Thomas Twining opens the first known tea…

Plague breaks out in Ruthenia, Podolia and Volhynia, with Lviv (Lemberg, Lwów) suffering around ten thousand plague deaths in 1704 and 1705 (forty percent of all inhabitants).

The armies of Charles XII of Sweden had repelled and taken up pursuit of the armies of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, by 1702, defeating them in July at Klissow near Pińczów on the Nida in southern Poland.

In their military hospital in Pińczów, the Swedish army suffers its first plague infections of soldiers, recorded on the basis of reports from "trustworthy people from that very land" by Danzig (Gdańsk) physician Johann Christoph Gottwald.

In Poland, the plague will recur in various places until 1714.

Marlborough and Eugene had separated again, following the Battle of Blenheim, with the former going to the Low Countries, and the latter to Italy.

Little progress is made in 1705 by either France or the Allies in any theater.

While Marlborough's attempted invasion of France down the Moselle comes to naught, and although he manages to wrong-foot Villeroy and break through the Lines of Brabant, he is unable to bring the French commander to battle.

Villars and Louis of Baden maneuver indecisively on the Rhine, and the story is much the same for Vendôme and Eugene in Italy.

Alexander Selkirk, hearing strange sounds from inland, which he feared were dangerous beasts, had remained at first along the shoreline, eating shellfish, scanning the ocean daily for rescue, and suffering all the while from loneliness, misery and remorse.

Hordes of raucous sea lions, gathering on the beach for the mating season, had eventually driven him to the island's interior.

Once there, his way of life had taken a turn for the better, as more foods were now available.

Feral goats—introduced by earlier sailors—provide him with meat and milk and wild turnips, cabbage, and black pepper berries offer him variety and spice.

Although rats attack him at night, he is able, by domesticating and living near feral cats, to sleep soundly and in safety.

Selkirk has proved resourceful in using equipment from the ship as well as materials that are native to the island.

He has built two huts out of pimento trees.

He uses his musket to hunt goats and his knife to clean their carcasses.

As his gunpowder dwindles, he has to chase prey on foot.

During one such chase he had been badly injured when he tumbled from a cliff, lying unconscious for about a day. (His prey had cushioned his fall, sparing him a broken back.)

He reads from the Bible frequently, finding it a comfort to him in his condition and a mainstay for his English.

When Selkirk's clothes wear out, he makes new garments from goatskin using a nail for sewing.

The lessons he had learned as a child from his father, a tanner, help him greatly during his stay on the island.

When his shoes became unusable, he had no need to make new ones, since his toughened, callused feet make protection unnecessary.

He forges a new knife out of barrel rings left on the beach.

Two vessels had arrived and departed, but both were Spanish.

As a Scotsman and privateer, he risked a terrible fate if captured and therefore he hid himself.

At one point, his Spanish pursuers had urinated at the bottom of a tree he was hiding in, but did not discover him.

Further forays, principally executed by the Creeks, are made into northern Florida in the wake of Moore's raids.

Creeks in August 1704 had destroyed the Yustagan missions of San Pedro and San Mateo; a year later they attack the Apalachee at Abosaya.

Further attacks against Abosaya the next month prompt the survivors to flee to St. Augustine.

Creek raiders besiege San Francisco de Potano and attack the La Chua ranch near Abosaya in the spring of 1706; both of these are abandoned, and Timucua is virtually depopulated by May 1706.

According to Apalachee scholar John Hamm, between Moore's raids and these later ones, two thousand natives went into exile, and an unknown number were enslaved.

Bienville wrote that raiding in the Florida area had resulted in the killing of two thousand Apalachees and the capture of thirty-two Spaniards, seventeen of whom were burned alive.

The Spanish presence in Florida by the end of 1706 has been reduced to St. Augustine and Pensacola.

The Province of Carolina incorporates the town of Bath on March 8, 1705, making it the first incorporated town in present day North Carolina.

The town will become the political center and de facto capital of the northern portion of the Province of Carolina until Edenton is incorporated in 1722.

French support for Rákóczi's struggle has gradually diminished, and a larger army is needed to occupy the already-won land.

Supplying the current army with arms and food is beyond his means.

He has tried to solve this problem by creating a new copper-based coinage, which is not easily accepted in Hungary as people are used to silver coins.

Rákóczi nevertheless manages to maintain his military advantage for a while.

A meeting of the Hungarian Diet (consisting of six bishops, thirty-six aristocrats and about a thousand representatives of the lower nobility of twenty-five counties), held near Szécsény (Nógrád county) in September 1705, elects Rákóczi to be the "fejedelem"—(ruling) prince—of the Confederated Estates of the Kingdom of Hungary, to be assisted by a twenty-four-member Senate.

Rákóczi and the Senate are assigned joint responsibility for the conduct of foreign affairs, including peace talks.

The Dublin Gazette, the gazette, or official newspaper, of the Irish Executive, Britain's government in Ireland based at Dublin Castle, publishes its first edition on November 5, 1705.

It publishes notices of government business, including Royal Proclamations, the granting of Royal Assent to bills, writs of election, appointments to public offices, commissions and promotions in the Armed Forces, and awards of honors, as well as notices of insolvency, and of changes of names or of arms.

As with the parallel London Gazette, the strapline is "Published by Authority".

The Sophia Naturalization Act passed by the English Parliament in December 1705 naturalizes Sophia of Hanover and the "issue of her body" as English subjects.

Parliament has also established the first turnpike trusts, which place a length of road under the control of trustees drawn from local landowners and traders.

The turnpike trusts borrow capital for road maintenance against the security of tolls; this arrangement will become the common method of road maintenance for the next one hundred and fifty years.