Queen Elizabeth I grants a royal charter to the East India Company, which later comes to rule much of the Indian subcontinent.
Date given in the Julian calendar.
King Henry IV issues an edict granting substantial religious rights to the Huguenots, ending the French Wars of Religion.
Miguel de Cervantes publishes the first part of Don Quixote, often regarded as one of the first modern novels.
English colonists establish Jamestown in Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
Johannes Kepler publishes Astronomia nova, stating his first two laws of planetary motion, including elliptical orbits.
Observing with his own telescope, Galileo Galilei discovers the moons of Jupiter, publishing them in Sidereus Nuncius in 1610 in support of heliocentrism.
The Armada sent by Philip II to invade England is defeated by the English navy at the Battle of Gravelines and scattered during its retreat.