1660s

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	16th century – 17th century – 18th century
Decades:	1630s 1640s 1650s – 1660s – 1670s 1680s 1690s
Years:	1660 1661 1662 1663 1664 1665 1666 1667 1668 1669
1660s-related categories:	Births – Deaths – By country Establishments – Disestablishments

This is a list of events occurring in the 1660s, ordered by year.

January–June

• January 1
  • Colonel George Monck with his regiment crosses from Scotland to England at the village of Coldstream and begins his advance towards London in support of the English Restoration.
  • Samuel Pepys begins his diary.
• February 3 – George Monck and his regiment arrive in London.
• February 13 – Charles XI becomes king of Sweden at the age of five upon the death of his father, Charles X Gustavus.
• February 27 – John Thurloe is reinstated as England's Secretary of State, having been deprived of his offices late in the previous year.
• March 16 – The Long Parliament disbands.
• April 4 – The Declaration of Breda promises amnesty, freedom of conscience, and army back pay, in return for support for the English Restoration.
• April 23/May 3 – Treaty of Oliva: peace made between Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Habsburgs and Brandenburg-Prussia.
• May 8 – The Parliament of England declares Prince Charles Stuart, King Charles II of England.
• May 15 – John Thurloe is arrested for high treason for his support of Oliver Cromwell's regime.
• May 25 – Charles II of England lands at Dover.
• May 27 – The Treaty of Copenhagen is signed, marking the conclusion of the Second Northern War. Sweden returns Trøndelag to Norway and Bornholm to Denmark.
• May 29 – King Charles II of England arrives in London and assumes the throne, marking the beginning of the English Restoration.
• June 29 – John Thurloe is released from custody.

July–December

• August 19 – Dr Edward Stanley preaches a sermon in the nave of Winchester Cathedral to commemorate the return of the Chapter following the English Restoration.
• September 25 – Samuel Pepys has his first cup of tea (an event recorded in his diary).
• October 17 – The ten regicides who signed the death warrant of Charles I of England are hanged, drawn and quartered, a process which includes their being disemboweled and their bowels burned before their eyes.
• November 28 – At Gresham College in London, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray meet after a lecture by Wren and decide to found "a College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning" (later known as the Royal Society).
• December – Andres Malong, a native chieftain of Pangasinan, Philippines, leads a revolt against the Spanish regime.
• December 8 – First actress to appear on the professional stage in England in a non-singing rôle, as Desdemona in Othello, following reopening of the theatres; variously considered to be Margaret Hughes, Anne Marshall or Katherine Corey.

Date unknown

• Blaise Pascal's Lettres provinciales, a defense of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, is ordered to be shredded and burned by King Louis XIV of France.
• The expulsion of the Carib indigenous people from Martinique is carried out by French occupying forces.
• Hopkins School is founded.
• The Rigsraad (High Council) of Denmark is abolished and Denmark–Norway becomes an absolute monarchy with the Kingdom of Denmark as a hereditary monarchy.
• A permanent standing army is established in Prussia.

January–June

• January 6 – The Fifth Monarchists unsuccessfully attempt to seize control of London. George Monck's regiment defeats them.
• January 30 – The body of Oliver Cromwell is exhumed and subjected to a posthumous execution, along with those of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton.
• February 5 – The Shunzhi Emperor of the Qing dynasty of China dies and is succeeded by his son the Kangxi Emperor.
• February 14 – George Monck’s regiment becomes The Lord General's Regiment of Foot Guards (which later becomes Coldstream Guards)
• March – Following the death of his mentor, Cardinal Mazarin, King Louis XIV of France starts to rule independently.
• April 23 – King Charles II of England, Scotland, Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey, for the second time.

July–December

• July 1 – Russo-Swedish War (1656–58) – Treaty of Cardis: Russia surrenders to Sweden all captured territories.
• August 6 – Portugal and the Dutch Republic sign the Treaty of The Hague, whereby New Holland is formally ceded to Portugal by the Dutch Republic.

Date unknown

• The first modern bank notes are issued in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Köprülü Mehmed Pasha ends his rule as vizier of the Ottoman Empire.
• The Great Clearance was spread to Guangdong.

January–June

• January 23 – Battle of Nagyszőllős: János Kemény of Transylvania is killed.
• February 1 – The Chinese general Koxinga seizes the Dutch Fort Zealandia on the island of Taiwan after a 9-month siege, then establishes the Kingdom of Tungning. In response, the Kangxi Emperor of the mainland Qing Dynasty migrates all residents along the southern coast by 50 miles.
• March 18 – A short-lived experiment of the first public buses (holding 8 passengers) begins in Paris.
• May 3 – John Winthrop the Younger, the son of the first governor of Massachusetts, is honoured by being made a fellow of the Royal Society, England's new scientific society. Winthrop uses his election to the Society to gain access to the king, who grants him a new charter uniting the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven.
• May 9 – Samuel Pepys witnesses a Punch and Judy show in London (the first on record).
• May 16 – The Hearth Tax is introduced in England, Wales and Scotland.
• May 30 – Catherine of Braganza marries Charles II of England; as part of the dowry, Portugal cedes Bombay and Tangier to England.

July–December

• July 15 – The Royal Society receives an official charter.
• August 24 – The Act of Uniformity is introduced, making mandatory in the Church of England the forms of worship prescribed in the new edition of the Book of Common Prayer. This is followed by the Great Ejection of over 2000 clergy who refuse to take the required oath of conformity to the established church.
• October 27 – Charles II of England sells Dunkirk to France for £400,000 (or 2.5 million livres).
• November 28 – The Royal Society holds its first meeting.
• December 20 – Nicolas Fouquet is sentenced to banishment.
• December 26 – Molière's play The School for Wives premieres.

Date unknown

• Robert Boyle publishes Nova experimenta physico-mechanica in Oxford (2nd edition), setting forth the law bearing his name.
• Joan Blaeu publishes Atlas Maior, sive cosmographia Blaviana in Amsterdam (first complete edition, 11 volumes in Latin).
• Milton, Massachusetts is incorporated as a town.
• John Graunt, in one of the earliest uses of statistics, publishes statistical information about births and deaths in London.
• The Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg is founded in Germany.
• The Dodo bird goes extinct.

January–June

• January 10 – The Royal African Company is granted a Royal Charter by Charles II of England.
• March 4 – The Prince Edward Islands in the sub-antarctic Indian Ocean are discovered by Barent Barentszoon Lam of the Dutch ship Maerseveen and named Dina (Prince Edward) and Maerseveen (Marion).
• March 5 – Emperor Go-Sai's reign ends and Emperor Reigen ascends to the throne of Japan.
• March 24 – King Charles II of England issues the Charter of Carolina, establishing the Province of Carolina and dividing it between eight Lords Proprietors.
• April 17 – The Turks declare war against Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I.
• May 7 – Opening of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London.
• June 8 – Battle of Ameixial: The Portuguese and some English auxiliaries defeat the Spanish.

July–December

• July 8 – King Charles II of England grants John Clarke a Royal Charter to the American Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
• July 27 – The English Parliament passes the second Navigation Act, requiring that all goods bound for the American colonies have to be sent in English ships from English ports.
• August 21 – Concerned about the wintry weather, the Parliament of England holds an intercessary fast.
• August 28 – Severe frost in England.
• July-Sept – 4 years of Esopus Wars in and around Kingston, New York are ended by a coalition of Dutch settlers, Wappinger and Mohawk against the Esopus tribe of the Delaware.

Date unknown

• The Prix de Rome Scholarship is established for students of the arts.
• The first Maroon community arises in Suriname.
• Early February; the Sack of Campeche.
• Robert Hooke discovers that cork is made of "tiny little rooms" which he first calls "Cells".
• Publication at Cambridge in the Massachusetts Bay Colony of the "Eliot Indian Bible" (Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God), the first complete Bible published in the Americas, a translation by English-born Puritan missionary John Eliot of the Geneva Bible from English into the Massachusett language (Natic or Wômpanâak) variety of the Algonquian languages.

January–June

• January 5 – Battle of Surat: The Maratha Chhatrapati Shivaji defeats Mughal Emperor Inayat Khan and sacks Surat.
• May 9 – Robert Hooke discovers Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
• June – Gazzetta di Mantova is first published in Mantua, Italy. By 2009 it will be the world's oldest private newspaper still published, and the oldest continuously published in print.

January–June

• January 5 – The Journal des sçavans begins publication in France, the first scientific journal.
• March 4 – The Second Anglo-Dutch War begins.
• April 10 – The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society begins publication, the first scientific journal in English.
• March 11 – A new legal code is approved for the Dutch and English towns of New York guaranteeing all Protestants the right to continue their religious observances unhindered.
• March 16 – Bucharest allows Jews to settle in the city in exchange for an annual tax of 16 guilders.
• April 12 – Margaret Porteous is the first person recorded to die in the Great Plague of London. This last major outbreak of Bubonic plague in the British Isles has possibly been introduced by Dutch prisoners of war. Two-thirds of Londoners leave the city, but over 68,000 die. Plague spreads to Derby.
• May 19 – Great fire of Newport, Shropshire, England.
• June 12 – England installs a municipal government in New York City (the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam).
• June 13 (June 3 O.S.) – Second Anglo-Dutch War: English naval victory at the Battle of Lowestoft under James Stuart, Duke of York.
• June 30 – King Charles II of England issues a second charter for the Province of Carolina, which clarifies and expands the borders of the Lords Proprietors' tracts.

July–December

• July 3 – The first documented case of cyclopia is found in a horse.
• July 7 – King Charles II of England leaves London with his entourage, fleeing the Great Plague. He moves his court to Salisbury, then Exeter.
• August 2 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: Dutch naval victory at the Battle of Vågen.
• August 27 – Ye Bare & Ye Cubbe, the first play in English in the American colonies, is performed in Pungoteague, Virginia.
• September – Robert Hooke's Micrographia published in London, first applying the term 'cell' to plant tissue, which he discovered first in cork, then in living organisms, using a microscope.
• September 17 – Charles II of Spain becomes King while not yet four years old.
• September 22 – Molière's L'Amour médecin is first presented, before Louis XIV of France at the Palace of Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
• October 5 – The University of Kiel is founded.
• October 21 – Louis XIV of France and Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded the Manufacture royale des glaces of Saint Gobain which is the oldest French company of the CAC 40 with 350 years in 2015.
• October 29 – Battle of Mbwila: Portuguese forces defeat and kill King António I of Kongo.
• November 7 – The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published as The Oxford Gazette.

Date unknown

• Colonisation of Réunion begins with the French East India Company sending twenty settlers.
• Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga is invested as Duke of Mantua.
• Joan Blaeu completes publication of his Atlas Maior (Theatrum Orbis Terrarum) in Amsterdam.
• John Bunyan publishes The End of the World, The Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment and The Holy City or the New Jerusalem.
• The English poet John Milton popularizes the Chinese sailing carriage in a famous poem; this peculiar Chinese invention was first written of in the West by Abraham Ortelius in his atlas of 1584.

January–June

• January 13 – French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier arrives in Dhaka and met Shaista Khan.
• January 17 – The Chair of Saint Peter (Cathedra Petri, designed by Bernini) is set above the altar in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
• February 1 – The English royal court returns to London as the Great Plague of London subsides.
• The tower of St. Peter's Church in Riga collapsed 11 March, burying eight people in the rubble.
• May 3 – According to manuscripts, Isaac Newton witnessed the falling of an apple on this day which led him to discover gravity.
• June 4 – Molière's comedy The Misanthrope is premièred at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris by the King's Players.
• June 11–14 (June 1–4 Julian calendar) – Second Anglo-Dutch War – Four Days' Battle: The Dutch Republic fleet under Michiel de Ruyter defeats that of the Kingdom of England in the North Sea in one of the longest naval engagements in history.

July–December

• July – The town of Piteå in Sweden is completely burned by a large fire.
• August 4 (July 25 Julian calendar) – Second Anglo-Dutch War – St. James's Day Battle: The English fleet under Prince Rupert of the Rhine and George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, defeats the Dutch off the North Foreland of England.
• August 19–20 (August 9–10 Julian calendar) – 'Holmes's Bonfire': Rear Admiral Robert Holmes leads an English raid on the Dutch island of Terschelling, destroying 150 merchant ships in the Vlie estuary, and pillaging the town of West-Terschelling.
• September 2–5 – Great Fire of London: A large fire breaks out in the City of London in the house of a baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. The fire destroys more than 13,000 buildings including Old St Paul's Cathedral but only six people are known to have died, whilst at least 80.000 were left destitute and homeless. The re-surveying of property is credited with giving both cartography and the practices of surveying a leg up, as well as resulting in the modern definition by John Ogilby of the statute mile as 1760 yards.
• September 6 – Cestui que Vie Act 1666 passed by the Parliament of England to provide for disposal of the property of missing persons.
• September 7 – Samuel Pepys describes the aftermath of the Great Fire of London in his diary and details the city in ruins.
• September 16 – Apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi in Istanbul.
• December 22 – The French Academy of Sciences, founded by Louis XIV, first meets.

Date unknown

• Mughal forces of Emperor Aurangzeb, in alliance with the Portuguese, under Shaista Khan and his son Buzurg Umed Khan expel the Arakans from the Bengal port city of Chittagong, renaming the city as Islamabad.
• Moulay al-Rashid conquers Fes, marking the beginning of Morocco's still-reigning Alaouite dynasty.
• Isaac Newton uses a prism to split sunlight into the component colours of the optical spectrum, assisting understanding of the nature of light. He also develops differential calculus. His discoveries this year lead to it being referred to as his Annus mirabilis.
• Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer paints The Art of Painting, his largest and most complex work.
• Lund University is founded in Lund, Sweden.
• Jean Talon completes a census of New France, the first census in North America.
• December 12 – A sobor (church council) of the Russian Orthodox Church deposes Patriarch Nikon, but accepts his liturgical reforms. Dissenters from his reforms, known as Old Believers, continue to this day.
• This year contains all the Roman numerals used only once in order from the biggest to the smallest value (MDCLXVI = 1666).

January–June

• January 20 – Russo-Polish War (1654–67): Poland cedes Kiev, Smolensk, and eastern Ukraine to Russia in the Treaty of Andrusovo, which puts a final end to Poland's status as a major Central European power.
• February – The first theatre in Scandinavia, opens in Lejonkulan and Bollhuset in Stockholm, Sweden.
• March – Louis XIV of France abolishes the livre parisis (Paris pound) in favor of the much more widely used livre tournois (Tours pound). He also designates Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie as the first chief of "police" of Paris.
• March 27 – In North America (Canada), explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle is released from the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).
• April 6 – Dubrovnik earthquake: An earthquake in the Republic of Ragusa kills one fifth of the population.
• April 27 – The blind, impoverished, 58-year-old John Milton seals a contract for publication of Paradise Lost with London printer Samuel Simmons for an initial payment of £5. The first edition is published in October and sells out in eighteen months.
• May 24 – The War of Devolution begins: France invades Flanders and Franche-Comté.
• June 9–14 – Raid on the Medway: A Dutch fleet under Admiral Michiel de Ruyter burns Sheerness, sails up the River Medway in England, raids Chatham Dockyard and tows away the royal flagship The Royal Charles.
• June 15 – The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys. He transfuses the blood of a sheep to a 15-year-old boy (though this operation is a success, a later patient dies from the procedure and Denys is accused of murder).
• June 20 – Pope Clement IX succeeds Pope Alexander VII, becoming the 238th pope.
• June 26 – Louis XIV of France conquers Tournai.

July–December

• July 31 – Second Anglo-Dutch War – The Treaty of Breda ends the war, and recognizes Acadia as a French possession.
• September 6 – The "Dreadful Hurricane of 1667" ravages southeast Virginia, bringing 12 days of rain, blowing down plantation homes and stripping fields of crops.
• October 18
  • Brooklyn is chartered under the name Brueckelen by Mathias Nicolls, Governor of New Netherland.
  • Yohannes I becomes king of Ethiopia following the death of his father Negus Fasilides.
• November 25 – A devastating earthquake rocks Caucasia, killing 80,000 people.

Date unknown

• The Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb buys off the warrior Shivaji by making him a Rajah and allowing him to collect taxes.
• Robert Hooke demonstrates that the alteration of the blood in the lungs is essential for respiration.
• The French army uses grenadiers.
• The first military campaign of Stenka Razin is conducted in Russia.
• Isaac Newton has investigated and written his works in subjects of optics, acoustics, the infinitesimal calculus, mechanism and thermodynamics. The researches themselves will be published only years later.

January–June

• January – The Triple Alliance of 1668 is formed between England, Sweden and the United Provinces.
• February 13 – In Lisbon, a peace treaty is established between Afonso VI of Portugal and Carlos II of Spain, by mediation of Charles II of England, where the legitimacy of the Portuguese monarch is recognized. Portugal yields Ceuta to Spain.
• May 2 – The first Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of Devolution.

July–December

• July 7 – Bishop Isaac Barrow founds the Bishop Barrow Trust to establish a university on the Isle of Man (King William's College).
• Mid-July – Henry Morgan sacks Portobello and Panama City; the lack of booty from the latter attack leads to the city being burned.
• September 9 – Molière's comedy, L'Avare, is first performed.

Date unknown

• The British East India Company takes over Bombay.
• The first National Bank in Europe (the Riksbank) is founded in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Emperor Yohannes I of Ethiopia convenes a church council in Gondar, which decides to expel all Roman Catholics in Ethiopia.
• Isaac Newton builds the first reflecting telescope (Newton's reflector).

January–June

• March 11 – Mount Etna erupts, destroying the town of Nicolosi and killing 20,000 people.
• May 31 – Samuel Pepys stops writing his diary.
• June 22 – Roux de Marsilly, accused of plotting the assassination of King Louis XIV of France, is publicly tortured in Paris.
• June 25 – François de Vendôme, Duke of Beaufort, disappears during a battle in the Siege of Candia in Crete.

July–December

• July – The Hanseatic League, after 400 years of operation, holds its last official meeting in Lübeck.
• September 6 – Francesco Morosini, capitano generale of the Venetian forces in the Siege of Candia, surrenders to the Ottomans.
• September 23 – Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor grants the status and privileges of a university to the Jesuit Academy in Zagreb, the precursor to the modern University of Zagreb.

Date unknown

• Shakushain's Revolt breaks out in Hokkaido, Japan.
• The Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb destroys several Hindu temples (e.g. Kashi Vishwanath and Kesava Deo) and prohibits the whole religion, leading to Hindu rebellion.
• Ottoman units burn the eastern part of Kolárovo.
• The Chinese Kangxi Emperor allows coastal residents deported in 1662 to return home.
• Famine in Bengal kills 3 million people.
• Phosphorus is discovered by Hennig Brand.
• Antonio Stradivari makes his first violin.
• Okaya & Co., Ltd., is founded in Nagoya, Japan.
• The Chinese herbal medicine company Tongrentang, or 同仁堂 in Chinese, is established.
• Blaise Pascal's Pensées posthumously published in Paris.
• Jan Swammerdam publishes his Algemeene Verhandeling van de bloedeloose dierkens, a groundbreaking work in microscopy as well as entomology

Births

• Alessandro Scarlotti - May 2 1660