1655

• Johann Christoph Denner, possible inventor of the clarinet.
• French painter Fra Vittore del Galgario.
• Future King Charles XI of Sweden.
• Dutch painter Willem Wissing.
• Chinese 'Banana Garden' poet Lin Yining.
• Chinese poet Nalan Xinde.
• Italian harpsichord maker Bartolommeo Cristofori, inventor of the piano.
• Spanish painter and art historian Antonio Palomino y Velasco.
• Early deist philosopher Matthew Tindal.
• Future Japanese Emperor Go-Saiin.

 

• French philosopher and physicist Pierre Gassendi.
• French painter Eustache Le Sueur.
• Dutch painter Nicolaes Pickenoy.
• French writer François Tristan L'Hermite.
• Spanish composer Francisco Correa de Araujo.
• Dutch classical scholar Daniel Heinsius.
• English politician Sir Henry Vane the Elder.
• French soldier and writer Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, after someone drops a board on his head.
• Pope Innocent X.  After 80 tumultuous days, the College of Cardinals elects Fabio Chigi to replace him; he takes the name Alexander VII.
• Francesco Molin, Doge of Venice. Carlo Contarini succeeds him.

• Giovanni Cassini, with help from Jesuit astronomers, proves that the Earth's orbit around the Sun is elliptical, confirming Johannes Kepler's theory.
• Robert Hooke publishes his Micrographia.
• Christiaan Huygens discovers a moon orbiting Saturn, naming it Titan.
• François Bernier publishes his account of Shah Jahan]'s court, An Account of India and the Great Moghul.
• Shah Jahan's builders complete the Moti Mosque in Agra.
• Thomas Stanley's The History of Philosophy appears.
• Isaak Walton thoroughly revises his fishing treatise The Compleat Angler.
• Francis Kirkman gets around the Puritan ban on stage plays (thought to be ungodly) by inventing Droll-Humours, essentially sketch comedy.
• Peter Stuyvesant, governor of Nieuw Nederland, decides that the Swedish forts along the Delaware River are a threat.  Facing seven armed ships and 317 soldiers, the Swedish commanders at Fort Trinity and Fort Christiania surrender without a fight.  Johan Rising and his commanders go home, but most of the colonists stay on their farms, paying taxes to Stuyvesant, and so ends the era of Swedish settlement in North America.
• Cardinal Jules Mazarin presides over a council of bishops that condemns Jansenism.
• Louis XIV, all of 17, reminds the French Parliament "L'etat, c'est moi!"
• A Colonel John Penruddock leads a royalist rebellion in Wiltshire.  This is easily crushed, but because of it, Major General John Lambert convinces Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell to impose direct military rule on England, dividing it into eleven districts each headed by a Puritan 'major general'. To pay for this, a decimation tax, or 10% income tax is imposed on former Royalists.
• Led by Admiral William Penn, The English take control of Jamaica from the Spanish.
• End of the Joo Era in Japan and the beginning of the Meireki Era.
• Japan invades Hokkaido, enslaving the native Ainu people.
• Oliver Cromwell
• invites Menasseh ben Israel to England, to discuss allowing Jews to settle in England.  When a commission tells Cromwell there is no law banning Jews from England, he dismisses it.
• calls on Louis XIV to stop the massacre of the Waldenses in Savoy.  The Waldenses living in Piedmont are exterminated.
• allows Marrano Jews in Jamaica to worship openly.
• Socinian leader John Biddle avoids execution and is banished to the Scilly Isles.
• Swedish king Charles X Gustavus invades Poland. The Russians take advantage, invading Lithuania and capturing Vilna.  The Swedes, Russians and Cossacks overwhem Poland, and Polish king Jan II Kazimierz is in constant retreat. Eventually the Swedes destroy the ancient capital, Cracow. The only holdouts are Gdansk and Lvov.   However, a (Lutheran) Swedish attempt to enter the (Catholic) shrine in Czestochowa causes an uprising of the genral population, and with the support of the Tatar Khanate of the Crimea, Jan Kazimirerz manages to take back parts of southern Poland.

1654 - 1655 - 1656

How They Were Made - 17th Century