1556
Akbar Takes the Mughal Throne
Thirteen years old when his father Humayun fell down the library stairs of Delhi's Purana Qila, Akbar was crowned on a scaffold in the middle of a military campaign in the Punjab. His regent Bairam Khan managed the empire until the boy king decided, at eighteen, to manage it himself.
Shaanxi Earthquake
Before dawn a catastrophic earthquake ripped through Shaanxi and neighboring provinces of Ming China. Loess cave-dwellings collapsed on their sleeping occupants. Contemporary estimates put the dead at over eight hundred thousand, making it the deadliest earthquake in recorded history. The enormous death toll was largely due to the region's distinctive loess cave dwellings, which collapsed on sleeping families in the early morning.
Cranmer Burned at Oxford
Thomas Cranmer, architect of the English Book of Common Prayer, was burned at the stake outside Balliol College after recanting his recantation of Protestantism. He thrust the hand that had signed the earlier document into the flames first, crying, This hand hath offended. Mary's burning of Protestants had become unignorable.
Akbar Wins the Second Battle of Panipat
Bairam Khan, regent for the teenage Akbar, crushed the Hindu general Hemu on the same plain where Babur had conquered thirty years earlier. A chance arrow pierced Hemu's eye at the decisive moment. Mughal rule in northern India was restored and would not be seriously challenged for over a century.
Charles V Finishes Abdicating
Charles V formally abdicated the Spanish and American crowns in favor of his son Philip II in Brussels, completing the transfer of his vast inheritance. The aging emperor told his assembled courtiers that he had always tried to serve his kingdoms faithfully. Many wept. He had tried, and it had proved impossible.
Charles V Retires to Yuste
After distributing his empires, the exhausted emperor retired to the monastery of Yuste in the Gredos mountains with a library, a flock of clocks, and a retinue of servants. He spent his final two years tinkering with the clocks, which could never be made to strike in unison. He died in September 1558.