1690

January–June

• January 6 - Joseph, son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, becomes King of the Romans.
• January 7 - The first recorded full peal is rung, at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London, marking a new era in change ringing.
• January 14 - The clarinet is said to have been invented in Nuremberg, Germany.
• February 3 - The Massachusetts Bay Colony issues the first paper money in North America.
• May 20 - England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of the deposed James II.
• June 14 - King William III of England lands in Ireland, to confront James II.
• June 8 - Siddi general Yadi Sakat razes the Mazagon Fort in Mumbai.

  July–December

• July 10 - Battle of Beachy Head : The Anglo-Dutch navy is defeated by the French, giving rise to fears of a Jacobite invasion of England.
• July 11 - Battle of the Boyne, north of Dublin: King William III of England defeats the deposed James II, who returns to exile in France. The rebellion in Ireland continues for a further year until the Orange army gains full control.
• July 26 - French landing party raids and burns Teignmouth in Devon, England. However, with the loss of James II's position in Ireland, any plans for a real invasion are soon shelved, and Teignmouth is the last-ever French attack on England.
• August 24 - In India, the fort and trading settlement of Sutanuti is founded on the Hooghly River by the English East India Company, following the signing of an Anglo-Moghul treaty.
• September 25 - The only issue of Publick Occurrences is published in Boston, Massachusetts, before being suppressed by the colonial authorities.
• October 6-12 - Massachusetts Puritans, led by Sir William Phips, besiege the city of Quebec; the siege ends in failure.
• October 8 - Great Turkish War: The Ottomans recapture Belgrade.
• November 17 - Barclays is founded in London, England.
• December - The planet Uranus is first sighted and recorded, by John Flamsteed, who mistakenly catalogues it as the star 34 Tauri.
• December 29 - An earthquake hits Ancona, in the Papal States of Italy.

  Date unknown

• Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic leads the first of the two Great Serbian Migrations into the Habsburg Empire, following Ottoman atrocities in Kosovo.
• The Hearth Tax is abolished in Scotland, one year after its abolition in England and Wales.
• French physicist Denis Papin, while in Leipzig and having observed the mechanical power of atmospheric pressure on his 'digester', builds a working model of a reciprocating steam engine for pumping water, the first of its kind, though not efficient.
• Giovanni Domenico Cassini observes differential rotation within Jupiter's atmosphere.
• The Barrage Vauban, a defensive work in the city of Strasbourg, is completed.
• Possible year of the disappearance of the western part of the island of Buise, in St. Peter's Flood.