- Jan 6 Virginia orders half of its tobacco crop destroyed to support plunging prices and to avoid an economic catastrophe, the 1st colony to order the destruction of crops
- Jan 14 1st Connecticut constitution (Fundamental Orders) adopted in Hartford, published by Rodger Ludlow
- Jan 24 Connecticut colony organizes under Fundamental Orders
- Feb 7 Academie Française begins Dictionary of French Language
- Mar 13 Cambridge College, Massachusetts, renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard
- May 8 William Coddington founds Newport, Rhode Island
- May 20 Dorchester Massachusetts forms 1st school funded by local taxes
- Jun 6 Massachusetts grants 500 acres of land to erect a gunpowder mill
- Jun 10 1st American log cabin at Fort Christina (Wilmington Delaware)
- Jun 18 Treaty of Berwick: Ends the First Bishops' War between England and Scotland
- Jul 19 French troops occupy Salses, at Perpignan
- Aug 22 Madras (now Chennai), India, founded by the British East India Company on sliver of land bought from local Nayak rulers
- Sep 12 Viceroy Thomas Wentworth sails back to England
- Sep 25 First printing press in America set up in Cambridge under the guaranty of Harvard College
- Sep 25 Suzuki Shosan, Samurai monk of Zen Buddhism, found awakening
Victory in Battle
Oct 21 Sea battle at Dunes, Lt Admiral Maarten Tromp defeats Spanish armada under De Oquendo
- Nov 5 First post office in the colonies is set up in Massachusetts
Transit of Venus
Nov 24 1st observation of transit of Venus by Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree - helped establish size of the Solar System
- Dec 3 1st annulment by court decree passes