1676
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Year 1676 (MDCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1676

January - June

• January - six months into King Philip's War, Metacomet (King Philip), leader of the Algonquin tribe known as the Wampanoag, travels westward to the Mohawk nation, seeking an alliance with the Mohawks against the English colonists of New England; his efforts in creating such an alliance are a failure.
• January 29 - Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia.
• February 10 - after the Nipmuck tribe attacks Lancaster, Massachusetts, the colonist Mary Rowlandson is taken captive and lives with the Indians until May.
• February 14 - Metacomet and his Wampanoags attack Northampton, Massachusetts; meanwhile, the Massachusetts Council debates whether a wall should be erected around Boston.
• February 23 - while the Massachusetts Council debates how to handle the Christian Indians they had exiled to Deer Island on October 13, 1675, a coalition of Indians led by Metacomet attacks colonial settlements just 16 km (10 miles) outside of Boston.
• March 29 - Providence, Rhode Island is attacked and destroyed by the Indians.
• May 2–May 3 - Mary Rowlandson is released from captivity and returns to Boston.
• May 26 - a fire destroys the Town Hall and 624 houses in Southwark in England.
• c. May 31 - the Massachusetts Council finally decides to move the Christian Indians from Deer Island to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• June - Beginning of Bacon's Rebellion in the Virginia Colony.
• June 12 - the Indian coalition attacks Hadley, Massachusetts, but are repelled by Connecticut troops.
• June 19 - Massachusetts issues a declaration of amnesty to any Indian who would surrender.

July - December

• July 2 - Major John Talcott and his troops begin sweeping Connecticut and Rhode Island, capturing large numbers of Native Americans from Algonquin tribes and exporting them out of the Thirteen Colonies as slaves.
• July 4 - Captain Benjamin Church and his soldiers begin sweeping Plymoth for any remaining Wampanoag tribesmen.
• July 11 - the Wampanoags attack Taunton, Massachusetts, but are repelled by colonists.
• July 17 - In France, Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers is executed for poisoning his father and brothers. Case also scares the king Louis XIV to start a series of investigations about possible poisonings and witchcraft, later called the Poison affair.
• July 27 - nearly two hundred Nipmuck tribesmen surrender to the English colonists in Boston.
• August 2 - Captain Benjamin Church captures Metacomet's wife and son.
• 12 August - King Philip (Metacomet), the chief of the Wampanoags that had waged war throughout southern New England in a war that bore his name, was killed by an Indian named Alderman, a soldier who was led by Captain Benjamin Church.
• September 21 - Pope Innocent XI succeeds Pope Clement X as the 240th pope.
• November 16 - The Nantucket Island Prison founded on Nantucket Island in the English colony of Massachusetts.
• December - Ole Rømer makes the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

Undated

• First measurement of the speed of light, by Ole Rømer.
• King Philip's War continues, between the settlers in New England and the indigenous tribes led by Metacomet.
• First actions in the Russo-Turkish Wars.
• Emperor Yohannes I decrees that Muslims must live separately from Christians throughout Ethiopia.
• Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers microorganisms.
• Turku was the meeting place of the States of Finland.

Births

• March 17 - Thomas Boston, Scottish church leader (died 1732)
• March 27 - Francis II Rákóczi, leader of the Hungarian uprising against the Habsburg (died April 8, 1735)
• April 23 - King Frederick I of Sweden (died 1751)
• May 28 - Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (died 1754)
• June 21 - Anthony Collins, English philosopher (died 1729)
• July 3 - Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Prussian field marshal (died 1747)
• July 14 - Caspar Abel, German theologian, historian, and poet (died 1763)
• August 26 - Robert Walpole, first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1745)
• September 19 - Eberhard Ludwig, Duke of Württemberg (died 1733)
• October 8 - Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, Spanish scholar (died 1764)

See also Category: 1676 births.

Deaths

• January 14 - Francesco Cavalli, Italian composer (born 1602)
• January 29 - Tsar Alexis I of Russia (born 1629)
• February 14 - Abraham Bosse, French engraver and artist (born c.1604)
• March 21 - Henri Sauval, French historian (born 1623)
• April 5 - John Winthrop, the Younger, Governor of Connecticut (born 1606)
• April 29 - Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruijter, Dutch admiral (born 1607)
• June 7 - Paul Gerhardt, German hymnist (born 1606)
• July 5 - Carl Gustaf Wrangel, Swedish soldier (born 1613)
• July 22 - Pope Clement X (born 1590)
• July 25 - François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French writer (born 1604)
• August 11 - Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, German writer (born 1621)
• September 10 - Gerrard Winstanley, English religious reformer (born 1609)
• October 28 - Jean Desmarets, French writer (born 1595)
• November 1 - Gisbertus Voetius, Dutch theologian (born 1589)
• December 25 - Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of England (born 1609)
• December 25 - William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, English soldier, politician, and writer (born 1592)

See also Category: 1676 deaths.