Galileo Galilei died under house arrest near Florence, nine years after the Inquisition forced him to recant heliocentrism.

Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first recorded European to sight the island later named Tasmania, landing his ships off its coast.

Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted a mountainous coastline off the southern Pacific, becoming the first European to encounter what is now Tasmania.

Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, England, on Christmas Day by the Julian calendar then in use, later reshaping physics and mathematics.