1554
Suleiman's Heir Executed at Topkapi
The Ottoman prince Mustafa, beloved of the Janissaries and widely seen as the ablest heir, was summoned to his father's tent and strangled with a bowstring on the orders of Suleiman the Magnificent. Roxelana, the sultan's Ukrainian-born wife, had lobbied for her own sons' succession. The empire's most promising future died in a silken cord.
Mary I Marries Philip of Spain
At Winchester Cathedral, Queen Mary married Philip, heir to the Spanish and Habsburg empires, in a ceremony combining Castilian and English traditions. The match was unpopular in England from the beginning. Philip would spend little time with his wife and leave her nothing but heartbreak and a phantom pregnancy. The treaty limited Philip's English powers, but the restrictions did little to mollify hostile English public opinion about the Spanish match.
Bayinnaung Crowned in Toungoo Burma
Bayinnaung, a warlord sometimes called the conqueror of the ten directions, ascended the throne of the Burmese Toungoo dynasty. He would build Southeast Asia's largest land empire, swallowing Lan Na, Lan Xang, and briefly the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya. His white elephants became a regional obsession. His brief conquest of Ayutthaya demonstrated both the potential and fragility of Southeast Asian imperial ambitions.
Saint Basil's Begun in Moscow
To commemorate the conquest of Kazan, Ivan the Terrible commissioned a cathedral of the Intercession beside Red Square. Architects piled nine domed chapels around a central tower, painting each onion dome a different color. The cathedral would become a visual symbol of Russia itself, and of Ivan's combination of piety and paranoia.