Events

• January 30 - William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is performed for the first time
• June 9 - Battle of Fontaine-Française . Henry IV of France defeats the Spanish, but is nearly killed due to his rashness.
• October 28 - Battle of Guirgevo . Transylvanian forces under Sigismund Bathory, allied to the Habsburgs, defeat the Turkish army of Sinan Pasha, securing Transylvanian control over Wallachie.
• Mehmed III succeeds Murad III as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
• The Austrians incite a rebellion against the Ottomans in Bulgaria.
• The Spanish navigator and explorer, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira leads the voyage that discovers (for Europeans), the first known islands of Polynesia, the Marquesas.

Births

• June 9 - Wladislaus IV of Poland.
• December - Henry Lawes, English musician.
• December 4 - Jean Chapelain, French poet.
• Count Johann von Werth, German general of cavalry in the Thirty Years' War.
• Bohdan Chmielnicki, a Zaporizhzhya (Zaporozhian) Cossack hetman of Ukraine, noted for his revolt against Poland which began in 1648, and for instigating a massacre of the Jews.
• Andrej Cergol , Slovene mathematician.
• Jean Desmarets, French dramatist and miscellaneous writer.
• date unknown -Pocahontas

Deaths

• January 15 - Murat III, Ottoman Emperor
• January 24 - Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria, Regent of Tyrol and Further Austria
• February 12 - Archduke Ernest of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands
• April 25 - Torquato Tasso, Italian poet
• James Stewart, Earl of Arran .
• Luis Barahona de Soto, Spanish poet.