January 3 – By theCoonan Cross Oath, the Eastern Church in India cuts itself off from colonial Portuguese tutelage.
January – TheSwiss Peasant War begins after magistrates meeting atLucerne refuse to hear from a group of peasants who have been financially hurt by the devaluation of the currency issued fromBern.
February 10 –Swiss peasant war of 1653: Peasants from the Entlebuch valley in Switzerland assemble at Heiligkreuz to organize a plan to suspend all tax payments to the authorities in thecanton of Lucerne, after having been snubbed at a magisterial meeting in Lucerne. More communities in the canton join in an alliance concluded atWolhusen on February 26.
April 28 – TheGreat Fire of Marlborough destroys 224 houses and much of the textile businesses in the Wiltshire town which, "at that date was one of considerable importance, and had merchants of affluence and repute."[3]
May 31 –Ferdinand IV, already the King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, is electedKing of the Romans by his fellow German monarchs, making him eligible to succeed his fatherFerdinand III asHoly Roman Emperor. Ferdinand IV will not live to become Holy Roman Emperor, instead dying from smallpox 14 months after his designation.
September 13 – A violent storm off the west coast of Scotland sinks the English Navy warshipSwan, and the commandeered merchantmenSpeedwell andMartha and Margaret, all of which have been anchored off of Mull. Most of the crews had gone ashore, but 23 of the men on the shipSpeedwell are killed.
October 29 –Pierre-Esprit Radisson, a French Canadian teenager who had been captured by aMohawk raiding party two years earlier and then tortured, escapes captivity in what is now the U.S. state of New York.
November 8 – TheBattle of Arronches takes place near the town ofArronches on the Portuguese side of the border betweenPortugal andSpain, with the Portuguese Army outflanking and defeating a larger Spanish force.
November –John Casor, a servant of African descent in Northampton County of the colony of Virginia, leavesAnthony Johnson's farm, after claiming his contract of indenture had expired, and goes to work for a new employer, Robert Parker. Johnson sues Parker, claiming that Casor is a slave for life, rather than an indentured servant, and the court issues a landmark ruling on March 8, 1655, establishing African-Americans as property.
Marcello Malpighi, an Italian pioneer of microscopical anatomy becomes a doctor of medicine.
Stephen Bachiler, a clergyman and early advocate for the separation of church and state returns to England after having spent more than 20 years overseas in theMassachusetts Bay Colony.
The gardens surrounding theTaj Mahal mausoleum are completed atAgra.
^Oskar Garstein,Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: The Age of Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina of Sweden, 1622-1656 (E. J. Brill, 1992) p. 688
^"Fires, Great", inThe Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance, Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) p30
^Hajo Holborn,A History of Modern Germany, 1648-1840 (Princeton University Press, 1959) p. 59
^"The Marais: 'Paris' in the seventeenth century", by Joan Dejean, inThe Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Paris, ed. by Anna-Louise Milne (Cambridge University Press, 2013) p. 29
^"The Symbolic Role of Calligraphy on Three Imperial Mosques of Shah Jahan", by Wayne E. Begley, inKalādarśana: American Studies in the Art of India (E. J. Brill, 1981) p. 8
^Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006.ISBN0-14-102715-0.
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