1641-1650 - AND ELSEWHERE WORLDWIDE
HISTORY: English Civil War begins; Louis XIII of France died, succeeded by his five-year-old son Louis XI; Anne of Austria invested with supreme power, confirms Mazarin as first minister; English Civil War: Parliamentarian army surrenders to King Charles I; French occupation of the Rhineland; Ming dynasty in China ends, Manchu dynasty in power; English Civil War ends with surrender of Oxford to Roundheads; English occupy Bahamas; Peace of Westphalia ends Thirty Years' War; Charles I beheaded; Charles II is proclaimed king; England declared a Commonwealth.
ARTS: Rembrandt: "The Night Watch"; Molière founds "Illustre Théâtre" inParis; Beginning of modern harmony; The overture as musical form emerges in two types, Italian and French.
SCIENCE/GROWTH: Arsenic prescribed for medicinal purposes for first time; Cotton goods begin to be manufactured in Manchester; Income and property tax introduced in England; Coffee drinking becomes popular in Paris; German mathematician Athanasius Kircher constructs first projection lantern; Population of Germany has sunk from 17 million in 1618 to eight million owing to war, famine, and plague; World population estimated at 500 million, in 1850: 1:1 billion, 1950: 2.4 billion; Tea first drunk in England.
