William II was sovereign Prince of Orange and stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands from 14 March 1647 until his death three years later. His only child, also named William, would go on to reign as William III of England an...

Shivaji Bhonsle was an Indian warrior king and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan, Shivaji, in 1674, carved out an enclave from the declining Adilshahi sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of an independent Maratha kingdom with Ra...

The Honourable Robert Boyle was an Irish natural philosopher, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. He was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of effect...

John Ray FRS was an English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the pract...

Charles Perrault was a French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known of his tales include Le Petit C...

Father of Peter the Great. Alexey Mikhailovich Romanov was a Tsar of Russia during some of the most eventful decades of the mid-17th century. The son of Tsar Mikhail I and Eudoxia Streshneva, he was sixteen years old at the time of his fath...

John of Austria (the Younger) (Don Juan José de Austria) was a Spanish general and political figure. He was the only natural son of Philip IV of Spain to be acknowledged by the King and trained for military command and political administrat...

Pieter de Hooch, also spelled "Hoogh" or "Hooghe", was a Dutch Golden Age painter famous for his genre works of quiet domestic scenes with an open doorway. He was a contemporary of Jan Vermeer in the Delft Guild of St. Luke, with whom his w...

Cornelis Tromp was a Commander in chief of the Dutch navy. Tromp was born in Rotterdam, the son of Admiral Maarten Tromp and Dignom Cornelis de Haes. He served in the First Anglo-Dutch War, being promoted to Admiral after the death of Johan...

Christiaan Huygens was a prominent Dutch mathematician and scientist. He is known particularly as an astronomer, physicist, probabilist and horologist. Huygens was a leading scientist of his time. His work included early telescopic studi...

Jan III Sobieski was one of the most notable monarchs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1674 until his death. Sobieski's 22-year-reign was marked by a period of the Commonwealth's sta...

Charles II was the King of England, King of Scots, and King of Ireland from 1649 until his death. His father Charles I had been executed in 1649, following the English Civil War; the monarchy was then abolished and the Kingdom of England an...

Hendrick Hamel was the first Westerner to provide a first hand account of Joseon Korea. After spending thirteen years there, he wrote "Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea, 1653-1666," which was subsequently published i...

Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan erected the Taj Mahal in the memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The construction of Taj Mahal started in the year 1631 and it took approximately 22 years to build it. An epitome of love, it made use of the s...

Mary, Princess Royal was Princess of Orange and Countess of Nassau as the wife of Prince William II. She was the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland and his wife, Henrietta Maria of France. Her only child lat...