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The 1530s

748 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 CE63 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.
  • March 23 – The Tribute of the Maltese Falcon, an agreement by the Grand Master of the Order of St John of Jerusalem to pay an annual tribute to the Charles V, King of Sicily, in return for an order granting the Knights full rulership of Tripoli and the islands of Malta and Gozo, is reached. The transfer of ownership takes place on October 26, 1550, although Tripoli is conquered by the Ottomans on August 15, 1551.
  • 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 CE75 entries

  • May – William Skeffington accepted the formal submission of the Gaelic leader Hugh Duff O'Donnell in Drogheda.
  • 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 CE63 entries

  • April 27 – The democratic government of the Republic of Florence in Italy, in existence for more than 400 years since its founding in 1115, is abolished by order of Pope Clement VII in order for a hereditary, and absolute, monarchy to be established. Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence, the illegitimate son of Pope Clement, is given full power and the Republic's parliament (the Signoria) and the rule of the executive officer, the Gonfaloniere, come to an end.
  • April – Battle of Quipaipan in Peru: Atahualpa wins the civil war in the Inca Empire, defeating his brother Huáscar.
  • 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 CE66 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.
  • July 11 – Henry VIII is excommunicated by Pope Clement VII, as is Archbishop Cranmer.
  • December 21 (Feast of St Thomas the Apostle) – Hernando de Grijalva and his crew become the first persons discover the uninhabited Revillagigedo Islands, off the Pacific coast of Mexico, reporting the finding of what Grijalva names Isla Santo Tomé, probably Socorro Island.

1534 CE69 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.
  • April 13 – Sir Thomas More, having been brought before a royal commission to swear his allegiance to the Act of Succession, testifies that he accepts Parliament's right to declare Anne Boleyn the legitimate Queen of England, but denies that the marriage is spiritually valid of the king's second marriage". Holding fast to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy, More refuses to take the oath of supremacy toward King Henry VIII. More is confined in the Tower of London. He will be executed on July 6, 1535.
  • 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 CE81 entries

  • May 10 – In Amsterdam, a small troop of Anabaptists, led by the minister Jacob van Geel, attacks the city hall, in an attempted coup to seize the city. In the counter-attack by the city's militia, the burgemeester, Pieter Colijns, is killed by the rebels. In another incident this year in Amsterdam, seven men and five women walk nude in the streets; and Anabaptists rebel in other cities of the Netherlands.
  • 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.

1536 CE87 entries

  • January 24 – King Henry VIII of England is seriously injured when he falls from his horse at a jousting tournament in Greenwich, after which the fully armored horse falls on him. The King is unconscious for two hours, sustaining an injury to an ulcerated leg and a concussion.
  • February 25 – Tyrolean Anabaptist leader Jacob Hutter, founder of the Hutterites, is burned at the stake in Innsbruck for heresy.
  • September 1 – King James V becomes the first Scottish monarch since 1346 to voluntarily leave his kingdom, leaving six vice-regents— the Lord Chancellor Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow; James Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews; the earls of Huntly, Montrose, and Eglinton, and Lord Maxwell— to govern the nation during his absence. King James sails from Kirkcaldy on the Royal Scots Navy flagship Mary Willoughby, along with 500 men and five other ships, to travel to France to meet his future bride, Princess Madeleine of Valois. The Scottish entourage docks in France at Dieppe one week later.

1537 CE82 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 CE82 entries

  • January 31 – General Johann Katzianer of the Holy Roman Empire, on trial in Vienna for the disastrous Imperial campaign against the Ottoman Empire and for desertion during the Battle of Gorjani, escapes and flees to Kostajnica Fortress in Ottoman-controlled Croatia. After 14 months, Nikola IV Zrinski has Katzianer murdered.
  • 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.
  • November 5 – The siege of the Indian city of Diu ends as the Gujarat and Ottoman forces withdraw from the Portuguese held city.

1539 CE80 entries

  • April 19 – The Treaty of Frankfurt is signed at Frankfurt-am-Main by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor on behalf of the Empire's Roman Catholic states, and the Lutheran theologian Philip Melanchthon, representative of the Schmalkaldic League of Protestant German states. Effective May 1, the parties agree that no violent actions will be taken by either side against the other during a 15 month truce period.
  • 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.
  • August 17 – The revolt of Ghent begins in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) as members of the city's guilds demand the right to choose their own leaders, and the resignation of the Spanish-sponsored city leaders. Within four days, the city is under the control of nine guild leaders.