• Irish satirist Jonathan Swift.
• Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli.
• French mathematician Abraham de Moivre.
• English mathematician and geologist William Whiston.
• Italian mathematician Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri.
• English cross-dressing soldier Kit Cavanagh, who disguised herself as a man in order to stay with her husband.
• English dramatist Susanna Centlivre.
• Italian composer Antonio Lotti.
• French composer Jean-Louis Lully.
• Italian painter Alessandro Magnasco.
• English author Edward `Ned' Ward.
• German composer Johann Christoph Pepusch.
• English politician and poet George Granville, future Earl of Lansdowne.
• English sculptor Francis Bird.
• English poet John Pomfret.
• French composer Michel Pinolet de Montéclair.
• Scottish physician and writer John Arbuthnot.
• Scottish nobleman and Jacobite agitator Simon Fraser, later Earl of Lovat.

• German composer Heinrich Schütz.
• (approx.) Chinese playwright Li Yu.
• Italian composer Francesco Borromoni.
• English poet and satirist George Wither.
• Dutch mathematician Adriaan Vlacq.
• Flemish mathematician Gregorius Saint-Vincent.
• French painter Antoine Rivalz.
• Spanish painter Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo.
• French architect François Mansart.
• English preacher and devotional writer Jeremy Taylor.
• Dutch painter Gabriel Metsu.
• Spanish sculptor Alonso Cano.
• Dutch painter Cornelis van Poelenburgh.
• English royalist poet Abraham Cowley.
• English Cavalier commander Edward Somerset, marquess of Worcester.
• Shah Abbas II of Persia, succeeded by his son Sulaiman.
• Pope Alexander VII. Guilio Rospigliosi is elected Pope Clement IX.

• John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost appears.
• John Dryden's heroic poem Annus Mirabilis appears.
• Jean Racine's play Andromaque appears.
• John Lacy's play Sauny the Scot appears.
• Piazzo San Pietro, designed by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, is completed.
• The Great Fire which had ravaged London the previous year has destroyed many important public buildings, and Charles II contracts with Christopher Wren to rebuild many of them.
• Robert Hooke examines cork under a microscope and discovers a structure of 'cells'; he also shows that respiration is related to blood circulation.
• Matsuo Munefusa moves to Edo.
• Georges Fournier describes le Scurbut (scurvy) and the fact that eating citrus fruits seems to prevent it.
• Light from a supernova that occurred 9100 years previously reaches the Earth.  Although this would have appeared in Cassiopeia, no-one at the time notices.
• Five ministers of English king Charles II form a fractious 'Cabal' which controls English politics for several years to come.
• The Second Anglo-Dutch War draws to a close.
• (February) The French capture Montserrat with help from Carib Indians and Irish indentured servants.
• (June 10-14) Admiral Michiel Ruyter sails a Dutch fleet up the River Medway in Kent, and destroys a large part of the English fleet at Chatham Dock.  The Dutch begin a blockade of the Thames Estuary.
• (July) An English fleet defeats a combined French-Dutch fleet off Nevis.
• (July 31) The Treaty of Breda ends the war, cementing England's conquest of Antigua, Nieuw Nederland and New Sweden.  The English cede Surinam to The Netherlands and Acadia to France.  The Dutch enter a trade alliance with Sweden and Denmark.
• Louis XIV:
• having just signed a treaty with The Netherlands, proceeds to lay claim to the Spanish Netherlands based upon his marriage to Maria Theresa of Austria, a Hapsburg, and ] an obscure rule of 'devolution' for Hapsburg ownership of the Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comte.  French troops enter Lille alarming the Dutch.
• takes the Marquise de Montespan as his latest mistress.
• An attempt by the Patriarch of Moscow to reform the Russian Orthodox liturgy results in schism, and a sect of 'Old Believers' forms.
• King Jan II Kazimeirz of Poland, having been defeated at Matwy the previous year, signs the Treaty of Andrussova ceding Podolia, Kiev, and Smolensk to Russia.  Jan's wife also dies, leaving him without an heir.
• A Cossack-Tatar army raids into Poland, Jan Sobiseki build a line of forts from which to raid at the invaders.
• Cossack hetman Stenka Razin decides that it is a good time for landless Cossacks to get their share, and begins raiding villages in the Volga valley.
• The Vereenigte Oostindische Compagnie reduces the Kingdom of Macassar on Sulawesi. The Muslim Bugis, mercenaries for the Dutch, are now shut out of the shipping business, are now in the slave trading business, supplying Goa tribesmen for Dutch plantations.  The VOC also ships several Muslim political prisoners including (Sheikh Yusuf) to the Cape of Good Hope, the start of a long Islamic tradition in South Africa.
• Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb puts down a revolt by the Yusufsai.
• Thirteen-year-old Qing Emperor Kangxi seizes power from his regent Oboi.
• A severe hurricane hits the Lesser Antilles, on top of all the human destuction caused by the war. Montserrat is depopulated; St. Kitts is also levelled.  The same hurricane goes on (September 6) to devastate Virginia.
• Mt. Tarumai on Hokkaido erupts.  One of the largest eruptions in Japanese history, it forms a caldera now filled by Lake Skikotsu.
• An earthquake centered on the Caucasian town of Shemakha kills 80,000 people.
• Another earthquake kills 5,000 people in the tiny Adriatic republic of Ragusa (called Dubrovnik today), destroying its cathedral.

1666 - 1667 - 1668

How They Were Made - 17th Century