April 1 – Potosí is founded by the Spanish as a mining town after the discovery of huge silver deposits in this area of modern-day Bolivia. Silver mined from Huayna Potosí Mountain provides most of the wealth on which the Spanish Empire is based until its fall in the early 19th century.
Sher Shah Suri, King of the Sur Empire in northern India, is fatally injured by an explosion from one of his own cannons while leading the siege of the Kalinjar Fort and dies two days later.[2]
InVietnam, warlord Nguyễn Kim of the Lê dynasty leads troops toward an attack on Ninh Binh when he is invited by Dương Chấp Nhất of the Mạc dynasty to dinner. General Kim is treated to a watermelon by Duong and dies the next day.
May 27 – Prince Jalal Khan, the second son of the late Sher Shah Suri, is crowned as the new King of the Suri Empire and takes the regnal name of Islam Shah Suri.[3]
May 31 – During the Italian War, a French expeditionary force under the direction of Claude d'Annebault begins an invasion of Britain by landing in Scotland.[4]
June 20 – Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez arrives at a large island in the South Pacific Ocean. Stopping at the Mamberamo River, Ortiz claims the island for Spain and christens it "Nueva Guinea" after concluding that the natives resemble the people on the coast of the Guinea coast of West Africa.[5]
July 19 – The Royal Navy's flagship, the Mary Rose, is sunk along with 365 of its 400 crew[6] before the Battle of the Solent ends inconclusively. The wreckage will be located in 1971, more than 400 years after the sinking, and raised on October 11, 1582.[7]
August 5 – Scottish nobleman Domhnall Dubh, also called "Black Donald", secures an alliance with King Henry VIII of England and plans an invasion of Scotland (Dubh's Rebellion) seeking to install the Earl of Lennox as the regent for Mary, Queen of Scots, rather than the incumbent Regent Arran.[8] The rebellion attracts little support from other nobles and Dubh dies of a fever while in Ireland, before an invasion can take place.
August 8 – King Injong of Joseon, ruler of the Korean Empire, dies at the age of 30, after only eight months as monarch. His allies suspect that he had slowly been poisoned by his stepmother, Queen Janggyeong, who had been Queen consort as the wife of King Jungjong. Queen Janggyeong's 12-year-old son Myeongjong is enthroned as the new King, with Janggyeong as the regent.[9]
In a one-day campaign in the Rough Wooing border war between England and Scotland, the English generals Lord Hertford and Robert Bowes carry out a mission of burning Scottish towns along the River Teviot. He writes later that with 1,500 light horsemen from 5:00 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon, his army "burnt 14 or 15 towns" including "Rowle, Spittel, Bedrowle, Rowlewood, The Wolles, Crossebewghe, Donnerles, Fotton, West Leas, Troonyhill, and Dupligi.[11]
October 20 – The "New Laws"(Leyes Nuevas), officially the New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians are repealed less than a year after being issued by King Carlos of Spain.[12]
November 15 – (10 Ramadan 952 AH) Hamida Banu Begum, Empress consort of India's Mughal Empire and wife of the Emperor Humayun, returns to the capital, Agra, after a three-year absence.[14] She is accompanied by an army provided to Humayun by Tahmasp I, Shah of Iran.
InChina, a large failure of the harvest in Henan province occurs due to excessive rainfall, which drives up the price of wheat, and forces many to flee their rural counties; those who stay behind are forced to survive by eating leaves, bark, and human flesh.
The Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano published a book on algebra, Ars Magna, that contained the first published algebraic solutions to cubic and quartic equations.
^Robert KnechtRenaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp.501—502. ISBN0-521-57885-X.
^Quanchi, Max (2005). Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Pacific Islands. The Scarecrow Press. p. 215. ISBN0810853957.
^Gardiner, Julie, ed. (2005). Before the Mast: Life and Death aboard the Mary Rose. The Archaeology of the Mary Rose. Vol. 4. Portsmouth: The Mary Rose Trust. ISBN0-9544029-4-4.
^Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN0-14-102715-0.
^David Laing, 'Account of the Earl of Hertford's Second Expedition to Scotland', PSAS, p. 277: Samuel Haynes, Collection of State Papers (London, 1740), p. 53.
^Giménez Fernández, Manuel (1971). "Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas: A Biographical Sketch". In Friede, Juan; Keen, Benjamin (eds.). Bartolomé de las Casas in History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and his Work. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. p. 103.
