1618
Defenestration of Prague
A Protestant mob stormed the Bohemian royal chancellery and threw two Catholic regents and their secretary out a third-floor window into the moat. All three survived, which Catholics credited to angels and Protestants to manure. The act ignited the Thirty Years' War, the most destructive conflict Europe would endure before the twentieth century, killing perhaps eight million people.
Harvey Discovers Blood Circulation
The English physician William Harvey, after years of vivisecting snakes, deer, and patients, concluded that the heart was a pump and that blood circulated through the body along a closed loop. He kept the finding private for another decade, fearing ridicule, and only published in 1628. His discovery demolished the ancient Galenic system that had governed medicine for fourteen centuries.
Walter Raleigh Beheaded
On a frosty October morning in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, Sir Walter Raleigh mounted the scaffold, felt the edge of the axe, and told the executioner it was a sharp medicine but a sound cure. His head fell with one stroke. The Elizabethan age had now genuinely ended, its last great adventurer dispatched by a king who had never liked him.
Comet of 1618 Alarms Europe
Three bright comets appeared in 1618, the brightest from November into January. Protestants and Catholics alike read them as omens of the Thirty Years' War just beginning. Kepler wrote a treatise explaining them as sublunary phenomena; the pamphlet-buying public paid more attention to the horoscopes. The comets marked a moment when superstition and science competed openly for European minds.
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Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1618?
Saeculum lists 4 curated events from 1618. The most significant is Defenestration of Prague: A Protestant mob stormed the Bohemian royal chancellery and threw two Catholic regents and their secretary out a third-floor window into the moat.
What era was 1618 part of?
1618 falls within the Renaissance (1501-1650). Reformation, conquest, and the world drawn whole.
Which regions saw notable events in 1618?
The curated events from 1618 span Europe.