1655 - Wikiwand

1655 (MDCLV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1655th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 655th year of the 2nd millennium, the 55th year of the 17th century, and the 6th year of the 1650s decade. As of the start of 1655, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Quick facts

1655 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1655 MDCLV
Ab urbe condita	2408
Armenian calendar	1104 ԹՎ ՌՃԴ
Assyrian calendar	6405
Balinese saka calendar	1576–1577
Bengali calendar	1061–1062
Berber calendar	2605
English Regnal year	6 Cha. 2 – 7 Cha. 2 (Interregnum)
Buddhist calendar	2199
Burmese calendar	1017
Byzantine calendar	7163–7164
Chinese calendar	甲午年 (Wood Horse) 4352 or 4145 — to — 乙未年 (Wood Goat) 4353 or 4146
Coptic calendar	1371–1372
Discordian calendar	2821
Ethiopian calendar	1647–1648
Hebrew calendar	5415–5416
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1711–1712
- Shaka Samvat	1576–1577
- Kali Yuga	4755–4756
Holocene calendar	11655
Igbo calendar	655–656
Iranian calendar	1033–1034
Islamic calendar	1065–1066
Japanese calendar	Jōō 4 / Meireki 1 (明暦元年)
Javanese calendar	1577–1578
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 10 days
Korean calendar	3988
Minguo calendar	257 before ROC 民前257年
Nanakshahi calendar	187
Thai solar calendar	2197–2198
Tibetan calendar	ཤིང་ཕོ་རྟ་ལོ་ (male Wood-Horse) 1781 or 1400 or 628 — to — ཤིང་མོ་ལུག་ལོ་ (female Wood-Sheep) 1782 or 1401 or 629

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Events

January 5 – Emperor Go-Sai ascends to the throne of Japan.
January 7 – Pope Innocent X, leader of the Roman Catholic Church and the Papal States, dies after more than 10 years of rule.
February 14 – The Mapuches launch coordinated attacks against the Spanish in Chile, beginning the Mapuche uprising of 1655.^[1]
February 16 – Dutch Grand Pensionary advisor Johan de Witt marries Wendela Bicker.^[2]
March 8 – John Casor becomes the first legally recognized slave in what will become the United States, as a court in Northampton County in the Colony of Virginia issues its decision in the Casor lawsuit, the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who has committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.^[3]
March 25 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.^[4]

April 4 – Battle of Porto Farina, Tunis: English admiral Robert Blake's fleet defeats the Barbary pirates.^[5]
April 7 – Pope Alexander VII (born Fabio Chigi) succeeds Pope Innocent X, as the 237th pope.^[6]
April 24 – The Piedmontese Easter Massacre of the Waldensians: Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy slaughters 1,500 men, women and children; this is memorialized in John Milton's sonnet "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont" and apologized for by Pope Francis in 2015.
April 26 – The Dutch West India Company denies Peter Stuyvesant's request to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam (Manhattan).^[7]
April 28 – Admiral Blake severely damages the arsenal of the Bey of Tunis.
May 10–27 – Anglo-Spanish War: Invasion of Jamaica – Forces of the English Protectorate led by William Penn and Robert Venables capture the island of Jamaica from Spain.^[8]
June 13 – Adriana Nooseman-van de Bergh becomes the first actress, in Amsterdam theater.^[9]

July 20 – The Amsterdam Town Hall (the modern-day Royal Palace) is inaugurated.
July 27
- The Jews in New Amsterdam petition for a separate Jewish cemetery.^[10]
- The Netherlands and Brandenburg sign a military treaty.
July 30 – Dutch troops capture Fort Assahudi Seram.
July 31 – Russo-Polish War (1654–67): The Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for 6 years.^[11]
August 9 – Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell divides England into 11 districts, under major-generals.
August 28 – New Amsterdam and Peter Stuyvesant bar colonial Jews from military service.^[12]
August – The governor of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, attacks the New Sweden (Delaware) colony.^[13]
September 8 – Swedish King Karl X Gustav occupies Warsaw (Poland).
September 26 – Peter Stuyvesant recaptures the Dutch Fory Casimir, and defeats the New Sweden (Delaware) colony.

October 15 – The Jews of Lublin are massacred.
October 19 – Swedish King Karl X Gustav occupies Kraków (Poland).^[14]
November 3 – England and France sign military and economic treaties.^[15]
November 24 – English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell announces measures against the Laudian party, which are enforced starting on January 1.^[16]^[17]
December 4 – Middelburg, the Netherlands forbids the building of a synagogue.
December 18 – The Whitehall Conference ends with the determination that there is no law preventing Jews from re-entering England after the Edict of Expulsion of 1290.^[18]
December 27 – Second Northern War/the Deluge: Monks at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa are successful in fending off a month-long siege.^[19]

Stephan Farffler, a 22-year-old paraplegic watchmaker, builds the world's first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.^[20]^[21] However, the device has the appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design includes hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.^[22]
The Bibliotheca Thysiana is erected,^[23] the only surviving 17th century example in the Netherlands, of a building designed as a library.^[24]
1655 Malta plague outbreak kills 20 people.^[25]
Frederick III of Denmark-Norway gives control of the Faroe Islands to Christoffer Gabel and his son, which will last until 1709.^[26]