January 23– (January 12 Old Style) The Conventicle Act (Konventikelplakatet) is adopted in Sweden, outlawing all non-Lutheran religious meetings outside of church services.
March 2– In London, a night watchman finds a severed head by the River Thames; it is later recognized to be that of the husband of Catherine Hayes. She and an accomplice are later executed.[2]
March 10– China's Emperor Yongzheng issues a special edict instructing his "Vice Minister of Punishments" Huang Bing to interrogate Qin Daoran, who provides the evidence that Yongzheng's brothers Yintang, Yin-ssu and Yin-ti, had conspired to overthrow the Emperor.[3]
March 29– The first large shipment of slaves is brought to New Orleans as the slave ship L'Aurore arrives with 290 black Africans captured in Gambia.[4] During the 90-day voyage from Gorée in Senegal, 60 of the slaves had died.
March 30– After King Haffon of the West AfricanKingdom of Whydah (now in Benin) allows Portuguese traders to build Fort São João Batista in the capital at Savi, mercenaries of the Dutch West India Company make a failed attempt to destroy the fort by "throwing two flaming spears over the walls". By 1726, traders from Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal are all competing to establish trade with Whydah, which supplies other West Africans to be used as slaves.
September 6– An explosion kills all but seven of the 700 passengers and crew on the Portuguese Navy galleon HMFMS Santa Rosa as its cargo of gunpowder blows up. Historians speculate that of the 693 people on the ship, those who weren't killed by the explosion drowned or were killed by sharks as the ship went down off of the coast of Recife.
Bentley, G. E. Jr. (March 2009). "Blake's Murderesses: Visionary Heads of Wickedness". Huntington Library Quarterly. 72 (1). University of California Press: 69–105. doi:10.1525/hlq.2009.72.1.69. JSTOR10.1525/hlq.2009.72.1.69. At Catherine's urging, "Billings went into the room with a hatchet, with which he struck Hayes so violently that he fractured his skull" but did not kill him. Wood, "taking the hatchet out of Billings's hand, gave the poor man two more blows, which effectually dispatched him." They were then faced with the problem of how to dispose of the body.
