1661

• French nobleman and mathematician Marquis Guillaume François Antoine de L'Hôpital, pioneer of calculus.
• English physician and poet Samuel Garth.
• German composer Georg Böhm.
• French composer Jean-Fery Rebel.
• French composer Henry Desmarets.
• Austrian painter Peter Strudel.
• Japanese haiku poet Takarai Kikaku.
• Italian composer Giacomo Antonio Perti.
• Italian biologist Antonio Vallisneri, who disproved spontaneous generation.
• English poet Anne Finch, later Countess of Winchilsea.
• Charles Montagu, later Chancellor of the Exchequer and 1st Earl of Halifax.
• Future Spanish King Charles II, the last Spanish Hapsburg.
• French soldier and explorer Pierre Le Moyne, later Sieur d'Iberville, explorer of Canada and founder of Louisiana.
• English architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, master of the English Baroque.

• French composer Louis Couperin.
• French mathematician Gerard Desargues.
• French Jansenist leader, abbess Angélique Arnauld.
• Dutch painter Gerard Houckgeest.
• Dutch painter Pieter Claesz.
• English bookseller and publisher Humphrey Moseley.
• English-born Dutch painter Cornelius Janssen.
• Flemish painter Daniel Seghers.
• Italian painter Andrea Sacchi.
• Charles II's political enemies are dropping like flies.
• Scottish Presbyterian theologian Samuel Rutherford, hanged for treason, condemned by the now-Royalist Scottish Parliament.
• Scottish general Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven, who handed Charles I over to the English to be executed.
• English commonwealth politician Sir Arthur Hesilrige, imprisoned in the Tower of London.
• Scottish Parlimentarian general Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, beheaded.
• Royalist theologian and historian Thomas Fuller, in his bed.
• Ottoman grand vizier Mohammed Koprulu. Fazil Ahmed Pasha succeeds him.
• Sicilian Cardinal Jules Mazarin, regent of France. His 22-year-old charge Louis XIV is loosed upon the world.
• Wampanoag chief Massasoit, whose hospitality to the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony would eventually result in the destruction of his people.  His son Wamsutta succeeds him.
• Seventh Sikh guru Har Rai Ji.  He appoints his son Har Krishan Ji as his succesor before passing away.

• England issues its very first postage stamps.
• Robert Boyle publishes The Skeptical Chymist, containing an early atomic theory, with the first modern definition of a chemical element, dismissing the ancient Greek view of the Four Elements.
• Louis founds an Academie Royale du Danse.
• Isaac Newton enters Trinity College, Cambridge.
• French finance minister Nicolas Foucquet's palace Vaux-le-Vicomte is completed, and he throws an elaborate housewarming party attended by the King, featuring a new Molière play, Les Fâcheux (The Nuisances).  This party is so extravagant that Mazarin's protege Jean-Baptiste Colbert convinces Louis that Foucqet's wealth was embezzled from the royal treasury (an assertion that is probably correct). Louis has Foucquet arrested, and appoints Colbert Minister of Finance, ans Francois-Michel Le Tellier Minister of War,
• Charles II, having been restored to the thrones of England and Scotland the previous year,
• orders the body of Oliver Cromwell dug up, hung at Tyburn, then beheaded.  The head is put on display outside Westminster Hall (It may now be buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge).
• is crowned at Westminster Abbey on April 23rd.   The jewelry used for this coronation forms the core of the present-day British Crown Jewels.
• disbands the New Model Army.  This causes a rebellion in the ranks, and Charles must use troops commanded by General George Monck to put it down.  Monck's Regiment survives the transition to the New Standing Army, eand eventually becomes the Coldstream Guards.
• is betrothed to Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, receiving Bombay as dowry up front.  Charles rents out Bombay to the East India Company.
• the English Parliament passes the Corporation Act, banning Dissenters from public office.
• Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb captures Cooch Bihar in Bengal and briefly controls Assam.
• Edo authorities ban sumo.
• Fugitive Ming general Zheng Cheng Gong, aka "Koxinga", traps the Dutch garrison on Formosa.
• David Jones settles on the banks of the Jones Falls in the wilds of northern Maryland. He is the first settler in what would later become Baltimore.

1660 - 1661 - 1662

How They Were Made - 17th Century