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Manila. Francisco Sande, governor of the Philippines, requests 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers to invade China, plus the support of a Japanese armada. In 1579, the proposal increases to 10,000-12,000 Spanish soldiers, 5,000-6,000 Filipinos, and as many Japanese as possible. King Philip will deny this support,

The Cossack corps was born: militarized settlers sent to the frontier regions to defend the lands they gradually conquered. They would stop the invasions of the Ottoman Turks and the Tatars, and then push eastward to the Pacific Ocean and Alaska.

Tycho Brahe: planetary motion: heliocentric with the Sun around the Earth

Jubilee celebrated by Gregory XIII

The Portuguese, after abolishing their total commercial monopoly on the spice trade with the Indies in 1575, in order to have more money to advance before their missions, actually outsourced the entire business. This opened the door to the Dutch, who already managed a large

Earthquake magnitude 5.1 on the Richter scale in Finale Emilia (Modena)

Sunday evening. Lepanto. The battle turned into a massacre and the looting of Turkish galleys. Venier reports that, of 200 Turkish galleys, 180 were captured and only 5 managed to escape, 15,000 Christians were freed, including many women, and 20,000 Turks were killed. Only after

The League’s fleet is anchored at Petala, a natural harbor at the mouth of the Gulf of Lepanto. There are heated discussions about what to do. The Venetian Venier is furious: “Christianity will lose the greatest opportunity in the world” if we don’t give battle.

The League’s fleet sets sail from Messina to head for Lepanto, to meet the Turkish fleet.

The Turkish fleet sets sail from Preveza to Lepanto, the last stop before closing the season and returning to Constantinople.

Scutari, Montenegro. Rector Alessandro Dona’ surrenders to the Ottomans.

Ulcinj, Albania. Count Sciarra Martinengo and his 200 Huguenots bravely defend the city against the Ottoman besiegers but then have to negotiate its surrender.

Zakynthos. The Ottomans arrive, sack and burn the city. Then they attack Kefalonia. In all, several thousand civilians are enslaved.

Farmagosta, Cyprus. Turkish cannon fire continues. In one night, the Venetians count eight thousand.

Farmagosta, Cyprus. Second Turkish mine dug into the rock beneath the ravelin.

The Turkish fleet set sail from Kastellorizo toward Crete, stopping on the 300-kilometer route to plunder Souda Bay. But reinforcements had already arrived: 2,000 soldiers recruited in Corsica by Count Pietro Avogadro (a notorious bandit) and the Genoese Colonel Francesco Giustiniani. The Corsicans are tough,

Constantinople. The 80 Ottoman galleys set sail.

Farmagosta, Cyprus. The Turks begin digging tunnels and mines under the enemy walls.

Ottoman general Lala Mustafa, under the command of Sultan Selim the Drunkard, conquers Christian Cyprus.

7 p.m.: Series of earthquakes in the so-called Ferrara folds, around Mercalli magnitude VIII.

The Venetians and the Pope decide to end the year’s sea season. Zane and Colonna begin their return journey. The former will resign and be replaced by Sebastiano Venier. The latter will be caught in a storm and will only be able to bring back

Cyprus. A second wave of Ottoman galleys arrives on the island to support the besiegers.

Otranto. The Catholic King’s 49 galleys and the Pope’s 12 set sail.

Off the coast of Malta, a group of four galleys that were supposed to join the Anti-Ottoman League were captured by an entire corsair fleet, in the pay of the Ottomans, with 19 galleys. This fleet was Uluc Ali, known to the Italians as Uccialli

Cyprus. The Ottoman commander Piali is surprised to find the beaches of Cyprus unguarded by the Venetians. He easily disembarks his soldiers and all their equipment. They number 40,000 men, of whom, however, only 6,000 are janissaries and 4,000 sipahis. This is only the first

Pope Pius V opens negotiations for the Anti-Ottoman League. They will last the entire month. The participants are: the Spanish under the Catholic King and his Genoese allies, and the Venetians.

The Pope decides to clear up the misunderstanding: he explicitly asks the Spanish ambassadors if their Genoese ally Gian Andrea Doria is truly going to join the Venetians in Corfu. This was not Doria’s intention, as he had always been a bitter enemy of the

The Venetian fleet stops in Corfu. Here Zane meets the man who will replace him after six months: the elderly provveditore of Corfu, Sebastiano Venier. Together they decide to attack the Ottoman fortress of Sopotò, in the Albanian mountains. The Ottomans flee without a fight,

Constantinople. The 82 galleys under the command of Piali’ set out to sea. Barbaro, Venetian ambassador, sees them marching in disarray and is pleased. He is even more pleased when he sees them return the next day “due to a bit of a storm […]

Zadar. The Venetian fleet, en route to the Ottoman fleet, is augmented by many more infantry than planned: a full 12,000 show up, meaning several thousand must be left ashore. The fleet departs with a full 10,740 men.

Venice. Eighty-two galleys and eleven galleasses leave the port, carrying at least 2,000 sailors, or more than 1% of the city’s population. Additionally, a thousand specialized craftsmen are aboard 94 warships. The fleet heads to Zadar to take on 600 swordsmen. Captain General of the

During the Cyprus War, the French effectively replaced the Venetians in the Levant. Or rather, they replaced their flags and passports, as many Venetians and Genoese were recruited by the Genoese on the spot for their experience.

Modena. Construction begins on the area north of the Ducal Castle (now the Military Academy), between present-day Via Ganaceto and Via dei Caduti in Guerra.

Rome has 50,000 inhabitants compared to 1 million in the imperial age.

The Inquisition arrests Gerolamo Cardano for casting Jesus’s horoscope…

Venice. Explosion at the arsenal where more than one hundred dismantled galleys are stored dry. It employs up to 2,500 craftsmen daily.

Constantinople. A great fire devastates the city. Half of the capital’s wealth is said to have gone up in smoke.

The Dutch, overwhelmingly Protestant, revolt against their Catholic Spanish overlord.

Beginning of the Este regency period in Modena

Scotland. Henry Stewart, Earl of Darnley and husband of Mary Queen of Scots, is assassinated. He was surly and brutal, and at one point murdered David Riccio, Mary’s secretary, in front of her. Henry Stewart’s house was set on fire on February 9, 1567, and

With the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule and the founding of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Amsterdam also became a refuge for Jews.

Dutch revolt against Spanish rule and the founding of the United Dutch Provinces.

Galileo Galilei, the father of modern science, was born in Pisa.

Venice. Mirror makers multiplied so much that they formed a separate guild from the glassmakers.

The only deposit of pure, solid graphite is discovered in Cumbria, Northern England. The English are thus the first to manufacture pencils.

William Shakespeare

The Council of Trent closes. The discipline of the Catholic Church is reformed. The Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone is condemned, as is the Calvinist doctrine of divine predestination to hell before the commission of any sin. It reaffirms that Adam’s sin did

Cardano’s fortunes are coming to an end. At 16, his daughter Chiara seduces his eldest son, Giovanni, and becomes pregnant. She miscarries and remains sterile. She remains promiscuous even after marriage and contracts syphilis. Giovanni becomes a doctor but becomes known as a poisoner. His

The Portuguese reached Macau and established a trading base there, from which they could conduct business with China and Japan.

Passage of a great comet. It is one of the most tragic ever, according to popular superstition: there are two earthquakes, one in Shaanxi province causing 830,000 deaths, another in Costinople devastating the historic center. The comet is clearly visible throughout the world. Charles V

India. The Mughal victory secures Akbar’s rise. Fifty miles north of Delhi, a Mughal army defeats the forces of Hemu, an ethnic Hindu general attempting to usurp the Mughal throne from the recently proclaimed fourteen-year-old Akbar. The victory at Panipat secures Akbar’s accession to the

Szigetvar, Croatia. The city, on the road to Vienna, is besieged by the Ottomans. Governor Miklos Zrinyi refuses to surrender. After dozens of fierce assaults, the Turks capture two of the three islands, costing 3,000 Ottomans and 300 Croats and Hungarians. The surviving defenders gather

Seathwaite, England. The first graphite mine opens.

The French were the first to settle in Guanabara Bay, or the Bay of Rio de Janeiro; the French governor, the puritan Nicolas de Villeganon, decided to settle on a small island which he named Antarctic France; they exploited the timber of the surrounding forests

A group of Jesuit missionaries led by Manoel da Nobrega and Jose de Anchieta founded the city of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, was burned at the stake in Calvin’s Geneva for denying the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus.

Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor set sail from Deptford to search for a Northeast Passage to India. Willoughby froze to death during the voyage, but Chancellor reached Archangel and then continued overland to Moscow, to the court of Ivan the Terrible. There he founded the

Portugal. The first tobacco (called Patum by Native Americans) arrives in Europe, likely in the pockets of sailors, soldiers, and clergy returning from the Americas. Within a few decades, Virginia in America becomes the world’s largest producer and the finest tobacco. In Europe, the Netherlands

Modena. Construction of the second city walls. Duke Ercole II arrives from Ferrara with engineer Casanova to design the new city walls to replace the old ones, which were now in disrepair.

There are less than a dozen scientists who embrace the Copernican theory

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado explores part of the semi-desert Jornada del Muerto region in New Mexico. Five centuries later, the region would be the site of the first nuclear explosion in history.

The Ottomans try again. They move toward Vienna. This time, having reached the town of Szigetvar, they are significantly slowed down, making it impossible for them to advance on Vienna.

The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his army permanently occupied Buda, where they remained until 1686 when it returned to Christian hands.

Hernando de Soto (Spain) discovers and navigates the Mississippi River. He can still see the remains of the large villages of the rich agricultural kingdoms that had emerged along the river over the centuries. But two years before his arrival, the local population had been

The Turks are masters of the Eastern Mediterranean. Under the leadership of Barbary sailors like Khair ad-Din, the Ottoman navy finally operates as an independent force, no longer an extension of the land army.

Smallpox epidemic among the populations of the Mississippi plain, brought by Indian traders, a few years before the arrival of the Spanish, who were however already present in the Caribbean.

Calvin began his preaching in Geneva by adopting positions of extreme doctrinal and political radicalism.

Holland. Great Fire of Delft.

Jacques Cartier (France) explores the Gulf of St. Lawrence up to the present city of Montreal

Some texts mention beans given as a wedding gift by Alessandro de’ Medici to his sister Caterina, who had married Henry II of France in 1533. This evidence of the precious and sought-after beans were. Native to Mexico and Guatemala, the bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) was

Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn, Pope Clement VII excommunicates Henry VIII. The English Church’s separation from Rome continues.

Suleiman, Ottoman sultan, sails up the Danube and conquers Belgrade after only three weeks of siege

Aztec surrender

A Spanish sortie into Tenochtlan ends in tragedy: 68 are captured and sacrificed, Cortes himself is saved under fortuitous circumstances.

Upon Magellan’s death, he was succeeded by his second-in-command: Juan Sebastian Elcano, a Basque, who refused to free Henry the Black from slavery, as per Magellan’s will. Henry the Black (aka Enrique of Malacca) then escaped and was never heard from again. He may have

The Pope excommunicates Luther and invites Charles V to banish him

The governor of Cuba Velazquez, informed of Cortes’ disloyalty towards Montezuma, sends 800 soldiers to stop him, Cortes, having learned of this, marches towards the coast with 266 men and defeats the governor’s envoys.

Peretola, Italy. Zoroastro da Peretola, a student of Leonardo da Vinci, dies. He is said to have been the first to experiment with Leonardo’s “flying machine,” and to have broken his ribs on Mount Ceceri while doing so.

Magellan’s five ships landed in Gualabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro and remained there for several weeks, thanks to the friendly welcome of the natives (both men and women); this was part of their journey to find a western passage to the South Seas.

Smallpox epidemic among the Aztecs in Mexico