* 1626 – Sabbatai Zevi, Montenegrin rabbi, founder of the Sabbatean movement ( d. 1676 )

* 1676 – Praying Indian John Alderman shoots and kills Metacomet, the Wampanoag war chief, ending King Philip's War.

* 1629 – Alexis of Russia ( d. 1676 )

Alexander Selkirk ( 1676 – 13 December 1721 ) was a Scottish sailor who spent four years as a castaway after being marooned on an uninhabited island.

* 1604 – François Hédelin, abbé d ' Aubignac, French writer ( d. 1676 )

* 1747 – Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Prussian field marshal ( b. 1676 )

* 1721 – Alexander Selkirk, Scottish sailor and castaway ( b. 1676 )

* 1729 – Anthony Collins, English philosopher ( b. 1676 )

* Francis II Rákóczi, Duke of Transylvania ( 1676 – 1735 )

* 1602 – Francesco Cavalli, Italian composer ( d. 1676 )

* 1612 – Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, French military officer ( d. 1676 )

Image: Geumgangjeon. jpg | View of Geumgang, Jeong Seon ( 1676 – 1759 ), 1734, Korean

The heresies of Sabbatai Zevi ( 1626 – 1676 ) and Jacob Frank ( 1726 – 1791 ) distorted Lurianic Kabbalah and led to the Jacob Emden # Emden-Eybeschütz controversy | Emden-Eybeschütz Controversy.

* 1647 – Nathaniel Bacon, English-born American colonist ( d. 1676 )

* 1676 – Paul Gerhardt, German writer ( b. 1606 )

* 1676 – Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia.

* 1676 – Tsar Alexis I of Russia ( b. 1629 )

* 1676 – Anthony Collins, English philosopher ( d. 1729 )

* 1676 – Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Prussian field marshal ( d. 1747 )

* 1676 – Franco-Dutch War: France ensured the supremacy of its naval fleet for the remainder of the war with its victory in the Battle of Palermo.

* 1623 – Jacopo Melani, Italian composer and violinist ( d. 1676 )

* 1676 – John Weldon, English musician and composer ( d. 1736 )

* 1642 – Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve ( 1612 – 1676 ) founds the Ville Marie de Montréal.

An early experiment to measure the speed of light was conducted by Ole Rømer, a Danish physicist, in 1676.

Ole Christensen Rømer (; 25 September 1644, Århus – 19 September 1710, Copenhagen ) was a Danish astronomer who in 1676 made the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

* 1676 – Ole Rømer: first measurement of the speed of light

Rømer presented his results to the French Academy of Sciences, and it was summarised soon after by an anonymous reporter in a short paper,, published 7 December 1676 in the Journal des sçavans.

* 1676 — Olaus Roemer measures the speed of light by observing Jupiter's moons

Four different major rail gauges ( which measures the distance between rails ) exist across the continent: most of Europe, as well as Turkey, Iran, China, and the Koreas use the 1435 mm gauge, known as Standard gauge ; Russia, and the former Soviet republics use a 1520 mm gauge ; Finland uses a 1524 mm gauge ; most of the railways in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use the 1676 mm gauge, known as Indian gauge ; and most of Southeast Asia has metre-gauge.

Illustration from the 1676 article on Rømer's Speed of light # Astronomical techniques | measurement of the speed of light.

Barometric light was first observed in 1675 by the French astronomer Jean Picard: " Towards the year 1676, Monsieur Picard was transporting his barometer from the Observatory to Port Saint Michel during the night, he noticed a light in a part of the tube where the mercury was moving ; this phenomenon having surprised him, he immediately reported it to the Sçavans ,..." The Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli studied the phenomenon while teaching at Groningen, the Netherlands, and in 1700 he demonstrated the phenomenon to the French Academy.

In 1676 accommodation was increased by erecting a simple wooden gallery at the west end of the nave, with a dormer window opening at each end of it in order to give it light.

The Dutch briefly occupied it for a period in 1676.

Instead he resigned his right of primogeniture and from Pope Innocent XI ( 1676 – 89 ) he purchased, according to the custom of the time, for 30, 000 scudi, a position of prelatial rank and devoted his wealth and leisure to the enlargement of the library bequeathed to him by his uncle.

In 1676 Sydenham published a seminal work, Medical Observations Concerning the History and Cure of Acute Diseases, in which he promoted his brand of opium tincture, and advocated its use for a range of medical conditions.

Turku was also the meeting place for the States of Finland in 1676.

On 26 May 1676, ten years after the Great Fire of London, a great fire broke out, which continued for 17 hours before houses were blown up to create fire breaks.

By the time the enlarged project was completed in 1676, the river front measured 196 metres and the complex had fifteen courtyards, the largest being the cour d ' honneur (" court of honour ") for military parades.

In 1676, the Duke of Valois died at the Palais-Royal in Paris, making Philippe the new heir to the House of Orléans ; the future heirs of the Duke of Orléans would be known as the Duke of Chartres ( duc de Chartres ) for the next century.

The town's lands were originally set off for the officers and soldiers ( or their descendants ) involved in the " Falls Fight ", a battle loosely related to King Philip's War, in 1676.

Sir Matthew Hale SL ( 1 November 1609 — 25 December 1676 ) was an influential English barrister, judge and lawyer most noted for his treatise Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown.

His initial attempts to resign as Chief Justice were declined by the King, but when Hale applied for a writ of ease the King reluctantly allowed him to retire on 20 February 1676, granting him a pension of £ 1, 000 a year.

After suffering for ten more months, Hale died on 25 December 1676 at his country home, The Lower House ( now the site of the present day Alderley House ).

The Earl of Rochester, real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege's The Man of Mode ( 1676 ) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, and sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity's idea of the glamorous Restoration rake ( actually never a very common character in Restoration comedy ).

Wycherley's The Plain Dealer ( 1676 ), a variation on the theme of Molière's Le Misanthrope, was highly regarded for its uncompromising satire and earned Wycherley the appellation " Plain Dealer " Wycherley or " Manly " Wycherley, after the play's main character Manly.

In 1676, the British Parliament declared that navigation was the greatest scientific problem of the age and in 1714 offered a substantial financial prize for the solution to finding longitude.

The first recorded use of the term universal joint for this device was by Hooke in 1676, in his book Helioscopes.

At this point, Christian V no longer had his most experienced foreign relations counsel around to repair the political damage — in 1676 he had been persuaded to sacrifice Griffenfeldt as a traitor, and to the clamour of his adversaries, Griffenfeldt was imprisoned for the remainder of his life.

His greatest work, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, was published in Latin at Amsterdam in 1676, and was an elaborate statement of the grounds for holding certain fundamental positions laid down in the Theses.

The ahnentafel system of numeration is also known as: the Eytzinger Method, for Michaël Eytzinger, the Austrian-born historian who first published the principles of the system in 1590 ; the Sosa Method, named for Jerónimo ( Jerome ) de Sosa, the Spanish genealogist who popularized the numbering system in his work Noticia de la gran casa de los marqueses de Villafranca in 1676 ; and the Sosa – Stradonitz Method, for Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz, the genealogist and son of Friedrich August Kekulé, who published his interpretation of Sosa's method in his Ahnentafel-atlas in 1898.

In 1676 contacts with Huguenots at Charenton led Simon to circulate a manuscript project for a new version of the Bible.

“ Essay IV Against modern Sadducism in the matter of Witches and Apparitions ” in Essay on several important subjects in philosophy and religion, 2nd Ed, London: ( printed by Jd for John Baker and H. Mortlock, 1676, p. 1-4 ( in the history 201 course-pack compiled by S. McSheffrey & T. McCormick )

His talents were eventually recognized and, in 1676, he became director-general of fortifications for the Swedish crown.