Major Events
- Mar 9 Pierre Corneilles play "Horace" premieres in Paris
- Apr 13 English Short Parliament forms (till May 5)
- May 3 English Upper house accepts Act of Attainder
- May 5 English Short Parliament rises
- May 12 Revolt of Catalonia begins, an uprising against the Spanish King Philip IV in eastern Spain
- Aug 3 2,000 men VOC-army surrounds the city of Malacca
- Aug 3 Zorilla's "Bire el Ojo" premieres in Toledo
- Aug 28 Second Bishop's War: King Charles I's English army loses to a Scottish Covenanter force at the Battle of Newburn
- Oct 28 English King Charles I signs a peace treaty with the Scottish Covenanters, ending the Second Bishops' War
- Nov 3 English Long Parliament forms
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Born in 1640
- Jan 25 William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, English polymath & aristocrat, born in Handsworth, England (d. 1707)
- Mar 18 Philippe de la Hire, French mathematician and astronomer (d. 1719)
- Apr 1 Georg Mohr, Danish mathematician (d. 1697)
- Apr 22 Mariana Alcoforado, Portuguese nun, born in Beja, Portugal (d. 1723)
- May 31 Michał Wiśniowiecki, King of Poland (1669-73), born in Biały Kamień, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (d. 1673)
More People Born in 1640
Who Died in 1640
- Jan 14 Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry, English lawyer and judge (b. 1578)
- Jan 22 Erasmus Quellinus I, Flemish wood carver, dies at about 55
- Jan 25 Robert Burton, British writer and Anglican clergyman (The Anatomy of Melancholy), dies at 62
- Feb 4 Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Dutch seascape painter, dies (b. 1562)
- Feb 8 Murad IV, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1623-40) who conquered Baghdad, dies from cirrhosis in Istanbul at 27
More 1640 Deaths