1633

Eppur si muove.

And yet it moves.

- Galileo Galilei, overheard muttering to himself after being forced to publicly deny that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

In the year AD 1633...

• Galileo Galilei is summoned to appear before the Inquisition in Rome to answer charges of heresy for advocating the Copernican view of the cosmos the year before in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Under threat of torture, he is forced to publicly "abjure, curse, and detest" his heliocentric views, all publication of any of his works is banned, and he is thereafter confined to house arrest for the remainder of his life.
• In China the beleaguered Ming court feels increasingly threatened by the inroads of the Dutch East India Company, but lacking any sort of real navy of its own, turns to pirate king Zheng Zhilong (who conveniently happens to be in posession of a private fleet of more than 800 vessels), appointing him Grand Admiral and dispatching him to battle the Dutch, whom he crushes in a naval engagement off the Kinmen islands.
• National Seclusion begins in Japan as Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu places severe restrictions on foreign trade and overseas travel by Japanese.
• The Thirty Years War shambles onward into its sixteenth year.
• With the death of Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus the previous year, the Protestant forces are in disarray. However, with great effort Swedish minister Axel Oxenstierna is able to wield the German princes into some semblance of unity at the Council of Heilbronn, thereby forming the Heilbronn League.
• Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar is named supreme commander of the Protestant forces and promptly launches an invasion of Bavaria, winning a great victory by capturing the city of Regensburg.
• In the brief Smolensk War between Russia and Poland, Russian forces under Mikhail Shein are about to capture the Polish city of Smolensk, when a small force under Polish king Wladyslaw IV arrives on the scene and drives the Russians away from the city.
• In Ethiopia, newly crowned emperor Fasilides consolidates his power by expelling the meddlesome Portuguese Jesuit missionaries.
• The first Particular Baptists establish a church under the leadership of John Spilsbury.
• Peter Mogila, metropolitan of Kiev, establishes the Academy of Kiev, an Orthodox theological school which will become the center of Ukrainian high culture.
• French engraver Jacques Callot executes his masterwork, a series of prints entitled Miseries of War.

These people were born in 1633...

• English king James II.
• King of Hungary and Bohemia Ferdinand IV
• English politician Samuel Pepys, best remembered today for his revealing diary.
• Japanese emperor Go-Komyo.
• Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini, first to recognize the rising danger of occupation-related illness.
• Chinese painter Yun Shouping, famous as one of the "Six Masters of the Early Qing" and remembered for his masterful paintings of flowers.
• Dutch painter Willem van de Velde the Younger.
• Philaret, patriarch of Moscow and father of Russian tsar Michael Romanov, the founder of the Romanov dynasty.

These people died in 1633...

• English poet George Herbert.
• 17-year-old Dutch girl Trijntje Keever, at 8'6" (260 cm), the tallest person who ever lived.
• Italian composer Jacopo Peri, creator of the first opera.
• English clergyman Robert Browne, leader of a group of religious separatists popularly known as Brownists.
• Dutch scientist Cornelius Drebbel, inventor of the first functional submarine.
• Archbishop of Salzburg Paris Graf von Lodron.

1632 - 1633 - 1634

17th century

How they were made