1639

Events

• January 14 - Connecticut's first constitution, the "Fundamental Orders," is adopted.
• March 13 - Harvard University is named for a clergyman named John Harvard.
• November 24 - Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus.
• Charles I starts the first of the Bishops Wars against Scotland.
• The Casiquiare canal, a river forming a natural canal between the Amazon River and Orinoco River basins, is first encountered by Europeans.
• The Barbados House of Assembly meets for the first time.
• The first printing press in North America is started in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Russian Cossacks advance over Urals to Pacific, to Okhotsk.
• Montreal first settled

Births

• June 21 - Increase Mather, New England Puritan minister (d. 1723)
• December 22 - Jean Racine, French dramatist
• Yair Bacharach - German rabbi

Deaths

• August 20 - Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet (b. 1597)