is a contemporary and close friend of Leonhard Euler.

He goes to St. Petersburg in 1724 as professor of mathematics, but is unhappy here.

His earliest mathematical work is the Exercitationes (Mathematical Exercises), published in 1724 with the help of Goldbach.

In it, he expresses the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence in terms of the golden ratio.

The St. John Passion (in German: Johannes-Passion), BWV 245, is a sacred oratorio of Johann Sebastian Bach from the Passions.

The original Latin title Passio secundum Johannem translates to "The Suffering According to John" and is rendered in English also as St. John Passion and in German as Johannespassion.

During the first winter that Bach is responsible for church music at the St. Thomas Church, Leipzig and the St. Nicholas Church, he composes the St. John Passion for the Good Friday Vespers service of 1724.

The St. John Passion is a dramatic representation of the Passion, as told in the Gospel of John, constructed of dramatically presented recitatives and choruses, commented by reflective chorales, ariosos, and arias, framed by an opening chorus and a final one, followed by a last chorale.

Compared with the St. Matthew Passion, the St. John Passion has been described as more extravagant, with an expressive immediacy, at times more unbridled and less "finished." (Steinberg, Michael. Choral Masterworks: A Listener’s Guide, 19. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005.)

The first recorded smallpox vaccination in Germany takes place in 1724.

The number of deaths associated with the practice soon cause it to fall into disfavor.

The Russians and the Ottomans are engaged in a race to occupy more Persian territories and are about to engage in a war over the occupation of Gandjeh when France intervenes.

With France as intermediary, the two governments on June 12 1724, sign a treaty in Constantinople—the Treaty of Constantinople, Russo-Ottoman Treaty or Treaty of the Partition of Persia—dividing a large portion of Persia between them.

Thus, the lands located on the east of the conjunction of the rivers Kurosh (Kur) and Aras are given to the Russians and the lands on the west go to the Ottomans.

Philip V, a younger brother of Louis, Duke of Burgundy and an uncle of Louis XV of France, on January 14, 1724, abdicates the throne to his eldest son, the seventeen-year old Louis, for reasons still subject to debate.

One theory suggests that Philip, who had exhibited many elements of mental instability during his reign, did not wish to reign due to his increasing mental decline.

A second theory puts the abdication in context of the Bourbon dynasty.

The French royal family recently had lost many legitimate agnates to diseases, making the lack of an heir and another continental war of succession a possibility.

Philip V is a legitimate descendant of Louis XIV, but matters are complicated by the Treaty of Utrecht, which forbids a union of the French and Spanish crowns.

In any case, Louis dies on August 31, 1724 in Madrid of smallpox, having reigned only seven months and leaving no issue.

Philip is forced to return to the Spanish throne as his younger son, the later Ferdinand VI, is not yet of age.

Narciso and Diego Tomé, in the University of Valladolid (1719), and Pedro de Ribera, in the facade of the San Fernando Hospital (now the Municipal Museum) in Madrid (1722), prove themselves to be the chief inheritors of Churriguera.

Innocent in 1724 invests the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI with sovereignty over the Kingdom of Naples.

Like his predecessor, Innocent XIII has showed much favor to the English Pretender "James III", and liberally supported him, recognizing James (the Old Pretender) as the king of England and promising him subsidies conditional upon the reestablishment of Roman Catholicism in England.

Following his death on March 7, 1724, he is succeeded by Pietro Francesco Orsini, later Vincenzo Maria Orsini, a member of the great Orsini family of Rome, and the third and last member of that family to become Pope.

At first, he calls himself Benedict XIV (due to the superstition alleging that the number thirteen brings bad luck), but afterwards alters the title to Benedict XIII.

A reforming Pope, he endeavors to put a stop to the decadent lifestyles of the Italian priesthood and of the cardinalate.

The Spanish Baroque and the Churrigueresque Style

Spanish Baroque, while sharing similarities with Italian Baroque, distinguishes itself through a heightened emphasis on surface decoration and intricate detail.

The most celebrated figure of this artistic movement is José Benito Churriguera, whose work epitomizes the Spanish Baroque’s fascination with rich ornamentation and elaborate textural embellishments. His opulent designs inspired a generation of architects, leading to the emergence of the Churrigueresque style, a term used to describe the highly decorative architectural trends of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Spain.

His brothers also left their mark on Spanish architecture. Joaquín Churriguera (1674–1724) is best known for his contributions to the Salamanca Cathedral (1714–1724, later dismantled after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake) and the Colegio de Calatrava (begun in 1717) in Salamanca. Meanwhile, Alberto Churriguera (1686–1750) designed the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca, one of the most distinguished public squares in Spain.