1535
Thomas More Executed
Sir Thomas More, former Lord Chancellor and author of Utopia, climbed the Tower Hill scaffold and joked with his executioner to help him up. He swore he died the King's good servant, but God's first. His head was parboiled and mounted on London Bridge. His refusal to swear the Oath of Supremacy made him a Catholic martyr whose canonization in 1935 honored fidelity to conscience.
Pizarro Founds Lima
Francisco Pizarro chose a dusty valley near the Pacific coast for his new capital, away from the mountains and closer to Spanish supply ships. He called it the City of Kings. Lima would grow into the viceregal heart of Spanish South America, fat on silver from Potosi. Lima's coastal location, near shipping routes rather than Andean strongholds, reflected Pizarro's understanding that Spanish power depended on sea communication.
Charles V Captures Tunis
Leading an armada of over four hundred ships, Charles V landed in North Africa and drove the Ottoman-backed corsair Barbarossa from Tunis. Thousands of Christian galley slaves were freed. It was the emperor's proudest personal victory, immortalized in tapestries he carried from palace to palace. The victory temporarily halted Barbarossa's corsair raids but demonstrated the limits of Habsburg naval power in sustaining North African conquests.
John Fisher Beheaded
The elderly Cardinal John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was led to Tower Hill and beheaded for refusing to accept Henry VIII's supremacy over the English church. He carried a copy of the New Testament and opened it at random to a verse about eternal life before laying his neck on the block.
Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster Falls
An apocalyptic Anabaptist commune led by the tailor Jan van Leiden, who had proclaimed himself king of New Jerusalem in the German city of Muenster, was finally overwhelmed by besieging Catholic and Lutheran forces. Jan and two lieutenants were tortured to death and their bodies hung in iron cages from a church tower.
Nuremberg Chronicle Reprinted
The sprawling illustrated universal history known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, first printed in 1493, was reprinted in reduced formats for a new generation of German readers. Its woodcuts of biblical and classical figures continued to shape popular visual imagination about the past. Its woodcuts, many reused to depict multiple cities, reflected early printing's practical economics and willingness to recycle visual material.