The 17th century

In 1601, the Poor Law Act established parish responsibility for poor relief, a framework lasting over two centuries (England).

In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was founded, the first company to issue tradeable shares to the public (Netherlands).

In 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England, uniting the crowns (Britain).

In 1604, Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall appeared, the first monolingual English dictionary (England).

In 1605, the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament was discovered (England).

In 1606, Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent (Australia).

In 1607, Jamestown was founded, the first permanent English settlement in North America (North America).

In 1608, the refracting telescope was first documented in the Netherlands (Netherlands).

In 1609, Galileo turned a telescope on the night sky, and Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion (Europe).

In 1610, Galileo observed the four largest moons of Jupiter (Europe).

In 1611, the King James Bible was published, shaping English prose for centuries (England).

In 1612, the Lancashire witch trials at Pendle produced some of the most fully documented English witchcraft proceedings (England).

In 1613, Michael Romanov was elected tsar, beginning three centuries of Romanov rule (Russia).

In 1614, John Napier published his description of logarithms, transforming calculation (Scotland).

In 1615, the second part of Don Quixote was published, completing what is often called the first modern novel (Spain).

In 1616, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes both died, within days of one another (Europe).

In 1617, John Napier described the calculating rods known as Napier's bones, a practical aid to multiplication (Scotland).

In 1618, the Thirty Years' War began with the Defenestration of Prague (Central Europe).

In 1619, the first recorded Africans were brought to Virginia, an early step toward chattel slavery in the English colonies (North America).

In 1620, the Mayflower carried English separatists to Plymouth (North America).

In 1621, Robert Burton published The Anatomy of Melancholy (England).

In 1622, William Oughtred devised the slide rule, which remained the working calculator of engineering until the 1970s (England).

In 1623, the First Folio collected Shakespeare's plays, preserving eighteen that had never been printed (England).

In 1624, the Dutch founded New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island (North America).

In 1625, Hugo Grotius published On the Law of War and Peace, a foundation of modern international law (Low Countries).

In 1626, St Peter's Basilica was consecrated in Rome after more than a century of building (Italy).

In 1627, the last recorded aurochs died in the Jaktorów forest (Poland).

In 1628, William Harvey published his account of the circulation of the blood (England).

In 1629, Charles I dissolved Parliament and began eleven years of personal rule without it (England).

In 1630, Boston was founded by Puritan colonists in Massachusetts Bay (North America).

In 1631, Vesuvius erupted, the most destructive eruption since antiquity and the one that prompted systematic monitoring (Italy).

In 1632, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was published, leading to his trial (Italy).

In 1633, Galileo was tried by the Inquisition and forced to recant heliocentrism (Italy).

In 1634, the Oberammergau Passion Play was first performed, a vow made during plague and kept roughly every decade since (Bavaria).

In 1635, the Académie française was established to regulate and record the French language (France).

In 1636, Harvard College was founded, the oldest institution of higher education in what became the United States (North America).

In 1637, Descartes published Discourse on the Method, including analytic geometry (France).

In 1638, Galileo published Two New Sciences, setting out the mathematics of motion and material strength (Italy).

In 1639, Jeremiah Horrocks made the first recorded observation of a transit of Venus, having predicted it when established tables did not (England).

In 1640, the Long Parliament assembled, sitting in some form for two decades and reshaping the constitutional balance (England).

In 1641, rebellion broke out in Ireland, beginning a decade of war (Ireland).

In 1642, the English Civil War began (England).

In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli demonstrated the mercury barometer (Italy).

In 1644, the Qing dynasty took Beijing, ending Ming rule (China).

In 1645, the New Model Army decisively defeated the royalists at Naseby, effectively deciding the first English Civil War (England).

In 1646, Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica set out to test common beliefs against evidence, an early exercise in debunking (England).

In 1647, the Putney Debates argued the basis of political authority among the New Model Army's own ranks (England).

In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War and shaped the modern state system (Europe).

In 1649, Charles I was executed and England became a republic (England).

In 1650, Otto von Guericke built the first vacuum pump, making the properties of air experimentally accessible (Holy Roman Empire).

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan (England).

In 1652, a Dutch supply station was established at the Cape of Good Hope (Southern Africa).

In 1653, Oliver Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector (England).

In 1654, correspondence between Pascal and Fermat on a gambling problem laid the foundations of probability theory (France).

In 1655, Christiaan Huygens identified Titan and correctly described the rings of Saturn (Low Countries).

In 1656, Christiaan Huygens built the first pendulum clock, improving timekeeping accuracy by more than an order of magnitude (Low Countries).

In 1657, the Accademia del Cimento was founded in Florence, one of the earliest scientific societies (Italy).

In 1658, Jan Swammerdam observed red blood cells under a microscope, the first description of them (Low Countries).

In 1659, the Central England Temperature record begins, the longest continuous instrumental temperature series anywhere (England).

In 1660, the monarchy was restored under Charles II, and the Royal Society was founded (England).

In 1661, Robert Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist argued for chemistry as an experimental science distinct from alchemy (England).

In 1662, the Royal Society received its royal charter (England).

In 1663, James Gregory described a reflecting telescope design, avoiding the colour fringing of lenses (Scotland).

In 1664, the English took New Amsterdam and renamed it New York (North America).

In 1665, the Great Plague killed roughly a quarter of London's population (England).

In 1666, the Great Fire destroyed much of the City of London (England).

In 1667, Milton's Paradise Lost was published (England).

In 1668, Isaac Newton built the first working reflecting telescope (England).

In 1669, Hennig Brand isolated phosphorus, the first element discovered in the historical record (Germany).

In 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company was chartered, and still trades today (North America).

In 1671, Leibniz described the stepped reckoner, a calculating machine that could multiply directly (Holy Roman Empire).

In 1672, Newton published his work on the composition of white light, showing prisms separate rather than colour it (England).

In 1673, Christiaan Huygens published his work on the pendulum clock and centrifugal force (Netherlands).

In 1674, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first observed single-celled organisms, a world nobody had known was there (Low Countries).

In 1675, the Royal Observatory was founded at Greenwich to solve the problem of longitude at sea (England).

In 1676, Ole Rømer produced the first quantitative estimate of the speed of light (Denmark).

In 1677, Spinoza's Ethics was published shortly after his death (Low Countries).

In 1678, Huygens presented his wave theory of light, the rival to Newton's corpuscular account (Low Countries).

In 1679, the Habeas Corpus Act required that a detained person be brought before a court, a protection widely copied since (England).

In 1680, the dodo is generally reckoned extinct around this date, within a century of first contact (Mauritius).

In 1681, William Penn received the charter for Pennsylvania (North America).

In 1682, Pennsylvania was established under William Penn's charter (North America).

In 1683, the Ashmolean opened in Oxford, the first university museum open to the public (England).

In 1684, Leibniz published his notation for the calculus, the one still used today (Holy Roman Empire).

In 1685, the Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the toleration of French Protestants, driving Huguenot emigration across Europe (France).

In 1686, Edmond Halley published the first meteorological chart, mapping the trade winds (England).

In 1687, Newton's Principia set out the laws of motion and universal gravitation (England).

In 1688, the Glorious Revolution replaced James II with William and Mary (England).

In 1689, the Bill of Rights limited the powers of the Crown and established parliamentary rights (England).

In 1690, John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government both appeared (England).

In 1691, the Treaty of Limerick ended the Williamite War in Ireland (Ireland).

In 1692, the Salem witch trials were held in Massachusetts (North America).

In 1693, an earthquake devastated eastern Sicily, killing tens of thousands (Italy).

In 1694, the Bank of England was founded (England).

In 1695, the lapse of the Licensing Act ended pre-publication censorship of the press (England).

In 1696, the window tax was introduced in England, and windows were bricked up in response — a tax still visible on buildings (England).

In 1697, Charles Perrault published the fairy tale collection that fixed Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty in their familiar forms (France).

In 1698, Thomas Savery patented an early steam pump for draining mines (England).

In 1699, the Treaty of Karlowitz marked the end of Ottoman expansion into central Europe (Central Europe).

In 1700, Russia adopted the Julian calendar counted from the birth of Christ, replacing a year count from the supposed creation of the world (Russia).