1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610
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France's Henri IV is assassinated at Paris May 14 at Les Halles, the great Paris food market, when his carriage is stalled between two vendors' carts that have been overturned in a narrow lane and a fanatic, François Ravaillac, 31, seizes the opportunity. Dead at age 56 after a momentous reign of nearly 21 years, Henri is succeeded by his 9-year-old son, who will reign until 1643 as Louis XIII. The boy's mother, Marie de' Medici, will act as regent until he is of age and will exercise power for long after.
The grand duke of Muscovy Basil (Vasily) IV Shuiski is deposed in July by Poland's Sigismund III with help from Muscovite boyars and landlords. He is carried off to Warsaw; his throne is offered to Sigismund's son, who is proclaimed Vladislav IV Vasa; and Polish forces occupy Moscow. But the Cossacks and peasants resist Vladislav IV, and Sigismund wants the throne for himself. A second "false Demetrius" has established a camp outside Moscow at Tushino and gains support, a Tatar in his retinue kills him in December, his supporters blockade Moscow, and a popular uprising obliges the Poles inside the city to take refuge in the Kremlin (see 1612).
The Ottoman Empire's third (and largest) Celali (Jelali) Revolt ends after 15 years as the grand vizier Kuyucu Murad suppresses the insurgency, having killed a great many Jelalis (see 1654).
The Hausa queen Amina dies at age 34 after an 18-year reign that has expanded her realm to the mouth of the Niger.
The Virginia colonists come under attack from the Powhatan chief Wahunsonacook, who may have been inspired by Spaniards to the south. A few colonists are killed.
The French queen mother Marie de' Medici installs her court favorite Concino Concini in a position of power, ushering in an era of cruelty and oppression for the peasantry.
Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Bathóry, countess Nádasdy, a niece of Poland's Stephen Bathóry, is found to have murdered 650 young girls in order to keep her youth by bathing in their warm blood. Her accomplices are burnt at the stake and she is confined to her fortress (see 1613).
Henry Hudson makes another attempt to find a Northwest Passage (see 1609). Backed by Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Dudley Digges, John Wolstenholme, and other English investors, Hudson leaves London April 17 in his 55-ton ship Discovery, crosses the Atlantic, but succeeds only in entering the strait that will later bear his name and in exploring the shallow bay that will be called first Hudson's Bay and then Hudson Bay. Winter overtakes his expedition as it seeks an outlet to the Pacific in James Bay at the southern end of Hudson's Bay, and it is trapped in the ice (see 1611).
English soldier Thomas West, 12th baron De La Warr, 32, is appointed first governor of the Virginia colony. His deputy Sir Thomas Gates arrives at the colony in late May with 175 new immigrants (see 1609). Gates finds Jamestown in ruins; Native Americans have killed or eaten all the livestock, the seines for fishing are gone, and only 60 survivors are left from the nearly 500 who were there in the fall of last year. Only 150 of the 900 colonists landed in the last 3 years have survived, the others having succumbed to starvation and disease. The colonists are primarily English but include some French, German, Irish, and Polish artisans. Having buried some 500 of their men, women, and children, few want to remain in Virginia, and they set sail with Gates for Newfoundland, where the English have fishing rights, but en route down the James River June 10 they encounter the Virginia and two other ships, all commanded by Baron De La Warr, with 150 new settlers and fresh supplies. The outward bound vessels come about and return to Jamestown to try again with De La Warr as their governor. He erects two forts near the mouth of the James, rebuilds Jamestown, and restores order (see Cole, 1611).
Survivors of last year's Bermuda shipwreck build two new ships from timbers and planks salvaged from their wrecks and arrive at Jamestown May 24. Among the arrivals are John Rolfe and his wife (see 1612).
Delaware Bay is named in honor of Governor De La Warr by his deputy Sir Samuel Argall, who will rule Virginia tyranically following De La Warr's departure next year.
A sporadic fur trade begins to develop between Dutch merchants and the Native Americans encountered last year by Henry Hudson.
The Dutch East India Company introduces the term share.
Dutch speculation in tulip bulbs reaches the point where a single bulb of a new variety may provide a bride's dowry (year approximate; see environment, 1554). Demand for colorful new varieties far exceeds supply, and a French investor exchanges a prosperous brewery for one bulb of the variety Tulipe Brasserie, but trade in the bulbs remains restricted to professional growers and experts (see 1634).
Siderius Nuncius by Galileo Galilei creates a sensation with talk of the unevenness of the moon's surface as observed by Galileo through his spyglass, whose lenses magnify objects 20 times (see 1609). He has observed the three moons of Jupiter January 7, calls them the Medicean stars, dedicates his treatise to his patron Cosimo II de' Medici, and moves to Florence (see 1613).
English scientist Thomas Harriot makes entry in his notebook December 8 that he has observed what later will be called sunspots on the surface of the sun (see 1609; sunspots, 800 B.C.). Reading Galileo's Siderius Nuncius spurs him to observe the satellites of Jupiter, but he fails to grasp the significance of his sunspot discovery (see 1611).
German-born mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen dies at Leyden December 31 at age 70, having calculated n to 35 places by using polygons with 262 sides. He has been teaching arithmetic, surveying, and fortification at Leyden's military school since 1600, and his students have included Willebrord van Roijen Snell, now 30, who will improve the classical method of calculating approximate values of n using 96 sided polygons to give a value correct to seven places rather than just two places (see Snell, 1616).
Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci dies at Beijing (Peking) May 11 at age 57, having attracted and converted members of the intelligentsia by his ability to cross cultural barriers.
The duque de Lerma steps up the expulsion of Spain's Moriscos (Moors), who have contributed much to the country's culture and economy. Spain will never recover from the loss.
Nonfiction: "Concerning the Powers of the Supreme Pontiff in Temporal Matters" ("De Potestate Summi Pontificis in Rebus Temporalibus") by Roberto Cardinal Bellarmino is a response to last year's pamphlet by William Barclay of Aberdeen.
The Bodleian Library that opened 8 years ago at Oxford University makes an agreement with the Stationers' Company entitling it to receive one free copy of every book printed in England.
Poetry: Wittes Pilgrimage by John Davies (of Hereford) is a collection of love sonnets.
Painting: Laocoön and The Opening of the Fifth Seal by El Greco; Raising of the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens. Caravaggio dies of malaria (or pneumonia) at Port 'Ercole while en route to Rome July 18 at age 36. He fled Rome after a fatal brawl in 1606 and has worked at Naples, in Malta, and in Sicily; Adam Elsheimer dies at Rome in December at age 32.
Theater: Peribanez by Lope de Vega Carpio, who shows 15th-century peasants driven to murder their tyrannical lord in defense of their honor; The Alchemist by Ben Jonson, who refers in his prologue to "Fortune, that favors fools"; The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton at London's Fortune Theatre, with the Prince's Men; Cymbeline by William Shakespeare: "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings" (II, iii); "Golden lads and girls all must/ As chimney-sweepers come to dust" (IV, ii).
"Vespers" by Claudio Monteverdi is published at Mantua.
The Palace of Governors at Santa Fe, New Mexico, is completed by Spanish authorities (see human rights, social justice [Oñate], 1607).
A deputy Austrian commissioner in Savoy hears stories of a glacier in the high Alpine valley of Chamonix and sets out to investigate. Farmers tell him that fields that once yielded bountiful harvests of rye and wheat are now under ice. They lead him to the De Bois glacier, and he reports to Vienna that it is "terrible and frightening to look on," having "ruined a good part of the land and all the village of Chastellard and quite carried away another little village called Bonnenuict" (see 1644).
Baron De La Warr sends his lieutenants to Bermuda for hogs and fish, the Virginia colonists resume cultivation of their cornfields and gardens, and they soon receive fresh supplies of cattle, hogs, sheep, and poultry (see 1611).
Community regulations posted at Kraków, Poland, make the first recorded mention of beygls (bagels)—round, chewy, hard glazed rolls of leavened dough that are dipped or poached in water that is close to the boiling point before they are baked. The regulations state that bagels will be given as gifts to women in childbirth (see 1932; Lender's, 1927).
Amsterdam receives its first shipment of tea from the Orient (date approximate). Europe gets its first taste of the beverage that has been popular for centuries in China and Japan (see 1614).
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