/year

Voltaire

French writer, historian and philosopher (1694–1778)

18 dated entries naming Voltaire, drawn from 14 separate years between 1694 CE and 1791 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

JSONWikipedia articleWikidata Q9068

17th century

  • 1694November 21 – Voltaire, French writer, historian, and philosopher (died 1778)source

18th century

  • 1717François-Marie Arouet is sentenced to imprisonment in the Bastille for eleven months, because of a satirical verse against the Régent of France and his infamous daughter Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, who is hiding an illegitimate pregnancy and soon to give birth; Arouet will emerge with the pseudonym Voltaire and the completed text of his first play, Œdipe.source
  • 171716 May – Voltaire is sentenced to eleven months in the Bastille and banished from Paris for criticizing the Duc D'Orléans; while in prison he writes his first play, Oedipe ("Oedipus")source
  • 1718November 18 – Voltaire's first play, Oedipus, premières at the Comédie-Française in Paris. This is his first use of the pseudonym.source
  • 1726May – Voltaire begins an exile in England which lasts three years.source
  • 1726May 1 – Voltaire begins his exile in England.source
  • 1728Late Summer – Voltaire ends his exile in England.source
  • 1742August 19 – Voltaire's controversial play Fanatacism, or Mahomet the Prophet is first performed, in Paris, to a theatre audience filled with French nobility.source
  • 1746May 9 – Voltaire, on being admitted into the Académie française, gives a discours de réception in which he criticizes Boileau's poetrysource
  • 1757March 14 – British Royal Navy Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad on board the ship HMS Monarch in the Solent after his court martial conviction for failing in the Battle of Minorca (1756) to save British troops who had been besieged by a numerically superior French force in the Siege of Fort St Philip. General Edward Cornwallis, the ranking British Army officer at the battle, is exonerated of charges of dereliction of duty, but his career is ruined. Byng's execution is the origin of the phrase "In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others", coined by Voltaire in his novel Candide.source
  • 1759January 15 – Voltaire's satire Candide is published simultaneously in five countries.source
  • 175915 January – Voltaire's satire Candide is published simultaneously in five countriessource
  • 1764Voltaire - Dictionnaire philosophiquesource
  • 1765March 9 – After a public campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have committed suicide.source
  • 1766July 1 – François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, is tortured and beheaded, before his body is burnt on a pyre, along with a copy of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique nailed to his torso, supposedly for the crime of not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, and for other sacrileges, including desecrating a crucifix.source
  • 1778May 30 – Voltaire, French philosopher (born 1694)source
  • 1791July 11 – The ashes of Voltaire are transferred to the Panthéon in Paris.source
  • 179111 July – The ashes of Voltaire are transferred to the Panthéon. An estimated million people attend the procession.source

Named in the same entries