July 27

The Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam issued a writ of cherem against the young philosopher Baruch Spinoza, its language never later rescinded.

Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, the British Museum keeper and prolific translator of ancient Egyptian funerary texts, was born in Bodmin, Cornwall.

Ajahn Sumedho, an American-born monk of the Thai Forest tradition and a founding figure of its monasteries in England, was born Robert Jackman in Seattle.

Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, an Iraqi poet celebrated as a master of the neoclassical Arabic qasida, died in Damascus.