The first book published in England's American colonies is Bay Psalm Book, a revised translation of the psalms

Peter Stuyvesant begins a 17-year spell as director-general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in North America

Peter Stuyvesant accepts the reality of the military situation and yields New Amsterdam to the British without a shot being fired

New Amsterdam is renamed New York by the recently established English regime

Robert de La Salle makes his first exploration of the Ohio valley, providing the basis for France's later claim to the area

Samuel Sewall begins a diary of daily life in Boston, Massachusetts, that will span a period of more than fifty years

A sudden uprising by the Wampanoag Indians against the new England settlements begins the conflict known as King Philip's War

The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico rise against the Spanish, killing 21 missionaries and some 400 colonists

Charles II grants William Penn the charter for the region that becomes Pennsylvania, in settlement of a debt to Penn's father

Robert de la Salle travels down the Mississippi to its mouth and claims the entire region for France, naming it Louisiana

William Penn approves the Great Law, allowing complete freedom of religious belief in Pennsylvania

William Penn achieves peace for Pennsylvania by negotiating a treaty with the local Lenape (or Delaware) tribes

Mennonites and other from Germany (later known as the Pennsylvania Dutch) begin to settle in Penn's liberal colony

The Massachusetts town of Salem is gripped by witch-hunting hysteria

Twenty people convicted of witchcraft are hanged in Salem, and one is pressed to death

Boston merchant Samuel Sewall publishes The Selling of Joseph, a very early anti-slavery tract

Scottish entrepreneur John Law establishes the Louisiana Company to develop the Mississippi valley for France

16-year-old Benjamin Franklin contributes the 'Dogood Papers', essays on moral topics, to a Boston journal, The New England Courant

Benjamin Franklin prints, publishes and largely writes the weekly Pennsylvania Gazette

Benjamin Franklin sets up a subscription library, the Library Company of Philadelphia

Georgia is granted to a group of British philanthropists, to give a new start in life to debtors

Benjamin Franklin establishes the most successful of America's almanacs, publishing it annually until 1758

A revivalist movement in America, led by Jonathan Edwards, becomes known as the Great Awakening

John Peter Zenger, editor of the Weekly Journal, is acquitted of libelling the governor of New York on the grounds that what he published was true

The American Magazine and the General Magazine both begin a short-lived existence