1533
Atahualpa Executed at Cajamarca
After filling a room with gold in exchange for his freedom, Atahualpa was tried by Pizarro on trumped charges and garroted in the square at Cajamarca. He was baptized moments before so his body would not be burned. The Inca Empire, already fractured by civil war, collapsed into its conquerors' hands.
Henry VIII Marries Anne Boleyn
In a secret ceremony at Whitehall, Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn while still technically wed to Catherine of Aragon. Anne was already pregnant. Thomas Cranmer would soon annul the first marriage, and the break with Rome, three decades in the making, could no longer be postponed. The marriage, before the first was formally annulled, precipitated the Act of Supremacy and England's permanent break with Rome.
Pizarro Enters Cuzco
Francisco Pizarro marched into Cuzco, the navel of the Inca world, past temples sheathed in gold. His men stripped the Coricancha and melted its gardens into ingots. A puppet emperor, Manco Inca, was enthroned. The conquest of the central Andes was, on paper, complete. The looting of the Coricancha, whose walls were sheathed in gold plate, produced a treasure so vast its division took months.
Holbein Paints the Ambassadors
Hans Holbein the Younger completed a double portrait of two French diplomats at Henry VIII's court, crammed with scientific instruments, globes, and an oblique anamorphic skull that only resolved when viewed from the side. The painting was a brooding meditation on learning, diplomacy, and the brevity of human ambition. The anamorphic skull, resolving only from a sharp angle, is art history's most famous optical trick and a meditation on mortality.
Nostradamus Treats Plague in Aix
The young physician Michel de Nostredame, traveling through Provence, treated plague victims at Aix-en-Provence using rose-pill remedies of his own invention and strict hygiene. His reputation as a healer spread, though his first wife and children would die in a later outbreak he could not contain. His methods, emphasizing hygiene and herbal remedies over bloodletting, suggest a practical intelligence his later prophetic career has obscured.