1642

Events

• January 4 - Charles I attempts to arrest five leading members of the Long Parliament, but they escape. Beginning of English Civil War.
• March 1 - Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) becomes the first incorporated city in America
• May 17 - Sieur de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.
• July - Charles I besieges Hull in an attempt to gain control of its arsenal.
• October - Battle of Edgehill.
• November 24 - Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
• The Dutch drive Spain from Taiwan.
• Abel Tasman achieves the first recorded European sighting of New Zealand.
• Blaise Pascal produces a mechanical adding machine (the "Pascaline").
• Claudio Monteverdi's opera l'Incoronazione di Poppeia is first performed.
• First Battle of Lostwithiel
• Jean-Baptiste Tavernier brings Hope diamond to Europe
• Puritans close all theaters in England
• Montreal founded
• Peter Stuyvesant becomes the governor of Curacao

Births

• April 15 - Suleiman II, Sultan, Ottoman Empire (d. 1691)
• December 25 - Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician and scientist.

Deaths

• January 8 - Galileo Galilei, Italian artist and scientist.
• December 4 - Armand-Jean Duplessis Richelieu, French cardinal and statesman

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