1682

January–June

• March 11 - Work begins on construction of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers in London, England.
• March 22 - A fire breaks out in Newmarket, Suffolk, consuming half the town and spreading into sections of surrounding Cambridgeshire. Historian Laurence Echard describes it later as "A Providential Fire", noting that King Charles II "by the approach of the fury of the flames was immediately driven out of his own palace", and, after moving to safety in another section of town, was forced to flee again "when the wind, as conducted by an invisible power, suddenly changed about, and blew the smoke and cinders directly on his new lodgings, and in a moment made them as untenable as the other."
• 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 - The reign of Peter the Great officially begins in Russia.
• May 11 - Moscow Uprising of 1682: A mob takes over the Kremlin and lynches the leading boyars and military commanders.

  July–December

• July 19 - Iyasus succeeds his father Yohannes I as Emperor of Ethiopia.
• August 12 - Vesuvius begins a period of volcanic activity lasting for 10 days.
• August 25 - Following the Bideford witch trial, three women become the last known to be hanged for witchcraft in England, at Exeter.
• September 14 - Bishop Gore School is founded in Swansea, Wales.
• September - A comet is observed, which later becomes known as Comet Halley, after Edmond Halley successfully predicts that it will return in 1758.
• 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.

  Date unknown

• 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.