Events

• September 6 - English emigrants on the Mayflower depart from Plymouth, England for the future New England and arrive at the end of the year. The Mayflower Compact is signed on November 11.
• November 8 - The Battle of White Mountain, the first battle in the Thirty Years' War, takes place near Prague, ending in a decisive Catholic victory in only two hours.
• Two officers of the British East India Company attempt to claim the Table Mountain region (in present-day South Africa) for England, but fail.
• Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada restores Osaka Castle. Its current appearance dates from this remodeling.
• Modern violin
• Witch hunts begin in Scotland.
• Cornelius Drebbel builds an undersea boat.
• J.P.Donnet , teacher of deaf children in the Spanish court, creates sign alphabet.
• Bonesetting becomes a science.

Births

• February 16 - Friedrich Wilhelm, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, Duke of Prussia (d. 1688)
• October 31 - John Evelyn, English diarist and writer (d. 1706)

Deaths

• March 1 - Thomas Campion, poet and composer
• May 16 - William Adams, English navigator and Japanese samurai