1637

1637

Events of 1637

February 3 - Tulip mania collapses in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands) by government order.
February 15 - Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
April 10 - Plymouth Colony grants the "tenn menn of Saugust" a new settlement on Cape Cod, later named Sandwich, Massachusetts
May - Chinese encyclopedist Song Yingxing publishes his Tiangong Kaiwu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature), considered one of the most valuable encyclopedias of classical China.
June 28 - The first British venture to China is undertaken by Admiral Weddell, who sailed into port in Macau and Canton during the late Ming Dynasty. The voyages were for trade, which was dominated there by the Portuguese (then combined with the power of Spain).

October 13 - The launching ceremony is held for HMS Sovereign of the Seas, the gilded warship of the British Royal Navy.
December 17 - Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan.

Pierre de Fermat makes a notation, in a document margin, claiming to have proof of what would become known as Fermat's last theorem.
France places a few missionaries in the Côte d'Ivoire, a country it would come to rule more than 200 years later.
The Kingdom of England wages war against the Mashantucket Pequots.
First opera house, Teatro San Cassiona, opens in Venice.
René Descartes writes Discours de la Méthode.
Elizabeth Poole becomes the first woman to have founded a town (Taunton, Massachusetts) in the Americas.
The Blessed Virgin is proclaimed Queen of Genoa.
Second Manchu invasion of Korea, the Joseon court reluctantly submits to the Manchu's demands of vassalhood while continuing to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Ming Dynasty.
Six European ships dock at a port in China, bringing 38,421 pairs of eyeglasses to China during the late Ming Dynasty, the first recorded European-made eyeglasses to enter China. Now the Daoist unconcern with sight would change, and so would their favorable attitude towards lack of intricate detail in painting (although those with good eyesight often favored intricate details in their painting). Refer to page 57 of Timothy Brook's book The Confusions of Pleasure: Culture and Commerce in Ming China. However, the historian Kaiming Chiu argues in his The Introduction of Spectacles Into China that spectacles were introduced into China as far back as the late 13th century.