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Year '1608' was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Friday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Contents

Events of 1608

January - June

July - December

Undated

Births

Deaths

Notes

Events of 1608

January - June

★ January - At Jamestown, Virginia, Christopher Newport returns in a ship with the first supply and about 100 new settlers: he finds only 38 survivors.

★ January - Jamestown: Powhatan releases John Smith.

★ January 7 - Fire destroys "all the houses in the fort" at Jamestown, Virginia. The fort is repaired in March.

★ March 18 - Susenyos is formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia.

★ April 10 - Jamestown: Christopher Newport again sails for England.

★ May 14 - Protestant Union is founded in Auhausen.

July - December

★ July 3 - Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain.

★ July 30 - At Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs. This was to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.

★ July - English ship ''Mary and Margaret'' captained by Christopher Newport leaves England bound for Jamestown, Virginia.^[1]

★ August 24 - The first official English representative to India lands at Surat.

★ September 10 - John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, and begins expanding the fort.

★ September 21 - Founding of the University of Oviedo, Spain.

★ October 1 - At Jamestown, a second supply ship, the ''Mary and Margaret'', arrives with Christopher Newport, including 70 settlers, bringing the population back up to 120; the passengers include 8 glassmen.

★ October 2 - Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey demonstrates the first telescope in the Dutch parliament.

★ Year end - Jamestown: Christopher Newport returns to England carrying cargo with "tryals of Pitch, Tarre, Glasse, Frankincense, Sope Ashes ..."

Undated

★ Swedish troops enter Moscow.

★ First cheques come to use in Netherlands.


★ Old Bushmills Distillery is founded in Bushmills, County Antrim, Ireland.

Births

★ January 28 - Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Italian physiologist and physicist (d. 1679)

★ February 6 - Antonio Vieira, Portuguese writer (d. 1697)

★ April 25 - Gaston, Duke of Orléans, third son of King Henry IV of France (d. 1660)

★ June - Richard Fanshawe, English diplomat (d. 1666)

★ July 13 - Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1657)

★ July 14 - George Goring, Lord Goring, English Royalist soldier (d. 1657)

★ October 15 - Evangelista Torricelli, Italian physicist and mathematician (d. 1647)

★ December 6 - George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, English soldier (d. 1670)

★ December 9 - John Milton, English poet (d. 1674)

★ ''date unknown''

★
★ Daniello Bartoli, Italian Jesuit priest (d. 1685)

★
★ John Desborough, English soldier and politician (d. 1680)

★
★ Thomas Fuller, English churchman and historian (d. 1661)

★
★ Jin Shengtan, Chinese editor (d. 1661)

★
★ Edward Rainbowe, English clergyman and a preacher (d. 1684)

★
★ Eudoxia Streshneva, Tsarina of Mikhail I of Russia (d. 1645)

★
★ Torii Tadaharu, Japanese nobleman (d. 1651)
: ''See also .''

Deaths

★ January - Nikita Kosoj Trubetsky, Polish Prince

★ January 29 - Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg (b. 1557)

★ February 13 - Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski, Lithuanian prince (b. 1526)

★ February 13 - Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury (b. 1527)

★ February 26 - John Still, English bishop (b. c1543)

★ March 12 - Koriki Kiyonaga, Japanese warlord (b. 1530)

★ April 19 - Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, English statesman and poet (b. 1536)

★ May 14 - Charles III, Duke of Lorraine (b. 1543)

★ June 19 - Alberico Gentili, Italian jurist (b. 1551)

★ July 18 - Joachim Friedrich, Elector of Brandenburg (b. 1546)

★ August 13 - Giambologna, Italian sculptor (b. 1529)

★ October 11 - Giovanni Ambrogio Figino, Italian painter (b. c1549)

★ October 19

★
★ Martin Delrio, Flemish theologian and occultist (b. 1551)

★
★ Geoffrey Fenton, English writer and politician (b. c1539)

★ December

★
★ John Dee, British mathematician, astronomer, and geographer (born 1527)

★
★ William Davison, secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England (born c1541)

★ ''date unknown''

★
★ George Bannatyne, collector of Scottish poems (b. 1545)

★
★ William Barclay, Scottish jurist (b. 1546)

★
★ Luca Bati, Italian composer (b. 1546)

★
★ Laurence Tomson, English Calvinist theologian (b. 1539)

★
★ Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell (b. 1575)

★
★ Fiodor Trubetsky, Polish prince

★
★ Edmund Whitelocke, English soldier and courtier (b. 1565)
: ''See also .''

Notes

1.
"first Germans at Jamestown 1" (history), Davitt Publications, 2000, webpage:
GHfirst.