1637

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Events

January–March

January 5 – Pierre Corneille's tragicomedy Le Cid is first performed, in Paris, France.
January 16 – The siege of Nagpur ends in the modern-day Maharashtra state of India, as Kok Shah, the King of Deogarh, surrenders his kingdom to the Mughal Empire.
January 23 – John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen arrives from the Netherlands to become the Governor of Dutch Brazil, and extends the range of the colony over the next six years.
January 28 – Qing invasion of Joseon: The Manchu armies of China complete their invasion of northern Korea with the surrender of King Injo of the Joseon Kingdom.
February 3 – Tulip mania collapses in the Dutch Republic.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
February 15 – Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor upon the death of his father, Ferdinand II, although his formal coronation does not take place until later in the year.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
February 18 – Eighty Years' War: Battle off Lizard Point – Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by six warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
March 6 – The world's first opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opens in Venice with the premiere of L'Andromeda, with music by Francesco Manelli and libretto by Benedetto Ferrari.<ref>Mark Ringer, Opera's First Master: The Musical Dramas of Claudio Monteverdi (Amadeus Press, 2006) p. 130</ref>
March 25 – The Blessed Virgin is proclaimed Queen of Genoa.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

April–June

April 10 – Plymouth Colony grants the "tenn menn of Saugust" a new settlement on Cape Cod, later named Sandwich, Massachusetts.
April 30 – King Charles I of England issues a proclamation, attempting to stem emigration to the North American colonies.<ref name=CBH>Template:Cite book</ref>
May 26 – Pequot War: Mystic massacre – A band of English settlers under Captain John Mason, and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies, set fire to a fortified village of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe near the Mystic River. Between 400 and 700 people, mostly women, children and old men, are killed.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
May – Chinese encyclopedist Song Yingxing publishes his Tiangong Kaiwu ("Exploitation of the Works of Nature"), considered one of the most valuable encyclopedias of classical China.
June 27 – The first English venture to China is attempted by Captain John Weddell, who sails into port in Macau and Canton during the late Ming dynasty with six ships. The voyages are for trade, which is dominated here by the Portuguese (at this time combined with the power of Spain). He brings 38,421 pairs of eyeglasses, perhaps the first recorded European-made eyeglasses to enter China.<ref>Brook, Timothy (1998). The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China p. 57. Template:ISBN.</ref>

July–September

July 23
- After a court battle, King Charles I of England hands over title to the North American colony of Massachusetts to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the founders of Plymouth Council for New England.
- Introduction of a new Scottish Prayer Book is met with widespread demonstrations, notably that of Jenny Geddes at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, who is said to have thrown a stool at the Dean's head.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
August 16 – Adam Olearius, sent along with Philipp Crusius and Otto Bruggemann by the German Duke of Holstein-Gottorp to establish a trade deal with Persia, is welcomed by the Safavid ruler, the Shah Safi at the Persian capital, Isfahan.
August 25 – Eighty Years' War: A force of 17,000 Spanish troops, led by the Spanish Netherlands Governor-General, Don Fernando de Austria, recaptures the city of Venlo from the Dutch Republic after a five-day siege
August 29 – Fighting in the modern-day West African nation of Ghana, troops of the Dutch West India Company capture the Portuguese territory of the Gold Coast after the five-day Battle of Elmina.
September 29 – The last five of the "16 Martyrs of Japan" are executed for illegally attempting to spread Christianity in Japan. Lorenzo Ruiz, Guillaume Courtet, Michael de Aozaraza, Vincent Shiwozuka and Lazarus of Kyoto are all put to death by the slow hanging torture of ana-tsurushi. They will be canonized 350 years later as saints of the Roman Catholic Church, on October 18, 1987.

October–December

October 13 – English Royal Navy first-rate ship of the line Template:Ship is launched at Woolwich Dockyard at a cost of £65,586, adorned from stern to bow with gilded carvings, after a design by Anthony van Dyck.
November 18 – The coronation as the new Holy Roman Emperor of Ferdinand III, Archduke of Austria, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, takes place in Vienna.
December 17 – The Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan, when 30,000 peasants in the heavily Catholic area of northern Kyūshū revolt.

Date unknown

Pierre de Fermat makes a notation, in a document margin, claiming to have proof of what will become known as Fermat's Last Theorem.
René Descartes promotes intellectual rigour in his Discourse on the Method, and introduces the Cartesian coordinate system in its appendix La Géométrie (published in Leiden).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
France places a few missionaries in the Ivory Coast, a country it will rule more than 200 years later.
Scottish army officer Robert Monro publishes Monro, His Expedition With the Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-Keys in London, the first military history in English.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Elizabeth Poole becomes the first female founder of a town (Taunton, Massachusetts) in the Americas.
Richard Norwood's book The Seaman's Practice is published for the first time.