January 11 (5th waxing of Tabodwe 912 ME) – King Bayinnaung of Burma is successful in capturing his ancestral city of Toungoo from his rebellious half-brother Minkhaung II, and sets about to make Toungoo the capital for the first time since 1539. Minkhaung is forgiven by King Bayinnaung rather than being executed, and assists in the King's campaign to capture the neighboring Kingdom of Prome.
February 14–Alice Arden and her lover, Richard Mosbey, carry out the murder-for-hire of her husband, Thomas Arden of Faversham with the assistance of a highwayman known as "Black Will", two of Arden’s domestic servants (Michael Saunderson and Elizabeth Stafford) and Mosbye's sister (Cicely Pounder). The body is carried outside, and Thomas is reported as missing, but a discovery is made that the murder was committed inside the house. The conspirators are later executed.
March 27– French mechanical engineer Aubin Olivier becomes the director of the new Royal Mint, the Moulin des Etuves on the Île de la Cité in Paris after having learned the technique of producing uniform milled coinage during a sabbatical in Germany.
April–June
April 4–Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, issues an edict to reduce tensions among the three major ethnic groups in the Kingdom of Hungary, with an administration to have equal representation of for ethnic Hungarians, Slovaks and Germans.
June 27– The Edict of Châteaubriant is promulgated in France by King Henri II, providing for an increasingly severe series of measures in the Roman Catholic Kingdom to be taken against Protestants, considered to be heretics.
July–September
July 7– The fifth, and final outbreak of sweating sickness in England reaches London, as documented by Henry Machyn in his diary, and continues until July 19. Machyn notes that "ther ded from the vii day of July unto the xix ded of the swett in London of all dyssesus viij/c, iij/xx and xij and no more in alle, and so the chanseller is sertefiyd." ("There died from the 7th day of July unto the 19th dead of the sweat in London of all diseases 8 hundred, 3 score and 12 [i.e., 872], and no more in all, and so the Chancellor is certified.") John Caius of Shrewsbury writes the first full contemporary account of the symptoms of the disease.
July 30– With the surrender of the island of Gozo, the Ottoman place 6,000 survivors on ships and transporting them to Tarhuna Wa Msalata (in modern-day Libya), where they are sold into slavery. The only natives left on the island are 300 persons who escaped the citadel and 41 elderly residents.
November 20– The Office of Cardinal Secretary of State, the second highest position in the Roman Catholic Church after the Pope, is created to temporarily fill the vacancy between the death of one Pontiff and the election of another. Cardinal Girolamo Dandini is appointed by Pope Julius III to serve as the first Secretary of State.
December 16–George Martinuzzi, the Hungarian Archbishop of Esztergom and the Governor of Transylvania, is assassinated by Marco Aurelio Ferrari on orders of Ferdinand, King of Hungary. Martinuzzi had been suspected of treason after attempting to negotiate a separate peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire.
Date unknown
Qizilbash forces under the command of Tahmasp I raid and destroy the cave monastery of Vardzia in Georgia.
In Henan province, China, during the Ming dynasty, a severe frost in the spring destroys the winter wheat crop. Torrential rains in mid summer cause massive flooding of farmland and villages (by some accounts submerged in a metre of water). In the fall, a large tornado demolishes houses and flattens much of the buckwheat in the fields. Famine victims either flee, starve, or resort to cannibalism. This follows a series of natural disasters in Henan in the years 1528, 1531, 1539, and 1545.
The new edition of the Genevan psalter, Pseaumes octantetrois de David, is published, with Louis Bourgeois as supervising composer, including the first publication of the hymn tune known as the Old 100th.
↑John S. C. Abbott, The Empire of Russia from the Remotest Period to the Present Time (Mason Brothers, 1859, reprinted 2020)("On the 23rd of February, 1551, a larger convention of the clergy...")
↑Porteous, John (1969). Coins in History. New York: Putnam. pp.178–180..
