February 18 – A group of Protestant English settlers in Ireland surrender to Irish authorities at CastlebarinCounty Mayo in hopes of having their lives spared, and are killed one week later on orders of Edmond Bourke.
February 20 – The Treaty of The Hague, between the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Portugal, is ratified by the Republic's States-General.
February 22 – The Italian opera Il palazzo incantato (The Enchanted Palace), by Luigi Rossi with libretto by Giulion Rospigliosi, is given its first performance.
March 1 – Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) becomes the first incorporated city in the British colonies of North America.[2]
June 1 – The "Nineteen Propositions" are sent by the English House of Lords and House of Commons to King Charles I, asking the King to consent to parliamentary approval for the members of his privy council, his chief officers, and new seats created for the House of Lords, as well as regulating the education and choice of marital partners of the King's children, and barring Roman Catholics from the Lords.[4]
July 2 – Hundreds of sailors are killed when the French warship Galion de Guise and the Spanish galley Magdalena become entangled during the Battle of Barcelona. A French fireship attempts to burn the Magdalena and accidentally sets fire to the Galion de Guise, killing 500 of the 540 crew.[5]
July 10 – First English Civil War: Charles Ibesieges Hull, in an attempt to gain control of its arsenal. The siege lasts until July 27, with Charles's Royalist Army failing to take the city from the Parliamentarians commanded by Governor John Hotham and General John Meldrum.
July 12 – The English Parliament votes to raise its own Army, under the command of the Earl of Essex.
August 3 – A Dutch Navy fleet of 14 warships, led by Hendric Harouse, begins a campaign to drive Spaniards from the island of Formosa (now Taiwan) off of the coast of mainland China. After disembarking at Tamsui, the Dutch begin a siege of Fort Domingo, which falls on Saint Bartolomeo Day (August 24).[7]
October 8 – 1642 Yellow River flood: Some 300,000 people die in the intentional breaking of the dams and dykes of the Yellow River, done either by the Ming dynasty defenders of Kaifeng to break the siege by the large Manchu dynasty rebel force of Li Zicheng.[9]
November 24 – Abel Tasman and his crew become the first Europeans to discover "Van Diemen's Land", now the Australian island and state of Tasmania, and the island is claimed for the Netherlands on December 3 at what is now Prince of Wales Bay.[11]
December 13 – Abel Tasman and his crew become the first recorded Europeans to sight New Zealand, arriving at its South Island. In a battle between the Europeans and the Island's Maori inhabitants, four crew members are killed.
December 21 – After routing Edward Ford's royalist troops at the Battle of Muster Green, William Waller follows Ford's retreating force to Chichester as the Parliamentarians besiege the city, which falls on December 29 after eight days. The inhabitants of Chichester agree to pay the Parliamentarians an additional month's pay to prevent the town from being plundered.[13]
The village of Bro (Broo), Sweden is granted city rights for the second time, and takes the name Kristinehamn (literally "Christina's port") after the then Swedish monarch, Queen Christina.
^Field, John (2011). The Story of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster (2nd ed.). London: James & James. pp. 107–108. ISBN9780907383871.
^Coolidge, Austin J.; John B. Mansfield (1859). A History and Description of New England. Boston, Massachusetts: A.J. Coolidge. pp. 369–372. coolidge mansfield history description new england 1859.
^"Committee of Safety", in The Concise Encyclopedia of the Revolutions and Wars of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1639-1660, by Stephen C. Manganiello (Scarecrow Press, 2004) p.125
^James W. Davidson, The Island of Formosa: Historical View from 1430 to 1900 (Macmillian, 1903) p.22
^John W. Dardess, Ming China, 1368-1644: A Concise History of a Resilient Empire (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) p. 132
^John Grehan and Martin Mace, Battleground Sussex: A Military History of Sussex from the Iron Age to the Present Day (Pen & Sword, 2012) pp. 86-87
^"Tasman, Abel", by Carl Waldman, in Biographical Dictionary of Explorers, ed. by Alan Wexler and Jon Cunningham (Infobase Publishing, 2019) p. 798
^"Abatai", by L. Carrington Goodrich, in Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, 1644-1912, by Arthur W. Hummel (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943) pp. 3-4
^James Dallaway, A History of the Western Division of the County of Sussex (T. Bensley, 1815) pp.13-14
^Greene, David (1985). Greene's biographical encyclopedia of composers. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday. p. 154. ISBN9780385142786.
^Brackenridge, J (1995). The key to Newton's dynamics : the Kepler problem and the Principia : containing an English translation of sections 1, 2, and 3 of book one from the first (1687) edition of Newton's Mathematical principles of natural philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 40. ISBN9780520916852.
^Scheck, Florian (1999). Mechanics : from Newton's laws to deterministic chaos. Berlin New York: Springer-Verlag. p. 517. ISBN9783540655589.
^Shuckburgh, Evelyn (2015). Two biographies of William Bedell : with a selection of his letters and an unpublished treatise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN9781107463905.
