1626  Feb 6, Huguenot rebels and the French signed the Peace of La Rochelle.

1626  May 4, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan island. Indians sold Manhattan Island for 60 guilders, $24 (1839 dollars) in cloth and buttons. The 1999 value would be $345. The site of the deal was later marked by Peter Minuit Plaza at South Street and Whitehall Street.

1626  Nov 15, The Pilgrim Fathers, who settled in New Plymouth, bought out their London investors

1628  Sep 8, John Endecott arrived with colonists at Salem, Massachusetts, where he would become the governor

1628  Oct 28, After a fifteen-month siege, the Huguenot town of La Rochelle surrendered to royal forces.

1628  The Reformed Protestant Dutch Church was established by settlers in New York. In 1867 it became the Reformed Church of America.

1629  Mar 10, England's King Charles I dissolved Parliament and did not call it back for 11 years

1630  Mar 22, The first American legislation prohibiting gambling was enacted in Boston.

1630-1639  The well-known soy sauce company Kikkoman starts near Edo, Japan

1634  Mar 25, Maryland was founded by English colonists sent by the second Lord Baltimore. Lord Baltimore founded the Catholic colony of Maryland

1635  May 19, Cardinal Richelieu of France intervened in the great conflict in Europe by declaring war on the Hapsburgs in Spain

1630-1639  Honeybees are brought by colonists to North America, where they begin to breed naturally

1635  Oct 9, Religious dissident Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony

1636  Oct 28, Harvard College was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States

1636  Henry Adams reached Massachusetts and settled on 40 acres of land in Braintree and fathered eight sons. He was the great-grandfather of John Adams, 2nd president of the US.

1636-1637 The Dutch tulip craze was known as the "tulipomania." Prices crashed 95% in the end.

1637  Jun 5, The English and their Mohegan allies slaughtered as many as 600 Pequot Indians [in the area of Connecticut]. The survivors were parceled out to other tribes. Those given to the Mohegans eventually became the Mashantucket Pequots. American settlers in New England massacred a Pequot Indian village.

1637  Jul 23, King Charles of England handed over the American colony of Massachusetts to Sir Fernando Gorges, one of the founders of the Council of New England.

1638  Mar 22, Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony

1638  Mar 29, The first permanent white settlement was established in Delaware. Settlers from Sweden who came to Delaware were the first to build log cabins in America.

1638   Jun 1, The first earthquake was recorded in the U.S. at Plymouth, Mass.

1639  Jan 24, Representatives from three Connecticut towns banded together to write the Fundamental Orders, the first constitution in the New World.

c1640  In Connecticut Roger Williams prepared the first primer of the Algonquian Indian language.

1641  Oct 23, Catholics in Ireland, under Phelim O'Neil, rose against the Protestants and cruelly massacred men, women and children to the number of 40,000 (some say 100,000).

1641  The Spanish warship Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion sank off of the coast of Florida.

1641  In Ireland a Catholic uprising in Ulster was suppressed. English Gen'l. Oliver Cromwell took away the land rights of 44,000 Catholics in Ulster and adjacent counties.

1642  Feb 25, Dutch settlers slaughtered lower Hudson Valley Indians in New Netherland, North America, who sought refuge from Mohawk attackers.

1642  Mar 1, York, Maine became the first American city to incorporate.

1642  Aug 22, Civil war in England began as Charles I declared war on Parliament at Nottingham. The Battle of Edgehill was the first major clash of armies of the English Civil War. Charles I went to the House of Commons to arrest some of its members and was refused entry. From this point on no monarch was allowed entry.

1643  Jul 13, In England, the Roundheads, led by Sir William Waller, were defeated by royalist troops under Lord Wilmot in the Battle of Roundway Down.

1640-1649  Violence between the natives of North America and the Dutch settlers continues when New Amsterdam's governor calls for a massacre of Wappinger Indians.

1643  In England the bloody battle of Chalgrove Field occurred. Royalist strategy meetings were held at the Horsenden Manor at Buckinghamshsire.

1644  Jul 2, Lord Cromwell crushed the Royalists at the Battle of Marston Moor near York, England.

1645  Jun 14, Oliver Cromwell's army routed the King's army at Naseby

1647  May 26, A new law banned Catholic priests from the colony of Massachusetts. The penalty was banishment or death for a second offense.

1647  May 27, The first recorded American execution of a "witch," Achsah Young, took place in Massachusetts.

1647  Jun 4, The English army seized King Charles I as a hostage.

1647  Jun 24, Margaret Brent, a niece of Lord Baltimore, was ejected from the Maryland Assembly after demanding a place and vote in the body.

1640-1649  The Quaker sect originates in Leicestershire, England, under the leadership of George Fox, who is heavily influenced by Anabaptist theology

1647  Nov 10, The all Dutch-held area of New York was returned to English control by the treaty of Westminster

1648  Oct 18, The "shoemakers of Boston"--the first labor organization in what would become the United States--was authorized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1648  Oct 24, The Peace of Westphalia ended the German Thirty Years War and effectively destroyed the Holy Roman Empire.

1649  Jan 30, King Charles I of England was beheaded at Banqueting House, Whitehall by the hangman Richard Brandon. Parliament became the supreme power under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, who ruled over Parliament as Lord Protector of the New Commonwealth from 1649-1658. He argued against his soldiers having a voice in government because they owned no property.

1649  Apr 21, The Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly.

1650  Sep 3, The English under Cromwell defeated a superior Scottish army under David Leslie at the Battle of Dunbar.

1650s  In Massachusetts the Puritans ordered Obadiah Holmes to be "well whipped" for holding a Baptist service.

1651  Dec 25, The General Court of Boston levied a five shilling fine on anyone caught "observing any such day as Christmas."

1650-1659   Condoms made of sheep's gut are referred to for the first time in the Parisian publication L'ecole Des Filles and will gain some popularity in the upper class to protect against rampant venereal disease. Birth control remains virtually unknown.

1652  May 18, A law was passed in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies but it caused little stir and seemed unlikely to be enforced.

1652  Under the "Liberty Tree," a tulip poplar at St. John's College campus in Annapolis, Md., Virginia Puritans were welcomed as colonists by Lord Baltimore, and smoked peace pipes with the Susquehanna Indians.

1653  Nov 5, The Iroquois League signed a peace treaty with the French, vowing not to wage war with other tribes under French protection.

1653  Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherland, ordered a wall built to protect the Dutch settlers from the Indians. The wall gave New York's Wall Street its name

1656  Mar 10, In the colony of Virginia, suffrage was extended to all free men regardless of their religion

1655  Mar 25, Puritans jailed Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.

1656  Sep 22, In Patuxent, Md., the first colonial all-female jury heard the case of a woman accused of murdering her child. The jury voted for acquittal.

1657  Mar 23, France and England formed an alliance against Spain.

c1659  The British Parliament invoked law that made it a crime, punishable by burning at the stake, to forecast the weather.

1660  Mar 13, A statute was passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.

1660  May 29, Charles II, who had fled to France, was restored to the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth.