January–March •
January 7 – Sir
Walter Raleigh appoints
John White to be the Governor of the
Roanoke Colony, to be established later in the year by English colonists on
Roanoke Island off the coast of the modern-day U.S. state of
North Carolina. White and 121 other colonists depart from Portsmouth on three ships on May 8 and arrive at Croatoan Island on July 22. •
January 14 – In Japan,
Chancellor of the Realm Toyotomi Hideyoshi ends
Portugal's control of the port of
Nagasaki after six years. Omura Sumitada had leased the fishing village to Portuguese Jesuits on August 15, 1580. •
February 5 (1st waxing of Tabaung 948 ME) – King Nanda of Burma appoints his eldest son and heir apparent,
Minye Kyawswa II, as Viceroy of Ava, later part of upper Burma, with a capital at
Inwa (located in the modern-day Mandalay Region of Myanmar). •
February 8 –
Mary, Queen of Scots, the monarch of Scotland from 1542 to 1567, is beheaded in front of 300 witnesses at
Fotheringhay Castle, seven days after the signing of a
death warrant by her cousin,
Queen Elizabeth of England. Mary has been convicted of treason for her role in the
Babington Plot, a conspiracy to overthrow the English government and to assassinate Elizabeth. •
February 12 – A period of exceptionally severe cold begins in western Europe and lasts until February 24. •
February 27 –
Sir Anthony Cope, a member of the English Parliament, is imprisoned in the
Tower of London after presenting a Puritan revision of the Anglican
Book of Common Prayer to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir
John Puckering. He is released on March 23. •
March 6 – In west Africa,
Álvaro II Nimi a Nkanga becomes the new ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo, with a capital at
São Salvador in what becomes the city of M'banza-Kongo in the northern part of the Republic of Angola, and including parts of the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Alvaro II claims the throne upon the dath of his father,
Álvaro I Nimi a Lukeni lua Mvemba. •
March 15 – English sailor Sir
Francis Drake accepts a privateering commission from
Queen Elizabeth to disrupt shipping routes in order to slow supplies from Italy and Andalucia to Lisbon, to trouble enemy fleets in their home ports, to capture Spanish treasure ships and to attack the Spanish Armada if it were to sail for England. On 12 April, his fleet sails from Plymouth.
April–June •
April 20 (14th waxing of Kason 949 ME) –
Burmese–Siamese War (1584–1593): Burma's siege of
Ayutthaya (now in
Thailand), capital of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, fails after six months as the troops of Burma's King
Nanda Bayin begin their withdrawal. •
April 29 – ''
Singeing the King of Spain's Beard'': On his expedition against Spain, English sailor Sir
Francis Drake leads a raid in the
Bay of Cádiz, sinking or capturing at least 30 ships of the Spanish fleet, delaying by a year the sailing of the
Spanish Armada for England. •
May 8 – The second expedition to establish an English colony at
Roanoke Island in North America departs from England with two ships, supplies, and 121 people under the command of John White. •
May 19 –
John Davis sets out from
Dartmouth, Devon, for a third attempt to find the
Northwest Passage. •
June 8 – Sir Francis Drake captures Portuguese carrack the
São Filipe, laden with treasure from the Indies, off the Azores. Its cargo is valued at £108,000 (), of which 50% goes to Queen Elizabeth and 10% to Drake; it also includes valuable documents relating to the Indies trade. •
June 11 (Tensho 15, 6th day of 5th month) – Most of
Kyushu is surrendered to
Toyotomi Hideyoshi by Yoshihisa Shimazu, 32 days after Hideyoshi's
siege of Kagoshima began (on the 3rd day of the 4th month). Hideyoshi follows on July 24 (19th day of the 6th month of Tensho 15) with an order banishing all European Christian missionaries from the province. •
June 20 –
Gabriel VIII becomes the new Pontiff of the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt, being enthroned as Pope Gabriel VIII and filling a vacancy that had existed for nine months since the death of Pope John XIV of Alexandria. Gabriel will reign until his death on May 14, 1603.
July–September •
July 22 –
Roanoke Colony: A group of English settlers arrive on
Roanoke Island off
North Carolina, to re-establish the deserted colony. •
August 18 – According to legend,
Saul Wahl is named king of Poland; he is deposed the following day. •
August 19 –
Polish and
Lithuanian nobles elect
Sigismund III Vasa, King of Sweden, as the ruler of the after the death in December of the previous King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania,
Stephen Báthory. •
August 22 – A small group of nobles who oppose Sigismund Vasa as King vote to proclaim
Maximilian III, Archduke of Austria, as ruler of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a decision supported by the
Primate of Poland,
Stanisław Karnkowski. The divide begins the
War of the Polish Succession. •
August 27 – Governor John White leaves the
Roanoke Colony to get more supplies from
England. •
September 9 – In the
Burgundian Netherlands (part of modern-day
Belgium), the faculty at the
University of Leuven publishes a condemnation of the 34 propositions drawn up by the
Jesuit scholar
Michel Baius, leading to a campaign by traditional Belgian Catholics against the Jesuits. •
September 22 – The coronation of
Vincenzo Gonzaga as
Duke of Mantua in Italy takes place. •
September 28 – At
Gremi in the modern-day
Republic of Georgia,
King Alexander II of
Kakheti signs an oath of allegiance to
Feodor I, the
Tsar of all Russia.
October–December •
October 1 –
Shāh ‘Abbās I "The Great" succeeds as
Shahanshah of
Iran. •
October 7 – Sigismund Vasa and a fleet of Swedish ships land in Poland to confront an invasion by Maximilian III and an Austrian Army. •
October 14 –
War of the Polish Succession (1587–1588): Archduke Maximilian of Austria begins the
siege of Kraków, while
Jan Zamoyski,
hetman of the Polish Army, begins the defense of the city. •
October 18 –
Landing of the first Filipinos: The first
Filipinos in North America land in Morro Bay, near San Luis Obispo in modern-day California. •
October 20 –
Battle of Coutras:
Huguenot forces under
Henry of Navarre defeat Royalist forces under
Anne de Joyeuse, favorite of King
Henry III of France; Joyeuse is killed. •
October 31 –
Leiden University Library opens its doors, after its founding in
1575. •
November 4 – During the circumnavigation of the world by
Thomas Cavendish, the English ships capture the Spanish galleon
Santa Ana and its treasure of 100
troy pounds of gold (worth 122,000 Spanish pesos) and a total treasure worth 2.1 million pesos. •
November 14 –
Davide Vacca is elected to a two-year term as the new
Doge of the
Republic of Genoa in Italy in a vote by the Grand Council of the Republic. •
November 22 – A final Austrian attack on Kraków by Archduke Maximilian III is repelled by the Polish defenders. •
November 29 – Maximilian III withdraws his forces and the siege of Kraków ends. •
December 27 –
Sigismund III Vasa is formally crowned as King Zygmunt Waza of Poland and Duke of Lithuania in a coronation ceremony at
Kraków.
Date unknown • A severe famine breaks out in
Ming dynasty China. •
The Rose (theatre), the first on
Bankside in London, is built by
Philip Henslowe and functioning by the year's end. •
Pope Sixtus V establishes the
canon law office of 'Promoter of the Faith' (
promotor fidei), popularly known as the "
Devil's advocate" (
advocatus diaboli). • The
chapbook Historia von D. Johann Fausten, printed by
Johann Spies in
Frankfurt, is the first published version of the
Faust story. •
Everard Digby's
De Arte Natandi, the first treatise on
swimming in England, is published. •
St. Dominic's Church, Macau is established. •
Hailuoto, an island in the
Bothnian Bay, is separated from the grand parish of Saloinen into an independent parish. == Births ==