Johannes Kepler spent six years defending his own mother against charges of witchcraft.

1615 · 1621 · apart: 6 years

Katharina Kepler's case dragged on from 1615 to 1621 and ended with her release.

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The event

• Kepler's supernova1604 · Prague. In October 1604 a supernova flared in Ophiuchus, and Johannes Kepler followed it from Prague for over a year. It remains the last supernova in our galaxy seen with the naked eye. In the same weeks, False Dmitry I crossed into Russia.

17th century

More amazing facts

• 1613 · 1627 The last aurochs, the wild ancestor of cattle, died in a Polish forest in 1627 — 14 years after Michael Romanov was elected tsar.
• 1613 · 1618 Five years after the Romanovs came to power (1613), the Thirty Years' War broke out in Europe.
• 1614 In a small town near Seville, hundreds of people bear the surname Japón — "Japan". They are thought to descend from samurai of Hasekura's embassy who reached Spain in 1614 and never went home.
• 1614 An Italian doctor spent 30 years weighing himself, his food and everything that left his body.
• 1615 · 1620 In 1615 a Japanese samurai was made an honorary citizen of Rome.
• 1616 · 1697 The oldest European object from Australia is a pewter plate.

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