Person report

★18 Aug 1590
John White, governor of the Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in North America, returned after a three-year absence, only to find it deserted.

★23 Jun 1594
Anglo-Spanish War: During the Action of Faial, an English attempt to capture a Portuguese carrack, reputedly one of the richest ever to set sail from the Indies, caused it to explode with all the treasure lost.

★26 Oct 1597
Thirteen Korean ships commanded by Admiral Yi Sun-sin defeated a far larger Japanese invasion fleet at the Battle of Myeongnyang in the Myeongnyang Strait.

★16 Dec 1598
Admiral Yi Sun-sin's Korean navy defeated the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Noryang, the final naval battle of the Imjin War.

★05 Oct 1607
Venetian statesman Paolo Sarpi survived an attack by assassins sent by Pope Paul V.

★29 Jun 1613
The original Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground after a cannon employed for special effects misfired during a performance of William Shakespeare's Henry VIII and ignited the theatre's roof.

★24 Jun 1622
Dutch–Portuguese War: An outnumbered Portuguese force repelled a Dutch attack in the Battle of Macau, the only major military engagement that was fought between two European powers on the Chinese mainland.

★10 Aug 1628
The Swedish warship Vasa sank after sailing less than a nautical mile on her maiden voyage from Stockholm on her way to fight in the Thirty Years' War.

★17 Jun 1631
Mumtaz Mahal, wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, died in childbirth; Jahan spent the next seventeen years constructing her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.

★13 Mar 1639
Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was named after its first principal donor, clergyman John Harvard.

Historical data by Wikipedia Contributors CC BY-SA 3.0.