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Scottish forces defeat their English invaders February 25 at Ancrum Moor. The English retreat but invade once again in September.
An English fleet leaves Portsmouth July 19 to engage the French in Solent. Henry VIII's 36-year-old flagship H.M.S. Mary Rose was uprated to 700 tons 9 years ago and fitted with more efficient guns, but her lower gun ports were cut only 16 inches above the waterline. Manned by 400 bowmen and 300 others, she fires a broadside, but a strong gust of wind causes her to heel. Her guns break loose, she capsizes, and the overloaded vessel sinks in less than a minute as the king watches from the shore. Divers will find her timbers in 1836.
The emperor Charles V makes a truce with Suleiman the Magnificent at Adrianople in November.
The former Mughal emperor Humayun takes Kandahar with support from Persian forces granted by Shah Tahmasp. Humayun's rival emperor Sher Shah has reformed the empire's administration but is killed by a cannon ball while besieging the Rajput stronghold of Kalanjar. Humayun will not regain his throne, however, for another 10 years (see Kabul, 1547).
Vietnamese forces loyal to the Le dynasty regain control of territories south of the Red River delta (see 1527); civil war will continue for another 50 years before the Le regain Hanoi and the rest of the north (see 1558).
Portuguese naval officer João de Castro, 45, commands a fleet that helps end another Ottoman-Indian siege of the fort at Diu (see 1509). The fort was besieged again a few years ago.
Bartolomé de Las Casas arrives in Central America in January after a 6-month journey with 44 other Dominicans (see 1542). Named bishop of Chiapas in Guatemala, he promptly issues a Confesionario forbidding priests to grant absolution to those who hold Indians as slaves, but colonists bridle at the strict enforcement of his "Admonitions and Regulations for the Confessors of Spaniards" ("Avisos y reglas para confesores de españoles"). Their opposition at Lent forces him to establish a council of bishops to assist him, and although his staunch pro-Indian stance will so antagonize the colonists that he will return to Spain in 1547 he will continue to champion the cause of the indigenes.
A silver mine discovered by llama herder Diego Huanca at Potosí in the altiplano of New Castile will yield much of the wealth to fuel the commercial activity of Europe in the next century and prepare the way for an industrial revolution. Reports of the silver have reached conquistador Juan de Villaroel through the llama herder, who said he built a fire to keep warm while he slept and the next morning found shining silvery threads melted out of the rocks by the heat of the fire. Accompanied by Diego and Francisco de Centeno, Juan de Villaroel has come to Potosí and found a mountain (Cerro Rico) containing deposits that will yield an estimated $2 billion in silver and later will produce significant quantities of bismuth, gold, tin, tungsten, wolfram, zinc, and other metals (see 1611; Drake, 1573).
The Great Art (Ars Magna) by Girolamo Cardano, now 44, is the first major Renaissance work to concentrate on algebra. It contains the solution of the cubic equation (borrowing from the Venetian mathematician Niccolo Tartaglia) as well as the solution of the quartic equation (borrowing from his former servant, Ludovico Ferrari), and introduces the use of a, b, c for solving algebraic problems (see Bhaskara II, 1185). Cardano is a gambler, and his Book on Games of Chance (Liber de ludo aleae) presents the first systematic computations of probabilities.
A typhus epidemic in Cuba kills as many as 250,000; a similar number die in New Spain; 150,000 die in Tlascala; and 100,000 at Cholula according to the friar Geronimo de Mendieta.
The Byrth of Mankynde counsels that a midwife shall "sit before the labouring woman and shall diligently observe and wait, how much and after what means the child stireth itself." Midwives also apply warm clothes to the stomach, administer enemas to widen the birth canal, employ belladonna as an antispasmodic, and give women sneezing powder in the belief that sneezing will help dislodge the infant. Christians believe that pain in childbirth is woman's punishment for Eve's sin, and efforts to ease the pain are often condemned. Alcohol, opium, Indian hemp (cannabis sativa), and mandrake root are used in surgery but generally not in childbirth, even though protracted labor can sometimes last 48 hours and more (the longer a birthing woman labors the more her own life is at risk).
The Council of Trent convened by Pope Paul III under Jesuit guidance undertakes reform of the Church. No Protestants attend, but the Tridentine Decrees issued by the Council will effect some genuine internal reforms while formulating rigid doctrines in direct opposition to Protestant teaching. The Tridentine Decrees will establish the Latin liturgy that will be used in Roman Catholic Church services for more than 400 years (see 1551).
A Provençal baron massacres Waldensian Protestants April 20 and seizes his victims' lands.
Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier moves in the fall from Goa to the Malay Peninsula, where he spends months evangelizing among the people of various races in the Portuguese commercial center at Malacca and in the Moluccas (Spice Islands) (see 1542). He will return in 1548 to India, where more Jesuits will have arrived to join him (see 1548).
Nonfiction: Taxophilus (Lover of the Bow) by humanist scholar Roger Ascham, 30, at the University of Cambridge is the first book on archery in English. Ascham has written it in the form of a dialogue; Bibliotheca universalis by Zürich physician and naturalist Konrad Gesner, 29, lists about 1,800 authors alphabetically, giving the titles of their works. The first work of its kind, the reference book includes an annotation, evaluation, and comments on the nature and merit of each entry.
Painting: Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time by Florentine painter Il Bronzino (Agnold di Cosimo di Mariano), 41, court painter to Cosimo de' Medici.
Fishing grows poor in the Baltic Sea while becoming good in the North Sea, a development that will have important economic and political consequences.
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