1600s timeline: what happened in the 17th century?
The 17th century was an age of telescopes and theatres, colonies and civil wars, and the birth of modern science.
85 events, oldest first.
Timeline of The 1600s
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c. 1600
Shakespeare writes Hamlet
It is Shakespeare's longest play, at over 4,000 lines.
Art & literature history
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1600
The East India Company is founded
At its height, it had a private army larger than Britain's own.
Early modern history
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1602
The Dutch East India Company is founded
It is often called the world's first publicly traded company.
Early modern history
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1603
Kabuki theatre is born in Kyoto
It was founded by a woman, Izumo no Okuni, though women were later banned from performing.
Early modern history
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1603
Tokugawa Ieyasu becomes shogun
His family ruled Japan for over 250 years, largely closed off from the outside world.
Early modern history
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1604
Kepler sees a supernova
It is the most recent supernova in our galaxy seen with the naked eye.
Science & technology history
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1604
The first English dictionary is published
Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall defined about 2,500 'hard' words.
Art & literature history
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1605
Don Quixote is published
Cervantes and Shakespeare both died in the same year.
Art & literature history
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1605
The Gunpowder Plot is foiled
Guy Fawkes was caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath Parliament.
Early modern history
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1606
Willem Janszoon lands in Australia
He was the first European known to set foot in Australia.
History of exploration
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1607
Jamestown is founded in Virginia
Pocahontas, a Powhatan girl from the area, later visited London and met King James I.
Early modern history
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1607
Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo premieres
It is one of the earliest operas still regularly performed today.
Art & literature history
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1608
Bushmills receives its licence to distil
Its licence makes it one of the oldest licensed whiskey distilleries in the world.
Food & brand history
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1608
Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec City
It is one of the oldest European settlements in North America.
Early modern history
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1608
The telescope is invented in the Netherlands
Hans Lipperhey applied for a patent on it, but was refused.
Science & technology history
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1609
Henry Hudson sails up the Hudson River
He was looking for a shortcut to Asia.
History of exploration
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1609
Kepler publishes his first laws of planetary motion
Kepler showed that planets move in ellipses, not perfect circles.
Science & technology history
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1610
Galileo discovers Jupiter's moons
He named them after his patrons, the Medici family.
Science & technology history
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1610
Santa Fe is founded
It is the oldest state capital in the United States.
Early modern history
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1611
Henry Hudson is cast adrift by his crew
He was never seen again.
History of exploration
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1611
The King James Bible is published
Some 47 scholars spent about seven years translating it.
Art & literature history
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1613
The Globe Theatre burns down
A cannon fired during a performance of Henry VIII set the thatched roof alight.
Early modern history
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1613
The Romanov dynasty begins
The Romanovs ruled Russia for more than 300 years.
Early modern history
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1616
Pocahontas visits London
She attended a royal masque and was presented to King James I.
Early modern history
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1616
The Blue Mosque is completed
It is called the Blue Mosque because of the blue tiles inside.
Early modern history
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1616
William Shakespeare dies
In his will he famously left his wife his 'second-best bed'.
Art & literature history
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1618
The Second Defenestration of Prague
Two royal governors and their secretary were thrown from a castle window and survived, sparking the Thirty Years' War.
Early modern history
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1619
The first enslaved Africans arrive in Virginia
Around 20 Africans were brought to Point Comfort on an English privateer ship.
Early modern history
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1620
The Pilgrims land at Plymouth
They crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower, a voyage of about two months.
Early modern history
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1621
The Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving
The feast lasted three days and featured venison - turkey may not have been on the menu.
Early modern history
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1623
Shakespeare's First Folio is published
Without it, 18 of his plays, including Macbeth and The Tempest, might have been lost.
Art & literature history
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1626
The Dutch buy Manhattan
The price, 60 guilders of goods, is often quoted as about $24.
Early modern history
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1627
The last aurochs dies in Poland
The wild ancestor of all cattle survived until after Shakespeare's death.
Natural history & deep time
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1628
William Harvey describes the circulation of blood
He worked out that the heart pumps more blood in an hour than the body contains.
Science & technology history
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1630
Boston is founded
Puritan settlers named it after a town in Lincolnshire.
Early modern history
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1632
Construction of the Taj Mahal begins
Shah Jahan built it as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
Early modern history
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1633
Galileo is tried by the Inquisition
He spent his last nine years under house arrest.
Science & technology history
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1636
Harvard University is founded
Founded by a vote of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.
Early modern history
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1637
The first public opera house opens in Venice
For the first time, anyone who could buy a ticket could see an opera.
Art & literature history
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1637
Tulip mania collapses in the Netherlands
At the peak of the craze, a single rare tulip bulb could cost as much as a house.
Early modern history
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1639
Japan closes its borders to most foreigners
Only Dutch and Chinese traders were allowed, on strict terms.
Early modern history
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1639
Jeremiah Horrocks observes a transit of Venus
He was the first person known to have predicted and watched one.
Science & technology history
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1642
Abel Tasman sights New Zealand
He called it Staten Landt; mapmakers later named it Nova Zeelandia.
History of exploration
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1642
Isaac Newton is born
He was born in the same year that Galileo died.
Science & technology history
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1642
Rembrandt paints The Night Watch
Darkened varnish made it look like a night scene, but it is actually set in daytime.
Art & literature history
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1642
The English Civil War begins
King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham.
Early modern history
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1643
Louis XIV becomes king aged four
His reign of 72 years is the longest of any European monarch.
Early modern history
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1644
The Ming dynasty falls
The Qing dynasty that replaced it ruled China until 1912.
Early modern history
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1645
Sweden's official gazette is first published
Post- och Inrikes Tidningar is still published today, though now only online.
Early modern history
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1647
Parliament bans Christmas celebrations
Puritans saw the festivities as wasteful; Christmas came back after the Restoration.
Early modern history
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1648
The Thirty Years' War ends
The Peace of Westphalia is often seen as the birth of the modern system of sovereign states.
Early modern history
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1649
Charles I is executed
He wore two shirts so he wouldn't shiver in the cold and appear afraid.
Early modern history
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1652
London's first coffee house opens
Within decades London had hundreds of coffee houses, nicknamed 'penny universities'.
Food & brand history
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1652
The Dutch found Cape Town
It began as a supply station for ships sailing to Asia.
Early modern history
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1653
Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector
He refused the title of king when Parliament offered it to him.
Early modern history
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1656
Velázquez paints Las Meninas
Velázquez painted himself into the picture, standing at his easel.
Art & literature history
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1660
Samuel Pepys begins his diary
During the Great Fire, he buried his Parmesan cheese in the garden to save it.
Early modern history
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1660
The monarchy is restored under Charles II
Charles II reopened the theatres, which the Puritans had closed.
Early modern history
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1660
The Royal Society is founded
Its motto, 'Nullius in verba', means 'take nobody's word for it'.
Science & technology history
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1662
Catherine of Braganza makes tea fashionable in England
The Portuguese princess brought her tea-drinking habit when she married Charles II.
Food & brand history
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1662
The dodo is last sighted
It vanished less than a century after Dutch sailors first described it.
Natural history & deep time
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1664
New Amsterdam becomes New York
The English renamed it after the Duke of York.
Early modern history
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1665
Robert Hooke names 'cells' in Micrographia
He named them after the small rooms that monks lived in.
Science & technology history
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1665
The Great Plague of London
Newton's university closed because of it, so he worked at home on gravity and calculus.
Early modern history
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c. 1665
Vermeer paints Girl with a Pearl Earring
The 'pearl' is so large that some experts think it was polished tin or glass.
Art & literature history
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1666
The Great Fire of London
It destroyed over 13,000 houses, yet only a handful of deaths were officially recorded.
Early modern history
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1669
Mount Etna's lava reaches Catania
Men in wet cowhides tried to divert it with iron bars - the first recorded lava diversion attempt.
Natural history & deep time
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1669
Phosphorus is discovered
Hennig Brand found it by boiling down huge quantities of urine.
Science & technology history
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1670
The Hudson's Bay Company is founded
It once controlled a territory covering about 15% of North America.
Food & brand history
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1673
Molière collapses on stage
He was playing a hypochondriac in The Imaginary Invalid, and died hours later.
Art & literature history
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1675
Cassini finds a gap in Saturn's rings
The gap, the Cassini Division, still bears his name.
Science & technology history
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1675
The Royal Observatory at Greenwich is founded
It was set up to help sailors work out their longitude at sea.
Science & technology history
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1676
Van Leeuwenhoek first observes bacteria
He was a cloth merchant who ground his own microscope lenses.
Science & technology history
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1679
The Habeas Corpus Act is passed
It protects people from being imprisoned without legal justification.
Early modern history
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1682
Louis XIV moves his court to Versailles
He reigned for 72 years, the longest of any monarch in European history.
Early modern history
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1682
Philadelphia is founded
William Penn chose a name meaning 'brotherly love' in Greek.
Early modern history
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1683
The Ashmolean, the first university museum, opens
It opened in Oxford with a collection that included a stuffed dodo.
Art & literature history
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1683
The Siege of Vienna is lifted
Legend says Vienna's bakers invented the croissant to celebrate - almost certainly a myth.
Early modern history
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1687
Isaac Newton publishes his laws of motion
Harvard had already been teaching for half a century when Newton's Principia came out.
Science & technology history
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1688
The Glorious Revolution
William of Orange and Mary II became joint monarchs, without a major battle in England.
Early modern history
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1689
The English Bill of Rights is passed
It limited royal power and inspired the later American Bill of Rights.
Early modern history
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1692
The Salem witch trials begin
Massachusetts later admitted the trials were wrong and paid compensation to families.
Early modern history
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1694
The Bank of England is founded
It was set up to raise money for King William III's war against France.
Early modern history
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1697
Peter the Great tours Western Europe
The Tsar travelled incognito and worked in a Dutch shipyard.
Early modern history
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1698
Scotland's Darien scheme is launched
The failed colony in Panama helped push Scotland into union with England.
Early modern history
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