Events

• February 8 - Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she is implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.
• July 22 - Colony of Roanoke: A group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off of North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.
• August 19 - Polish and Lithuanian nobles elect Sigismund Vasa as their king
• October 20 - Battle of Coutras - Huguenot forces under Henry of Navarre defeat Royalist forces under Anne, Duc de Joyeuse, favorite of King Henry. Joyeuse is killed.
• First Filipinos in North America landed in Morro Bay near San Luis Obispo, California
• The Rose (theatre) is founded in London by Philip Henslowe.

Births

• January 6 - Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, Duke of San Lucar
• August 18 - Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Gov. John White of the Colony of Roanoke, becomes the first English child born in the Americas.

Deaths

• February 8 - Mary, Queen of Scots
• April 8 - John Foxe - author of Foxe's Book of Martyrs
• October 19 - Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (b. 1541)
• October 20 - Anne, Duc de Joyeuse, favorite of Henry III of France