Maurice of Orange was stadtholder of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 at earliest until his death in 1625. Before he became Prince of Orange upon the death of his eldest half-brother Philip William in 1...

Willem Cornelisz Schouten was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean. In 1615 Willem Cornelisz Schouten and his younger brother Jan Schouten sailed from Texel...

Samuel de Champlain was a French Explorer. He made several expeditions to North America before founding Quebec in 1608 with 32 colonists, most of whom did not survive the first winter. He joined with the northern Indian tribes to defeat Iro...

Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, Dutch painter, was born at Delft, the son of a goldsmith, who apprenticed him to the copperplate engraver Hieronymus Wierix. He subsequently became a pupil of Willem Willemz and Augusteyn of Delft, until Anthoni...

Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, viol player, and singer. His work marks the transition from Renaissance to Baroque music. During his long life he produced work that can be classified in both categories, and he was one of the mos...

Pope Urban VIII, born Maffeo Barberini, was pope from 1623 to 1644. He was the last pope to expand the papal territory by force of arms, and was a prominent patron of the arts and reformer of Church missions. However, the massive debts incu...

The Eighty Years' War or Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648) was a revolt of the Seventeen Provinces of what are today the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, as well as the French region of Hauts-de-France against the political and rel...

Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes Night or Fireworks Night, is a celebration (but not a public holiday) which takes place on the evening of the 5th of November every year in the United Kingdom (and New Zealand). It celebra...

Alessandro Salvio was an Italian chess player who is considered to be the unofficial world champion around the year 1600. He started an Italian chess academy in Naples, Italy, and wrote a book called Trattato dell'Inventione et Arte Liberal...

Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as Reis Mourad the Younger, was a Dutch pirate in Morocco who converted to Islam after being captured by a Moorish state in 1618. He began serving as a pirate, one of the most famous of the 17th-cent...

The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a galley fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of the Republic of Venice, the Papacy (under Pope Pius V), Spain (including Naples, Sicily and Sardinia), the Republic of Genoa, the Duch...

Michelangelo Merisi, called later Caravaggio, was born in either Milan, or a town of Caravaggio near Milan, as the son of a ducal architect. His early training started in 1584 under Simone Peterzano, a little known pupil of Titian, and cont...

Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga (or "Francisco Felipe Faxicura", as he was baptized in Spain) was a Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyo of Sendai. In the years 1613 through 1620, Hasekura headed a diplomatic mission to...

Frederick de Houtman was a Dutch explorer, navigator, and colonial governor who sailed along the coastal regions of western Australia on the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies from 1595 until 1597, during which time he made observati...

Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epi...