Despite the arguably greater architectural inventiveness of Borromini and Cortona, Bernini's artistic pre-eminence, particularly during the reigns of popes Urban VIII ( 1623 – 1644 ) and Alexander VII ( 1655 – 1665 ), meant he was able to secure the most important commission in the Rome of his day, St. Peter's Basilica.

In early 1655 he was arrested at Whetstone, Leicestershire and taken to London under armed guard.

He held many college offices, becoming successively lecturer in Greek ( 1651 ), mathematics ( 1653 ), and humanity ( 1655 ), praelector ( 1657 ), junior dean ( 1657 ), and college steward ( 1659 and 1660 ); and according to the habit of the time, he was accustomed to preach in his college chapel and also at Great St Mary's, long before he took holy orders on 23 December 1660.

In 1655 Jamaica was conquered by the English, although the Spanish did not relinquish their claim to the island until 1670.

Spanish Jamaica was subject to many privateer attacks, before the final conquest of the island by the English in 1655.

In 1655 he was appointed hakham of that city.

Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg ( 11 November 1599 – 28 March 1655 ) was a German princess and queen consort of Sweden.

The Mosquito Coast based on Bluefields on the Atlantic was claimed by the United Kingdom as a protectorate from 1655 to 1850.

The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori ( 1655 – 1731 ) of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Ferdinando de ' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the Keeper of the Instruments.

Pope Alexander VII ( 13 February 1599 – 22 May 1667 ), born Fabio Chigi, was Pope from 7 April 1655, until his death.

When Innocent X died, Chigi, the candidate favoured by Spain, was elected pope after eighty days in the conclave, on 7 April 1655, taking the name of Alexander VII.

After her abdication the queen came to reside in Rome, where she was confirmed in her baptism by the Pope, in whom she found a generous friend and benefactor, on Christmas Day, 1655.

Pope Innocent X ( 6 May 1574 – 7 January 1655 ), born Giovanni Battista Pamphilj ( or Pamphili ), was Pope from 1644 to 1655.

Pope Innocent XIII ( 13 May 1655 – 7 March 1724 ) was pope from 1721 until his death.

In 1655, he sailed into the Delaware River with a fleet of seven vessels and about 700 men and took possession of the colony of New Sweden, which was renamed " New Amstel.

His father's first cousin, Sir Richard Pepys, was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, and appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, on 25 September 1655.

The biggest revolt was staged in 1655 and is known as the Penruddock uprising, named after one of the leaders of the revolt, John Penruddock.

The revolt was easily put down by forces loyal to the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, and for his part in the rebellion Penruddock was beheaded in May 1655.

Year 1655 ( MDCLV ) was a common year starting on Friday ( link will display the full calendar ) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar.

New Sweden (, ) was a Swedish colony along the Delaware River on the Mid-Atlantic coast of North America from 1638 to 1655.

The Swedish settlement was incorporated into Dutch New Netherland on September 15, 1655.

Portugal annexed territories in the region which were ruled as a colony from 1655, and Angola was incorporated as an overseas province of Portugal in 1951.

In 1655, Huygens proposed that Saturn was surrounded by a solid ring, " a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic.

What is unique about the inclusion of Joachim Gans in this expedition was that Jews were not allowed in England until Oliver Cromwell allowed them back into England in 1655 by refusing to extend Expulsion Laws imposed roughly 300 years earlier by Edward I in 1290.

Shang Kexi, known to the Dutch as the " Old Viceroy " of Guangdong, drawn by Johan Nieuhof in 1655.

Shang Kexi, known to the Dutch as the " Old Viceroy " of Guangdong, drawn by Johan Nieuhof in 1655

The Jews had been banished from England in 1290 and were not permitted to return before 1655, when Shakespeare had been dead for thirty-nine years.

* 1655 – Alfonso de la Cueva, 1st Marquis of Bedmar, Spanish cardinal and diplomat ( b. 1572 )

In 1693 Morosini resumed command, but his only acts were to refortify the castle of Aegina, which he had demolished during the Cretan war in 1655, the cost of upkeep being paid as long as the war lasted, by the Athenians, and to place it and Salamis under Malipiero as Governor.

These reformed French Breviaries — e. g. the Paris Breviary of 1680 by Archbishop François de Harlay ( 1625 – 1695 ) and that of 1736 by Archbishop Charles Gaspard Guillaume de Vintimille ( 1655 – 1746 )— show a deep knowledge of Holy Scripture, and much careful adaptation of different texts.

At the same time, there were 1756 non-Swiss men and 1655 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland.

In 1651, the Dutch, reinvigorated by the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant, established a fort at present-day New Castle, and in 1655 they conquered the New Sweden colony, annexing it into the Dutch New Netherland.

In 1655, Oliver Cromwell dispatched a fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir William Penn, to conquer Santo Domingo.

* 1655 – Second Northern War / the Deluge: Monks at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa are successful in fending off a month-long siege.

* 1658 – Treaty of Roskilde: After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars ( 1655 – 1661 ), the King of Denmark-Norway is forced to give up nearly half his territory to Sweden to save the rest.

One early Quaker convert, the Yorkshireman James Nayler, arose as a prominent preacher in London around 1655.

In 1655 the newly established English administration on Jamaica sponsored the re-occupation of Tortuga under Elias Watts as Governor.

Meanwhile the English captured Jamaica in 1655 and soon were seeking allies on the coast, and hit upon the Miskito, whose king Jeremy visited Jamaica in 1687.

In 1534 the settlers moved to a new healthier site they named Villa de la Vega, which the English renamed Spanish Town when they conquered the island in 1655.

* 1591 – Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, Crete-Italian physician, mathematician, and theorist ( d. 1655 )

* 1592 – Pierre Gassendi, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist ( d. 1655 )

* 1655 – Empress Eleonore-Magdalena of Neuburg of the Holy Roman Empire ( d. 1720 )