1608

"So much silver and money...always has been poison to cities and republics. They believe money will protect them but it is not true: plowed fields, pastures, and fisheries are what provide true sustenance."

- Spanish humanist Pedro de Valencia, accurately foreseeing the corrosive effects of South American silver on the future prospects of the Spanish Empire.

In the year AD 1608...

• Tensions continue to increase in Europe between Protestants and Catholics. After a majority of the Holy Roman Empire's Imperial Diet votes that the renewal of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) must be contingent upon the restoration of all Catholic Church lands confiscated since 1552, the German Protestant states band together under the leadership of Frederick IV, Elector Palatinate, to form the Protestant Union in order to protect their lands and interests.
• Hans Lippershey invents the telescope.
• An army led by Ethiopian emperor Susenyos I ambushes an army of Oromo near Ebenat, reportedly killing 12,000 Oromo at the cost of just 400 Ethiopians.
• Italian monk Francesco Maria Guazzo first publishes his popular witch-hunter's manual, the Compendium Maleficarum.
• French explorer Samuel de Champlain founds what would later become Quebec City as a fur trading post called the Habitation de Québec.

These people were born in 1608:

• English poet John Milton.
• Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III.
• Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli, best known for his invention of the barometer, and for whom the unit of pressure, the "torr," was named.
• English general George Monck, restorer of Charles II.
• Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher Nakae Toju.

These people died in 1608:

• Korean king Sonjo.
• English scholar/mystic/conman John Dee.
• Flemish-born Italian sculptor Giambologna.
• Scottish poetry enthusiast George Bannatyne.

1607 - 1608 - 1609

17th century

How they were made