1654

• Swiss mathematician and physicist Jakob Bernoulli.
• French mathematician Pierre Varignon.
• English historian John Selden.
• French mathematician Pierre Raymond de Montmort.
• French painter Louis de Boullongne the Younger.
• German composer Vincent Lübeck.
• Italian composer Agostino Steffani.
• French marshal Louis Joseph, Duc  de Vendôme.
• Japanese Hokku poet Hattori Ransetsu.
• Future Qing Emperor Kangxi.

• German composer Samuel Scheidt.
• French composer Artus Auxcousteaux.
• Spanish composer Francisco Correa de Araujo.
• Spanish painter and writer Francisco Pacheco.
• Italian sculptor Francesco Mochi.
• Italian sculptor Alessandro Algardi.
• English poet William Habington.
• Dutch painter Paulus Potter.
• Dutch painter Carel Fabritius. See below.
• English astrologer and herbalist Nicholas Culpeper.
• Spanish Jesuit priest St. Peter Claver.
• Islam Giray III, Khan of the Crimea. Muhammad Giray IV succeeds him.
• Matei Basarab, prince of Wallachia.
• Count Axel Oxenstierna, chancellor (and former regent) of Sweden.  See below.

• The gardens around the Agra mausoleum that Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan ordered built for his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal are completed.
• Otto von Guericke builds the first air pump.
• Robert Bissaker invents the Slide Rule.
• Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac's two plays Le Pédant Joué and La Mort d'Agrippine appear.
• Joost van den Vondel's play Lucifer appears.
• Blaise Pascal gives up mathematics after a religious revelation.
• Archbishop James Ussher uses the Bible to calculate the date of Earth's creation at October 23, 4004 BC.
• English troops based in Boston capture Port Royal and the rest of Acadia.
• Oliver Cromwell
• dissolves the current permutation of Parliament, the Nominated Assembly.
• appoints military officers to rid the clergy of religious and political dissent.
• begins negotiations to end the Anglo-Dutch War, signing the Treaty of Westminster in April.  England gains control of trade in the area, the expulsion of Royalists from the Netherlands, and the former ruling House of Orange is curbed a bit.
• At one point in her life, Swedish Queen Christina wished to marry her first cousin Charles Gustavus, but it was not permitted.  As a consolation, and over Oxenstierna's objections, she named Charles her successor.  Fast forward to 1654. Catholicism is illegal in Lutheran Sweden.  Swedish Queen Christina Vasa's contacts with Jesuit priests cause her to lose support, and Christina abdicates in favor of Charles.   By the end of the year, she is living in Brussels and has officially converted to Catholicism.  I can find no actual connection between Christina's abdication and her former regent's death, but one has to wonder.
• Islam Giray III is poisoned by a Ukranian slave woman.  The previous year, he had abandoned an alliance with Russia, switching to Poland.  His former ally, Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, allies himself with Russian Tsar Alexei .  Alexei promptly invades Poland's half of the Ukraine, and Poland's Bloody Deluge begins.
• Johan Rising, the governor of New Sweden, attacks and captures the Dutch Fort Casimir on the Delaware River.
• The arsenal of Delft suddenly explodes. Carel Fabritius's neaby home is destroyed, along with Fabritius and many of his paintings.

1653 - 1654 - 1655

How They Were Made - 17th Century