1666
Encyclopedia : 1 : 16 : 166 : 1666
| Years: 1663 1664 1665 - 1666 - 1667 1668 1669 | ||||||||||
| Decades: 1630s 1640s 1650s - 1660s - 1670s 1680s 1690s | ||||||||||
| Centuries: 16th century - 17th century - 18th century
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1666 is often called Annus Mirabilis. This is the year talked about by the poem Annus Mirabilis. This year also saw a great advance in mathematics and physics by Isaac Newton.
Events
- August 5 - English fleet beats Dutch under Michiel de Ruyter
- September 2 - Great Fire of London: A large fire breaks out in London in the house of Charles II's baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. The fire burns for three days destroying 10,000 buildings including St. Paul's Cathedral, but only 16 people are known to have died.
- September 5 - Great Fire of London ends.
- Sir Isaac Newton uses a prism to split sunlight into its component colours, which helped us understand the nature of light more comprehensively. (See optical spectrum).
- Lund University founded in Lund, Sweden
- Jean Talon completes a census of New France, the first census in North America
- Louis XIV founds the French Academy of Sciences.
Births
- February 9 - George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, British soldier (d. 1737)
- March 15 - George Bähr, German architect (d. 1738)
- May 14 - Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia (d. 1732)
- July 10 - John Ernest Grabe, German-born Anglican theologian (d. 1711)
- August 13 - William Wotton, English scholar (d. 1727)
- September 6 - Tsar Ivan V of Russia (d. 1696)
- December 22 - Guru Gobind Singh (d. 1708)
- Arthur Chichester, 3rd Earl of Donegall (d. 1706)
- Thomas Parker, 1st Earl of Macclesfield (d. 1732)
Deaths
- January 20 - Anne of Austria, queen of Louis XIII of France and regent (b. 1601)
- January 22 - Shah Jahan, Mughal Emperor of India (b. 1592)
- January 24 - Johann Andreas Herbst, German composer (b. 1588)
- February 24 - Nicholas Lanier, English composer (b. 1588)
- June 30 - Alexander Brome, English poet (b. 1620)
- July 5 - Albert VI of Bavaria (b. 1584)
- August 15 - Johann Adam Schall von Bell, German Jesuit missionary (b. 1591)
- August 26 - Frans Hals, Dutch painter
- October 29 - Edmund Calamy the Elder, English Presbyterian leader (b. 1600)
- October 29 - James Shirley, English dramatist (d. 1596)
- Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Italian painter (b. 1591)
- Sir William Clarke, British politician
- Sir Richard Fanshawe, British diplomat and translator (b. 1608)
- Philip Fruytiers, Flemish painter (b. 1627)
- James Howell, British writer
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