1577
Drake Begins Circumnavigation
Francis Drake slipped out of Plymouth with five ships and a secret Elizabethan commission to raid Spanish shipping on the Pacific coast of South America. Only the Golden Hind would complete the three-year voyage around the world, returning fat with looted silver and charts Elizabeth locked away as state secrets.
Akbar Founds Din-i Ilahi
Akbar began developing his idiosyncratic religion of Din-i Ilahi, or Divine Faith, blending elements of Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity. It attracted only a small courtly following and died with him, but it remains one of history's boldest experiments in imperial religious synthesis. The experiment's failure to attract followers demonstrated the limits of imperial authority in matters of personal belief.
El Greco Settles in Toledo
Domenikos Theotokopoulos, trained in Crete and Venice, settled in the dusty Castilian cathedral town of Toledo after failing to win royal patronage at the Escorial. There he painted elongated saints twisting under stormy skies. Toledo was too dry and too old to care, and it suited him exactly. Toledo's intense piety and isolation from court fashion gave him the freedom to develop his extraordinary personal vision.
Ricci Joins the Jesuits
A twenty-five-year-old law student from Macerata named Matteo Ricci abandoned his studies to join the Society of Jesus and volunteered for the Asian missions. He had no idea his name would be written in Ming Chinese as Li Madou, and that his friendship with Xu Guangqi would open European mathematics to Chinese scholars.