Holland. Second great Dutch expedition to the Indies: eight ships commanded by Jacob van Neck. It brought home 10 tons of pepper, as well as nutmeg, mace, and cloves. Its arrival in the port of Amsterdam is immortalized in Hendrick Vroom’s painting “The Return of the Second Expedition from the Indies.” The expedition reached the true source of spices: the islands of Ternate and Tidore in the Moluccas for cloves, and the remote Banda Islands, where the nutmeg tree grows. Finally, it established a very useful supply station on the island, which would later be named Mauritius, in honor of the leader of the United Provinces of the Netherlands: Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Profits exceeded 400%. In just a few years, over 60 Dutch ships traveled to and from the Indies, in a race where everyone was against everyone else, until the East India Company was founded in 1602.

Giordano Bruno is handed over from Venice to the Roman Inquisition. A trial begins in Rome that will last seven years.

Giordano Bruno is imprisoned for his ideas in the prisons of the Inquisition of Venice, after having unwisely accepted the Doge’s invitation to visit the city.

Galileo Galilei became a professor of mathematics at the University of Padua and held the chair for 18 years.

Japan, led by shogun Hideyoshi, invades Korea, bringing with it tens of thousands of arquebuses crafted by Japanese blacksmiths. This art had been learned from Europeans only a few decades earlier. The invasion was short-lived, thanks to Chinese intervention on the Koreans’ behalf.

Galileo Galilei becomes professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa

The English Armada, or Counter Armada, led by Francis Drake, attempts, building on the previous year’s success, a counterattack against Spain. The mission fails with heavy losses on the English side. The mission aimed to destroy the Spanish fleet, land in Lisbon and spark a revolt against Philip II, King of Spain, seize the Spanish treasury, and finally conquer the Azores to establish a permanent base.

The first written documentation (by Carolus Clusius) of the existence of the potato on the European continent, comes from Peru.

The Spanish Armada is destroyed in a naval battle with Elizabeth Tudor’s English fleet; the attack with fireships disrupts the Spanish ranks, with a third of the fleet and half the men never returning to Spain. English domination of the seas begins.

The Wabanaki American Indians were among the first to make contact with English, Dutch, and French settlers in what is now New England in the United States and New Brunswick in Canada. Contacts were initially friendly, and some Wabanaki learned English and traveled to Europe before returning to America. It was the Wabanaki who helped the first desperate colony of Dutch religious refugees, who had been exterminated by the harsh winter (over 50 deaths out of a total of 100 settlers), survive by teaching them to plant corn and fertilize the sandy, hostile soil with fish entrails. They survived, and their genes are now found in 10% of the US population.

Virginia Dare was the first American citizen born on North American soil (the future United States of America). She was born in Roanoke, Virginia. An initial expedition to establish a permanent colony, which failed, was led by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1583. It is noteworthy that Raleigh was heavily influenced by a book by Montaigne that stated, “Barbarians appear no stranger to us than we appear to them.” Then, in 1587, John White’s mission followed, also to Roanoke. When, the following year, 1588, the English were supposed to send ships to John White’s aid at Roanoke, they were actually engaged in a far more serious threat posed by the Invincible Armada. England won the battle, but this cost the dream of Roanoke shattered and the true beginning of the American adventure postponed by over thirty years, until the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620. The colony founded by John White was called the Lost Colony, due to the unexplained disappearance of the settlement and its population (about 120 people).

Approximate date of writing of the Voynich Codex, an original 234-page manuscript found in the heart of Europe in 1912, written in a never-deciphered code, concerning botany, female anatomy and astrology; recent studies consider it a laborious medieval hoax

Saturday. Queen Mary Queen of Scots enters the crowded court chamber at Fotheringhay Castle. The throne of Queen Elizabeth, her archenemy, is empty. Mary Queen of Scots is being tried for treason. She is accused of plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth so she could seize the English throne herself. Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s principal secretary, has already arrested the other conspirators and extracted confessions. Elizabeth, despite hating Mary, must be convinced of her guilt, as she is her cousin, a queen (of Scotland), and ultimately condemning a queen to death could set a dangerous precedent… The conspirators are a group of young Catholic nobles authorized by Mary. But all her correspondence with the conspirators is carefully protected by ciphers. Unfortunately for Mary, Walsingham was not only Elizabeth’s secretary, but also an expert in espionage and ciphers, and he contacted the person he knew could decipher it: Thomas Phelippes. Mary had been crowned queen at the age of nine months, after her father, only thirty, died suddenly when she was only a week old. Mary later became Queen of France when she married Francis, King of France, who died only a year after their marriage. She then returned to Scotland to marry her cousin Henry Stewart, Earl of Darnley. Henry was surly and brutal and at one point murdered David Riccio, Mary’s secretary, in front of her. One day, Henry Stewart’s house was set on fire, and when he tried to escape, he was strangled and killed. Mary later married James Hepburn, Fourth Earl of Bothwell, but with no better luck: Scottish Protestant nobles managed to imprison Mary, who was forced to abdicate in favor of her son, James VI, who was only 16 months old. Mary was then forced to flee to England, where she was imprisoned by Elizabeth (who was not recognized as Queen of England by Catholics, as Elizabeth was the daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII following her divorce from her previous marriage). In 1586, after 18 years in prison, she authorized the plot to kill Elizabeth and exchanged information using encrypted codes. However, Mary’s agent, Gifford, was actually a double agent and was also in the pay of Walsingham, who obtained copies of each letter, which were then resealed after being copied. The letters were then deciphered by Phelippes using the frequency of each letter and suggested attempts. Mary’s trial began on October 15th. She

John Davis discovers Baffin Bay while searching for the Northwest Passage

Paraguay, the Jesuits founded the Reducciones de Indios (indigenous communities).

Simone Stevino, of Brugge, establishes the rules for solving equations of degree higher than the third)

Introduction to fractions

Giordano Bruno hypothesizes that the Sun is a star, like the others seen in the sky.

Period of time erased by Pope Gregory XIII to realign the Catholic calendar with the celestial one

Philip II of Spain annexes Portugal and its colonies. Spain’s naval and military power is at its peak. A truly global empire: from Ireland to Sumatra and much of the Americas. The only empire capable of countering this power is the Ottoman Empire. This Spanish golden age, however, lasts only eight years, until the English victory in 1588 and the destruction of the Invincible Armada.

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, deeming it ridiculous to attempt to conquer China militarily. China will have to be conquered commercially, and the base from which to do so is Manila. A Chinese ghetto will be created in Manila for the Chinese sailors and traders who commute to and from China. This ghetto will grow enormously, housing over 20,000 people, with wooden huts (building in stone was forbidden). In 1603, a revolt is bloodily suppressed, and in 1628 it burns almost completely, but is promptly rebuilt.

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 portion of the transport on behalf of the Portuguese. Furthermore, in Holland, the merchant class and the bourgeoisie in general held enormous importance in society and in the government of the country. It was a series of city-states, like medieval Italy, without a dominant noble class. The Dutch, often in a disadvantageous position militarily, learned to fight a war of course. They were called, and embraced the term, “beggars of the sea.”(watergeuzen).

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 several days did the enormity of the losses suffered, in human terms, even on the Christian side, begin to be realized. Venice counted 4,856 dead, a testament to the enormous effort with which the Venetians, despite their less overwhelming numerical superiority, achieved their victory. The Spanish (2,000) and the Pope (800) suffered smaller losses, while Genoa lost only 75 rowers.

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. Colonna agrees that it was necessary to at least “go and present battle.” On Saturday, October 6th, the wind drops, and it is decided to set sail at nightfall in battle formation. Heading east.

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.