The Danish-born navigator Vitus Jonassen Bering, after a voyage to the East Indies, had joined the Russian Navy in 1703, serving in the Baltic Fleet during the Great Northern War.

He had served in 1710–1712 in the Azov Sea Fleet in Taganrog and taken part in the Russo-Turkish War.

He had married a Russian woman, and in 1715 had made a brief visit to his hometown of Horsens, never to see it again.

A series of explorations of the north coast of Asia, the outcome of a far-reaching plan devised by Peter the Great, had led up to Bering's first voyage to Kamchatka.

Under the auspices of the Russian government in 1725, he had gone overland to Okhotsk, crossed to Kamchatka, and built the ship Sviatoi Gavriil (St. Gabriel).

Aboard the ship, Bering pushed northward in 1728, until he could no longer observe any extension of the land to the north, or its appearance to the east.

He made an abortive search in the following year for mainland eastward, rediscovering one of the Diomede Islands (Ratmanov Island) observed earlier by Dezhnev.

Bering returns in the summer of 1730 to St. Petersburg.

During the long trip through Siberia along the whole Asian continent, he had become very ill.

Five of his children have died during this trip.

Tsar Peter is betrothed to his new mentor's niece, Princess Yekaterina Dolgorukova, and the wedding is actually fixed for January 30, 1730, but the emperor dies of smallpox on this very day.

While he lay dying, his new wife had been pushed into his deathbed in a desperate attempt to make her pregnant.

With Peter's death, the direct male line of the Romanov Dynasty ends.

The Supreme Privy Council under Prince Dmitry Galitzine elevates to the imperial throne an improbable successor: Anna Ivanovna, Duchess of Courland, and daughter of Peter the Great's half-brother and co-ruler, Ivan V. The council members, deeming her to be easily amenable to manipulation and too conservative to restore Peter I's reforms, hope that she will feel indebted to the nobles for her unexpected fortune and remain a figurehead at best, and malleable at worst.

In the hope of establishing a constitutional monarchy in Russia, they persuade her to sign articles that limit her power, which confer on the Council the powers of war and peace and of taxation.

According to the conditions, Anna cannot promote officers to ranks higher than colonel and interfere into military affairs.

She promises not to marry and not to choose herself a successor.

The conditions are modeled on the form of government recently instituted in Great Britain.

In case Anna violates the conditions, she is to be dethroned.

On the elevation of Anna to the Russian throne, her former lover, the handsome, insinuating adventurer Ernst Johann von Biron, who had in the meantime married a Fräulein von Treiden, had come to Moscow and received many honors and riches.

A month after signing the document, Anna, on the advice of Biron, wins the sympathies of the Leib Guard and on February 25 tears up the terms of her accession, which, if implemented, would have led to Russia's transformation into a constitutional monarchy.

Within days, the Council is abolished and many of its members exiled to Siberia.

Dolgoruky's involvement in intrigues concerning the succession—including the manufacture of a letter purporting to be the tsar's last will, in which he had appointed Yekaterina his successor—resulted in his banishment, first to Siberia and then to the Solovetsky monastery.

As one of her first acts to consolidate this power, she restores the security police, which she uses to intimidate and terrorize those who oppose her and her policies.

Although she does not move the capital back to Moscow, she spends most of her time at this city in the company of her foolish and ignorant maids.

At Anna's coronation on May 19, Biron becomes grand-chamberlain, a count of the Empire, on which occasion he is said to have adopted the arms of the French ducal house of Biron, and is presented with an estate at Wenden with fifty thousand crowns a year.

The French troupe, which had performed for the royal court in Copenhagen since 1682, had been fired in 1721 by the king, who wished to hire an Italian opera troupe instead.

As the French actors, who in many cases have lived in Denmark for generations, do not all wish to leave, René Magnon and another French immigrant, Etienne Capion, ask or permission to open a public theater.

They are granted royal permission and in 1722, the first public theater was opened in Copenhagen on Lille Grönnegade, the first Danish-language theater open to the public.

Capion is the director, Magnon is responsible for the actors, and Marie Madeleine de Montaigu becomes the first actress to have performed for the Danish public at an official theater.

The female actors are few: among them are also Helene le Coffre, Maren Magdalene Lerche and Marie Madeleine's own daughter Frederikke Sophie.

Plays are performed in Danish but there is also dance: in 1726, Jean-Baptiste Landé is a guest ballet master.

The economic difficulties, however, prove too difficult.

The theater is closed in 1728; in 1730, theater is banned in Denmark.

The reign of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III (1703-1736) is sometimes known as the Tulip Age (Lâle Devri) because of the popularity of this flower in Constantinople in the early 18th century.

With Ahmed's encouragement, art and literature has flourished during this time.

News of successful police actions by Nadr to rid Persian territories of the Turkish occupiers sparks a popular uprising in Istanbul led by Patrona Halil, a Turkish bath waiter.

The rebels strangle the Ottoman grand vizier, the chief admiral, and other senior officials; they also force the abdication (but not the execution) of Ahmed III and the enthronement of his nephew, Mahmud I (1696-1754), on October 1, 1730.

This is the only Turkish rising not originating in the army.

Patrona Halil is assassinated soon after.

Despite the success of Persia's Nadr Khan in forcing Turkish squatters out of many Persian territories, the Ottoman Empire's elite corps, the Janissaries, have not been called into action; unemployed, they are also unpaid.

When the Persian police action spills over into Ottoman territory to spark a formal conflict, the Janissaries delay involvement for two months by supporting a rebellion among twelve thousand Albanian troops.

The Omanis have attacked Bahrain three times between 1700 and 1730, and destroyed many of the residential areas.

Bahrain comprised three hundred and sixty villages before these attacks, but is reduced to about ninety villages after the attacks.

Nadr continues operations against the Afghans until they are finally routed and expelled from Iran in 1730.

After Nadr has cleared the country of Afghans, Tahmasp makes him governor of a large area of eastern Iran.

Subsequently, many Afghani soldiers join Nader's army.

Nadr now attacks and routs the Ottoman Turks, who have occupied adjacent areas of Azerbaijan and Iraq.

He has by 1730 forced Turkish squatters from Tabriz, ...

...Hamadan, and ...

...Kermanshah.

Human belief in protection of the animal and plant kingdom reaches its apotheosis in 1730 when two hundred and ninety-four men and sixty-nine women of the Bishnoi sect lay down their lives to protect the khejri tree.

A highly revered tree among Hindus, it grows in desert areas devoid of any obvious sources of water, and helps combat desertification.

A senior officer of Jodhpur state arrives to cut down the trees, which are needed for burning lime for cement to build a new place for Maharajaj Abhai Singh of Marwar.

The first to challenge him is a woman, who upon refusing to pay a bribe hugs one of the trees and is promptly decapitated.

Her three daughters do the same, with the same consequences.

News of the deaths spread and summons to a meeting are sent to eighty-three Bishnoi villages.

The meeting determines that one Bishnoi volunteer will sacrifice their life for every tree that is cut down.

Older people begin hugging the trees that are intended to be cut and many are killed.

These efforts fail to have the desired impact and Bhandari claims that the Bishnois sre sacrificing aging people whom they no longer see as useful to society.

In response to this, young men, women and children begin to follow the example of the old.

The development shocks the tree-felling party.

The group leaves for Jodhpur with their mission unfulfilled and the Maharaja Abhai Singh of Marwar subsequently orders that no more trees should be felled in any Bishnoi village. (To this day, Bishnoi villages are wooded oases in the otherwise harsh Rajasthan desert, where wildlife congregates in proximity to the people.

The Thar region of Pakistan is adjacent to the Rajasthan desert of India.

Although the Thari people are now mostly Islamic, their traditional teachings about the sanctity of life somewhat resemble those of the Bishnoi.

The Sindh desert is farther west in Pakistan.

The Sindhi people, related to the Thari, have similar beliefs, but are now culturally divided: Sindhis who practice Hinduism long ago migrated into the Mumbai region of India, while those who practice Islam remain in Pakistan.