Years: 1636 1637 1638 - 1639 - 1640 1641 1642

Decades: 1600s 1610s 1620s - 1630s - 1640s 1650s 1660s

Centuries: 16th century - 17th century - 18th century

Events

• January 14 - Connecticut's first constitution, the "Fundamental Orders," is adopted.
• March 13 - Harvard University is named for a clergyman named John Harvard.
• November 24 - Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus.
• Charles I starts the first of the Bishops Wars against Scotland.
• The Casiquiare canal, a river forming a natural canal between the Amazon River and Orinoco River basins, is first encountered by Europeans.
• The Barbados House of Assembly meets for the first time.
• The first printing press in North America is started in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Russian Cossacks advance over Urals to Pacific, to Okhotsk.
• Montreal first settled

Births

• June 21 - Increase Mather, New England Puritan minister (d. 1723)
• December 22 - Jean Racine, French dramatist
• Yair Bacharach - German rabbi

Deaths

• August 20 - Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet (b. 1597)