Major Events
- May 20 Shakespeare's Sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by publisher Thomas Thorpe
- Jul 29 Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs at Ticonderoga, New York setting the stage for French-Iroquois conflicts for the next 150 years
- Aug 8 Venetian senate examines Galileo Galilei's telescope
- Aug 25 Galileo demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers, including to the Doge (ruler) of Venice, Leonardo Donato
- Aug 28 English explorer Henry Hudson is the first European to sail into Delaware Bay - names it South Bay
- Sep 4 Navigator Henry Hudson is the first European to discover island of Manhattan [or Sep 11]
- Sep 11 Expulsion order announced against the Moriscos of Valencia; beginning of the expulsion of all Spain's Moriscos
- More 1609 Events
Did You Know?
Children's rhyme "Three Blind Mice" is published in London in a book edited by and possibly written by Thomas Ravenscroft
Infante FerdinandMore People Born in 1609
Who Died in 1609
- Jan 21 Joseph Justus Scaliger, French inventor of "Julian Period", dies at 68
- Feb 7 Ferdinand I de' Medici, Italian Grand Duke of Tuscany (1587-1609), made Tuscany prosperous, introduced opera to Europe, dies at 59
- Feb 17 Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, dies at 59
- Feb 28 Paul Sartorius, German composer, dies at 39
- Mar 25 Olaus Martini, Swedish Archbishop of Uppsala (b. 1557)
More 1609 Deaths
Famous Weddings in 1609
- Oct 3 Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens weds his first wife, Flemish socialite Isabella Brant (17-ish) in St. Michael's Abbey, Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands, until her death in 1626
William Shakespeare
James I and VI