Years: 1639 1640 1641 - 1642 - 1643 1644 1645

Decades: 1610s 1620s 1630s - 1640s - 1650s 1660s 1670s

Centuries: 16th century - 17th century - 18th century 1642 in literature 1642 in science

Events

• January 4 - Charles I attempts to arrest five leading members of the Long Parliament, but they escape. Beginning of English Civil War.
• March 1 - Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) becomes the first incorporated city in America
• May 17 - Sieur de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.
• July - Charles I besieges Hull in an attempt to gain control of its arsenal.
• September 8 - Thomas Granger executed by hanging at Plimouth, Massachusetts for confessing to numerous acts of bestiality.
• October - Battle of Edgehill.
• November 24 - Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
• The Dutch drive Spain from Taiwan.
• Abel Tasman achieves the first recorded European sighting of New Zealand.
• Blaise Pascal produces a mechanical adding machine (the "Pascaline").
• Claudio Monteverdi's opera l'Incoronazione di Poppeia is first performed.
• First Battle of Lostwithiel
• Jean-Baptiste Tavernier brings Hope diamond to Europe
• Puritans close all theaters in England
• Montreal founded
• Peter Stuyvesant becomes the governor of Curacao

Births

• April 15 - Suleiman II, Sultan, Ottoman Empire (d. 1691)
• December 25 - Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician and scientist.

Deaths

• January 8 - Galileo Galilei, Tuscan astronomer, father of the scientific method (b. 1564)
• December 4 - Armand-Jean Duplessis Richelieu, French cardinal and statesman