Events of 1676

January–June

• January – Six months into King Philip's War, Metacomet (King Philip), leader of the Algonquin tribe known as the Wampanoag, travels westward to the Mohawk nation, seeking an alliance with the Mohawks against the English colonists of New England; his efforts in creating such an alliance are a failure.

• January 29 – Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia.

• February 10 – After the Nipmuck tribe attacks Lancaster, Massachusetts, the colonist Mary Rowlandson is taken captive and lives with the Indians until May.

• February 14 – Metacomet and his Wampanoags attack Northampton, Massachusetts; meanwhile, the Massachusetts Council debates whether a wall should be erected around Boston.

• February 23 – While the Massachusetts Council debates how to handle the Christian Indians they had exiled to Deer Island on October 13, 1675, a coalition of Indians led by Metacomet attacks colonial settlements just 16 km (10 miles) outside of Boston.

• March 29 – Providence, Rhode Island is attacked and destroyed by the Indians.

• May 2 – May 3 – Mary Rowlandson is released from captivity and returns to Boston.

• May 26 – A fire destroys the Town Hall and 624 houses in Southwark in England.

• c. May 31 – The Massachusetts Council finally decides to move the Christian Indians from Deer Island to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• June – Bacon's Rebellion begins in the Virginia Colony.

• June 1 – Battle of Öland

• June 12 – The Indian coalition attacks Hadley, Massachusetts, but are repelled by Connecticut troops.

• June 19 – Massachusetts issues a declaration of amnesty to any Indian who surrenders.

July–December

• July 2 – Major John Talcott and his troops begin sweeping Connecticut and Rhode Island, capturing large numbers of Native Americans from Algonquin tribes and exporting them out of the Thirteen Colonies as slaves.

• July 4 – Captain Benjamin Church and his soldiers begin sweeping Plymoth for any remaining Wampanoag tribesmen.

• July 11 – The Wampanoags attack Taunton, Massachusetts, but are repelled by colonists.

• July 17 – In France, Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers is executed for poisoning her father and brothers. The case also scares the king Louis XIV into starting a series of investigations about possible poisonings and witchcraft, later called the Poison affair.

• July 27 – Nearly 200 Nipmuck tribesmen surrender to the English colonists in Boston.

• August 2 – Captain Benjamin Church captures Metacomet's wife and son.

• 12 August – King Philip (Metacomet), the chief of the Wampanoags that had waged war throughout southern New England in a war that bore his name, is killed by an Indian named Alderman, a soldier led by Captain Benjamin Church.

• September 19 – Jamestown is burned to the ground by the forces of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion.

• September 21 – Pope Innocent XI succeeds Pope Clement X as the 240th pope.

• November 16 – A prison is founded on Nantucket Island in the English colony of Massachusetts.

• December – Ole Rømer makes the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

Undated

• King Philip's War continues, between the settlers in New England and the indigenous tribes led by Metacomet.

• The Russo-Turkish War (1676–1681) begins.

• Emperor Yohannes I decrees that Muslims must live separately from Christians throughout Ethiopia.

• Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers microorganisms.

• The States of Finland meet in Turku.

• The French East India Company founds its principal Indian base at Pondicherry, on the Coromandel Coast.

• Edmund Halley observes the transit of Venus.

Births

• March 17 – Thomas Boston, Scottish church leader (d. 1732)

• March 27 – Francis II Rákóczi, leader of the Hungarian uprising against the Habsburg (d. 1735)

• April 23 – King Frederick I of Sweden (d. 1751)

• May 28 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (d. 1754)

• June 21 – Anthony Collins, English philosopher (d. 1729)

• July 3 – Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Prussian field marshal (d. 1747)

• July 14 – Caspar Abel, German theologian, historian, and poet (d. 1763)

• August 26 – Robert Walpole, first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1745)

• September 19 – Eberhard Ludwig, Duke of Württemberg (d. 1733)

• October 8 – Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, Spanish scholar (d. 1764)

Deaths

• January 14 – Francesco Cavalli, Italian composer (b. 1602)

• January 29 – Tsar Alexis I of Russia (b. 1629)

• February 14 – Abraham Bosse, French engraver and artist (b. c. 1604)

• March 21 – Henri Sauval, French historian (b. 1623)

• March 27 – Bernardino de Rebolledo, Spanish poet, soldier and diplomat (b. 1597)

• April 5 – John Winthrop, the Younger, Governor of Connecticut (b. 1606)

• April 29 – Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruijter, Dutch admiral (b. 1607)

• June 7 – Paul Gerhardt, German hymnist (b. 1606)

• July 5 – Carl Gustaf Wrangel, Swedish soldier (b. 1613)

• July 22 – Pope Clement X (b. 1590)

• July 25 – François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French writer (b. 1604)

• August 11 – Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, German writer (b. 1621)

• September 10 – Gerrard Winstanley, English religious reformer (b. 1609)

• September 17 – Sabbatai Zevi, Montenegrin rabbi, kabbalist and founder of the Jewish Sabbatean movement (b. 1626)

• October 28 – Jean Desmarets, French writer (b. 1595)

• November 1 – Gisbertus Voetius, Dutch theologian (b. 1589)

• December 25 – Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of England (b. 1609)

• December 25 – William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, English soldier, politician, and writer (b. 1592)