Year 1638 (MDCXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

Events of 1638

January - June

• February 28 - The Scottish National Covenant is signed in Edinburgh.
• March 5 - Thirty Years' War - The Treaty of Hamburg is signed by France and Sweden.
• March 29 - The Swedish arrive on the ships Kalmare Nyckel and Fågel Grip to America, to establish the first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.
• April 15 - Shogunate forces defeat the last remnants of the Shimabara Rebellion in the fortress of Hara.

July - December

• October 21 - The Great Thunderstorm breaks out in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, England.
• November - The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is summoned to Glasgow by King Charles I of England.

Undated

• Covenanters meet at Muchalls Castle to compose responses to the Bishops of Aberdeen.
• The Dutch settle in Ceylon.
• Pedro Teixeira makes the first ascent of the Amazon River, from its mouth to Quito, Ecuador. The same trip had been made in the opposite direction in 1541.
• Dutch merchant Willem Kieft is appointed Director of New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company.
• The Netherlands colonizes Mauritius.
• Shipwrecked sailors from England found the first known European settlement in Belize.
• The Finnish postal service, Suomen Posti, is founded.
• New Haven, the first planned city in America, is founded.
• The Beijing Gazette makes an official switch in its production process of newspapers, from woodblock printing to movable type printing; private newspapers in Ming Dynasty China were first mentioned in 1582.
• Sultan Merad IV captures Baghdad.

Births

• January 1 - Emperor Go-Sai (d. 1685)
• January 24 - Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, English poet and courtier (d. 1706)
• March 14 - Johann Georg Gichtel, German mystic (d. 1710)
• March 15 - Shunzhi Emperor of China (d. c.1661)
• March 23 - Frederik Ruysch, Dutch physician and anatomist (d. 1731)
• May 6 - Henry Capell, 1st Baron Capell, First Lord of the British Admiralty (d. 1696)
• May 13 - Richard Simon, French Biblical critic (d. 1712)
• July 10 - David Teniers III, Flemish painter (d. 1685)
• August 6 - Nicolas Malebranche, French philosopher (d. 1715)
• September 5 - King Louis XIV of France (d. 1715)
• September 10 - Maria Theresa of Spain, wife of Louis XIV of France (d. 1683)
• November 25 - Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II of England (d. 1705)

See also Category:1638 births.

Deaths

• January 21 - Ignazio Donati, Italian composer (b. c.1570)
• January 27 - Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses, Spanish novelist (b. c.1585)
• February 26 - Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, French mathematician (b. 1581)
• April 7 - Shimazu Tadatsune, Japanese ruler of Satsuma (b. 1576)
• April 13 - Henri, duc de Rohan, French Huguenot leader (b. 1579)
• May 6 - Cornelius Jansen, French bishop and religious reformer (b. 1585)
• June 25 - Juan Pérez de Montalbán, Spanish writer (b. 1602)
• September 14 - John Harvard, American clergyman (b. 1607)
• November 9 - Johann Heinrich Alsted, German theologian (b. 1588)
• November 11 - Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, Dutch painter (b. 1562)
• December 8 - Ivan Gundulić, Croatian poet (b. 1589)
• date unknown - Pietro Paolo Floriani, architect (b. 1585)

See also Category:1638 deaths.