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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization science medicine religion literature art agriculture food and drink |
England's Henry VIII, now 52, marries Catherine Parr, 31, July 12. Formerly married to Edward Borough and then to a Lord Latimer, Catherine is a daughter of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal, is knowledgeable about religious subjects, and will have a chastening influence on the king in his final years.
The Ottoman admiral Barbarossa (Khair ad-Din) joins with François I to bombard, besiege, and sack the imperial city of Nice.
Ottoman forces invade Persia for the third time in 9 years, recovering territory that was lost earlier and seizing new territories; hostilities will continue until 1555.
Spanish conquistador Ruy Lopez de Villalobos is driven out of the Philippine Islands by the natives a year after reaching the islands and giving them their name (see Magellan, 1521). He is captured by the Portuguese.
Japan receives her first European visitors as a Chinese ship carrying two Portuguese adventurers is wrecked on an island off Kyushu. The fastidious Japanese find the foreigners offensive (like most Europeans, the men go for months without bathing), they will come to call them Namban (Chinese for southern barbarians), but the strangers have arquebuses (muskets) that the local lord buys and duplicates. Firearms will henceforth be employed in Japanese warfare.
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo dies in early January off the coast of northern California from complications of a broken leg suffered while landing on an offshore island (see 1542); his pilot Bartolome Ferrelo returns to New Spain April 14 after discovering a bay that will later be called San Francisco (see Drake, 1579).
A ship from Peru arrives at Santiago in September with clothing, iron goods, and military supplies to relieve the Spanish encampment headed by Pedro de Valdivia (see 1541). Inés de Suárez has raised thousands of pigs and chickens to feed the city's inhabitants, and although most of the first year's wheat crop has been used for seed grain, the new crop harvested in December is large enough to provide abundant supplies of bread (see 1549; first viceroy, 1544).
Courtier Jean-François de La Rocque sieur de Roberval abandons his plan to establish a colony in New France and returns home with his party after a brutal winter (see 1542); he brings what turns out, like Cartier's "treasure," to be fool's gold and mica. Sadly disappointed, the French will make no further expeditions to North America until 1600.
Six Books Concenerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbits (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri VI) by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus defy Church doctrine that the Earth is the center of the universe and establish the theory that the earth rotates daily on its axis and, with other planets, revolves in orbit around the sun (see Rheticus, 1540). The Christian Church continues to look askance at anything other than the geocentric Ptolemaic system that has been dogma for nearly 1400 years. Also Ptolemy's intricate geometric and trigonometric tables have made it difficult to calculate the dates of Easter and other Church holidays. Copernicus fills 95 percent of his book with technical information, but the clear and simple tables he presents make it much easier to calculate dates of holidays. He has not permitted his work to be published earlier, but his student Rheticus has persuaded him to complete it and has taken it to a Nuremberg printer. Copernicus corrects the proofs on his deathbed, and he dies of apoplexy and paralysis at Frauenburg, East Prussia, May 24 at age 70 just as the work is published. Copernicus's heliocentric principle was recognized in antiquity but is considered as revolutionary as his title (the word revolution will derive from his Revolutionibus) (see Tycho Brahe, 1572; 1576; Kepler, 1609; Galileo, 1613).
The Fabric of the Human Body (De humani corporis fabrica) by Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius, 29, is the first accurate book on human anatomy. Anatomical education up to now has been based on observations made by the 2nd century physician Galen, who used animals for his study, but Vesalius repudiates Galenism and advances knowledge of biology with his accurate descriptions of bones and the nervous system. Court physician to the emperor Charles V, Vesalius has defied Church opposition to human dissection; his work contains anatomical drawings by the Venetian painter Titian, and when Vesalius presents a copy to his patron, the emperor says that "hitherto, nothing has been composed so eloquent, learned, and useful" (see 1564; Albinus, 1747).
The Spanish Inquisition burns Protestants at the stake for the first time.
Pope Paul III issues an index librorum prohibitorum forbidding Roman Catholics to read certain books (see 1559).
Painting: Ecce Homo by Titian. Hans Holbein dies at London November 29 at age 45.
Wood carver, sculptor, and architect Baccio d'Agnolo (Bartolomeo d'Agnolo Baglioni) dies at Florence March 5 at age 80, having planned the Villa Borghese and the palazzo Bartolini, designed the campanile of Santo Spirito, and exercised a major influence on Renaissance architecture in the city.
New Spain's viceroy Antonio de Mendoza introduces wheat, barley, broad beans, chickpeas, European vegetables, and cows into the colony. The grains, vegetables, and livestock introduced into North America in the next few decades by English explorers will have come in many cases from Spaniards to the south.
Chinese consumption of oils and fats is four to five times as high as in Japan, where diets are far leaner and less varied than what Chinese enjoy in the rich Chang Jiang (Yangtze) delta but not too different from what northern Chinese eat beyond the Great Wall.
Japan's Portuguese visitors introduce baked bread. They will also bring in tomatoes, maize, and other Western Hemisphere foods, but initially just as curiosities. Dutch visitors will introduce sweet cakes which the Japanese will call castella (from Castile) and will continue to bake at Nagasaki for more than 4½ centuries.
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