The austerely neoclassical Villa Valguarnera, built from…

The first discovery of coal in Ukraine’s Donets Basin is made in 1721 at the Cossack village of Lisya Balka, which dates from 1710.

The Kuznetsk Coal Basin in south-central Russia is first discovered in 1721; the first small diggings for coal, along the Kondoma River, date from this time.

Production will long remain insignificant but in the twentieth century, “Kuzbass” is to become one of the largest producing coalfields of Russia.

Peter also reforms the government of the Orthodox Church, whose traditional leader is the Patriarch of Moscow.

When the office had fallen vacant in 1700, Peter had refused to name a replacement, allowing the Patriarch's Coadjutor (or deputy) to discharge the duties of the office.

Twenty-one years later, Peter follows the advice of Ukrainian clergyman Feofan Prokopovich, bishop of Pskov, and in 1671 erects a spiritual college, namely the Holy Synod, a council of ten clergymen, to take the place of the Patriarch and Coadjutor, which he permanently abolishes.

The tsar appoints a secular official—the ober-prokuror, or chief procurator— to supervise the activities of the Holy Synod's activities, which ferociously persecuted all dissenters and conducted a censorship of all publications.

Priests officiating in churches are obliged by Peter to deliver sermons and exhortations that are intended to make the peasantry “listen to reason” and to teach such prayers to children that everyone would grow up “in fear of God” and in awe of the tsar.

The regular clergy are forbidden to allow men under thirty years old or serfs to take vows as monks.

The church is thus transformed into a pillar of the absolutist regime.

Partly in the interests of the nobility, the extent of land owned by the church is restricted; Peter disposes of ecclesiastical and monastic property and revenues at his own discretion, for state purposes.

Sundsvall, a town and seaport in northern Sweden, lying at the mouth of the Selånger River on the Gulf of Bothnia, is burned in 1721 during the Russian Pillage.

The private life of Frederick IV, king of Denmark and Norway from 1699, has often aroused indignation.

Having married Louise of Mecklenburg-Güstrow in 1695, he has entered into two morganatic marriages during her lifetime.

The second of these, in 1712, is with Anna Sophie, daughter of the chancellor, Conrad, Count Reventlow, and after Louise's death in 1721, despite opposition within the royal family, he raises Anna Sophie to the dignity of queen.

The Muhu archipelago, lying in the Baltic Sea, is separated from the mainland to the east by Muhu Strait.

The archipelago's three main islands are Saaremaa, the largest, in the south; Hiiumaa in the north; and Muhu, the smallest, in the east nearest the mainland.

The islands, owned by the Brothers of the Sword in the early thirteenth century and the Teutonic Knights from 1237, had been settled by Germans and Swedes.

The archipelago had come under the rule of Denmark in 1560 and Sweden in 1582; Russia takes possession in 1721.

A liberal newspaper is founded in Berlin in 172:, the Vossische Zeitung (more precisely: "[Königlich Privilegierte] Berlinische Zeitung von Staats- und Gelehrten Sachen"); its predecessor had been founded in 1704.

The first successful comparative study of architecture is Entwurf einer historischen Architektur (1721; A Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture) by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach.

An Austrian architect and sculptor, his works include the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (1694–1702) and the Kollegienkirche (1696–1707), both in Salzburg, and the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy in Vienna.

Hs Baroque style, a synthesis of classical, Renaissance, and southern Baroque elements, has shaped the tastes of the Habsburg empire.

Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, a collection of six instrumental works presented by him to Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721, had probably been composed earlier.

Most likely they had been written over a number of years during Bach's tenure as Kapellmeister at Anhalt-Cöthen and possibly even extending back to the period of his employment at Weimar (1708-17).

The concertos, revered, like many of Bach’s works, for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, are often regarded as some of the best ever written.

Because King Frederick William I of Prussia patronizes the military over the arts, Christian Ludwig lacks enough musicians in his Berlin ensemble to perform the concertos.

The Vaud, annexed by Bern in 1536 and having had the Reformation imposed on them by force, has long chafed under the administration of Bernese bailiffs when in 1723 Jean-Abraham-Daniel Davel becomes the focus of discontent.

Claiming divine inspiration and envisioning a Christian revival, he leads a contingent of followers upon Lausanne, the administrative capital of the Vaud (March 31, 1723), where he urges the declaration of Vaudois independence.

The city's councilors refuse compliance with his demands and deliver him to the Bernese authorities.

Within three weeks, the movement is crushed and Davel executed, but his heroic manner on the execution block wins him the admiration of many, and he is to became a continuing symbol of the Vaudois struggle for independence, occupying a significant place in local tradition well into the twentieth century.