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Dutch defeat the Portuguese in a naval battle in the Indonesian Archipelago (the Spice Islands).
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A group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River.
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German-Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey invents the first refracting telescope.
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In 1618, the Second Defenestration of Prague leads to the outbreak of the conflict. In 1620, Ferdinand II defeats Ferdinand V at the Battle of White Mountain. In 1626, Albrecht von Wallenstein leads Catholic forces to victory at the Battle of Dessau Bridge. In 1631, Swedish forces led by King Gustavus Adolphus win the Battle of Breitenfeld. In 1643, French troops win the Battle of Roncroi. In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ends both the Thirty and Eighty Years' War.
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Sir Edwin Sandys sends a shipload of approximately 1,500 kidnapped children from England to the Virginia colony; it is one of several problematic programs used by Sandys and others wherein unemployed, vagrants, and other undesirable multitudes were sent to the New World to offset horrifying mortality rates in the colonies.
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Despite the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter, it is decided that only church members are allowed to become freemen who are allowed to vote for colony officials.
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English astronomer and mathematician W. Gascoigne invents the micrometer.
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Written by Locke, helped usher in freedom and equality and universal right instead of feudalism.
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English inventor and engineer Thomas Savery invents a steam pump.
