January 11 — The first recorded lottery in England begins and continues, nonstop, at the west door of St Paul's Cathedral for almost five months. Each share costs ten shillings, and proceeds are used to repair harbours, and for other public works.
February 26 — Pope Pius V issues a papal bull expelling all Jews from Italian and French territories.
March 13 – Battle of Jarnac: Royalist troops under Marshal Gaspard de Tavannes surprise and defeat the Huguenots under the Prince of Condé, who is captured and murdered. A substantial proportion of the Huguenot army manages to escape, under Gaspard de Coligny.
May 6 – England's St. Paul Cathedral lottery ends with the selection of a winner.
May 8 – King Bayinnaung of Burma puts down the revolt by Setthathirath of Lan Xang (now Laos), and ending Lan Xang's attempt to rescue Thailand's Ayutthaya Kingdom from conquest.
May 31 – Kasim Pasha of the Ottoman Empire begins the Ottoman attempt to conquer Astrakhan with tens of thousands of troops and a plan to build a canal between the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea to send Ottoman ships on the conquest. The attempt to build a canal proves to be unfeasible.
June 10 – German Protestant troops reinforce Coligny, near Limoges.
July 24 – Huguenot forces under Gaspard II de Coligny and 15-year-old Prince Henry of Navarre begin the siege of Poitiers, a Roman Catholic stronghold. The siege fails and the Huguenots depart on September 7.
August 24 – Battle of Orthez: Huguenot forces under Gabriel, comte de Montgomery defeat Royalist forces under General Terride, in French Navarre. Catholics surrender under the condition that their lives will be spared. Huguenots agree, but then massacre the Catholics anyway.
September 7 – A Royalist army under the Duc d'Anjou and Marshal Tavannes forces Coligny to abandon the siege of Poitiers.
November 11 — Danish General Daniel Rantzau arrives at the Swedish held Varberg castle at Halland and orders his artillery to shell the castle with cannon fire. The Swedish defenders fire back with their own artillery and Rantzau's head is taken off by a cannonball on the first day.
November 14 — The siege of Varberg Castle by Denmark ends after three days of shelling the Swedish defenders.
The trade compact of 1536 is renewed, exempting French merchants from Ottoman law, and allowing them to travel, buy and sell throughout the sultan's dominions, and to pay low customs duties on French imports and exports.
