Meanwhile, somewhere in the 18th century...

 ... two British soldiers are killed by carelessness and one injured by bad luck. A lucky shot from the French, grazes the touch-hole of a British cannon.  The cannon must have been loaded and ready to go, just needing to be turned towards the enemy and having fire put to the touch-hole.  The enemy shot must have caused a spark as it grazed the touch-hole, thus firing the gun which injured a British soldier. We shouldn't rush to award either of the following dead soldiers with the Darwin Award, for we do not know if either of them were responsible for sponging the gun.  Sponging is done between one firing and the next.  The aim is to remove any smouldering matter in the gun before the next charge is shoved in.  If not done well, the new charge can ignite before time, as happened to the two unfortunate British soldiers in the excerpt above. 1756

...lies a slug-a-bed.  This 18th century drone is in dire need of a marvelous 1754 contraption, snappily christened the Rush-Light Larum .  A rush-light being a rudimentary candle and larum meaning alarm.  As you can see from the diagram: when the candle burns down to the point calculated to be wake up o'clock , a heavy weight is dropped which can either drag the bedclothes off or yank whichever appendage of the sleeper it is tied to. and if that does't work, then the ensuing blaze, caused by the sleeper turning over in bed and dragging the whole apparatus onto the floor, will serve as sufficient larum.

 ...co kurwa?  Where does Poland begin and end?  The border has shifted all over the place! In the 18th century, there is a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  Its borders encompass Lithuania, much of Latvia, Belarus, a good chunk of Ukraine and much of the Poland we know and love.  Prussia has left teeth-marks on the Baltic coast and the western border wiggles around a bit and is generally a little further east.  Słupsk, Koszalin, Szczecin, and Wrocław fall outside the border, but Gdańsk, Piła, Poznań and Katowice are within the Commonwealth.   One administrative area of the Commonwealth, of culinary and linguistic interest to me, is: województwo ruskie, the Ruthenian Voivodeship.  It's capital was Lwów, or Lviv as we know it today, and much of it is now in Ukraine.  The dumplings filled with potato, cheese curd and onion, take their name from wój. ruskie, so pierogi ruskie  were named after this area of the commonwealth and have nothing to do with Russia.  The only connection is a t

...Catherine the Great is born.  Greatness to come later, she was born Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg on the 2nd of May  1729 in Stettin, Pomerania.  At this point, Stettin, is in Prussia, part of the Roman Holy Empire.  Today it is know as Szczecin which, you may already know, is in Poland. Her native tongue was German, but she became fluent in French, essential for hob-nobbing with the elite of 18th century Europe.  She first met her second cousin, Peter, when she was 10 and found him loathsome.  Peter later became Peter III of Russia.  Despite Princess Sophie's dislike of Peter and that fact that Peter's mother  (The Empress Elizabeth of Russia) disliked Sophie's mother, the Empress took a shine to Princess Sophie.  The Princess had worked hard to master the Russian language and converted to the Eastern Orthodox church in 1744 and took on the name Ekaterina Alekseyevna. She married Peter in 1745 . Peter succeeded to the throne as Peter III

 ... on a Monday - Monday 15th May 1749 to be precise - a fireball passes through a room of people. Apparently such an everyday occurrence of 18th century Yorkshire, that there's no further discussion of what the hell just happened or whether it occurred during the cheese course, thus bringing fondue to Yorkshire a good two centuries early.

...in January 1747, some adventurous cove is fannying around with electricity.  I guess J. Smeaton got some form of precursor to a Van der Graaf generator in his Christmas stocking.  I imagine there were other members of the household willingly, or otherwise, employed in assisting Mr. Smeaton in his experimentation.  I am not sure suspending an anvil by silk cords is an easy task for one man.

...and hemorroids.  There's a macabre fascination with the stated causes of deaths and the proportions of death from each cause.  As we are looking at the eighteenth century, it will be of little surprise that small pox claimed many lives, 1206 deaths by small pox in an annual report of deaths in London.  That's more than ten times as many as those who died of mortification.  My image of a lady seeing another at the ball in an identical gown and snuffing it on the spot was ruined by reading that mortification is localized death of tissue, like in gangrene.   The French Pox was clearly too busy talking about art and philosophy so only chalked up 76 deaths.  One poor sod died of piles, 46 from cancer, 99 drowned, one nervous soul was frightened to death, 3 murdered, only 5 slovenly people made the effort to die of lethargy and, in what I imagine was a freak carpeting accident, 80 people were overlaid.