Many rumors, fake news items, and pamphlets…

Frederick de Houtman, in the VOC ship Dordrecht and Jacob d'Edel, in another VOC ship Amsterdam, sight land, which they call d'Edelsland, ear present day Perth on the Australian west coast.

After sailing northwards along the coast en route to Batavia, he encounters and only narrowly avoids a group of shoals, subsequently called the Houtman Abrolhos.

Houtman then makes landfall in the region known as Eendrachtsland, which previous explorer Dirk Hartog had encountered.

VOC headquarters have been in Ambon for the tenures of the first three Governor Generals (1610-1619), but it is not a satisfactory location.

Although it is at the center of the spice production areas, it is far from the Asian trade routes and other VOC areas of activity ranging from Africa to Japan.

A location in the west of the archipelago is thus sought; the Straits of Malacca are strategic, but have become dangerous following the Portuguese conquest.

Moreover, ...

...the first permanent VOC settlement in Banten is controlled by a powerful local ruler and subject to stiff competition from Chinese and English traders.

The VOC, troubled by disputes at the head office in Bantam with natives, the Chinese, and the English, desires a better central headquarters.

Coen has thus directed more of the company's trade through Jakarta, where it had established a factory in 1610.

However, not trusting the native ruler, he had decided in 1618 to convert the Dutch warehouses into a fort.

While the Dutch were away on an expedition, the English had taken control over the town.

Coen, backed by a force of nineteen ships on May 30, 1619, storms Jayakarta, driving out the Banten forces, and from the ashes, rebuilds the fort and establishes the city as the VOC headquarters.

Ambon is not a satisfactory location for VOC headquarters.

Although it is at the center of the spice production areas, it is far from the Asian trade routes and other VOC areas of activity ranging from Africa to Japan.

A location in the west of the archipelago is thus sought; the Straits of Malacca are strategic, but have become dangerous following the Portuguese conquest.

The first permanent VOC settlement in Banten is controlled by a powerful local ruler and subject to stiff competition from Chinese and English traders.

Jan Pieterszoon Coen, informed in April 1618 of his appointment as Governor-General of the VOC, sees the possibility of the company becoming an Asian power, both political and economic.

He is not afraid to use brute force to put the VOC on a firm footing.

The site of Smeerenburg, on Amsterdam Island in northwest Svalbard, is during the first intensive phase of the Spitsbergen whale fishery first occupied by the Dutch in 1614, when ships from the Amsterdam chamber of the Noordsche Compagnie (Northern Company) establish a temporary whaling station here with tents made of canvas and crude, temporary ovens. (The name Smeerenburg, in the Dutch language, literally means "blubber town").

One of Europe's northernmost outposts, Smeerenburg serves as the center of operations in the north for Danish and Dutch whalers.

A five hundred-ton ship with timber and other materials is in 1619 sent to Spitsbergen.

The tents and temporary ovens are replaced with wooden structures and copper kettles "set in a permanent fashion on a brick foundation, with a brick fireplace beneath and a chimney for the smoke."

Smeerenburg is occupied in its first year only by Amsterdam and the Danes, the former to the east and the latter to the west.

Isfahan has become the center of Safavid architectural achievement, with the mosques Masjed-e Shah and the Masjed-e Sheykh Lotfollah and other monuments like the Ali Qapu, the Chehel Sotoun palace, and ...

The Council of Castile, evaluating the expulsion of the Moriscos, concludes in 1619 that it has had no economic impact for the country.

This is basically true for Castile, as some scholars of the expulsion have found no economic consequences on sectors where the Morisco population was important.

However, ...

...fields are abandoned in the Kingdom of Valencia, and a vacuum is left in sectors of the economy the Christians cannot possibly fill.

With the removal of thirty-three percent of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Valencia, some counties in the north of Alicante lose virtually their entire population.

The infrastructure has decayed, and the Christian nobles and landlords have fallen into arrears: many of the Valencian nobles, strapped for cash, have increased rents on their Christian tenants to get even close to their previous income.

The increase in rents has driven off any new tenants from coming to replace them, and as a result agricultural output in Valencia has dropped tremendously.

Sacharias Janssen is the possible inventor of a single-lens (simple) microscope, probably with the help of his father, in 1595, while trying to find a way to make magnification even greater, to help people with seriously poor eyesight.

Janssen's attribution to this discovery is debatable.

He is also the first person to create and build a compound (two or more lens) microscope in 1609.

These compound microscopes can magnify objects up to nine times their original size.

Sacharias Jansen has been tried several times in the years 1613-1619 for counterfeiting coins.

Jansen had grown up right next to the Middleburg mint where his brother-in-law works.

These circumstances make it very easy for Janssen to mimic the process of manufacturing money.

He had fled to the neighboring village of Arnemuiden to avoid the high penalties for counterfeiting coins.

However, he has continued counterfeiting coins in Arnemuiden.

He is apprehended in 1619 for owning several devices with which he counterfeited coins.

Normally, one would be sentenced to death for this crime.

As the father of the Arnemuiden bailiff is found to be an accessory, however, it turns out better for Jansen: thanks to this, the process is delayed to such an extent that Janssen is able to flee yet another time.