1614
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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce science medicine religion literature art theater, film architecture, real estate food and drink |
French prelate Armand Jean du Plessis, 29, duc de Richelieu and bishop of Lucon, gains election to the Estates Genéral, representatives of the French people. Richelieu works to engineer the dismissal of the Estates Genéral (see 1615; 1624; literature [Harrington], 1656).
England's "Addled Parliament" meets, refuses to discuss finance, and dissolves.
Sweden's Gustav II Adolf conquers Novgorod from the Russians, having used bronze cannon that cost 10 times as much as iron ones but are so much lighter in weight that they can be easily moved.
Ottoman authorities drive the Lebanese ruler Fakhr ad-Din II into exile (see 1607). Never sure of his support at Constantinople, he allied himself with Tuscany in 1608, which has raised suspicions, and he will remain in exile for 4 years (see 1618).
Virginia colony widower John Rolfe is married April 5 to Pocahontas, favorite daughter of the Powhatan chief Wahunsonacook. Seized last year by colonists and held for ransom, Pocahontas, now 18, will never see her father again (see 1607; 1613; 1617).
Virginia colonists block French settlements in Maine and Nova Scotia (Acadia).
The Nieuw Nederland colony is founded in the area between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers (see 1623).
Fire destroys Adriaen Block's vessel Tiger, and his crew survives the winter only with help from the Algonquin on Manhattan Island, whose forests teem with game and whose waters are rich in fish, ducks, and geese (see 1613). Block's maps will for the first time show that Manhattan is an island; he puts his men to work in the spring building a 16-ton ship, the Onrust (Restless). She measures only 44½ feet long and 11½ wide, but his fur-trading partner Captain Hendrick Christiaensen accepts her in exchange for his Fortune, a larger vessel that takes Block back to Europe.
Hendrick Christiaensen sails upriver and founds Albany under the name Fort Nassau on the Hudson River (see 1609). He builds a stockade 36 feet long by 26 feet wide and names it in honor of Maurice, Prince of Orange and count of Nassau, who is stadholder of the Dutch Republic (see 1623).
Adriaen Block returns to Amsterdam October 1 after exploring the New England coast, sailing up the Connecticut River, and mapping the coast of Manhattan. His name will survive in Block Island.
The United Nieuw Nederland Company receives a charter that gives it a virtual monopoly in the fur trade and other trade that will continue until 1617. The company has been formed by 13 merchants of Amsterdam and Hoorn.
Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio by Scottish mathematician John Napier, 64, laird of Merchiston, describes the most powerful method of arithmetical calculation. Napier has discovered logarithms that make it possible to multiply seven- and eight-digit numbers by simple addition and to raise numbers to the 15th or 16th power by simple multiplication, permitting calculations heretofore almost impossible and providing the basis of the slide rule (see 1622; Briggs, 1624). A believer in astrology and divination, Napier in his younger days devised warlike machines for the defense of England against Spain's Felipe II.
On Medical Measurement (De Statica Medicina) by Santorio Santorius at the University of Padua is the first systematic study of basal metabolism (see thermometer, 1612). In an effort to test the 2nd century A.D. Greek physician Galen's finding that respiration occurs through the skin as "insensible perspiration," Santorius has built a large scale on which he often eats, works, and sleeps in order to study the fluctuations in his body weight in relation to his solid and liquid excrements, whose weight in 30 years has totaled less than the amount ingested. He supports the iatrophysical school of medical thinking that tries to explain the workings of the body entirely on mechanical grounds.
Japan's shōgun Ieyasu Tokugawa bans Christian missionaries from the country (see 1612; 1639).
Nonfiction: Historie of the World by Sir Walter Raleigh, who writes in his preface, "We may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's forepassed miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings . . . To be learned in many errors, as to be ignorant in all things, hath little diversity"; Titles of Honour by English legal antiquarian John Selden, 29.
French classical scholar Isaac Casaubon dies at London July 1 at age 55. Famed for his commentary on the ancient Greek grammarian Athenaeus, he was invited to England after the assassination of France's Henri IV in 1610 and became a naturalized English subject the following year.
Painting: Descent from the Cross and Death of Adonis (with Venus, Cupid, and the Three Graces) by Peter Paul Rubens; The Last Communion of St. Jerome by Italian painter Il Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), 32. El Greco dies at Toledo the night of April 6 at age 72; Lavinia Fontana at Rome August 11 at age 61.
Theater: The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster: "He hath put a girdle 'bout the world/ And sounded all her quicksands" (III, i); "Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,/ But, looked at near, have neither heat nor light" (IV, ii); St. Joan, Part II (La Santa Juana) by Spanish clergyman-playwright Tirso de Molina (né Gabriel Téllez), 30, 6/24 in the orchard of the duque de Lerma in honor of Felipe III's eldest son (Molina will voyage next year to Santo Domingo, teach theology there, and return to Spain in 1618); Bartholomew Fair by Ben Jonson 10/31 at London's Hope Theatre.
Venice's prisons and their connecting Bridge of Sighs are completed after 41 years of work to enlarge the state prison in the Doge's Palace.
Venice's Church of San Giorgio Maggiore is completed after 55 years of work according to plans by the late architect Andrea Palladio.
Amsterdam's Zuiderkerk is completed to designs by Hendrick de Keyser; it is the first Protestant Church in the Netherlands.
England's Levant Company brings home pepper and other spices aboard its big Indiamen ships from Java and Sumatra for re-export to Constantinople.
An English East India Company agent at Hirado, Japan, writes to a colleague at Macao June 27 requesting that he "buy for me a pot of the best sort of chaw in Macao" (see Amsterdam, 1610). It is the first mention of tea by an Englishman, and it will be nearly 50 years before the East India Company's books will record any purchase of tea (see 1664; Nieuw Amsterdam, 1650).
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