1627
Shah Jahan Ascends the Mughal Throne
After a brief war against his brothers, Prince Khurram, Jahangir's favorite, was crowned Shah Jahan, King of the World, in Agra. He would rule for thirty years, preside over an opulent court, and build for his dead wife a tomb of white marble that became the single most famous building in Asia.
Korean Joseon Invaded by Later Jin
Nurhaci's successor Hong Taiji hurled thirty thousand Jurchen cavalry across the frozen Yalu River into Joseon Korea. The invasion lasted barely a month before the Korean king submitted, but it shattered Joseon's alliance with the dying Ming dynasty and forced the peninsula into tributary orbit around the rising Manchu power to the north.
Last Aurochs Dies in Poland
In the Jaktorow Forest near Warsaw, the last known aurochs, a wild cow that had once thundered across Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, died quietly. Royal hunting laws had protected the final herd for decades, but poaching and disease finished what millennia of habitat loss had started. An Ice Age survivor vanished from the Earth.
Korean Aurochs Extinct in Europe
The last known European aurochs, a female of the enormous wild ancestor of domestic cattle, died in the forest of Jaktorow in the Mazovian woodlands of Poland. Kings had hunted them for centuries; poaching and habitat loss finished the species. A great Ice Age beast vanished quietly from Europe, and the concept of extinction began its slow entry into human consciousness.