Events

• January 16 - The Duke of Norfolk is tried for treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England.
• April 1 - The Sea Beggars, Netherlandish Calvinist rebels, capture the port city of Brielle. This leads to a wave of uprisings in Holland and Zealand, leaving most of those provinces (with the exception of Amsterdam), under rebel control.
• June 25 - The Sea Beggars capture the city Gorkum. Several Roman Catholic priests are put into a prison.
• July 9 - The Sea Beggars hang 19 previously imprisoned Roman Catholic priests at Brielle.
• August 18 - Wedding in Paris of the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre with Marguerite de France, sister of King Charles, in a supposed attempt to reconcile Protestants and Catholics.
• August 24 - St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris. Catholics in Paris murder thousands of Protestants, including Gaspard de Coligny, at the order of King Charles IX. Henry of Navarre and the Prince of Condé barely escape the same fate. This brings about the Fourth War of Religion in France.
• December - The Duke of Alva, Spanish commander in the Netherlands, lays siege to Haarlem.
• Ending of the Muromachi period in Japan
• Tycho Brahe observes supernova in Cassiopeia
• Vilcabamba, last independent remnant of the Inca Empire, conquered by Spanish

Births

• June 11 - Ben Jonson, English dramatist (d. 1637)
• Emperor Go-Yozei of Japan
• Johann Bayer, German astronomer
• John Donne, English poet
• Thomas Tomkins, English composer

Deaths

• May 1 - Pope Pius V
• June 9 - Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre (b. 1528)
• August 24 - Gaspard de Coligny, French Huguenot leader (b. 1519)
• August 24 - Pierre de la Ramée French humanist scholar (b. 1515)
• August 27 - Claude Goudimel, French composer
• November 24 - John Knox, great Scottish Reformer
• September 24 - Tupac Amaru, last of the Incas