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, unyielding men. They quickly manage to drive the Turks back into the sea, who decide to abandon their attack and continue on to Crete. Furthermore, when it comes to counting the crews, several thousand are missing from the Ottoman ships, having remained on the island.

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 to Italy three of the twelve galleys he had set out with.

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 or Occhiali. Three galleys were captured, and one survived. Uluc Ali had the statue of St. John the Baptist, captured on one of the three galleys, hung by its feet in the port of Algiers. The pilot and the captain of the ship, the capitana, who survived in the port of Agrigento, were tried and hanged for having taken a wrong course.

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 of a series of mistakes by the Venetian regency of the island.

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 Venetians. The Pope is also preparing his own fleet to join the anti-Ottoman league.

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, and Venier raises the standard of St. Mark over the empty fort.

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 […] and they are now near the Arsenal in bad condition.”

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 Sea Girolamo Zane is in command.

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 when he tried to escape, he was strangled and killed. Mary then 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 then had 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 ciphers. But the agent working for Mary, Gifford, is actually a double agent, and is also in the pay of Walsingham, who obtains copies of each letter, which are then resealed after being copied. The letters are then deciphered by Phelippes using the frequency of each letter and suggested attempts. Mary’s trial begins on October 15th. She maintains a composed and dignified demeanor throughout the trial and denies everything. But she is sentenced to death, a warrant signed by Elizabeth, and is beheaded on February 8, 1587, in front of a crowd of three hundred people in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle.

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 not extinguish free will. It reaffirms transubstantiation and the seven traditional sacraments. Luther is now deceased, and Calvin will die shortly thereafter.

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 other son, Aldo, works as a torturer. When Giovanni’s wife collapses after eating a cake her husband made, the authorities arrest him. His father, Cardano, will spend all his wealth, and his fame, to save his son, who will be executed anyway. In 1563, Cardano himself is convicted of sodomy and incest and expelled from Milan. Cardano is now out of his mind and suffers alternating periods of mental confusion. The final blow comes from Niccolo’ Tartaglia who, furious because Cardano had revealed his secret method for solving certain equations, convinces Aldo to testify against his father in exchange for an official appointment as torturer for the Inquisition of the city of Bologna.

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 is so shocked that he abdicates the throne of emperorship and retires to a monastery.

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 throne, but the empire he inherited from his father is greatly diminished after decades of defeats against the Hindus and Afghans. Under the guidance of capable regents, and then under Akbar himself, the Mughal Empire reached unprecedented splendor, extending its power over much of the Indian subcontinent. Akbar the Great, known as a skilled administrator and a valiant general, married two Hindu princesses to ensure the unity of his empire. Although he never renounced Islam, he took an active interest in other religions, and his court served as an important center of knowledge and culture. Akbar died in 1605. The Battle of Panipat ensured the continuity and expansion of power and territory of the Mughal Dynasty, the most important Muslim Indian imperial dynasty, which ruled over almost all of South Asia during the Islamic domination of India. The term Mughal (or Moghul) derives from Arabic and Persian, as a corruption of the word “Mongol,” to emphasize the Mongol and Turkic origins of the Timurid dynasty. It was the world’s strongest economy, and globally, had the highest industrial output in the 17th century, accounting for nearly a quarter of global GDP. The Empire also represented the pinnacle of Indian architecture, with famous monuments such as the Taj Mahal, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. The main emperors of the dynasty, direct descendants of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, were Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, and Bahadur Shah I.

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 in the citadel on the third island. Zrinyi removes his armor and, with a squad of 300 men, emerges from the citadel gate and massacres the Janissaries trapped on the elevated stone road. He is then struck by an arrow in the eye and two bullets in the body. With his head on a pike, the Janissaries, overwhelmingly outnumbered, enter the citadel and crowd into the small square within the walls. To this end, a young woman hiding in the Santa Barbara church lights the explosives. The terrible explosion, amplified by the castle’s sturdy walls, brought with it three thousand Ottoman janissaries. Another Ottoman attempt to take Vienna had literally gone up in smoke.

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 but were ill-equipped and demoralized.

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 Moscow Company (full name: The Mystery and Company of Merchants Adventures for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown).

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 becomes a major producer in the early 17th century, but with inferior quality.