1572

For all your arrows tipped with poison
The curved daggers you bear as arms
Amorous Malays and valiant Javanese
All will be subject to the Portuguese.

- Luís Vaz de Camões, Os Lusíadas

In the year AD 1572...

• The tide turns decisively in the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule, which had seemingly been repressed. The major turning point is the Capture of Brielle by the Sea Beggars on April 1, which inspires uprisings all across Holland and Zealand. The revolt is back on for good.
• The fourth of the French Wars of Religion ignites with the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, as Parisian Catholics rise up and slaughter thousands of Protestants at the urging of King Charles IX and with the connivance of Catherine de Medici. Henry of Navarre and the Prince of Condé barely escape with their lives.
• Vilcabamba, Peru, the last remnant of the Inca Empire, falls to Spanish forces, bringing a final end to the Incan civilization.
• Supernova SN 1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia is first observed by Cornelius Gemma. Tycho Brahe, who notices it two days later, will use it to challenge the prevailing view that stars do not change. The supernova is so bright that it remains visible through 1574.
• Italian physician Geronimo Mercuriali completes his De morbis cutaneis ("On the diseases of the skin"), the first scientific tract on dermatology.
• Os Lusíadas, an epic poem penned by Luís Vaz de Camões, now considered Portugal's national epic, is published for the first time.

These people were born in 1572...

• English writer and prelate John Donne.
• English dramatist Ben Johnson.
• Japanese emperor Go-Yozei.
• Japanese Shinto priestess Izumo no Okuni, remembered as the founder of Kabuki theatre.
• Dutch scientist Cornelis Drebbel, who would construct the first workable submarine in 1620.
• French noblewoman Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, founder of the Congregation of the Visitation, a Roman Catholic religious order for women.
• Welsh composer Thomas Tomkins.
• German uranographer Johann Bayer.

These people died in 1572...

• Túpac Amaru, last king of the Incas, executed by the Spanish following the capture of Vilcabamba.
• Pope Pius V, succeeded by Gregory XIII.
• Emperor Longqing of China's Ming Dynasty.
• Scottish religious reformer John Knox, considered the founder of Presbyterianism in Scotland.
• Italian artist and poet Agnolo di Cosimo, better known by his nickname, Bronzino.
• Italian scholar, jurist, poet, military engineer, urban planner, philologist, archaeologist, mathematician, naturalist, and all-around Renaissance man Girolamo Maggi.
• Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, succeeded by her son Henry III of Navarre (later King Henry IV of France).

1571 - 1572 - 1573

16th century

How they were made