1604

"An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country."

- Henry Wotton, written in the album of his friend
Christopher Fleckmore on the eve of his departure
to become English Ambassador to Venice, 1604

In the year AD 1604...

• False Dmitri, scrounging up support for his planned invasion of Russia, wins verbal support for his cause from Polish king Sigismund III Vasa and wins further support from the Polish and the Papal nuncio when he publicly converts to Roman Catholicism. He then launches his invasion of Russia with 3500 troops drawn from the private armies of various Polish and Lithuanian nobles. Unpopular Russian tsar Boris Godunov has many enemies, who flock to False Dmitri's banner. Initially, he is triumphant over the reluctant Russian army, capturing several cities, but the tide begins to turn as he gets closer to Moscow and Russian resolve stiffens, and the end of the year sees False Dmitri in retreat.
• The Treaty of London brings an end to the 19-year Anglo-Spanish War on terms highly favorable to Spain, most notably including the withdrawal of English support for the Dutch Revolt. Meanwhile, Spanish forces under Ambrogio Spinola finally capture the city of Ostend in what is now Belgium from the Dutch after a 3-year siege.
• A group of English Catholic conspirators led by Robert Catesby and including Guy Fawkes begins planning and purchasing gunpowder for the infamous "Gunpowder Plot" that would fail to assassinate King James the following year.
• Kepler's Supernova, so named because it was studied in detail by Johannes Kepler, explodes no more than six parsecs away from Earth, and is the last supernova to be observed occurring within the Milky Way Galaxy.
• English king James I orders the Church of England to prepare a new English translation of the Bible, which will ultimately become known to history as the King James Bible.
• Fifth Sikh guru Guru Arjan Dev completes the Adi Granth (the first holy scripture of Sikhism) and installs it in the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
• The earliest known English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall is published by schoolteacher Robert Cawdrey.
• William Shakespeare's play Othello debuts in London.
• The words zero, jaguar, and tomato appear in the English language for the first time. No indication on whether it was pronounced to-MAY-to or to-MAH-to.

These people were born in 1604:

• Tokugawa Iemitsu, third shogun of the Tokugawa bakufu.
• Ottoman Sultan Osman II.
• Protestant general of the Thirty Years War Bernard of Saxe-Weimar.
• French dramatist Jean Mairet.

These people died in 1604:

• Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, held by some to have been the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.
• Ethiopian emperor Za Dengel, killed in battle while attempting to suppress a revolt in Gojjam, succeeded by his cousin Yaqob.
• Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift.
• Famous English centenarian Katherine FitzGerald, Countess of Desmond, held to have been 140 years old at the time of her death.

1603 - 1604 - 1605

17th century

How they were made