Events

• April 13 - Tsar Boris Godunow dies - Feodor II accedes to the throne
• May 16 - Paul V becomes Pope
• June 1 - Russian troops in Moscow imprison Feodor II and his mother. They are later executed
• June 20 - Pretender Dmitri and his supporters march to Moscow
• July 30 - Pretender Dmitri is crowned tsar Dmitri II
• September 27 - Swedish armies defeated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Battle of Kircholm
• November 5 - Gunpowder Plot: A plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is foiled when Sir Thomas Knyvet , a justice of the peace, finds Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building and orders a search of the area. About 20 barrels of gunpowder were found and Fawkes was arrested for trying to kill Parliament and King James I of England who were scheduled to sit together in Parliament the next day
• Polish troops occupy Moscow
• Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote is published.
• Pope Leo XI is elected, but dies before the year is out.
• Tokugawa Ieyasu abdicates as shogun of Japan, becoming Ogosho . His son Tokugawa Hidetada succeeds him to the office.
• English colony founded on Barbados
• French huguenot refugees settle in Dublin and Waterford
• De Nieuwe Tijdinghen , Dutch proto-newspaper

Births

• April 8 - King Philip IV of Spain
• April 18 - Giacomo Carissimi Baroque era composer
• Simon Dezhnev - A Russian Cossack navigator.
• Sir Thomas Browne English physician and philosopher October 19

Deaths

• March 5 - Pope Clement VIII
• April 13 - Boris Godunov, tsar of Russia
• April 27 - Pope Leo XI
• October 15 - Jellaladin Mahommed Akbar, Mogul emperor