1637

Year 1637 (MDCXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1637

January–June

• February 3 – Tulip mania collapses in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands).
• February 15 – Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• April 10 – Plymouth Colony grants the "tenn menn of Saugust" a new settlement on Cape Cod, later named Sandwich, Massachusetts.
• 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 undertaken by Admiral Weddell, who sails into port in Macau and Canton during the late Ming Dynasty. The voyages are for trade, which is dominated there by the Portuguese (then combined with the power of Spain).

July–December

• October 13 – The launching ceremony is held for HMS Sovereign of the Seas, the gilded warship of the British Royal Navy.
• December 17 – The Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan.

Undated

• Pierre de Fermat makes a notation, in a document margin, claiming to have proof of what would become known as Fermat's last theorem.
• France places a few missionaries in the Côte d'Ivoire, a country it will rule more than 200 years later.
• The Kingdom of England wages war against the Mashantucket Pequots.
• The first opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opens in Venice.
• René Descartes writes his Discours de la Méthode.
• Elizabeth Poole becomes the first woman to have founded a town (Taunton, Massachusetts) in the Americas.
• The Blessed Virgin is proclaimed Queen of Genoa.
• Second Manchu invasion of Korea: The Joseon court reluctantly submits to the Manchu's demands of vassalhood while continuing to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Ming Dynasty.
• Six European ships dock at a port in China, bringing 38,421 pairs of eyeglasses to China during the late Ming Dynasty, the first recorded European-made eyeglasses to enter China. Now the Daoist unconcern with sight will change, along with their favorable attitude towards lack of intricate detail in painting (although those with good eyesight often favor intricate details in their painting). Refer to page 57 of Timothy Brook's book The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. However, the historian Kaiming Chiu argues in his The Introduction of Spectacles Into China that spectacles were introduced into China as far back as the late 13th century.
• 30,000 peasants in the heavily Catholic area of northern Kyūshū revolt.

Births

• January 1 – Emperor Go-Sai of Japan (d. 1685)
• February 12 – Jan Swammerdam, Dutch scientist (d. 1680)
• June 10 – Jacques Marquette, French Jesuit missionary and explorer (d. 1675)
• August 27 – Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, Governor of the Province of Maryland (d. 1715)
• November 30 – Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, French historian (d. 1698)
• December 6 – Edmund Andros, English governor in North America (d. 1714)
• December 7 – Bernardo Pasquini, Italian composer (d. 1710)
• December 24 – Pierre Jurieu, French Protestant leader (d. 1713)

See also Category:1637 births.

Deaths

• February 15 – Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1578)
• March 19 – Péter Pázmány, Hungarian cardinal and statesman (b. 1570)
• April 1 – Niwa Nagashige, Japanese warlord (b. 1571)
• May 19 – Isaac Beeckman, Dutch scientist and philosopher (b. 1588)
• June 24 – Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, French astronomer (b. 1580)
• August 6 – Ben Jonson, English writer (b. 1572)
• August 10 – Johann Gerhard, German Lutheran leader (b. 1582)
• August 14 – Gabriello Chiabrera, Italian poet (b. 1552)
• September 8 – Robert Fludd, English mystic (b. 1574)
• September 27 – Lorenzo Ruiz, Filipino saint (b. c.1600)
• December 4 – Nicholas Ferrar, English trader (b. 1592)
• December 27 – Vincenzo Giustiniani, banker (b. 1564)

See also Category:1637 deaths.