Tea first became popular in Paris in the 1660s, when King Louis XIV took it to aid his digestion.

BBC: A taste of Paris

In 1693, however, the French king Louis XIV again sacked Heidelberg, blowing up its key buildings and burning the refurbished library and its contents to the ground.

BBC: A Point of View: Why didn't Harry Potter just use Google?

In 1685, King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, depriving the Protestant Huguenots of all religious and civil liberties granted them by Henry IV in 1598.

CNN: Sunday,

Historians quibble about whether the modern level was invented by Mechisedech Thevenot , royal librarian to King Louis XIV of France, or by legendary English natural scientist Robert Hooke .

FORBES: No. 18 The Level

In 1669, in a bid to cut down on violence, King Louis XIV of France decreed all pointed knives on the street or the dinner table illegal, and ordered all knife points ground down.

FORBES: No. 1 The Knife

The emphasis on dance in French opera started with Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), himself a dancer, who became the court composer to France's music-loving "Sun King, " Louis XIV.

NPR: Opera Beyond Words: Rameau's Radiant Dances

The art of taxation, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83), the comptroller general of finances, told Louis XIV before that king's spending got really out of hand, is to pluck from the goose the most feathers with the least hissing.

FORBES: Mind the Geese

"Sire, do not talk to me of small projects, " said the Great Cham of baroque architecture, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, to Louis XIV after the Sun King lured him to Paris.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia