The 1642 reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

1642

Years: 1639 1640 1641 - 1642 - 1643 1644 1645

Decades: 1610s 1620s 1630s - 1640s - 1650s 1660s 1670s

Centuries: 16th century - 17th century - 18th century 1642 in literature 1642 in science

Table of contents

1 Events 2 Births 3 Deaths

Events

• January 4 - Charles I attempts to arrest five leading members of the Long Parliament, but they escape. Beginning of English Civil War.
• March 1 - Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) becomes the first incorporated city in America
• May 17 - Sieur de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.
• July - Charles I besieges Hull in an attempt to gain control of its arsenal.
• October - Battle of Edgehill.
• November 24 - Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).

• The Dutch drive Spain from Taiwan.
• The first recorded sighting of New Zealand and Tasmania by Abel Tasman.
• Blaise Pascal produces a mechanical adding machine (the "Pascaline").
• Claudio Monteverdi's opera l'Incoronazione di Poppeia is first performed.
• First Battle of Lostwithiel
• Jean-Baptiste Tavernier brings Hope diamond to Europe
• Puritans close all theaters in England
• Montreal founded
• Peter Stuyvesant becomes the governor of Curacao

Births

• December 25 - Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician and scientist.

Deaths

• January 8 - Galileo Galilei, Italian artist and scientist.
• December 4 - Armand-Jean Duplessis Richelieu, French cardinal and statesman

This is the "1642" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.