CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

1618

year

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ6801 ↗
Source-derived summary

1618 (MDCXVIII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1618th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 618th year of the 2nd millennium, the 18th year of the 17th century, and the 9th year of the 1610s decade. As of the start of 1618, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events

January–March

January 6

Jahangir, ruler of the Mughal Empire in northern India, gives an audience for the first time to a representative of the British East India Company, receiving Sir Thomas Roe at the capital at Ahmedabad.

Ben Jonson's play Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue is given its premiere performance, presented at the Palace of Whitehall in London.

January 28 – Rules are established for the Ōoku, the section of Edo Castle that housed the Shōgun's consort and his concubines.

February 18 – Chŏng Inhong becomes the new Chief State Councillor (the Yŏngŭijŏng, similar to a Prime Minister) of the Joseon Kingdom, after being appointed by Gwanghaegun of Joseon.

February 26 – Osman II deposes his uncle Mustafa I as Ottoman sultan (until 1622).

March 8 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion (after some initial calculations, he soon rejects the idea, but on May 15 confirms the discovery).

April–June

April 21 – Spanish-born Jesuit missionary Pedro Páez becomes (probably) the first European to see and describe the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.

May 23 – The Second Defenestration of Prague – Protestant noblemen hold a mock trial, and throw two direct representatives of Ferdinand II of Germany (Imperial Governors) and their scribe out of a window into a pile of manure, exacerbating a low-key rebellion into the Bohemian Revolt (1618–1621), precipitating the Thirty Years' War into armed conflict, and further polarizing Europe on religious grounds.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1618” as year. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1618, 1923, 1622, 1621—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where year can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as year. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6801. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1618, 1923, 1622 and 1621.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1618”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1618 primary sources, 1618 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1618”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1618” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.