1610

Events

January–March

• January 6 - Nossa Senhora da Graça incident: A Portuguese carrack sinks near Nagasaki, after fighting Japanese samurai for four nights.
• January 7 - Galileo Galilei first observes the four Galilean moons of Jupiter: Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Io, but is unable to distinguish the latter two until the following day.
• February 24 - English courtier Thomas Roe sets out on an expedition to The Guianas and Amazon River.
• March 13 - Galileo Galilei's treatise on astronomy, Sidereus Nuncius, the first printed scientific record of observations through a telescope, is first published.
• March 22 - Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, nephew of the Tsar Vasili, liberates Moscow from rebels.

  April–June

• April 10 - The Treaty of Brussol is signed between Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and a representative of King Henry IV of France, at a meeting at Bruzolo near Turin. The agreement for France and Savoy to remove Spanish occupiers from Italy, is never carried out because King Henry is assassinated one month later.
• April 20 - William Shakespeare's play, The Tragedie of Macbeth, is given its first performance, staged at the Globe Theatre in London.
• May 13 - A formal coronation is held for Marie de' Medici, wife of King Henry IV, as Queen Consort of France. King Henry is preparing to depart to Germany to participate in the War of the Jülich Succession.
• May 14 - King Henry IV of France is assassinated in Paris by François Ravaillac, a French Catholic activist who resents the Protestant monarch's decision to launch a war against the Catholic Spanish Netherlands. Ravaillac rushes up to a horse-drawn carriage and stabs King Henry in the chest. Henry's 8-year-old son becomes King Louis XIII, with Henry's widow, Marie de' Medici, governing France as queen regent.
• May 23 - Jamestown, Virginia: Acting as temporary Governor, Thomas Gates, along with John Rolfe, Captain Ralph Hamor, Sir George Somers, and other survivors from the Sea Venture arrive at Jamestown; they find that 60 have survived the "starving time", the fort palisades and gates have been torn down, and empty houses have been used for firewood, in fear of attacks by natives outside the fort area.
• May 24 - Jamestown, Virginia: The temporary Governor, Thomas Gates, issues The Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws.
• May 27 - Regicide François Ravaillac is executed by being pulled apart by horses in the Place de Grève, Paris.
• June 5 - The masque Tethys' Festival is performed at Whitehall Palace to celebrate the investiture of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.
• June 7 - Jamestown: Temporary Governor Gates decides to abandon Jamestown.
• June 8 - Jamestown: Temporary Governor Gates' convoy meets the ships of Governor Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr at Mulberry Island.
• June 10 - Jamestown: The convoy of temporary Governor Gates, and the ships of Governor Lord De La Warr, land at Jamestown.
• June 24 - Henri Membertou, Grand Chief of Mi'kmaq nation, becomes the first North American aboriginal person to accept baptism into the Christian faith and signs the Concordat of 1610, an agreement with the Roman Catholic Church recognizing the Mi'kmaq as an independent nation.

  July–September

• July 4 - ; Polish–Russian War - Battle of Klushino: The outnumbered forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth defeat the combined Russian and Swedish armies; Polish troops go on to occupy Moscow.
• July 5 - John Guy sets sail from Bristol, with 39 other colonists, for Newfoundland.
• July 9 - Lady Arbella Stuart, a claimant to the throne of England, is imprisoned for clandestinely marrying William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset, another claimant, without royal permission on June 22.
• July 27 - Vasili Ivanovich Shuisky, who proclaimed himself Tsar of Russia on May 19, 1606, is deposed as the Seven Boyars remove him from office to select a new ruler.
• July 28 - War of the Jülich Succession: The Siege of Jülich, a walled city within the Holy Roman Empire, is started by a combined force of troops from the Dutch Republic, the Kingdom of France and the Margraviate of Brandenburg.
• August 2 - Henry Hudson sails into what is now known as Hudson Bay, thinking he has made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.
• August 9 - Anglo-Powhatan Wars: The English launch a major attack on the Paspahegh village, capturing and executing the native queen and her children, burning houses and chopping down the corn fields; the subsequent use of the term "Paspahegh" in documents refers to their former territory.
• September 1 - Claudio Monteverdi's musical work Vespro della Beata Vergine is first published, printed in Venice and dedicated to Pope Paul V.
• September 2 - The Siege of Jülich ends as the Holy Roman Imperial city surrenders to Maurice of Nassau, commander of the Dutch Republic troops.
• September 4 - The Kingdom of Toungoo is retaken by King Anaukpetlun of Burma, as rebel leader Natshinnaung surrenders the city of Taungoo.
• September 6 - ; The Seven Boyars, the group of seven Russian nobles seeking stability in the troubled nation, vote to have King Wladyslaw IV of Poland as Tsar Vladislav of Russia, and invite the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to take over the city.
• September 19 - Frederick V, age 14, becomes the new Prince-Elector of the Rhineland Palatinate, two days after the death of his father, Frederick IV.
• September 21 - Forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth capture Moscow and begin occupation of the Kremlin for the next two years.

  October–December

• October 9 - Poland, under the command of Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, takes control of the Kremlin during the Polish–Russian War.
• October 17 - The coronation of Louis XIII of France takes place.
• October 24 - The War of the Jülich Succession ends as the Protestant Union and the Catholic League agree to withdraw their forces from Germany and to disband them by year's end.
• November 6 - After the Parliament of England gives King James only £ 100,000 of an agreed to £ 600,000 of debt relief promised in February under the Great Contract, the King demands the rest of the funds. Parliament is outraged and declares the Contract abandoned on November 9.
• November 8 - The Basque witch trials come to an end after almost two years. Out of about 7,000 persons accused of witchcraft, only six are condemned to be executed by the Spanish Inquisition as two men and four women are burned at the stake at Logroño.
• November 20 - The cession of Larache, a port in Morocco, takes place as Mohammed esh Sheikh el Mamun, Sultan of Morocco, transfers control of the city to Spain in return for. The Marquis de la Hinojosa accepts on behalf of King Felipe III of Spain in return for Spain's aid to the Sultan's fight against the Sultan's brother, Zidan Abu Maali. Larache remains under Spanish control for the next 79 years until another sultan retakes it.
• November 26 - French astronomers Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Joseph Gaultier make the first detailed observations of the Orion Nebula.
• December 18 - English astronomer Thomas Harriot becomes the first person on Earth to observe sunspots through a telescope.
• December 19 - Pieter Both becomes the first Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, serving until 1614.
• December 20 -, John Roberts, a Benedictine monk in Wales, is executed five days after being convicted of high treason for violating a law against Catholic ministry. He is hanged, drawn and quartered. Roberts will be canonized as a Roman Catholic saint almost 360 years later, on October 25, 1970.
• December 21 - The second False Dmitry is assassinated by a Kasim Tatar prince, Peter Urusov. After both Dmitry and Urosov have been drinking, Urusov shoots the Tsar Dmitry, then decapitates him.

  Date unknown

• Dr. Bonham's Case, a landmark decision, is decided by Edward Coke, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas of England. Coke affirms the supremacy of the common law, which limits the power of Parliament as well as the king.
• The Manchu tribal leader Nurhaci breaks his relations with the Ming dynasty of China, at this time under the aloof and growingly negligent Wanli Emperor; Nurhaci's line later becomes the emperors of the Qing dynasty, which overthrows the short-lived Shun dynasty in 1644, and the remnants of the Ming throne in 1662.
• Publication is completed of the Douay–Rheims Bible, a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, in the service of the Catholic Church.
• Jakob Böhme experiences another inner vision, in which he believes that he further understands the unity of the cosmos, and that he has received a special vocation from God.
• Work starts on the Wignacourt Aqueduct, in Malta.
• Santa Fe, New Mexico, capital of New Mexico, is founded as capital of Kingdom of Nuevo México.

  Births

January–March

• January 9 - George Wilde, Irish bishop
• January 10 - Louis Maimbourg, French Jesuit historian
• January 12 - Reinhold Curicke, jurist and historian from Danzig
• January 13 - Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria, Electress of Bavaria
• January 21 - Elizabeth Fones, American settler
• January 26 - Henry Hildyard, English Member of Parliament
• February 2
• * Francisco Ignacio Alcina, Jesuit missionary and historian
• * Pierre Bourdelot, French physician
• * Edmund Weaver, English politician
• February 11 - Salomon Idler, German inventor
• February 13 - Jean de Labadie, French pietist
• February 14 - Solomon Swale, English politician
• March 3 - Pierre Dupuis, French painter
• March 4 - William Dobson, English portraitist and painter
• March 14
• * Frederick Cornwallis, 1st Baron Cornwallis, English politician
• * Simon Louis, Count of Lippe-Detmolt