1678

January 10 – England and the Dutch Republic sign a mutual defense treaty in order to fight against France. January 27 – The first fire engine company (in what will become the United States) goes into service in Boston. February 18 – The first part of English nonconformist preacher John Bunyan's Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, is published in London. March 21 – Thomas Shadwell's comedy A True Widow is given its first performance, at The Duke's Theatre in London, staged by the Duke's Company. March 23 – Rebel Chinese general Wu Sangui takes the imperial crown, names himself monarch of "The Great Zhou", based in the Hunan report, with Hengyang as his capital. He contracts dysentery over the summer and dies on October 2, ending the rebellion against the Kangxi Emperor. March 25 – The Spanish Netherlands city of Ypres falls after a seven-day siege by the French Army. It is later returned to the Netherlands and later becomes part of Belgium. March 28 – The nova V529 Orionis is discovered by Poland astronomer Jan Heweliusz, referred to in history as Johannes Hevelius. April 2 – Ignatius Gregory Peter VI Shahbaddin is enthroned as the Patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church in Aleppo, after receiving recognition by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV and by Pope Innocent XI. April 12 – The Treaty of Casco Bay is signed between officials of the Province of New York and the Penobscot tribe and the Wabanaki Confederacy, bringing an end to further fighting that had happened in the two years since the end of King Philip's War in the modern-day U.S. state of Maine. Under the terms of the treaty, English settlers pay rent to the Penobscots and are given back farm land that had been confiscated in the war, while the English settlers agree to respect the Penobscot land rights. May 11 – French admiral Jean d'Estrees runs his whole fleet aground in either the Las Aves Archipelago or Isla de Aves, intending to reach Curaçao.