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Geneva wins independence from the duchy of Savoy, in the treaty of St Julien, after repelling a midnight assault on the city -
James I commissions the Authorized version of the Bible, which is completed by forty-seven scholars in seven years -
The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens completes an altarpiece in Rome which is an early masterpiece of the baroque -
The American Indian princess Pocahontas is taken hostage by Jamestown colonists in the first Anglo-Powhatan war -
Bohemian nobles throw the Habsburg regents out of a window in the castle in Prague, thus triggering the Thirty Years' War -
The Protestant Frederick V (elector palatine of the Rhine) is elected king by the rebellious Bohemian nobles -
Covenanters seize control of Edinburgh and other Scottish towns, launching the conflict with England known as the Bishops' War -
Charles I leads his army into action at Edgehill - the first, but inconclusive, battle in the English Civil War -
The British East India Company completes the construction of Fort St George in Madras -
The Peace of Westphalia finally brings to an end the Thirty Years' War -
Charles II returns to Scotland and is crowned king of Scots in the traditional manner at Scone -
A sudden uprising by the Wampanoag Indians against the new England settlements begins the conflict known as King Philip's War -
Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, now develops the hairspring - of great future importance in watches -
James II, landing in Ireland, is acclaimed as king in Dublin by enthusiastic Irish Catholics