January–March •
January 6 –
Axel Oxenstierna becomes
Lord High Chancellor of Sweden. He persuades the
Riksdag of the Estates to grant the
Swedish nobility the right and privilege to hold all higher offices of government. •
January 10 –
Gustavus Adolphus replies to Metropolitan Isidor, Odoevskij and the estates of
Novgorod, stating that he himself wishes to assume responsibility for the government of Novgorod and also of all Russians. A number of land grants signed the same day show that the Swedish king has assumed the title of
Tsar. •
January 20 •
Rudolf II,
Holy Roman Emperor, dies and several candidates vie to succeed him, with
Archduke Matthias eventually being elected. •
An uprising led by Dmitry Pozharsky begins in Moscow against occupying
Polish troops. •
February 11 –
Battle of Vittsjö: King
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and 3,000 of his troops are forced to retreat from
Denmark. The 17-year old king almost drowns while attempting to ride his horse across a frozen lake, but is rescued by two other members of his cavalry. The horse is lost. •
March 2 – The
False Dmitry III, one of three pretenders to the Russian throne who all claim to be sons of
Ivan the Terrible, is recognized as Tsar of Russia by the
Cossacks. •
March 12 – At Daulambapur, near
Kamalganj in what is now the
Sylhet Division in
Bangladesh, a battle takes place between 4,500 troops led by General
Islam Khan I of India's
Mughal Empire, and 12,000 defenders led by the Afghan warlord
Khwaja Usman. The Mughals are almost defeated until Usman is struck in the eye by an arrow fired from a crossbow.
April–June •
April 10 – In England, 12 persons who become known as the
Pendle witches allegedly hold a
coven at the
Malkin Tower in
Lancashire on Good Friday, after which 10 people die mysteriously. All but two of the accused witches are tried for causing harm by witchcraft on August 18. •
April 11 – In
Lichfield,
Edward Wightman, a
radical Anabaptist, becomes the last person to be
burned at the stake in England as punishment for
heresy. •
May 25 – A
Sicilian–
Spanish galley fleet
defeats the
Tunisians at La Goulette after a battle. •
June 13 –
Archduke Matthias of Austria is formally elected as the new
Holy Roman Emperor. •
November 20 – The
Treaty of Nasuh Pasha is signed, between the
Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and the
Safavid Empire (Iran), with the Ottomans ceding back land they had captured from the Safavids after 1555, in return for Safavid payment of 200 loads of silk. •
November 30 –
Battle of Swally: Forces of the
British East India Company and
Portugal engage off the coast of India, resulting in an English victory. •
December 15 –
Simon Marius becomes the first person on Earth to observe the
Andromeda Galaxy through a telescope. •
December 28 –
Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet
Neptune when in
conjunction with
Jupiter. He mistakenly catalogues it as a
fixed star, because of its extremely slow motion along the
ecliptic. Neptune will not be truly recognized as a planet until
1846, about 234 years later, when
Johann Gottfried Galle first sights it in the
Berlin Observatory.
Date unknown • The
Nagoya Castle is completed in
Japan. • The
Okamoto Daihachi incident in Japan. •
Thomas Shelton's English translation of the first half of
Don Quixote is published. It is the first translation of the Spanish novel into any language. == Births ==