April 9 – Marcello Cervini degli Spannocchi is unanimously chosen as the successor to Pope Julius III, who died on March 23, and takes the name of Pope Marcellus II as the 222nd Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He will reign for 22 days.[4]
May 15 – The conclave opens with 42 of the 56 Roman Catholic cardinals to choose a successor to Pope Marcellus II, who had died on May 1.[5]
May 23 – Giovanni Pietro Carafa, Cardinal of Naples, is elected as the new Pope after Giacomo del Pozzo fails to obtain the necessary two-thirds approval.[6] Carafa, the 223rd Pope, takes the name Pope Paul IV.[7]
August 24 – England's Thomas Thirlby, the first and only Roman Catholic Archbishop of Norwich and Queen Mary's envoy to Pope Paul IV, returns to London from bearing a papal bull that confirms Queen Mary's jurisdiction over Ireland.[9]
December 11 – Cardinal Reginald Pole is made a cardinal-priest in the Roman Catholic Church and made the administrator of the See of Canterbury in England,[14] though he will not become the new Archbishop of Canterbury until the following March 20.
Date unknown
Russia breaks a 60-year-old truce with Sweden by attacking Finland.
English captain John Lok returns from Guinea, with five Africans to train as interpreters for future trading voyages.
Richard Eden publishes The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India, a translation into English of parts of Pietro Martire d'Anghiera's De orbe novo decades, the Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés work Natural hystoria de las Indias and others, urging his countrymen to follow the lead of Spain in exploring the New World;[15] the work includes the first recorded use in English of the country name 'China'.
^Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 150–153. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
^Goldsmid, E. (ed.) (1886). The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, collected by Richard Hakluyt, Preacher, Vol. III: North-Eastern Europe and Adjacent Countries, Part II: The Muscovy Company and the North-Eastern Passage. Edinburgh: E. & G. Goldsmid. pp. 101-112.
^Maureen E. Buja (1996). Antonio Barré and Music Printing in Mid-sixteenth Century Rome. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. p. 81.
^Chacón, col. 810-811; Panvinio, s. 427-428; por. Setton, s. 617.
^Pastor, Ludwig von. History of the Popes. T. 14. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1924
^Paul Johnson (1997). The Papacy. Barnes & Noble Books. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-7607-0755-5.
^ a bRonald Love (March 14, 2001). Blood and Religion: The Conscience of Henri IV. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. pp. 25–. ISBN 978-0-7735-6884-6.
^"Significant Earthquake Information India: Kashmir: Srinagar". ngdc.noaa.gov. NCEI. Retrieved August 7, 2021.
^Stephen R. Turnbull, The Samurai: A Military History, ( New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1977) pp. 131–134
^Parkman, Francis (1983). France and England in North America Vol 1. New York, New York: Library of America. pp. 33–41.
^"Marian Government Policies". Retrieved July 5, 2007.
^Lee, Frederick George (December 6, 1888). "Reginald Pole, Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury : an historical sketch, with an introductory prologue and practical epilogue". London : J. C. Nimmo – via Internet Archive.
^Hadfield, Andrew (2004). "Eden, Richard (c.1520–1576)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8454. Retrieved December 12, 2011. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^Ireland. Dept. of Foreign Affairs (1987). Ireland today. Information Section, Dept. of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved June 9, 2012.
^Mack P. Holt (May 2, 2002). The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle During the Wars of Religion. Cambridge University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-521-89278-0.
^"Julius III | pope". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
^Catherine Atkinson (2007). Inventing Inventors in Renaissance Europe: Polydore Vergil's De Inventoribus Rerum. Mohr Siebeck. p. 86. ISBN 978-3-16-149187-0.