The Hartog Plate
A Dutch captain nails a pewter plate to a post in Australia
In October 1616 Captain Dirk Hartog landed in Western Australia and nailed a pewter plate recording his visit to a post. Eighty-one years later Willem de Vlamingh found it, left a copy and took the original to Amsterdam. It is the oldest surviving European artefact from Australia.
Wikipedia (English) · 17th century
Did you know
The oldest European object from Australia is a pewter plate. Dirk Hartog nailed it to a post in 1616; 81 years later it was taken to Amsterdam, where it is now in the Rijksmuseum. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1598 Edict of Nantes — 18 years earlier
- 1600 East India Company founded — 16 years earlier
- 1610 Galileo's telescopic discoveries — 6 years earlier
- 1618–1648 Thirty Years' War — 2 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1598–1613 Time of Troubles — 18 years earlier
- 1612 Minin and Pozharsky liberate Moscow — 4 years earlier
- 1613 Election of Michael Romanov as Tsar — 3 years earlier
Africa
- 1591 Battle of Tondibi and fall of Songhai — 25 years earlier
- 1624–1663 Nzinga becomes Queen of Ndongo — 8 years later
Asia
- 1592–1598 Imjin War — 24 years earlier
- 1600 Battle of Sekigahara — 16 years earlier
- 1632–1653 Building of the Taj Mahal — 16 years later
Americas
- 1600 Eruption of Huaynaputina — 16 years earlier
- c. 1605–1694 Quilombo of Palmares — 11 years earlier
- 1607 Founding of Jamestown — 9 years earlier
- 1609 Jesuit reductions among the Guaraní — 7 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Tokugawa Ieyasu (aged 73)
- Miguel de Cervantes (aged 69)
- William Shakespeare (aged 52)
- Galileo Galilei (aged 52)
- René Descartes (aged 20)
- Rembrandt (aged 10)
- James I (aged 50)
- Johannes Kepler (aged 45)
- Abbas the Great (aged 45)
- Nur Jahan (aged 39)