Events

• March 4 - Start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War
• March 6 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society begins publication
• March 16 - Bucharest allows Jews to settle in the city in exchange of annual tax of 16 guilders
• June 3 - The Duke of York defeats the Dutch Fleet off the coast of Lowestoft
• June 12 - England installs a municipal government in New York City. This was the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.
• November 7 - The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published.
• Charles II of Spain becomes King
• London has its last severe outbreak of the Bubonic plague, possibly introduced by Dutch prisoners of war. Two-thirds of Londoners leave the city, but over 68,000 die. (See the Great Plague.)
• Rumours abound that syphilis wards off the Plague, causing many Londoners to frequent the brothels
• King Charles II moves his court to Salisbury, then Exeter
• Battle of Ambuila: Portuguese forces defeat and kill king Garcia II of Kongo , ending native rule of that kingdom.
• Molière publishes L'Amour médecin
• John Bunyan publishes The Resurrection, Alexendre Le Grand, and The Indian Emperor
• Approximate date of the discovery of the Great Red Spot

Births

• February 6 - Princess Anne Stuart, later Queen Anne of Great Britain (d. 1714)

Deaths

• January 12 - Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician
• June 25 - Archduke Sigismund Francis of Austria, Regent of Tyrol and Further Austria
• September 17 - Philip IV of Spain