Events

• February 21 - Battle of Wayna Daga - A combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeat the armies of Adal led by Ahmed Gragn.
• May - Nicolaus Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
• July 12 - King Henry VIII of England marries Catherine Parr. It is the sixth of Henry's marriages and the third of Catherine's. Princess Elizabeth attends the wedding
• Nice is captured and sacked by a Franco-Turkish fleet under Khair ed-Din Barbarossa.
• September-October - Landrecies in Picardy is besieged by forces under Emperor Charles V, but withdraw on the approach of the French army.
• Japanese receive first firearms from shipwrecked Portuguese
• Indians in Spanish colonies are announced free against the wish of local settlers

Science

• Andreas Vesalius publishes De Humanis Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), revolutionising the science of human anatomy
• Nicolaus Copernicus - De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium

Births

• January 18 (baptized) Alfonso Ferrabosco, Italian composer
• William Byrd, English composer
• Domenico Fontana, Italian architect (d. 1607)
• Sonam Gyrso , 3rd Dalai Lama
• Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japanese shogun and founder of Tokugawa shogunate
• Giovanni Maria Nanino (Nanini), Italian composer
• Federigo Zuccaro, Italian painter

Deaths

• February 21 - Ahmed Gragn, sultan of Adal.
• May 24 - Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer
• July 19 - Mary Boleyn, former mistress to both Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England.
• Francesco da Milano, Italian composer