Perhaps the early 17th century wasn't THE worst half-century ever, but it's hard to argue against it being in the top five. It was a time of constant warfare married to senseless religious strife married to unheard of disease and starvation in a way that gives the generally awful fourteenth century a run for its money. It started with the burning to death of Giordano Bruno on February 17, 1600, and closed with incessant plague and the devastation wrought by the Thirty Years' War, and somewhere in between time was found to threaten Galileo with torture and kill a British king.

- Count Dolby von Luckner