1638

Year 1638 (MDCXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1638

January - June

* February 21 - The Scottish National Covenant is signed in Edinburgh.
* March 5 - Thirty Years' War - The Treaty of Hamburg is signed by France and Sweden.
* March 29 - The Swedish arrive on the ships "Kalmare Nyckel" and "Fågel Grip" to America, to establish the first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.
* April 15 - Shogunate forces defeat the last remnants of the Shimabara Rebellion in the fortress of Hara.

July - December

* October 21 - The Great Thunderstorm breaks out in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, England.
* November - The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is summoned to Glasgow by King Charles I of England.

Undated

* Covenanters meet at Muchalls Castle to compose responses to the Bishops of Aberdeen.
* The Dutch settle in Ceylon.
* Pedro Teixeira makes the first ascent of the Amazon River, from its mouth to Quito, Ecuador. The same trip had been made in the opposite direction in 1541.
* Dutch merchant Willem Kieft is appointed Director of New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company.
* The Netherlands colonizes Mauritius.
* Shipwrecked sailors from England found the first known European settlement in Belize.
* The Finnish postal service, "Suomen Posti", is founded.
* New Haven, the first planned city in America, is founded.
* The Beijing Gazette makes an official switch in its production process of newspapers, from woodblock printing to movable type printing; private newspapers in Ming Dynasty China were first mentioned in 1582.
* Sultan Merad IV captures Baghdad.

Births

* January 1 - Emperor Go-Sai (d. 1685)
* January 24 - Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, English poet and courtier (d. 1706)
* March 14 - Johann Georg Gichtel, German mystic (d. 1710)
* March 15 - Shunzhi Emperor of China (d. c.1661)
* March 23 - Frederik Ruysch, Dutch physician and anatomist (d. 1731)
* May 6 - Henry Capell, 1st Baron Capell, First Lord of the British Admiralty (d. 1696)
* May 13 - Richard Simon, French Biblical critic (d. 1712)
* July 10 - David Teniers III, Flemish painter (d. 1685)
* August 6 - Nicolas Malebranche, French philosopher (d. 1715)
* September 5 - King Louis XIV of France (d. 1715)
* September 10 - Maria Theresa of Spain, wife of Louis XIV of France (d. 1683)
* November 25 - Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II of England (d. 1705)

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Deaths

* January 21 - Ignazio Donati, Italian composer (b. c.1570)
* January 27 - Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses, Spanish novelist (b. c.1585)
* February 26 - Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, French mathematician (b. 1581)
* April 7 - Shimazu Tadatsune, Japanese ruler of Satsuma (b. 1576)
* April 13 - Henri, duc de Rohan, French Huguenot leader (b. 1579)
* May 6 - Cornelius Jansen, French bishop and religious reformer (b. 1585)
* June 25 - Juan Pérez de Montalbán, Spanish writer (b. 1602)
* September 14 - John Harvard, American clergyman (b. 1607)
* November 9 - Johann Heinrich Alsted, German theologian (b. 1588)
* November 11 - Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, Dutch painter (b. 1562)
* December 8 - Ivan Gundulić, Croatian poet (b. 1589)
*"date unknown" - Pietro Paolo Floriani, architect (b. 1585)

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