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The 1530s

571 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 16th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1530 CE54 entries

  • February 14 – Tangaxuan II, last cazonci of the Purépecha Empire, is executed by conquistador Nuño de Guzmán, ending the Purépecha Empire's independence from Spain.
  • June 25 – The Augsburg Confession is presented to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
  • October 26 – The Knights of Malta are formed, when the Knights Hospitaller are given Malta by Charles V. They transfer the island capital from Mdina to Birgu.

1531 CE58 entries

  • August 26 – Comet Halley achieves its perihelion.
  • December 9 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City.
  • December 12 – Mary, mother of Jesus, in the guise of Our Lady of Guadalupe, appears imprinted on the tilmàtli of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Aztec convert to Catholicism, in Tepeyac near Mexico City.

1532 CE52 entries

  • April – Battle of Quipaipan in Peru: Atahualpa wins the civil war in the Inca Empire, defeating his brother Huáscar.
  • August 13 – Union of Brittany and France: The Duchy of Brittany is absorbed into the Kingdom of France.
  • December 4 – A fire strikes the cathedral in Chambéry, now a part of France, but at the time a part of Italy's Duchy of Savoy. The fire burns several holes in the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Roman Catholics to be the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth after the crucifixion, and to have a miraculous imprint of Jesus, but the shroud is repaired by nuns at the cathedral.

1533 CE51 entries

  • April 7 – The Statute in Restraint of Appeals in England, declaring the king to be the supreme sovereign and forbidding judicial appeals to the papacy, is given royal assent.
  • May 23 – King Henry VIII of England's marriage with Catherine of Aragon is declared annulled by Archbishop Cranmer. Since Pope Clement VII had rejected Henry's petition for annulment in 1530, Catherine continues to believe herself Henry's wife until her death.
  • July 11 – Henry VIII is excommunicated by Pope Clement VII, as is Archbishop Cranmer.

1534 CE52 entries

  • April 5 (Easter Sunday) – Anabaptist Jan Matthys is killed by the Landsknechte, who laid siege to Münster on the day he predicted as the Second Coming of Christ. His follower John of Leiden takes control of the city.
  • July 20 – Cambridge University Press is given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII of England, and becomes the first of the privileged presses.
  • October 4 – As the Michaelmas fair opens in Wittenberg, Martin Luther's translation of the complete Christian Bible into German is offered for sale for the first time. The work, printed on 1,824 pages in two volumes by Hans Lufft adds the Old Testament including the deuterocanonical books to Luther's 1522 translation of the New Testament, and includes woodcut illustrations.

1535 CE60 entries

  • June 1 – The Conquest of Tunis by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, begins with the destruction of Barbarossa's fleet. Following the eventual capture of the city from the Ottoman Empire, around 30,000 inhabitants are massacred.
  • November 30 – Jakob Hutter, leader of the Hutterites is arrested along with his wife in Klausen in the Tyrol region on the Italian side of the Alps. The two are taken to the prison at the fortress in Bronzolo.
  • December 4 – The Consejo de i Diexe, governing body for the Republic of Venice, votes to replace the republic's treasury, made of wood, with the Zecca a structure that has stone vaults, and invites architects to submit designs.

1536 CE69 entries

  • February 25 – Tyrolean Anabaptist leader Jacob Hutter, founder of the Hutterites, is burned at the stake in Innsbruck for heresy.
  • April 6 – Count's Feud: Malmø surrenders to King Christian III of Denmark.
  • October 10 – English barrister Robert Aske becomes the leader of the Pilgrimate of Grace rebels, whose numbers have grown to 9,000 and marches with them to York.

1537 CE62 entries

  • March 8 – Chipatá, now in the Santander Department of the Republic of Colombia, is founded by the Spanish conquistadors Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and his brother Hernán Pérez de Quesada as the first settlement in what will become the Spanish colony of Nueva Granada, which will later be divided into the nations of Colombia and Venezuela.
  • April 20 – Spanish conquest of the Muisca: Bacatá, the main settlement of the Muisca Confederation, is conquered by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, effectively ending the Confederation in the Colombian Eastern Andes.
  • August 25 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.

1538 CE56 entries

  • May 27 – A joint delegation of Lutherans from various German cities arrives in England for meetings with King Henry VIII; Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; and Thomas Cromwell, the former Chief Minister of England.
  • September 28 – Battle of Preveza: The Ottoman fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent, under the command of Hayreddin Barbarossa, defeats the Holy League of Emperor Charles V, under the command of Andrea Doria.
  • November 5 – The siege of the Indian city of Diu ends as the Gujarat and Ottoman forces withdraw from the Portuguese held city.

1539 CE57 entries

  • May 30 – Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay, Florida with 600 soldiers, with the goal of finding gold. He also introduces pigs into North America.
  • June 28 – The Six Articles, an Act of the Parliament of England, is given royal assent reaffirms certain Catholic principles in Henry VIII's Church of England.
  • December 15 – In the Spanish colony of Nueva Granada (now the Republic of Colombia, Spanish conquistador Baltasar Maldonado and his troops fight a final battle at Duitama (now the Boyacá Department) against the indigenous armies of the Muisca Confederation, led by Tundama.