1609

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Events

January–March

January 15: *Avisa* newspaper begins publication.

January 12 – The Basque witch trials are started in Spain as the court of the Inquisition at Logroño receives a letter from the commissioner of the village of Zugarramurdi, and orders the arrest of four women, including María de Jureteguía and María Chipía de Barrenetxea.<ref>Carmelo Lison Tolosana, Las brujas en la historia de España (Witches in the History of Spain) (Temas de Hoy, 1992) pp.89-94</ref>
January 15 – One of the world's first newspapers, Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, begins publication in Wolfenbüttel (Holy Roman Empire).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
January 31 – The Bank of Amsterdam is established.
February 4 – The last day of Keichō 慶長 13 (according to the Japanese lunar calendar).
March 11 – The Swedish Army, under the command of General Jacob De la Gardie, begins marching east from Vyborg (at this time, part of the Swedish Empire, modern-day Russia) in order to defend the Russian Empire against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the course of the Polish–Muscovite War.
March 19 – The Dutch warship Mauritius sinks off the coast of the Cape of Cape Lopes Gonçalves on the modern-day West African nation of Gabon. The wreckage of the Mauritius will not be located until 375 years later, in 1985.
March 24 – Led by the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, the Lithuanian Navy breaks the blockade of Riga by sinking two Swedish Navy warships off the coast of Salacgrīva.
March 25 – Johann Wilhelm, the Roman Catholic Duke of the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg in Germany, dies at the capital in Düsseldorf with no heirs. On April 2, his widow, Duchess Antoinette of Lorraine establishes a regency to determine who the successor will be, prompting the War of the Jülich Succession between the states of the Protestant Union and the states of the Catholic League.

April–June

April 4
- King Philip III of Spain signs an edict for the expulsion of the Moriscos from his country with effect from September 11.
- English explorer Henry Hudson, in the service of the Dutch East India Company, sets out from Amsterdam in the Halve Maen.<ref name="Half Moon">Template:Cite book</ref>
April 5 – Invasion of Ryukyu in Japan: Soldiers of the Shimazu clan capture the castle on Ryukyu Island, beginning to make the Ryukyu Kingdom a vassal of Satsuma Han, but Ryukyu is still allowed to keep itself a tribute state of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
April 9 – The Netherlands and Spain agree to the Twelve Years' Truce (which lasts until 1621) in the Eighty Years' War, with the signing of the Treaty of Antwerp, allowing the Dutch East India Company to trade within the Spanish Empire.
May 20 – London publisher Thomas Thorpe issues Shake-speares Sonnets, with a dedication to "Mr. W.H.", and the poem A Lover's Complaint appended; it is uncertain whether this publication has Shakespeare's authority.
May 23 – The Second Virginia Charter is officially ratified; it is intended to replace the council with a governor, who has absolute control in the colony.
June 2 – With the Sea Venture as its flagship, a fleet of nine English ships and more than 500 passengers altogether, departs from England to bring supplies to the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. The fleet runs into a storm in July and the Sea Venture is wrecked in the Bermuda islands on July 24.
June 10 – The War of the Jülich Succession begins as the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Palatinate-Neuburg sign a treaty at Dortmund and then send troops to establish Protestant Union rule in the Roman Catholic United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg.
June 16 – The Battle of Tashiskari is fought as General Giorgi Saakadze of the Georgian Kingdom of Kartli repels invading troops from the Ottoman Empire before they can capture Tbilisi.
June 29 – A fleet of ships from the Kingdom of Spain, assisted by a French warship, fights a battle in the Mediterranean Sea against a larger fleet of 23 ships from the North African Eyalet of Tunisia and sinks 21 of them. The other two Tunisian ships are captured.

July–September

July 4 – French explorer Samuel de Champlain and his entourage of 60 men in 24 canoes become the first Europeans to enter Lake Champlain, located between the modern-day U.S. states of Vermont and New York.<ref>"A Historical, Topographical & Agricultural Survey of the County of Washington", by Dr. Asa Fitch, in Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society: Report of the Executive Committee for 1848 (New York State Agricultural Society, 1849) p. 882 ("Attended by some of the Mountain Indians, he left Quebec, May 28th, 1609... On the 4th day of July they entered Lake Champlain.")</ref>
July 9 – Bohemia is granted freedom of religion by a 'Letter of Majesty'.
July 10 – The German Catholic League is formed in Munich by Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria to counteract the Protestant Union. Maximilian assembles representatives from Augsburg, Konstanz, Passau, Regensburg, and Würzburg in an alliance "for the defense of the Catholic religion and peace" within the Holy Roman Empire.
July 23 – A three-day hurricane begins in the Caribbean Sea and separates the nine London Company's ships and their 600 passengers who are en route to relieve the Jamestown settlement. One ship sinks, and the flagship is wrecked. Less than 300 settlers make it to Virginia.
July 25
- The Sea Venture, flagship of the nine-ship fleet of the London Company is deliberately wrecked at Bermuda during a storm, as Admiral George Somers drives the ship into the reefs of Discovery Bay in order to prevent the ship from sinking. A group of 153 survivors stay, making the first English settlement of the island.<ref>James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (Basic Books, 2006) pp. 158–160</ref>
- After a fight on November 30 in Portuguese Macau between Japanese traders and Portuguese soldiers, Japan's ruling shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, strictly prohibits further trade between Japan and Portugal.<ref>C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650 (University of California Press, 1951) p. 272</ref>
July 30 – At modern-day Crown Point, New York, Samuel de Champlain participates in a battle between the Huron and Iroquois, shooting and killing two Iroquois chiefs; this helps set the tone for French–Iroquois relations for the next 100 years.
August 10 – The Spanish galleon San Francisco sinks in a storm off the coast of Japan, with the loss of 56 men. Clinging to floating wreckage, the survivors are able to reach Yubanda, near Onjuku in modern-day Chiba Prefecture.
August 11 – Four ships arrive at the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, with almost 300 men, women and children, to bring supplies for the starving English colonists. They are followed days later by the other three ships remaining from the London Company. Most of the supplies, however, are spoiled by rain and seawater, and many of the passengers are ill with the bubonic plague.<ref>Lyon Gardiner Tyler, England in America, 1580-1652 (Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1907) p. 63</ref>
August 15 (August 5 O.S.) – English astronomer Thomas Harriot becomes the first person to make a detailed drawing of the Moon, based on his observations through a telescope.
August 25 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian officials.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
August 28 – Henry Hudson is the first European to see Delaware Bay.<ref name="Half Moon"/><ref name="Cassell's Chronology">Template:Cite book</ref>
September 2 – Henry Hudson enters New York Bay, aboard the Halve Maen.
September 10 – Jamestown: Capt. George Percy replaces Captain John Smith as president of the Council, and Smith returns to England.
September 11
- Expulsion of the Moriscos from Valencia in accordance with the edict signed by Philip III on April 4.
- Henry Hudson in the Halve Maen sails into Upper New York Bay,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and begins a journey up the Hudson River.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

October–December

October 12 – A version of the rhyme Three Blind Mice is published in London.<ref>In Deuteromelia or The Seconde part of Musicks melodie.</ref> The editor, and possible author of the verse, is the teenage Thomas Ravenscroft.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
November 19 – Archduke Matthias of Austria is formally crowned in Budapest as Mátyás II, King of Hungary, after having been appointed on June 26, 1608.
November 29 – In Japan, a treaty is signed between Spanish nobleman Rodrigo de Vivero, former Governor-General of the Philippines and the former shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, for the establishment of a Spanish factory in eastern Japan.
December 8 – One of the first public libraries, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, is opened in the Italian city of Milan, founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Unlike other reading rooms, the library houses its collection on shelves along the walls, rather than chained to reading tables.

Date unknown

The Dutch East India Company imports tea to Europe.
The Dutch East India Company establishes a trading post in Hirado, Japan.
Dutch entrepreneur Isaac Le Maire devizes the concept of selling short shares in order to benefit from a falling Dutch East India Company share price.<ref>Schoorl, H. (1968) Isaäc le Maire, koopman en bedijker Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink en zoon.</ref>
Hugo Grotius publishes Mare Liberum, his legal text on freedom of the seas, in Leiden.
The Scrooby Congregation of Protestant English Separatists (predecessors of the Pilgrim Fathers) moves from Amsterdam to Leiden.
Warsaw becomes the capital of Poland.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The municipality of Buenavista in Marinduque, Philippines is founded.
The Statutes of Iona are passed, marking the end of the bloody feuds between the clans in the Scottish Highlands.
The Douay–Rheims Bible Old Testament translation from the Vulgate into English vol. 1 is published in Reims.
English-born Sister Mary Ward founds the Sisters of Loreto at Saint-Omer, at this time in the Spanish Netherlands.
Johannes Kepler publishes his first two laws of planetary motion in Astronomia nova.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Cornelis Drebbel invents the thermostat.
"Egyptians" (i.e., Romany people) are expelled from the Kingdom of Scotland.