1682

April 9: La Salle claims the Mississippi River and the surrounding Louisiana Territory for France.

Events

January 7 – The Republic of Genoa forbids the unauthorized printing of newspapers and all handwritten newssheets; the ban is lifted after three months.
January 12 – Scottish minister James Renwick, one of the Covenanters resisting the Scottish government's suppression of alternate religious views, publishes the Declaration of Lanark.
January 21 – The Ottoman Empire army is mobilized in preparation for a war against Austria that culminates with the 1683 Battle of Vienna.
January 24 – The first public theater in Brussels, the Opéra du Quai au Foin, is opened.
February 5 – In Japan, on the 28th day of the 12th month in the year Tenna 1, a major fire sweeps through Edo (now Tokyo).
February 9 – Thomas Otway's classic play Venice Preserv'd or A Plot Discover'd is given its first performance, premiering at the Duke's Theatre.
March 11 – Work begins on construction of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers in London, England.<ref name="Pocket On This Day">Template:Cite book</ref>

April 7 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, exploring rivers in America, reaches the mouth of the Mississippi River.
April 9 – At the mouth of the Mississippi River, near modern Venice, Louisiana, Robert de La Salle buries an engraved plate and a cross, claiming the territory as La Louisiane for France.
May 6 – Louis XIV of France moves his court to Versailles.
May 7 (April 27 O.S.) – Upon the death of the Tsar Feodor III of Russia, Feodor's younger brother, 15-year-old Ivan is passed over in favor of a half-brother, 10-year-old Peter.
May 11 – The Moscow uprising of 1682 occurs when a mob, outraged by the rejection of Prince Ivan and upset over rumors that Ivan has been strangled, invades the Kremlin and lynches the leading boyars and military commanders. Ivan V and Peter I are named co-rulers of Russia as a result of a compromise between Peter's mother Natalya Naryshkina and Ivan's mother Maria Miloslavskaya and both are crowned a month later.
June 8 – The English trading freighter Johanna is wrecked off of the coast of South Africa with the loss of 10 of her 114 crew, becoming the first of Britain's East India Company fleet to be lost.
June 17 – The Indonesian city of Bandar Lampung is founded on the island of Sumatra.
June 25 (June 15 O.S.) – Ivan V and Peter I are crowned as joint Tsars of Russia at the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow, with actual power exercised by their older sister, Sophia Alekseyevna for the next seven years.

July 19 – Iyasus succeeds his father Yohannes I as Emperor of Ethiopia.
August 6 – The Ottoman Empire declares war on the Holy Roman Empire and makes plans to attack Vienna.
August 12 – Vesuvius begins a period of volcanic activity lasting for 10 days.
August 23 – A comet that will later become known as Comet Halley, is observed from several locations on Earth after reaching magnitude 2 and becoming visible to the naked eye. Arthur Storer sees it from the North American colony of Maryland, while German astronomer Johannes Hevelius measures it from Danzig (now Gdansk in Poland). <ref>"Comet Halley 1682", in Atlas of Great Comets, by Ronald Stoyan (Cambridge University Press, 2015) p. 90</ref> Edmond Halley successfully predicts that it will return in 1758.
August 25 – Following the Bideford witch trial, three women (probably) become the penultimate known to be hanged for witchcraft in England, at Exeter.<ref>Template:Cite book Another woman was sentenced to be hanged for witchcraft in Exeter in 1685 although there is no surviving confirmation that the sentence was carried out. Template:Cite web</ref>
September 14 – Bishop Gore School is founded in Swansea, Wales.
September 24 – Trịnh Căn becomes the new ruler of Tonkin (located in the northern part of Vietnam as far south as the Hà Tĩnh province upon the death of his father, Trịnh Tạc, and begins a program of reforms.

October 12 – Sultan Mehmed IV departs Istanbul for Adrianople.
October 19 – Kara Mustafa departs with the Ottoman army to Adrianople.
October 27 – The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded by William Penn.
November 22 – Nearly 1,000 houses in Wapping, London are destroyed in a fire.<ref name=Fires>Template:Cite book</ref>
December 11 – William Penn meets with Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore for the first discussion of the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, fixed at 40 degrees north. Recognizing that 40° north would remove Pennsylvania's access to the sea, Penn proposes a purchase of some of Maryland's territory.
December 27 – Colonists from the German electorate of Brandenburg arrive at Akwidaa on the Brandenburger Gold Coast at what is now Ghana and, five days later, begin building a fort at what is now Princes Town.

Celia Fiennes, noblewoman and traveller, begins her journeys across Britain, in a venture that will prove to be her life's work. Her aim is to chronicle the towns, cities and great houses of the country. Her travels continue until at least 1712, and will take her to every county in England, though the main body of her journal is not written until the year 1702.
The Richard Wall House, believed to be the longest continuously inhabited residence in the US, is built in Pennsylvania.