1687

January–March

• January 3 - With the end of latest of the Savoyard–Waldensian wars in the Duchy of Savoy between the Savoyard government and Protestant Italians known as the Waldensians, Victor Amadeus III, Duke of Savoy, carries out the release of 3,847 surviving prisoners and their families, who had forcibly been converted to Catholicism, and permits the group to emigrate to Switzerland.
• January 8 - Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, is appointed as the last Lord Deputy of Ireland by the English crown, and begins efforts to include more Roman Catholic Irishmen in the administration. Upon the removal of King James II in England and Scotland, the Earl of Tyrconnell loses his job and is replaced by James, who reigns briefly as King of Ireland until William III establishes his rule over the isle.
• January 27 - In one of the most sensational cases in England in the 17th century, midwife Mary Hobry murders her abusive husband, Denis Hobry, after he beats her up for the last time. Mary then dismembers his body and scatters the remains in a dunghill and in several outhouses in the area. Despite a defense of justifiable homicide, Mary is convicted of murder and burned at the stake.
• February 7 - The Arjeplog blasphemy trial begins for Erik Eskilsson and Amund Thorsson, two practitioners of the Sami religion who had resisted Sweden's efforts at their conversion to Christianity. Eskilsson and Thorsson are acquitted of the charges after agreeing to convert to Christianity.
• February 11 - In India, troops under the command of Job Charnock of the East India Company, preparing to go to war against the Nawab of Bengal, Shaista Khan of the Mughal empire, destroy his fortresses located at Thana.
• February 12 - The Declaration of Indulgence is issued in Scotland by King James VII as one of the first steps in establishing freedom of religion in the British Isles, eliminating enforcement of criminal penalties against persons who failed to conform with Anglicanism. As King James II of England, he issues a similar declaration on April 4.
• March 19 - The men under explorer Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle mutiny, while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River. Pierre Duhaut murders La Salle, near what is now Navasota, Texas.

April–June

• April 4 - King James II of England issues the Declaration of Indulgence, suspending laws against Roman Catholics and nonconformists.
• April 23 - Ignatius George II becomes Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
• April 26 - The Spanish city of Guayaquil is attacked and looted by English and French pirates under the command of George Hout, Pierre Le Picard and Francois Groniet. Of more than 260 pirates, 35 are killed and 46 were wounded; 75 defenders of the city died and more than 100 are wounded.
• May 6 - Emperor Higashiyama succeeds Emperor Reigen, on the throne of Japan.
• June 14 - In one of the few actions on land in the Anglo-Siamese War, English sailors on the coast of Mergui in Burma are massacred by Siamese troops.

July–September

• July 11 - Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known as the Principia, is published by the Royal Society of London. In it, Newton describes his law of universal gravitation, explains the laws of mechanics, and gives a formula for the speed of sound. The writing of Principia Mathematica ushers in a tidal wave of changes in thought, significantly accelerating the Scientific Revolution by providing new and practical intellectual tools, and becomes the foundation of modern physics.
• July 24 - Morean War: Battle of Patras - The Republic of Venice defeats the Ottomans, which flee in panic, allowing the Venetians to capture the fortresses of Patras, Rio, Antirrio, and Lepanto unopposed.
• August 12 - Great Turkish War: Battle of Mohács - The Habsburg imperial army, and allies under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, defeat the Ottoman Turks, and enable Austria to conquer most of Ottoman-occupied Hungary.
• September 21 - Morean War: The navy of the Republic of Venice raids the Dalmatian coast, and attacks Ottoman Turkish strongholds in Greece.
• September 22 - The Siege of Golconda, ordered by Emperor Aurangzeb of India's Mughal Empire against the capital of the Golconda sultanate, ends after nine months when a traitor inside the walled city, Sarandaz Khan, opens the first of several entrances into the fortress. The Sultan Abul Hasan Qutb Shah is taken prisoner by General Mir Shahab ud-Din, and Golconda.
• September 26 - Half of the Parthenon is destroyed in Athens after mortar shells are fired by Republic of Venice forces under the command of Francesco Morosini in a battle against the Ottoman Empire for control of the city. The strike ignites a stock of gunpowder that the Ottomans had stored inside the 2,200-year-old temple, which had been completed in 438 BC as a shrine to the goddess Athena. During the fighting September 23 and September 29 for control of the Acropolis in the Morean War, the Temple of Athena Nike is demolished and the Propylaea suffers damage.

October–December

• October 20 - An estimated 8.7 magnitude earthquake strikes off of the coast of Peru and kills at least 5,000 people, primarily from a tsunami that washes away the city of Pisco and causes severe damage to the Spanish colonial cities of Lima, Callao and Ica.
• October 31 - The legend of the Charter Oak begins as a successful attempt to hide the 1662 Royal Charter of the British colony of Connecticut after Edmund Andros, the Governor of the Dominion of New England, makes a mission of attempting to confiscate the founding documents for the seven colonies that make up the new administrative area. After Governor Andros arrives in Hartford and comes to the tavern of Zachariah Sanford to demand the Connecticut Colony charter, Captain Joseph Wadsworth spirits the parchment away from the and hides the Charter in a hollowed out portion of a white oak tree on Wyllys Hyll until Andros is recalled to London.
• November 8 - Suleiman II succeeds the deposed Mehmed IV, as Ottoman Emperor.
• December 31 - In response to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a group of Huguenots set sail from France, and settle in the recently established Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope, where, using their native skills, they establish the first South African vineyards.