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   Date  Event(s)
1523 
1525 
1527 
1529 
1530 
1532 
1533 
1534 
1535 
10 1536 
11 1537 
12 1539 
  • 1539: England - Remaining monasteries dissolved; wealth taken and used for Oxford and Cambridge, among other things; result almost 1/4 of land in England given to new owners, creates buyer's market
  • 1539: America - Hernando De Soto claimed Florida for Spain
  • 15 Nov 1539: Glastonbury, England - Dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey; buildings torched and looted by king's men; Abbot Richard Whyting is executed by hanging atop Glastonbury Tor.
13 1540 
14 1541 
15 1542 
16 1543 
17 1544 
  • 1544: Europe - Tomatoes reach Europe. It is unclear where tomatoes may have been first domesticated but the two main possibilities are Peru and Mexico. The wild forms may have originated in either area, but it was the indigenous peoples of Mexico that first cultivated them. In fact, the common name tomato comes from tomatl, the word for this plant in the Nahuatl language of Mexico.
  • 1544: France - Henry VIII and Charles V invade France
  • 1544: England - Henry VIII orders English translation of Bible placed in every parish church; Litany said in English for first time; Pope declares Henry deposed, supported by all Catholic princes, particularly France and Scotland; Henry builds 70-ship navy, arms people, fortifies coast
18 1546 
  • 1546: England - Girolamo Fracastoro published the idea that diseases were caused by disease-specific seeds that could multiply within the body and be transmitted directly from person to person or directly on contaminated objects, even over long distance; moreover, he proposed that variations in the intensity of epidemics could be attributed to changes in the virulence of germs
19 1547 
20 1548 
21 1549 
22 1550 
23 1551 
24 1552 
25 1553 
26 1554 
  • 1554: England - Laws against burning heretics repealed
27 1555 
  • 1555: England - Protestants are persecuted and about 300, including Archbishop Cranmer, are burned at the stake
  • 1555: England - Michel de Notredame or Nostradamus published his book of prophecies Centuries Asrtologiques and Excellent er Moult Utile Opuscule a tous necessaire qui desirent avoir connaissance de plusieurs exq uises recettes ('An excellent and most useful little work essential to all who wish to become acquainted with some exquisite recipes').
28 1558 
  • 1558: France - Philip drags England into war with France, Calais is lost; Mary I dies of dropsy, leaving no heir
  • 1558: England - Elizabeth I, ruler of England to 1603. House of Tudor: Daughter of Henry VIII, by Anne Boleyn.
  • 1558: England - William Cecil (later Lord Burghley), the Queen's closest advisor, assists Elizabeth in passing laws making monarch head of Church, making English prayer book only one, and generally laying foundations of Church of England as known today
  • 5 Mar 1558: England - Francisco Fernandes supposedly introduced smoking tobacco to Europe.
29 1559 
30 1560 
31 1561 
32 1562 
33 1563 
  • 1563: England - The Thirty-nine Articles, which complete establishment of the Anglican Church
  • 1563: England - Statute of Artificers: planned recruitment and control of labour and wages
34 1564 
35 1565 
36 1567 
37 1568 
38 1569 
39 1575 
  • 1575: England - English trade booms (to 1585)
40 1576 
  • 1576: Arcitic - Frobisher and Locke search unsuccessfully for Northwest Passage (to 1578)
41 1577 
42 1578 
43 1582 
44 1583 
  • 1583: England - Cesalpino, in De Plantis, classified plants with seeds according to the number, position, and shape of the parts of their fruit.
  • 1583: Italy - Galileo Galilei discovered by experiment that the oscillations of a swinging pendulum took the same amount of time regardless of their amplitude.
  • 1583: Munster, Ireland - Colonised by English
45 1584 
46 1585 
47 1586 
48 1587 
49 1588 
  • Jun 1588: England - Spanish Armada - 60,000 troops, 30,000 sailors, 77,000 tons of shipping - sails against England, battle lasts one week, decimated by English then by gales
50 1589 
  • 1589: England - William Lee develops the first knitting machine.
  • 1589: France - Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henry II of France died.She is sometimes called the 'mother of French haute cuisine' because the Italian chefs she brought with her from Florence had a strong influence on the development of French cuisine. One of the things they brought with them was ice cream.
51 1590 
52 1592 
  • 1592: England - Plague in London and provincial towns
53 1593 
  • 1593: Italy - Galileo invents a water thermometer.
  • 9 Aug 1593: England - Izaak Walton was born. He is mainly known for The Compleat Angler, or, the Contemplative Man's Recreation, which is one of the most frequently published books in English literature. It is a literary discourse on the pleasures of fishing.
54 1594 
55 1596 
56 1597 
57 1600 
  • 1600: England - William Gilbert, in De Magnete, held that the earth behaves like a giant magnet with its poles near the geographic poles. He coined the word electrica (from the Greek word for amber, elektron), and distinguished electricity from magnetism.
  • 1600: London, England - Population of London about 200,000
  • 1600: Sicily - The blood orange is believed to have developed by natural mutation
  • 1600: England - The British East India Company was incorporated by royal charter. It was created to compete in the East Indian spice trade.
58 1601 
  • 1601: England - Poor Law Act passed, prompted by three successive poor harvests resulting in demonstrations by starving peasants; codifies previous measures, differentiates between able-bodied and weak unemployed; town councils began to tax citizens to pay for alms
  • 1601: England - Essex attempts rebellion, and is executed
59 1602 
60 1603 
61 1604 
62 1605 
63 1606 
64 1607 
65 1608 
66 1609 
67 1610 
  • 1610: Kracow, Poland - Community Regulations of stated that bagels were to be given as a gift to women in childbirth.
68 1611 
  • 1611: England - James I's authorized version of the Bible is completed; English and Scottish Protestant colonists settle in Ulster
69 1612 
70 1614 
71 1615 
  • 1615: England - The first tea is imported to the west
  • 1615: Japan- Furuta Oribe died. His original name was Furuta Shigenari. He was a Japanese master of the tea ceremony who studied under Sen Riky. His ideas influenced the tea ceremony, teahouse architecture, tea-garden landscaping and even flower arrangement.
72 1616 
73 1617 
  • 1617: England - The first one way streets were established in London. Seventeen one way streets were created to regulate 'disorder and rude behaviour of Carmen, Draymen, and others using Cartes'.
74 1618 
75 1620 
76 1621 
  • 8 Sep 1621: France - Prince Louis II de Condé, known as the Great Condé, was born. He was a French general who loved to hunt and had a passion for rice. Several dishes have been named for him, including Consomme Condé and Creme Condé.
77 1622 
  • 1622: England - James I dissolves Parliament for asserting its right to debate foreign affairs
  • 1622: England - Weekly News, first English newspaper, published.
  • 1622: England - Commission to enquire into decline of woollen trade
78 1623 
79 1624 
80 1625 
81 1626 
  • 1626: England - Francis Bacon died. An English statesman, philosopher and author of Novum Organum, a work on scientific inquiry, he died after having stuffing a dressed chicken with snow to see how long the flesh could be preserved by the extreme cold. He caught cold and died from complications about a month later.
  • 1626: England - A large Codfish, split open at a Cambridge market, is found to contain a copy of a book of religious treatises by John Frith.
82 1627 
  • 1627: England - William Harvey was able to confirm his observation that the blood circulates throughout the body, which he inferred from the structure of the venal valves. The following year, in Exercitatio Anatomica, he published these conclusions as well as a description of the heart as a mechanical pump.
  • 1627: Warsaw, Poland - The last known living ancestor of all modern domestic cattle (the aurochs) was killed by a poacher
  • 1627: England - John Ray (Wray) was born. A leading 17th century English naturalist and botanist. He contributed to the advancement of taxonomy, and established the species as the basic unit of taxonomy.
83 1628 
84 1629 
85 1630 
86 1633 
  • 1633: America - Connecticut settled; Maryland founded by George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore
  • 1633: England - Bananas were supposedly displayed in the shop window of merchant Thomas Johnson. This was the first time the banana had ever been seen in Great Britain. It would be more than 200 years before they were regularly imported. In 1999 remains of a banana were found at a Tudor archaeological site on the banks of the River Thames. This would seem to date it 150 years earlier than Thomas Johnson's banana. A classic food mystery!
  • 1633: Rome, Italy - Galileo was forced by the Inquisition in Rome to renounce his theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
  • 3 Nov 1633: Italy - Bernardino Ramazzini was born. A physician, he was the first to note the relationship between worker's illnesses and their work environment. Considered the founder of occupational medicine.
87 1634 
  • 1634: Boston, Massachusetts - Samuel Cole supposedly opened the first tavern in the U.S.A.
88 1636 
  • 1636: England - Tulip mania begins and ceases the following year in a precursor of the 2000 dot-com crash
  • 1636: England - Mild outbreak of Black Death
  • 1636: England - W. Gascoigne invents the micrometer.
  • 1636: America - The Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established Harvard College (New College), the first college in the Americas.
89 1637 
90 1638 
91 1639 
92 1640 
93 1641 
94 1642 
95 1643 
96 1644 
97 1645 
98 1646 
  • 1646: England - Charles I surrenders to the Scots
99 1647 
100 1648 
101 1649 
  • 1649: London, England - The Commonwealth, in which England is governed as a republic, is established and lasts until 1660
  • 1649: Ireland - Cromwell harshly suppresses Catholic rebellions
  • 1649: England - Long Parliament (Rump Parliament) confiscates land; House of Lords abolished; Charles II, meanwhile in exile on Continent, travels to Scotland, signs Covenant, Scots support him
  • 1649: England - Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, ruler of England to 1658. Commonwealth & Protectorate.
  • 1649: England - Nicholas Culpeper, Herbalist, wrote the pseudoscientific A Physicall Directory. It listed plants and their supposed healing properties based on the plants resemblance to the human body parts.
  • 30 Jan 1649: London, England - Execution of Charles I
102 1650 
103 1651 
  • 1651: England - Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, argued from a mechanistic theory that man is a selfishly individualistic animal at constant war with others. In the state of nature, life is 'nasty, brutish, and short.'
  • 1651: England - Navigation Act passes, forbids exportation of goods except in all-English ships, foreign merchants and goods prohibited in England and colonies, strengthened in 1660
  • 3 Sep 1651: England - Charles II invades England and is defeated at Battle of Worcester; Charles escapes to France
104 1652 
105 1653 
  • 1653: England - Oliver Cromwell dissolves the 'Rump Parliament' and becomes Lord Protector
  • 1653: England - England victorious in battles against Spain and aids France against Spain; England becomes leading naval power and important military power; restores legal rights to Jews
106 1654 
107 1655 
108 1656 
109 1657 
110 1658 
111 1659 
112 1660 
113 1661 
114 1662 
115 1663 
116 1664 
117 1665 
118 1666 
  • 1666: England - First European printed paper banknote issued
  • 1666: London, England - The Great Fire of London began in the shop of the King's baker. After burning for four days, more than 13,000 buildings had been destroyed.
119 1667 
  • 1667: Medway River, Kent - Dutch fleet defeats the English
120 1668 
121 1669 
  • 1669: England - Isaac Newton circulated a manuscript, De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas, the first notice of his calculus.
122 1670 
123 1671 
124 1672 
125 1673 
126 1674 
127 1675 
128 1676 
129 1677 
130 1678 
131 1679 
132 1680 
  • 1680: America - Pennsylvania founded by William Penn for oppressed Quakers
  • 1680: England - Moves to remove Charles II's brother James from succession persist through into 1681 (because he married an Italian and converted to Catholicism) and replace with Charles's illegitimate son, also Charles;civil war between Tories and Whigs narrowly averted
133 1681 
134 1685 
135 1686 
136 1687 
137 1688 
138 1689 
139 1690 
140 1691 
  • 3 Oct 1691: Limerick, Ireland - The Treaty of Limerick allows Catholics in Ireland to exercise their religion freely, but severe penal laws soon follow. The French War begins
141 1692 
142 1693 
143 1694 
144 1695 
145 1697 
146 1698 
  • 1698: England - Thomas Savery patented an engine which produced a vacuum by condensing steam. It was employed for raising water from a mine and supplying water to several country houses.
  • 1698: Russia - Tsar Peter the Great begins taxing men with beards
147 1699 
  • 23 May 1699: America - John Bartram was born. A naturalist and explorer, considered 'father of American botany'; established a world renowned botanical garden in Philadelphia in 1728.
148 1700 
149 1701 
150 1702 
151 1703 
  • 1703: Epworth, Lincolnshire, England - Birth of John Wesley. By 1784, 356 Methodist chapels built in places lacking church
152 1704 
153 1706 
  • 1706: London, England - The Evening Post, first evening newspaper issued
  • 23 May 1706: Netherlands - British, Bavarian and Austrian troops under Marlborough defeat the French at the Battle of Ramillies, and expel the French from the Netherlands
154 1707 
  • 1707: Great Britain - The Act of Union unites the kingdoms of England and Scotland and transfers the seat of Scottish Government to London
155 1708 
  • 11 Jul 1708: England - The Duke of Marlborough defeats the French at the Battle of Oudenarde. The French incur heavy losses. Queen Anne vetoes a parliamentary bill to recognise the Scottish militia. This is the last time a bill is vetoed by the sovereign
156 1709 
157 1710 
  • 1710: Great Britain - A Tory ministry is formed, under Harley, with the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell and the fall of the Whig government
  • 1710: Great Britain - Wooden panelling replaces tapestry as wall covering
158 1711 
159 1712 
160 1713 
161 1714