1656

• English astronomer and physicist Edmond Halley.
• French mathematician Charles René Reyneau.
• French composer Marin Marais.
• French composer Jean-Baptiste Moreau.
• French alchemist Claude Alexandre Seguier.
• Italian painter Francesco Trevisani.
• French painter Nicolas de Largillière.
• Spanish sculptor Luisa Roldan.
• Early feminist writer Lady Mary Chudleigh.
• Dutch midwife Catharina Geertuida Schrader, author of a tract on midwifery.
• Austrian baroque architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach.
• French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, devisor of an early system of binomial nomenclature.

• James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, inventor of a Biblical timeline¹
• English clergyman and writer Joseph Hall.
• Welsh composer Thomas Tomkins.
• Italian mathematician and astronomer Giovanni Antonio.
• Italian sculptor Andrea Bolgi.
• Italian composer Francesco Turini
• Italian painter Bernardo Cavallino.
• Italian painter Aniello Falcone.
• Flemish painter Peter Neefs.
• Polish mathematician Andrzej Milewski.
• Dutch painter Jan Josephszoon van Goyen.
• Dutch painter Dirck Hals.
• Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst.
• French painter Laurent de la Hire.
• Spanish painter Francisco Herrara the Elder.
• Mohammed Adil Shah, ruler of Bijapur. Ali Adil Shah succeeds him.
• Plymouth Colony settler Miles Standish.
• King João IV of Portugal. His son succeeds him as Afonso VI.
• King Prasat Thong of Siam. His son Chao Fa Jai succeeds him briefly but his uncle Sri Suthammaraja (assisted by Phra Narai) kidnaps and murders him, taking over the throne.
• Dutch colonial troublemaker Cornelis van Tienhofen disappears under suspicious circumstances.
• 2000-3000 Polish Jews after the Polish capture of Leczyca (aka 'Lenshitz').

• London's first opera house, Rutland House, opens to The Siege of Rhodes by William Davenant, Matthew Locke, et al.
• Molière's play Le depit amoureux is performed.
• Abraham Cowley's Miscellanies and Pindaric Odes appear.
• Petrus Borellus provides the first description of nematodes.
• Gian Lorenzo Bernini begins construction of the Vatican's Piazza San Pietro.
• Christiaan Huygens gives the first description of M42, the Orion Nebula.
• Fengxiandian (Hall for Ancestral Worship) is built within Beijing's Forbidden City.
• Virginia forbids the enslavement of Indians.
• Baruch Spinoza is excommunicated from his Amsterdam synagogue.
• Blaise Pascal publishes his Lettres Provinciales defending Antoine Arnauld and Jansenism in general.
• John Wallis publishes his Arithmetica Infinitorum.
• Michael Boym publishes Flora Siniensis.
• Martino Martini's history of China, Sinicae historiae decas prima, appears.
• The Venetian navy destroys the Ottoman navy off the Dardanelles.
• Ottoman sultan Mehmet IV reached his majority and appoints Mehmed Koprulu grand vizier.
• Mughal Prince Aurangzeb, Viceroy of the Deccan for his father Shah Jahan, captures the Bidar Fort, and invades Hyderabad, besieging King Abul Hassan Tana Shah in the Golkunda Fort..
• As Bijapur buries Mohammed Adil Shah in the great Gol Gumbaz, Maratta warlord Shivaji and Aurangzeb each see opportunity for conquest.
• Oliver Cromwell
• grants a charter for an Acadia colony to Thomas Temple, William Crowne, and Charles le Tour (who immediately sells his interest to the other two).
• allows Jews, prohibited from England since 1290 to live in Great Britain and its American colonies.
• Chaos in Eastern Europe.
• Russia invades Estonia (controlled by Sweden's vassal Finland).
• Brandenburg and Sweden sign a treaty taking control of Prussia away from Poland, and giving it to Sweden.
• A Brandenburgian-Swedish army captures Warsaw.  A rather thorough looting of Warsaw results in Polish revenge strikes on East Prussia and Brandenburg.
• Polish king Jan II Casimir appeals for help from other Catholic countries against the Lutheran invaders.  Swedish King Charles X's supply lines are rather long, and harassment by the Poles forces him to pull out of southern Poland.  A Polish-Tatar army defeats the Swedish-Brandenburgian army at the Battle of Protski.
• An ancient icon, the Black Madonna of Czestocowa, is made a symbolic 'Queen of Poland'.
• The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
• orders Niew Nederland governor Peter Stuyvesant to allow Jews in his colony.
• builds Fort Batensteyn, around which the Ghana city of Butri developed.
• Fire destroys the city of Stade.
• the first Quakers arrive in Plymouth Colony and Massachussets Bay Colony.

1655 - 1656 - 1657

How They Were Made - 17th Century