Events of 1638

January–June

• February 28 – The Scottish National Covenant is signed in Edinburgh.
• March 3 – a mercenary army under Bernard de Saxe-Weimar fighting for France defeats imperial forces at the Battle of Rheinfelden.
• March 5 – Thirty Years' War – The Treaty of Hamburg is signed by France and Sweden.
• March 29 – The Swedish arrive on the ships Kalmare Nyckel and Fågel Grip to America, to establish the first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.
• March – Anne Hutchinson is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy and goes to Rhode Island.
• April 3 – John Wheelwright is banished from Boston and founds Exeter New Hampshire.
• April 15 – Shogunate forces defeat the last remnants of the Shimabara Rebellion in the fortress of Hara.
• May 23 – signing of the Kandyan Treaty between the Singhala King Rajasimha II and the Dutch to rid Ceylon of the Portuguese.
• June 20 – Spanish troops under Ferdinand of Austria defeat a much larger Dutch force near Antwerp at the Battle of Kallo during the Eighty Years War.
• June 27 – Patriarch Cyril of Constantinople is deposed for high treason and strangled and thrown into the sea by Janissaries on Ottoman Sultan Murad IV's command.

July–December

• October 21 – The Great Thunderstorm breaks out in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, England.
• November – The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is summoned to Glasgow by King Charles I of England.
• December 18 – Mazarin becomes first adviser to French potentate Richelieu on the death of Leclerc du Tremblay.

Undated

• Covenanters meet at Muchalls Castle to compose responses to the Bishops of Aberdeen.
• The Dutch settle in Ceylon.
• Pedro Teixeira makes the first ascent of the Amazon River, from its mouth to Quito, Ecuador. The same trip had been made in the opposite direction in 1541.
• Dutch merchant Willem Kieft is appointed Director of New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company.
• The Netherlands colonizes Mauritius.
• Shipwrecked sailors from England found the first known European settlement in Belize.
• The Finnish postal service, Suomen Posti, is founded.
• New Haven, the first planned city in America, is founded.
• The Beijing Gazette makes an official switch in its production process of newspapers, from woodblock printing to movable type printing; private newspapers in Ming Dynasty China were first mentioned in 1582.
• Sultan Murad IV captures Baghdad.
• Shah Jahan transfers the capital of the Moghul Empire from Agra to Delhi.
• Buccaneer Peter Wallace called "Ballis" by the Spanish, settles near and perhaps gives his name to the Belize River.

Births

• January 1 – Emperor Go-Sai (d. 1685)
• January 24 – Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, English poet and courtier (d. 1706)
• March 14 – Johann Georg Gichtel, German mystic (d. 1710)
• March 15 – Shunzhi Emperor of China (d. c.1661)
• March 23 – Frederik Ruysch, Dutch physician and anatomist (d. 1731)
• May 6 – Henry Capell, 1st Baron Capell, First Lord of the British Admiralty (d. 1696)
• May 13 – Richard Simon, French Biblical critic (d. 1712)
• July 10 – David Teniers III, Flemish painter (d. 1685)
• August 6 – Nicolas Malebranche, French philosopher (d. 1715)
• September 5 – King Louis XIV of France (d. 1715)
• September 10 – Maria Theresa of Spain, wife of Louis XIV of France (d. 1683)
• November 25 – Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II of England (d. 1705)

See also :Category:1638 births.

Deaths

• January 21 – Ignazio Donati, Italian composer (b. c.1570)
• January 27 – Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses, Spanish novelist (b. c.1585)
• February 26 – Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, French mathematician (b. 1581)
• April 7 – Shimazu Tadatsune, Japanese ruler of Satsuma (b. 1576)
• April 13 – Henri, duc de Rohan, French Huguenot leader (b. 1579)
• May 6 – Cornelius Jansen, French bishop and religious reformer (b. 1585)
• June 25 – Juan Pérez de Montalbán, Spanish writer (b. 1602)
• September 14 – John Harvard, American clergyman (b. 1607)
• November 9 – Johann Heinrich Alsted, German theologian (b. 1588)
• November 11 – Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, Dutch painter (b. 1562)
• December 8 – Ivan Gundulić, Croatian poet (b. 1589)
• date unknown – Pietro Paolo Floriani, architect (b. 1585)

See also :Category:1638 deaths.