1669 - Definition and Overview

Events

• Samuel Pepys stopped writing his diary.
• The Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb destroys several Hindu temples and banned the whole religion, so Hindus rebel.
• Antonio Stradivari makes his first violin
• Famine in Bengal kills 3 million people
• The Hanseatic League, formed 400 years ago, holds its final meeting
• Ottoman Turks take Candia, the Venetians lose Crete
• Francois de Beaufort, grandson of Henry IV of France, goes missing at Candia, presummed dead
• September 23 - Leopold I Habsburg grants the status and privileges of a university to the Jesuit Academy in Zagreb, the precursor to the modern University of Zagreb

Births

• August 24 - Alessandro Marcello, composer

Deaths

• September 10 - Henrietta Maria, Dowager Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, Princess of France and Navarra
• October 4 - Rembrandt, Dutch painter.
• October 14 - Antonio Cesti, Italian musical composer.
• December 9 - Pope Clement IX
• Pieter Cuypers

Publications

• Algemeene Verhandeling van de bloedeloose dierkens by Jan Swammerdam, groundbreaking work in microscopy as well as entomology
• Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch das ist by Hans von Grimmelshausen, the first major German novel
• Tyrannic Love by John Dryden
• Tartuffe by Molière
• Britannicus by Jean Racine